By Sinéad Baker
Ukraine is fighting with drones that lock onto their targets when they lose connection with their human operators.
Dmytro “Liber” Zhluktenko, a former drone operator who is now a lessons-learned analyst with Ukraine’s 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment “RAID,” told Business Insider that many of the country’s drones use what he called “target lock,” which allows drones to continue on to find and hit their targets even when their operators lose control.
It’s “quite useful,” he said, especially considering that Ukrainian operators frequently experience signal loss before they hit their targets due to Russian electronic warfare and also because of the ways many drones are designed.
Aug 4, 2026, 8:12 PM GMT+8