A Ukrainian soldier with the call sign Price smiles when he is asked if he has any combat experience of drones.
“Only running away from them,” he says.
It was a Russian mortar, not a drone, that took off part of one of Price’s legs, and although it ended his career as an infantry squad commander it did not blunt his desire to defend Ukraine.
Now Price (31) is learning how to build and fly drones at the Killhouse academy, a training centre run by Ukraine’s 3rd Army Corps at a former industrial site in Kyiv.
Hundreds of soldiers and civilians take courses every month, and it is open to men and women of all ages, Ukrainians and foreigners. Members of the 3rd Army Corps train for free, soldiers from other units get a discount, and civilians pay; the basic drone course, lasting at least six days, costs 8,000 hryvnia (€165).
Instructors try to make the training courses as realistic as possible, confronting military and civilian students with challenges they would face on the battlefield. Photograph: 3rd Army Corps
For that money, they learn the fundamentals of flying a first-person view drone (FPV), which the pilot operates using a remo
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