Drone Warfare in Ukraine Fills Trenches With Fishing Nets From Denmark

• Ukrainian troops want heavy-duty nets to dam enemy assault drones.
• They’re getting over 1,000 tons from Denmark without spending a dime, because of Brexit and a lone gardener.
• He and different volunteers are trucking heavy-duty trawl nets caught in harbors to the entrance traces.

Carl Futtrup isn’t any army man. The 53-year-old gardener spends most days on mowers and tractors, tending to fields in a city on the western fringe of Copenhagen, Denmark.

However Futtrup, like many Europeans, has saved a detailed eye on Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022 and donated gear to the entrance traces.

Earlier than Christmas final 12 months, he caught wind of an uncommon request from Ukrainians within the trenches. They wanted nets — thick ones sturdy sufficient to cease the munition-laden drones which have change into the battlefield’s main killer. Troopers have been draping them throughout fortified positions and fight autos as a remaining protection, and Futtrup heard they have been saving lives.

“They write to me that they need extra as a result of, with out this, all different donations are nugatory,” Futtrup advised Enterprise Insider.

Thyborøn, a fishing village of some 2,000 folks in Jutland, simply occurred to have 450 tons of these nets sitting unused on the harbor. These have been trawling nets, product of nylon fibers as much as 4 millimeters thick for hauling tons of of fish at a time from the deep sea.

Futtrup discovered Thyborøn’s fishermen on Fb and requested in the event that they have been open to creating a donation. They agreed.

Now, the nets are in Ukraine, getting used to snag Russian drones just like bugs on flypaper. They’re simply the primary tranche of what Futtrup and different volunteers hope might be a complete of two.1 million kilos of Danish industrial nets — left over from Brexit fishing disputes — lining Ukrainian fortifications.

As drones dominate the battlefield, defensive netting has change into a sizzling commodity on the bottom.

“They’re actually efficient as a result of the drones are nonetheless utilizing propellers, and the nets catch the propellers,” mentioned Mykhaylo Ardashyn, a senior soldier within the Separate Artillery Brigade of Ukraine’s Nationwide Guard. “Even after an explosion, the web won’t be destroyed or burned fully, and a few fibers can nonetheless catch different drones.”

There are occasions when a snagged drone would possibly even fail to blow up, he advised BI.

Ardashyn, who primarily helps his brigade procure provides, mentioned Futtrup’s donated nets are being deployed on his models’ part of the entrance line. The brigade is combating close to Pokrovsk.

Fishing nets aren’t new to the warfare. Ukrainians have been utilizing them in fortified positions for the reason that full-scale invasion started, however primarily to supply camouflage.

Lately, Ardashyn mentioned, there’s been an elevated demand for heavy-duty nets as troops realized they could be a dependable choice to counter uncrewed aerial programs. The necessity is exacerbated by the rising use of fiber-optic drones, which may bypass digital jamming and must be blocked or disabled.

“We’re speaking about large nets,” Ardashyn mentioned. “Not people who folks use by hand, however the actually large ones, like from ships. The fabric is powerful sufficient that it could deal with a drone falling from the sky.”

Some models have began draping thick nets on the tree traces alongside provide routes to hinder ambushes from expert Russian drone pilots. Others have shrouded their fortified positions fully in netting.

Moscow’s troops are utilizing them too, mentioned Federico Borsari, a fellow on the Middle for European Coverage Evaluation who research drone warfare in Ukraine.

“The Russians are utilizing nets to cowl whole roads and shield their logistics from Ukrainian first-person view UAVs, with combined outcomes relying on the world,” he advised BI. But it surely’s unlikely that both aspect may have sufficient time or sources to cowl their whole rear with nets, he added.

Troops additionally use them to guard armored autos, counting on a mix of nets and metallic frames — as soon as mocked as “cope cages” — to decrease the possibilities of direct affect from a drone. Even a foot or two distance from a automobile’s armored physique can scale back a drone’s explosive energy.

“The quantity of nets wanted is rising exponentially,” Ardashyn mentioned.

Brexit’s loss, Ukraine’s achieve

Again in Denmark, Futtrup has been contacting different native harbors and secured one other 600 tons of trawl nets to ship to Ukraine by way of truck. He is been talking with Ukrainian media, such because the Kyiv Submit, making an attempt to lift funds from volunteers and the Danish authorities for transportation.

It is a heavy expense for the gardener, with prices for the second cargo totaling about 90,000 euros. Futtrup estimates that every truck can carry as much as 20 tons of nets, and every journey will price about 3,000 euros, or $3,200. A typical trawl web is about 1,300 ft lengthy.

The nets themselves are free. Carsten Bach, a parliament member of the Danish right-wing Liberal Alliance opposition occasion, advised BI that many of the donated nets sat in storage for years after Brexit minimize off British fishing waters from Danish fishermen.

“A number of the fishermen put lots of worth in these nets. It is fairly a big funding for a small firm or a single-person fisherman,” mentioned Bach, who’s his occasion’s spokesman on each protection and meals. The fishing business contributes about 0.75% of Denmark’s GDP, however the nation is the world’s fifth largest exporter of fish merchandise.

Bach mentioned many fishermen selected to maintain their nets, hoping {that a} new settlement with the UK may restore entry to their previous fishing spots.

Nonetheless, Danish environmental legal guidelines require such tools to be disposed of or recycled finally. And Bach mentioned fishermen sometimes should pay a big payment for this service.

The politician, who helps Futtrup submit a financing proposal to the Danish authorities, mentioned it is due to this fact probably these trawl nets will not be a renewable useful resource for Ukraine.

“There won’t, sooner or later, be as massive a quantity of fishing tools like this for disposal in Denmark,” Bach mentioned.

Danish nets will not final without end

Nonetheless, Futtrup’s nets are supplying at the least 13 models on the entrance traces, mentioned Bernard Christensen, who runs the Swedish non-governmental group Courageous Ukraine.

“That is our principal vein for the foreseeable future,” he advised BI.

Christensen, a Swede residing in Ukraine, has been serving to brigades discover sources for heavy-duty nets. One brigade sometimes requests about 50 to 80 tons of netting, and they are often tough to obtain regionally, he mentioned. Russian-controlled territory blocks a lot of Ukraine’s entry to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

A unit commander overseeing fortifications and mine-laying within the Donetsk course advised BI that his battalion wants about three truckloads, or roughly 60 tons of nets, a month.

“Now we have no native sources for these nets, they will solely be obtained from overseas,” mentioned the commander, who spoke on situation of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his work. His identification is understood to BI.

He mentioned it takes his males about three to 4 days to arrange one truckload, typically in miles-long “tunnels” of netting alongside roads to guard autos towards drone strikes.

However even with volunteer donations, there’s barely sufficient to go round.

“Many models desperately want these marine nets,” he added.

Which means Futtrup’s nets will finally run out, and Christensen should search elsewhere quickly. Courageous Ukraine is seeking to purchase nets from organizations cleansing up the western Swedish coast, he mentioned.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of army evaluation on the Washington-based assume tank Protection Priorities, advised Enterprise Insider that Ukraine’s demand for fishing nets is an instance of how the combating there has democratized fashionable warfare.

“In america, army and political leaders are all the time trying to find the following greatest weapon or army system, the one platform that can give america insurmountable benefits,” she mentioned. “However what the Ukraine warfare has proven is that whereas some of these high-tech options to army challenges have their place, low-tech and cheap options can generally work simply as nicely.”

Investing billions of {dollars} into superior platforms is probably not sufficient to win a future warfare, since they may be defeated by a much less succesful adversary with a easy or low-cost protection, she added.

“Fishing nets won’t be the correct response for the US army, however on this case and others, the Pentagon ought to spend extra time exploring much less superior choices quite than defaulting instantly to complicated and bespoke designs,” Kavanagh mentioned.

In the meantime, Futtrup mentioned he is pouring his vitality into securing the cash to truck over the donated nets. He hopes to accumulate 50,000 euros from Swedish and Danish authorities businesses.

“Ukraine is a part of Europe, and the nation is only one,250 kilometers from Copenhagen,” he mentioned.

“So long as there’s demand for fishing nets in Ukraine, I’ll ship them, till there isn’t a extra to be present in Denmark both,” he added.