‘Mavics Are Unnecessary’: Czech Instructors Asked Ukrainians Not to Use Drones due to Excessive Realism

Mavics are unnecessary: Czech instructors admit that Ukrainian drones make training too realistic.

Ukrainian soldiers undergoing training in Poland and the Czech Republic are increasingly facing a gap between NATO training programs and the realities of drone warfare in Ukraine, BBC News Ukraine reported.

Some of the courses are still based on textbooks from Iraq and Afghanistan, where there were no drones, and the standards of tactics and medicine are designed for the ‘golden hour,’ (ed. – wounded transportation time in NATO doctrine) which simply does not exist on the frontline with drones.

Ukrainian marines who have been through Krynky are surprised by scenarios where an APC crosses a river: they tell instructors directly that any equipment will be destroyed by drones before it even approaches the shore.

During one of the exercises, Czech paratroopers had to attack Ukrainian positions where Mavic drones were operating. After the first attempt, instructor Jakub stopped the scenario and asked: “Can we take out the Mavics? You are finding us too fast.”

The Ukrainians responded harshly: if the drones are removed from the training ground, it will no longer be a modern war, but a reconstruction of the 2010s.

Soldiers from the Pokrovsk and Kharkiv sectors explain that today any movement under the sky, where 40-50 drones are hovering, is fatal. The tactic of “driving an IFV into a trench” no longer works.

Some courses seem archaic: for example, the instructors demonstrated navigation using paper maps, while at the front everyone has long been working with tablets and digital maps.

Drones have also dramatically changed medicine: evacuation in 60 minutes is unrealistic. Ukrainian officers explain to Europeans that a wounded person can lie there for a day, and that they need to be able to manage the tourniquet for hours.

Often, Ukrainian instructors actually change the course of the exercises themselves: they show Czechs and Poles how to conduct assault operations under the threat of drones, how to use Kikimora camouflage suits, anti-thermal cloaks and FPV cover.

However, some centers are already adapting. In Poland, the first drone training ground Jomsborg was created, where Ukrainians help design courses, and Norwegians integrate Ukraine’s experience into NATO programs.

Training abroad remains critically important, but it is the Ukrainian combat experience that becomes the basis without which it is impossible to prepare the army for the war of 2024-2025, experts emphasize.

As a reminder, it has recently become known that Montenegro will also join the NATO mission to train Ukrainian soldiers.