Inside Ukraine's Drone War: Maj. "Phoenix" of Lasar's Group
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The first armed drone Ukraine ever fielded wasn't built in a factory or procured from a defense contractor.
It was built in four months by a network engineer using a Starlink terminal and a large agricultural quadcopter frame, and the man who built it, Maj Phoenix, co-founder of Lasars Group, joins Craig Smith in Kyiv to explain exactly how it happened and what the battlefield looks like now. The conversation traces the full arc from that first prototype - with its two-person crew of pilot and navigator, operating beyond line of sight using satellite imagery and landmarks - to the layered drone architecture Lasars Group now operates: FPV drones on fiber optic covering 30 kilometers, heavy bombers reaching 65 kilometers, ISR planes surveilling the entire range, and interceptors protecting each crew position. The most unexpected part of this conversation is what drone technology has done to the physical shape of the war.
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