Sep 6, 2024
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Bridging a river is widely regarded as one of the most difficult tasks in military operations. The Ukrainians know these challenges well, having little success in crossing the Dnipro River near Kherson. Over the past few weeks, the Russians have been facing similar difficulties while attempting to build pontoon bridges across the Seim River in Kursk Oblast, after Ukrainian forces destroyed the original bridge to disrupt Russian supply lines. However, the Russians are now discovering that this challenging process is further complicated by the Ukrainians’ use of advanced drones to target and destroy these pontoon bridges.
The complexity of river bridging is multi-faceted. A river presents a natural obstacle with strong currents, deep water, and unstable banks. Building a bridge strong enough to support military vehicles, including trucks and armor, requires specialized engineer units. Yet, the true difficulty comes from the enemy on the far side. If the opposing force controls the far bank, they can engage exposed bridging units with direct fire. Even if the bank is secured, forward observers can still direct artillery strikes on the vulnerable bridge. Once constructed, the bridge becomes a natural choke point, and without proper coordination, vehicles crossing it are susceptible to attacks, as evidenced in May 2022 on the Siverskyi Donets River, where the Russians lost an entire Battalion Tactical Group.
Despite these challenges, military units train extensively to establish temporary bridges under hostile conditions, with specialized engineer teams able to construct them in just hours. They then coordinate forces to execute the “wet-gap crossing” swiftly and effectively. While these tactics are effective against traditional counter-bridging threats, they are proving to be very vulnerable to drone strikes. Indeed, the integration of drones into Ukrainian counter-bridging operations is making the Russian task of establishing a military bridge nearly impossible.
Drones have provided the Ukrainians with several new capabilities that traditional direct and indirect fires do not offer. Drone strikes, especially those involving loitering munitions, are more accurate than artillery. Moreover, Ukrainian forces do not need to be near the bridge, reducing their exposure to Russian fire. Drones can also maintain constant surveillance over a river, quickly identifying the start of a bridging operation. As drones become more accurate, able to carry larger payloads, and fly for longer durations, their effectiveness in counter-bridge operations will further increase.
The most common defense against enemy attacks during bridging operations is the use of obscurants, such as smoke screens. However, drones are now equipped with advanced sensors, many of which can see through these obscurants. For instance, infrared cameras can penetrate smoke and fog, making a bridge, whose temperature differs from the surrounding water, easy to detect. Additionally, new sensors are also using radio frequency sensing for tracking a military vehicle’s radio signal, allowing a drone to pinpoint the bridging unit’s location as it approaches the river.
Russian counter-drone systems offer very limited protection for their bridging units. The Russia military relies on electronic warfare systems that block drones from receiving control signals. Meanwhile, Ukraine is leveraging its commercial sector to develop increasingly autonomous drones, equipped with advanced computer vision algorithms for targeting. Identifying a river is straightforward, and a preprogrammed flight path can guide a drone along its course. From there, a bridge, which has sharp features relative to a moving body of water, can be easily detected by the drone’s algorithms, allowing it to operate with minimal human intervention.
The threat posed by Ukrainian drones to Russian bridges has significant implications for the broader theater of war. In the short term, if Russian forces cannot replace destroyed bridges with temporary ones, they risk losing critical supply routes. This would deprive their units, especially in southern Ukraine, of vital equipment, particularly artillery. In the long term, the inability to bridge rivers limit maneuverability on the battlefield, severely limiting offensive operations.
While obstacles like minefields have heavily influenced the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, natural obstacles, especially rivers, present even greater challenges. Both militaries possess the capability to rapidly construct bridges, but the use of advanced technologies, particularly drones, in counter-bridging operations has made sustaining these bridges in combat conditions nearly impossible.
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Drones are vital to Ukraine’s survival! Only drones can “safely” operate in enemy’s airspace and make deep strikes into mafia land.