Nick Schifrin:
They are the counteroffensive's tip of the spear. Their intelligence comes from a drone that flies over Russian lines and provides real-time feedback to adjust their fire.
Down the road, just after daybreak, that drone unit brings us to their hidden position. It is an active morning. This is right at the epicenter of the counteroffensive, where Ukrainians have pushed the Russians back a little. They're trying to expand their territory. The Russian line is just half-a-mile both that way and that way, and you can hear all the firing.
This is the meeting of past and present that helps define this war. Soldiers walk through the kind of trenches that troops have used for two millennia to be able to launch the most modern form of warfare that Ukraine is helping to invent.
They're from the National Guard 15th Operational Brigade and the Makhno Unit, a special forces team named for a Ukrainian revolutionary born more than a century ago. But it's not just reconnaissance, explosives on top, a charge on the bottom, and a drone in the middle that will be flown as a kamikaze.
Their first step is a surveillance drone that will help guide the kamikaze pilot. The Chinese-made surveillance Mavic drone flies toward the Russian position. The kamikaze drones are called FPVs for first-person view from video goggles. The pilot, call sign Maki, races the drone toward Russian positions, the surveillance drone helping guide him in.
And then they see their target. Maki flies the kamikaze FPV across no man's land until he loses connection the moment it explodes in a Russian trench.
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