By
Jake Epstein
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IRPIN, Ukraine — The soldiers arrived in darkness. Pulling up to a field in a van, they began quietly setting up their ground control station on the side of the road. Headlamps cut through the night as they prepared to launch.Before sending up the interceptor drone, they flew a small quadcopter out to scout the area and check for radar interference. Inside the van, the Ukrainians watched its progress on a computer screen.Suddenly, the feed vanished into static.Something had disrupted the scout drone's signal, likely electronic interference. They couldn't launch the interceptor, and the mission was grounded before it began.In moments like these, it's good to have a fallback.Ukrainian mobile air defense crews, such as this one in a Kyiv suburb, have long used .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns mounted on the beds of pickup trucks to battle the Russian one-way attack drones regularly striking their cities.But like other mobile defense units in Ukraine, they are learning to use high-tech interceptor drones alongside the Browning, a particularly versatile American-made heavy weapon designed at the end of World War I and fielded in the early 1930s.
