Russia Keeps Installing Emergency Comms. Ukraine Keeps Blowing Them Up.

Three months after losing access to Starlink satellites, the Russians are getting desperate.

Blowing up Russia’s wireless repeaters, Ukraine is working to prolong its connectivity advantage.

Recent footage of Ukrainian drone strikes on tower-mounter repeaters underscores the value of the repeaters—and their vulnerability. The repeaters, fixed to the tallest tower in a given area, can extend wireless signals across the war zone and allow drone operators to stay connected to their drones even as the drones fly over the horizon.

But the repeaters aren’t hard to find and strike. When the Russians began climbing towers to install repeaters, the Ukrainians sortied drones to hunt them down. The poor radio troops are easy targets, as montages of Ukrainian drone strikes attest. (See at top.)

In blasting Russian repeaters and their installers, Ukrainian forces complicate Russian forces’ efforts to restore their disrupted front-line communications and get their drones back in the air.