Inside Ukraine's elite drone command bunker | The Economist

This is the battle room. Here is the battle groups: pilots, intelligence and duties. These are all people with large. monitors, looks like they are. playing video games. This is the pilots and duties. who are watching online video. from the drones. This is the heart of our. battle—our brigade. We were the first foreign. journalists to visit the. command centre of one of. Ukraine’s elite drone brigades. Your goal is to kill the enemy,

destroy their infrastructure, but to do so cheaply. and efficiently. Has it become harder to do that? Is it harder to find. Russian soldiers? Yeah, of course. It's much harder today. every day harder and harder. Founded as a battalion by a group. of tech-focused civilians in 2023, Nemesis is known for. its lethal effectiveness, innovative culture. and technical expertise. Everywhere there is data,

everywhere there are screens, everywhere things are measured. Data is very important, absolutely. In our brigade, in Nemesis, we work with a big mass. of data from crews, from the battlefield, from intelligence, from planning, so it's like our base. to do our job [well]. We're trying to be the first. unit which improves new.

technologies, new ideas and. new drones, new payloads. And can I ask you a. slightly difficult question? But these people, when they are killing. Russians, frequently, that’s the mission: what does it do to their psychology? I think it’s like when you killed. once it’s a problem. When they kill once or twice. it’s a problem. When you kill or strike or destroy.

tech, military tech. many, many times, it’s like your job. Do you think there will be. psychological effects after the. war on people who have done this? So I think there are. these people who kill an enemy. by the screen, by the control. buttons, by the screen. It’s like not real emotion, not as much emotion as when. could kill them in real life, so it’s like not real emotion.

Do you ever, I feel naive asking. this of a military commander, but do you ever feel scared? Do you feel worried about. your own safety? Of course. So it’s like very bad. when you do not feel. scared, it’s absolutely not good. When you do not feel scared, you need to rest. You can watch the full report. of our visit to Ukraine. by clicking the link.