Ukrainian volunteer drone force uses DJI drones to defend country

A Ukrainian volunteer drone force consisting of civilians is helping to defend their country against the Russian invaders using DJI drones that become eyes in the sky.

These ordinary citizens and recreational drone pilots are providing crucial information on the Russian tanks’ and troops’ movements to the Ukrainian military.

Fox News spoke to the Ukrainian business owner and DJI dealer Taras Troiak.

Here’s a quick transcript of the short video interview.

Fox: First off great job that you’re doing this. How is the coordination working between what you get and what military headquarters can use?

Taras: The coordination works like this, so we use a drone to detect the GPS points of Russian troops, and then we have a chat board. It is a government chat board where we sent this information together with these pictures and after this, the government decides what to do with these troops. So they can use a bomb or some Ukrainian troops to destroy it very fast. And it works very good in Ukraine.

Fox: How many people are on your Ukrainian volunteer drone force? How many do you need?

Taras: Right now in Ukraine, we have a Facebook owners group. There are 15,000 people. Also, we train a lot of new pilots, so right now more than 10,000 pilots joined these actions and we are looking for Russian troops in all territory Ukrainian, including western borders as well.

Fox: What kind of success have you had? What have you seen through, even through the thermal imaging you have?

Taras: Right now statistics is like this, that more than 13,000 Russian soldier already dead and many troops, tanks destroyed and they sent how to go back to their home country. But the most problems that we use right now is Chinese drones, DJI and we cannot get any drones from US, like Skydio or other manufacturers, including military, and we are scared that DJI could shut down all the drones in Ukraine because we are not sure in their position right now.

Fox: Real quick why can you not get any American drones?

Taras: Because there is a license as I know and I tried to export US drone maybe five years ago and we cannot get license to export. Even civil use drones to Ukraine from US.

Fox: And you’re stuck with Chinese drones and we know they could bring you to your knees at any point because we know who they side with. Congratulations on doing this you are making a real impact in your country that needs you most. Continued success. If people want to help you out where can they go?

Taras: They can go to our Facebook group it is called Ukrainian DJI Owners Fan Club on Facebook. They can find me and email me and if there is any chance we can find drones that we can supply fast to Poland and then to Ukraine it will be a great help to us.

Ukrainian volunteer drone force

Let us know in the comments below what do you think of the Ukrainian volunteer drone Force. Do you think they’re risking their lives by flying DJI drones that might be spotted by the Russian military?

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