U.S. Marines Seeking 10,000 First-Person View Drones
December 20th, 2025The piece below mentions that battlefields in Ukraine are now covered in fiber optic cables from attack drones:
Pilots from the reconnaissance company of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade showed what Lyman looks like today. The city is holding on, but is gradually becoming covered by this “web.” – "Today, the intensity of combat is measured not so much by destroyed buildings as by the amount of… pic.twitter.com/KzRyRWmkpa
— Ukraine – Combat Footage Archive ?? ?? (@Bodbe6) December 19, 2025
Via: The War Zone:
The U.S. Marine Corps is looking for companies that can provide 10,000 first-person view drones by Jan. 1, 2027, according to a Request for Information (RFI) posted Thursday on a government procurement website. While just a minute fraction of the number of FPV drones being used by both sides of the war in Ukraine monthly, the RFI is the latest move by the Marines to put these swift and maneuverable weapons into the hands of its troops. It was issued as the Pentagon seeks to dramatically increase drone supplies across the services.
The USMC, as we have previously noted, wants strike weapons at the squad level with far greater reach than rifles and mortars. The Corps has created “attack drone teams” to integrate the lessons in Ukraine about the effectiveness of these weapons against personnel and equipment into their formations.
Related: U.S. Naval Forces Now Have Suicide Drones
The following article is from back in August.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91386822/russias-drones-have-created-a-brand-new-form-of-pollution
“Let’s do some math. As of 2025, Ukraine’s total FPV drone production capacity has surged to 200,000 units per month from the initial 20,000 units produced monthly in early 2024. Approximately 10% of the total Ukrainian drone output is now fiber-optic guided. The Russian numbers are not as clear. As of July 2025, tens of thousands of units of the wire-guided Prince Vandal drone are produced monthly, according to the official news agency TASS. Another source puts that number at 6,000 units per month. Let’s say it’s a conservative total of 15,000 drones for both sides. At 25 miles of cable per drone, that’s 375,000 miles of plastic cable, enough to circle the Earth’s equator 15 times. […] [T]hey will complicate future de-mining operations, as they can get tangled in the heavy machinery used to clear minefields.”
Ukraine’s surface area is about 480^2 square miles.