I Was Hunted by Ukrainian Drone Pilots

追加: 2026-05-07

[00:00:07]Hey, what's up guys? We're out here at the farm with Echo Mav. This is Nate.

[00:00:13]This is Lexo.

[00:00:14]And uh they do all things drones.

[00:00:30]Holy [ __ ] I'm out of shape.

[00:00:34]>> What do you guys got out here today?

[00:00:36]>> Oh, so we got a couple things. What we brought mostly was our our Monarch model. We've got another Mark1. It's a larger model with different capabilities. But what we're really excited about with the Monarch is we were trying to address a problem that we saw and that was drones that were very expensive, difficult to repair with long repair times. So with this, we've got a 3D printed drone that >> These are 3D printed?

[00:01:06]>> Yes.

[00:01:06]>> Do you just 3D print them in country?

[00:01:08]>> Yes.

[00:01:08]>> No [ __ ] You could take a 3D printer to a fob and print them there.

[00:01:13]>> Um, >> and it will work.

[00:01:15]>> Yes. Yeah. We give you, when you buy this, we give you the files to print the parts that you need. The motors, no, the motors are, you know, you buy the motors yourselves.

[00:01:26]>> Okay.

[00:01:26]>> We're currently working on our own props. Uh, another thing you'll see is with the battery, uh, that's a commercial offtheshelf item.

[00:01:33]>> Okay. So you're not stuck buying a battery from us at some sort of higher price point or if just logistically you can get them somewhere else, that's a capability that you have to um keep your operational percentage higher.

[00:01:48]>> Right on.

[00:01:49]>> So at at the end of the day, what we're seeing is troops get to get more practice time because if they break it, it's not such a big deal. Uh when you purchase these, we have training that we put you through essentially build classes. So, it's kind of like a really cool arts and crafts Lego. We we sit you down at the table. We walk you through the steps. You answer the questions internally. Uh from an engineering standpoint, there's a couple cool concepts in that they're designed so the the main computer board inside is designed to have uh to easily swap radios and cameras. So if your unit requires a different radio, um it's just an easy swap of parts instead of like an entire remanufacturing of that board. So that offers changes some capabilities uh price points as well where you where you've got us now. So originally this was designed with certain requirements and as you would imagine requirements change and get more increased and so where we're at right now is we're getting more requirements to increase our capability to find people that are hiding. So as you can imagine that requires a little bit of software upgrade, better lenses, better thermal. And so where where you're at with us today is us now just delving into that.

[00:03:14]>> Oh, great. So that's what we're doing today. So you got some new stuff you're going to test out on me.

[00:03:19]>> You're you're going to be our guinea pig.

[00:03:21]>> [ __ ] perfect.

[00:03:22]>> Hey, this could turn out good for you, though.

[00:03:25]>> How so?

[00:03:26]>> You you know it it's new technology.

[00:03:29]You're looking at prototypes.

[00:03:30]>> This is cool.

[00:03:31]>> So you you use these specifically to find people?

[00:03:34]>> Yes. That's that's where we're going.

[00:03:36]>> What's scenario?

[00:03:38]>> All right. Good question. So, um, man, as you can imagine, there's infinite number of scenarios and every tool can be designed for something specific, but where we're getting here, these things have easily a 40-minute flight time. And um, we're not going to do this today, but you can have more than one Monarch in the air with the same pilot controller. So, you can so you can send one up and park it and then launch the other one and fly it. So the one that's parked in the sky can be recording while a pilot does something else. And you know depending on your capabilities with your personnel, their training and the equipment that you have, we can just use this for observation. Uh we're currently working on using it to deliver ordinance. And you can also use it for the thermal capabilities to then relay that to you know like Lex was saying, hey, we found a heat signature. We've positive, you know, PD it and we'll send somebody with a first person drone >> to do what? Kill them.

[00:04:40]>> Yes, we have variety of payloads. If it's an armor or some light vehicle, that's completely different payload. Um so for human there's variations of um the shrapnel loads that like looks completely sometimes they're handmade sometimes they come from um from the manufacturing like nicely already done but they do the same job. Uh but if you see human or multiple humans it's usually something with a shrapnel.

[00:05:09]>> Can I ask you a personal question?

[00:05:11]>> Sure.

[00:05:12]>> Do you feel anything when you get a kill with one of these? Uh it's it's it's a different feeling uh with this um adrenaline is like very similar than with a gun.

[00:05:22]>> It is >> um but it's um it's it's very different because you are sitting in a in a ground uh far away sometimes 26 km away. Um and uh it is it is different um but yeah it's usually again depends for who for me that's my enemy. So every kill or if I take their equipment, it's very exciting and you know something that I celebrate. So >> welcome to Hollywood versus reality.

[00:05:55]They do it right.

[00:06:00]>> What does he do in the movies? Tell me if I'm doing this wrong cuz I don't watch any of this. Little flick like that, right? Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool.

[00:06:11]Got to silence it.

[00:06:17]>> In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living. Proprietary magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're now bringing them back.

[00:06:35]It does look pretty cool. I got I got to admit that.

[00:06:42]>> So, as I'm sure you can imagine, we were talking about this uh earlier. You know, the the purpose of every drone is the payload, right? So, everything has to be in support of that.

[00:06:57]uh when you if it's just ISR, you've got to be able to support the capabilities of the camera, whether that's vi vibration or um gimbal that isolates movement. Um being able to communicate through RF.

[00:07:13]You put a dropper on now, the camera becomes, you know, in support of the dropper, right? So, you've got to, and this is all engineering stuff, right?

[00:07:23]Mhm.

[00:07:23]>> Um, you've got to have a camera that you can, it's not just as simple as looking down. You have to know that when I look down and the crosshairs are here and I hit release, it's going to hit or else it's just like having a rifle that's not zeroed. So, it's it's a very >> So, the camera is correlated with where this is going to drop. It's this is [ __ ] arm that just comes out and this thing just drops.

[00:07:42]>> Mhm.

[00:07:44]>> And now, see if you like if you look at this like even that's 3D printed, right?

[00:07:48]>> Yeah. You can tell everything on here is >> these these break away very easily. So, kind of if you have a hard landing, often times these will give and absorb a lot of the energy. There's there's just been a lot of cool little nuanced things that we the engineers have have really improved upon. You know, we we take them out, we fly them, we break them. They're like, "Oh, we didn't think of that.

[00:08:08]Let's go revisit that." So, it's it's been really u really been interesting and fun to work on. Damn. How long does it take you guys to put one of these together? From 3D printing it to putting the cameras, the propellers, the motor, all that [ __ ] on there.

[00:08:27]>> What? Well, once we have all the parts on a tabletop, he and I could do it in about an hour.

[00:08:34]>> Holy [ __ ] >> The >> So, does each individual individual drone operator assemble their own drones >> if they want to? Yeah. because then they can kind of get a hands-on, learn how to do it. The the speed at which we 3D print, there's a lot of variables in that the the way they're oriented inside the printer. Some people they'll they'll print a bunch of one part on one machine or they'll you can lay it out in the software to print a bunch of different materials at the same time. Uh there's just there's too many variables to like give you a solid answer on that.

[00:09:11]>> Right on. What um what are some of the key indicators you're looking for when you're trying to find somebody that's hiding?

[00:09:18]>> Um again, uh movement is is the number one, right? If you see something unnatural and it's moving, it's obvious something is there and all the tension is going to be there. If not, it's if it's stale and nothing is moving, again, something weird, there's never like perfect circle, something that sniper would look like, right? Like just look at something and scan. Uh and of course, then heat signature. If it's night time and it's cold out and if you are not doing your homework like masking that place very well, you will be found. If uh but usually drones are not really like locked on. They're just like flying, right? Just like fluidly and it needs to really catch their eye something. It's it's not like like every single meter they're just going to spend 5 minutes. It's impossible. So, uh, usually it's just group one drones absolutely flooded, uh, like dozens of them in, uh, in this. So, in this area, you would have like the five guys all the time just flying without coming down like just lines, right? So, if you move, if you come out come out to piss or [ __ ] or like if I see you, usually that's when they get caught.

[00:10:22]>> Um, so, and or if they have equipment, they have antennas that are like perfectly square. It's weird. I'll see you in a sniper. the cyber living for.

[00:10:33]>> Yeah.

[00:10:33]>> Yeah. It's a lot of it comes down to the pilot being a level of familiarity, right? So, you might be more familiar with the landscape here in this part of the country and then if you go further out west in the mountains, it might take you a day or two to like fly around to just kind of get, oh, that's a rock or that's what this bush looks like under thermal. Um, so a lot of it, like you said, is is just the pilot being familiar with the area and then understanding what normal looks like and then something's off to then catch their attention.

[00:11:04]>> Right on. What do you guys What are you looking at normally? Is it thermal or regular video or?

[00:11:09]>> You need both, right? Um, it's daytime right now, day camera, uh, nighttime or it's really early, everything is still cold. Definitely thermals. That's that's where it shines. Yeah, this depending on, you know, if we're trying to find you and depending on the the foliage that you may or may not be under with the sun coming up this time of day, it's not going to be optimal for thermal.

[00:11:32]We'll still use it to see if it it'll give us something, but it, you know, there's different times of day, different times of year, you know, at elevation when it's cooler later in the year. Thermal, you can hang on to that longer. Okay, so the other cool thing about this is it integrates well with uh ATAC and UAS tools. We're not flying out of that today, but as you can see, I've got just our regular ground control software up. I got a bunch of information up here. You can see that we've got our satellites. Um this number right here is our horizontal and ver vertical um dissolution. It's a number that basically says it's within parameters within in less than a meter of up, down, left, right. So it just your GPS is in. This is our battery on board there. Um battery last for 45 minutesish.

[00:12:24]>> Yes. And then um you know we've got our speed, our altitude, our compass, uh all those things. And then down here I can see if I'm recording video, taking photos, and I've got all of that stuff sort of pre-programmed uh on my controller. We can do something kind of cool right here. Let's do a motor runup.

[00:12:45]So, um, we'll hit motor runup like that. So, I'll start. It's going to turn in. The bottom right turns in.

[00:12:54]Bottom left is we're going to expect that to turn in. And then the front left turns in. We're good to go.

[00:13:09]So, if you take a look at my screen, right, and look here. And if I want to, I can toggle to my thermal, look around like that.

[00:13:33]So, and at this point he's just flying a drone. So, that's us.

[00:13:42]Now, you can see especially we're standing here in the sun in the warmest part of the day.

[00:13:48]It's not the best conditions for a thermal, but that's one of the things that we're working on. So, now I'm recording video.

[00:13:56]Gotcha. This is from the drone's perspective.

[00:13:59]But at this point, we just start flying around again. We can monitor our battery. We can come into here, you know, go into some parameters. And so, let's say we're some sort of training environment. We can tell the drone what to do when the battery starts to get to certain levels, you know, fly home, fly home at a certain time, uh, certain altitude. We can come up here and basically set up a bubble to say, "Hey, you know, I'm on this private property. You know, stay under this altitude, stay within these parameters."

[00:14:36]All pretty pretty normal stuff. And then, so we don't have ordinance, but if you take a look at the the dropper there, I'll go ahead and drop it.

[00:14:47]So, just as simple as that. Wow.

[00:14:55]What would you drop?

[00:14:58]>> Uh, various. So, anything on this current model, 1 and a2 lbs.

[00:15:04]>> But what what would you drop?

[00:15:05]>> Oh, grenades.

[00:15:07]>> They are going to come and try to find me on my property. We're on over a 100 acres here. Got this GoPro. I'll probably be talking [ __ ] in the meantime, but uh a lot more goes into this than I thought. So, doesn't sound like the thermal is going to be too helpful during the daytime with the temperature today. So, I actually brought a thermal blanket.

[00:15:30]I'm going to leave it. And I'm probably going to [ __ ] regret leaving it, but I want to give these guys a chance because I'm pretty [ __ ] good at this [ __ ] So, but uh yeah. So, I'm going to hit the back side of the property over that bluff in between that waterfall and there's another waterfall uh down to the left.

[00:15:54]I'll be somewhere in that vicinity. I'll probably run some creek beds and see if I can find a ledge to get under. But, uh, it sounds like if I just stay in one spot for good, then they probably won't find me. But, you know, real world, you're going to have to piss, [ __ ] burp, [ __ ] move around a little bit to stay warm, especially in Ukraine. So, I want to uh I want to make it at least a little realistic. Uh cuz you know we're on a limited time cruncher. But anyways, I better get [ __ ] going.

[00:16:30]>> I've got a general flight path that I'm going to scan. We'll see how far we can get through that scan pattern with the battery that I have. Bring it back, swap batteries, relaunch it. Uh it's my first time being out here. I'm not really familiar with the terrain. I don't even know what it's going to look like this time of year down here.

[00:16:53]I mean, it is kind of funny. These guys are already making [ __ ] excuses. Oh, we're not familiar with the terrain.

[00:17:02]You got like four [ __ ] drones down there.

[00:17:05]>> All right, we're about 250.

[00:17:08]Let's see what it looks like from up there.

[00:17:14][ __ ] Here they come. There they [ __ ] are.

[00:17:22]All right.

[00:17:23]So, I'm going to use this falling over tree.

[00:17:30]See, the bad thing about this is if they catch me on the back side of this, it's a I'm wearing a black shirt, so it's a black silhouette against [ __ ] tan.

[00:17:38]So, this probably is not the greatest idea. But, we've already found success.

[00:17:42]So, now we're [ __ ] testing the limits here.

[00:17:47]So, for example, something caught my eye. It was like, "Oh, something's different." I looked in, zoomed in. It was It was a tree knocked over.

[00:17:58]>> [ __ ] There it is. There it is.

[00:18:00][ __ ] [ __ ] Think I see some movement here on the ridge. Look at that.

[00:18:15]Yeah, you're [ __ ] You're [ __ ] once I find you. And even if you do shoot that [ __ ] drone down, you got a whole swarm of them coming after it. Warfare is a whole new [ __ ] game now, ladies and gents.

[00:18:33]Unless an EMP hits and wipes all this [ __ ] out, I am rendered obsolete.

[00:18:43]Well, good thing I'm a podcaster now.

[00:18:49]Hight tailed it all the way to this creek bed. Found a like a log laying over the creek and uh so got a little cover or I guess concealment for me guys and uh you know I was like all right I'm not going to move. Put myself on a dark like a dark surface but I was worried. I was like well [ __ ] this creek water's cold once I was in there. Mhm.

[00:19:11]>> So I was like, "Shit, the creek water's cold. They'll probably just flip the thermals on and it'll highlight me." But I stayed there and I heard two drones passing, but you can't [ __ ] tell where they're at. Like it's I couldn't tell if you guys were below I thought you were actually below the tree line at first.

[00:19:28]>> Is that Oh, that's what it sounded like.

[00:19:30]>> That's what it sounded like.

[00:19:31]>> Okay.

[00:19:31]>> And then it would sound like you're right above me, but you're maybe I don't know 100 yards off. And um so anyways, I figured you guys probably couldn't see me in there. So then I was like, "All right, let me move up." So I found a tree that would fallen over and uh the root system was up. It's probably about 6 ft off the ground. So I was just thinking, "All right, if they're looking at me from that direction, I got concealment.

[00:19:58]And if they're looking at the other from the other direction, then I'll just stay still." But then I was It was like dried dirt. So I was like, "Well, great. I got a black shirt on. So, that'll be a black silhouette right in right on top of a brown uh backdrop. So, >> so I don't I don't know if we if I got it on the recording and and on here too, but when I was flying, I remember I was I was like, "I think I see something."

[00:20:24]And I zoomed in. I thought basically what I was doing is looking for motion, right? So, this is my first time on this game field. Launched up, kind of got the coordinates. I could see the difference in the tree line. So I thought, okay, we're we're kind of looking here and I started just flying a pattern and I would toggle between EO and my IR and I caught movement on something on the thermal. So I thought, oh, let me zoom in. And I zoomed in. I was like, so I switched to EO and it was a tree that had fallen over.

[00:20:54]>> Was it over there?

[00:20:55]>> Yeah. And so I like I could have I mean this is all work guesswork at this point.

[00:21:02]your movement could have caught my eye enough, but with the the older camera that I'm using, time on target, familiarity with the scene, I might have just caught it, looked and then kept flying. Oh, >> okay. Right on. Well, you somebody I thought somebody had me right after that cuz then I was like, "All right, I'm going to try to just move to cover to cover and then one of the drones was right above me." We'll do this here in a second with you, but we'll we'll turn on one of our newer thermals that we're still tweaking. You know, the the camera that we were hunting you with was developed a little while ago for a whole different set of requirements, right? It now what we're requiring of the drone is to support a ISR system that it can find somebody that's trying to hide.

[00:21:54]>> Gotcha. So very different from like, "Hey, go over this ridge or tree line and look for troop movements and vehicles." Now we're like, "Hey, look for this tiny guy uh underneath all this brush who knows he's being hunted."

[00:22:07]>> Damn.

[00:22:08]>> So that's out, but that's being developed.

[00:22:10]>> It's being developed right now.

[00:22:12]>> Right on now.

[00:22:12]>> It's being improved.

[00:22:14]>> Gotcha.

[00:22:14]>> So it's it's as you can I'm sure already know, it's a cat and mouse game. So we're always there we're always refining. But now when you, you know, you put a new lens on, you know, now you got to change a couple of things because the the weight inside the gimbal is different. The power requirements you, you know, and that's why we have the engineers because you don't want to burn too much energy unnecessarily and then that now your flight time suffers.

[00:22:39]>> Right on.

[00:22:39]>> So there's just a whole balancing act and then once we think we kind of got it, they send it to us. We come out here and we we do this, >> test it out.

[00:22:50]We we try to break it and then give it back and say we broke it and here's how to make it harder to break. Yeah. So, even though we found you under these conditions, it was pretty difficult. So, >> right on.

[00:23:03]>> I wouldn't want to go up against you in real life. That's for damn sure. Well, you killed me.

[00:23:10]Nice work. Thank you.

[00:23:13]>> Thank you.

[00:23:14]>> Thank you. It's >> nice work with you. Yeah, you too.