In 2016 DJI stunned the drone community with the Mavic Pro. This would be the moment in history where consumer drones become affordable, easy to pilot, and deliver 4K-grade image quality, all while fitting in the pocket of your winter jacket.
The Mavic, the drone who's arm fold into place to make it compact while travelling, and can be quickly deployed in the air in a manner of less than a minute, that flies for roughly 30-45 minutes, can capture 5K video, zoom 8x digitally, and is the Instagrammer's/YouTuber's preferred quadcopter - is giving Ukrainian, and Russian soldiers alike a way to adjust artillery, drop grenades, remotely survey positions, gather data to make decisions in command centers, recover lost items for SIGINT purposes ... and more. The same drone I use to make short videos for Instagram when I travel, the same drone Casey Neistat uses, the same drone used in countless YouTube videos, commercials, movie productions is the drone Ukrainian defenders crowdfund to buy, the drone bought by the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe and US which is shipped to Ukraine via countries like Poland or Hungary. The Mavic went from a simple commercial quadcopter to a drone used extensively by two militaries, one of them, the invasor, at some point was considered the second strongest in the world, must've been before my time.
Now, this drone is clearly meant for me and you to fly around and have fun, how the hell are Ukrainians and Russians using it? Turns out, military quadcopters and Mavics are sent to the front largely to accomplish the same mission: have an eye on the Russian invaders from above, and then rain artillery on them. The Mavic 3, the most common Mavic model in the front can fly for up to 45 minutes in optimal conditions, but it roughly gets 35-40 minutes of real flight time. In order to counter the drone threat, both Ukraine and Russia use signal jammers, which take out the C&C and video link signals from Mavics when close to the device. Mavics are also shot down at a higher rate than proper militry drones, like Leleka-100, Shark, PD-2 or others. This is because Mavics cannot fly at very high altitudes like their military counterparts. Accoridng to a RUSI report, authered by British and Ukrainian military personnel, the average lifestan of a UAV in Ukraine is 3 flights. That's quite a rate of attrition, losing a drone every so few flights would prompt massive overhaul from most armies, but for Ukraine, this is no problem: There is a massive divide - which is fortunately shrinking - between what Ukrainian soldiers have at their disposal in the trench and what the Ukrainian government acquires and can provide. Another aspect of this invasion is how Ukrainians have harnessed crowdfunding and donations to equip themselves with off the shelf gear to push the muscovites back. Now, back to the point, Ukraine's MoD cannot provide every unit with a drone, between the fact that there are many gov-adjacent groups out there (Belarusians, Georgians, etc... all fighting side to side with Ukrainians) and the individual soldiers and commanders have a freedom to operate independetly not seen commonly in any Western army, so the soldiers just either acquire the gear themselves, be it Mavic drones, laser range finders, thermal imaging visors, laptop, tablets, winter clothes. All of this stuff is unregulated, it does not require export controls, its not controlled by ITAR, it can be exported freely among the 27 states of the European Union. So, if a Mavic drone goes down, it's relatively easy for either the Ukrainian government or the soldiers themselves to get another one. Internet guerillas like NAFO, the North Atlantic Fella Organization coordinate donation drives to buy Mavic drones for Ukrainian defenders. There also other efforts like Dzyga's Paw, a charity founded by a Ukrainian .NET developer, which crowdfunds the same stuff. Then there are groups like Ukraine Aid Ops who run warehouses out of Poland to receive goods and ship them over the border to Ukraine. President Zelenskyy's charitable organization U24 even runs a similar program, called Dronations. The time between a drone sitting in my living room to it being in the frontlines of Ukraine is roughly 14 days.
All in all, the reason why so many quadcopters from the Chinese manufacturer DJI are at the front is because they're not meant to be there. DJI drones are not military drones, despite Ukrainians and Russians using them, and because they're not military drones they're produced in mass quantities, sold everywhere an iPhone is sold, bought by anyone and their grandmother, and then shipped over to an European Union country. All legal, and all very cool.
Compare this to literally any military gear. First it has to be procured from manufacturers, there's a lead time for that, then shipped over in small quantities to the Ukrainian government, and then pray it makes its way to the intended recipients. Raise your hand if you can make 10,000 military-spec drones each month and sent them to Rzeszow.
Now the Mavic is not perfect for military use, not at all. DJI argues that it'd be foolish to use their drones in combat because their drones emit Aeroscope packets, which can be decoded by a special Software Defined Radio device also sold by DJI. The broadcast of these packets can be disabled on Mavic OG/2 Pro+Zoom/Air 2/2S/Mavic3 (firmware previous to .400) using a python software that sends a command to the drone. This python script, called CIAJeepDoors, an anagram of Aeroscope was written by the "DJI OGs", a group of hackers who reverse engineer firmware and software from the Shenzhen giant. DJI took notice of the hack and somewhere in April or May patched the firmware on their fleet of drones to remove this backdoor, so the drone would not respond to the command and would not act upon the privacy bits sent by the python script.
DJI was accused of somehow giving Russian the coordinates of Ukrainian drones, this is of course a lie, a conflict erupted based on speculation and lack of data. We know now, that what was essentially happening is that some Ukrainian Aeroscope boxes were misconfigured, and stopped working due to a contractor not paying the yearly fee to DJI. Russians of course used these Aeroscope boxes, but not in a big scale. DJI exited the Ukrianian and Russian market in April.
Everything the Mavic lacks, or falls short, Ukrainians have invented a way to make up for it. They hack the drones with CIAJeepDoors so the location isn't broadcasted to everyone listening in, they've mastered the art of making sub-400gram grenades for anti tank or anti-personnel use. These grenades are attached to Mavic drones, which have been rigged with a servo hooked up to a photosensor. Whenever the Mavic's bottom light is shining, the servo will spin, thus releasing the grenade. The light can be remotely operated from the remote controller. These small inventions change the war. Ukrainian soldiers in the front have also used a simple trick to broadcast the drone's signal back to HQ: Google Meet, probably the only video conference I would love to join regularly. The remote control of a Mavic is half-RC half-phone or tablet, the RC is responsible for receiving video and telemetry, and sending back stick moves or other commands. The phone or tablet is connected to the RC via a USB cable, and an app called DJI Fly running shows the live feed that is being received through the RC. Because on Android you can share your screen on video conferencing apps, much like a PC can, Ukrainians share their view of the DJI Fly app using Google meet and Starnlink antennas so commanders can make decisions, tell them where to aim, see how the artillery shot performed, or guide an evacuation. In any other army, like the US, drones would send video feed over an encrypted military system, but then again this would restrict who views it, and who can stream over it. Because of how much freedom is afforded to each Ukrainian soldier and commander, these ways end up being how things are done, and how they will win.