[Reuters] The first time Ukrainian drone pilot "KVN" guided a giant unmanned hexacopter to rescue a wounded comrade, preparations for the operation took seven days.
Just two weeks later, a similar mission came together in only 12 hours, highlighting how quickly a potentially transformative new tactic is taking hold on a rapidly evolving battlefield.
"Now, I just need to make four or five calls, so that all the drones in the air and our partner battalions... help us complete the operation," said KVN, 33, using his military call sign.
His 475th Separate Assault Regiment helped make military history last month by using the new hexacopter to carry out daring rescues of wounded fighters trapped in the "kill zone" - an area stretching for miles on either side of the front line where aerial drones hunt anything that moves.
Now the regiment wants to make the new capability part of its daily operations in the fifth year of Russia's war on Ukraine, one element of a broader Ukrainian effort to use technology to better protect soldiers' lives.
"The future for such evacuations is very promising," said Eduard Khoroshun, head of a major military hospital in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, in a statement after the first evacuations.
Quicker evacuations of wounded soldiers could lead to fewer complications and disabilities, he said.
With any movement inside the kill zone potentially fatal as drones prowl overhead, wounded soldiers are often stranded for days, weeks or even months.
While Kyiv's forces have embraced unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for evacuations to reduce the need to expose rescuers to danger, they are often slow and can make easy targets.
In August, a company commander from the 475th was forced to personally rescue two wounded soldiers by car when a UGV carrying them was struck by Russian drones.
Aerial evacuation drones, despite their large size, are faster and more evasive than UGVs, said "Cherry", 28, head of the regiment's medical service.
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