A Canadian Dreamed Of Being A Fighter Pilot. Now He Dogfights With Russian Drones

A Canadian recently celebrated becoming the first foreigner to take down a Russian Lancet loitering munition. The drone pilot, who goes by the callsign “Butcher” (“Myasnyk” or м’ясник in Ukrainian) belongs to an elite interceptor unit, fighting a new type of war in the sky. Many have compared it to the early days of combat aviation during WW1, when pilots used improvised weapons and tactics in a rapidly developing struggle for supremacy. You never know what your opponent will come up with next, and aircraft and pilots are pushed to the edge of their ability. “At the moment it is, hands down, the most challenging work in terms of drones in Ukraine,” Butcher told me.

His fearsome-sounding nickname actually comes from the fact that he used to be a butcher back home. This Canadian has come a long way, traveling to Ukraine in 2023 for an NGO doing humanitarian work. But he soon decided this was not enough. “Humanitarian work is critically important but will not end the war,” says Butcher. “I made the decision to switch to fighting the war.” In his forties and with bad knees, Butcher was not cut out to be an infantryman. But a new combat specialty was in demand: drone operator. He volunteered with the nonprofit group Wild Hornets, who turn donations into lethal drone hardware and who introduced him to a whole new world. “Wild Hornets taught me to build, maintain and fly drones,” says Butcher. “I got in a lot of flying practice.”

Butcher the joined the 25th Air Assault Brigade with the intention of operating strike drones hunting tanks. The commander asked if he was interested in working in air defence, and he jumped at the chance. It would be the fulfillment of a boyhood dream. Butcher had always wanted to be a fighter pilot, an ambition thwarted by poor eyesight. No surprise that he played a lot of video games as a teen, including plenty of air-to-air combat games and countless hours on MS Flight Simulator. “I would say being a gamer has definitely helped,” says Butcher. “You develop hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and you can see small changes on a monitor.” But he notes that gaming skills are not essential. His unit commander, a four-time ace at downing drones, never even played video games. “It takes a lot of different factors, and different people bring different assets to the table,” says Butcher. “There is no career path for this.”

The interceptors stand between Ukrainian forces and Russian drones, including reconnaissance drones which call down artillery and rocket fire and attack drones. “We are out in position 24/7, very much like WWII fighter pilots waiting for the call to scramble,” says Butcher. “At other times we are already up in the air and just jump from target to target or area to area, guarding the skies in a particular sector.” Multiple teams cover a sector, and Butcher says close co-ordination and team work is essential. His recipe for success is “Patience, strategy, teamwork, skill, communication — and a dose of luck.”

As Butcher sees it the FPV operators going after Russian tanks have it easy. Their target stays more or less in one place, is always at the same altitude and is usually obvious. Strike missions on the ground are a matter of flying in a straight line to a location, identifying the target there and engaging it. Intercepting drones in the air is harder. “We get intel on targets, and we go searching for those targets, and once we’ve found them we get up close and detonate our drone,” says Butcher. “What’s complicated is what happens in the air.”

Finding drones is challenging when you do not know exactly where they are or at what altitude. Unlike crewed aircraft, Butcher’s interceptor does not have radar, so he relies on visually spotting drones which may have a wingspan of just a few feet. Some, like the flat flying wing Supercam are virtually invisible seen edge-on. “It’s very, very difficult to sight in, to get visual on the target,” says Butcher. “Intel is not always super-accurate, so we have to use our brains and intuition — like understanding what they might be searching for in order to find them.”

Interceptors try to approach from above and behind where they will not be spotted by the Russian drone operator. If they can get close then the job may be a quick one. But increasingly Russian reconnaissance drones are fitted with rear-facing cameras. When it spots something coming, the camera triggers a series of automatic evasive maneuvers, a system known as Ukhylyant (“Evader,” but also “draft dodger”). “We’re flying all over the place chasing targets, doing maneuvers. It’s very much like dogfighting,” says Butcher. The interceptor is armed with an explosive charge, so the pilot has just one chance to get in close enough and trigger it. But the success rate is high. “Once we get eyes on a target, it’s usually going down,” says Butcher. “I’d say roughly 75% of the time this is the case.”

The Lancet kill was a notable success, because while Russian scout drones orbit in an area for several hours, the Lancet flies directly to its target. “It requires a greater sense of urgency,” says Butcher. “Both because of the limited time it’s in the air, and because of its intended use.” Knocking one down means that the Lancet – one of Russia’s most effective weapons – will never reach its target. Intercepting saves lives.

Flying a drone might seem less risky than being in the air. But the Russians are constantly locating and targeting Ukrainian drone teams, who are considered high value targets. “We’re under fire pretty much every day,” says Butcher. “Artillery, KABs [Russian glide bombs], FPVs, and MLRS [multiple launch rocket systems] are launched all the time. We have plenty of close calls. It’s just that some days are closer than others.”

Meanwhile drone combat is changing fast. Video has emerged of new Ukrainian interceptors armed with shotguns and netguns, and devices (presumably jammers) that can bring down drones without contact. Similarly, the Russian reconnaissance drones are currently unarmed, though there has been much discussion on Russian Telegram channels of fitting rear-firing weapons.

Luckily the Ukrainians are good at adapting swiftly to new demands. “In Ukraine, we have a sort of direct-to-consumer model happening where we on the front are able to directly communicate with and procure drone technology from companies,” says Butcher. “We can get a new prototype on a Sunday, test it, and provide feedback on Monday. The company will make changes over the next couple of days, and by Friday, we could have the next generation in our hands.”

The interceptors themselves are evolving. The originals were simply modified FPVs like those hitting ground targets. Now there are various bullet-shaped types with improved aerodynamics capable of much greater speeds as well as fixed wings. In sufficient numbers, a network of interceptors may one day protect Ukraine from the nightly waves of Shahed drones, which are not often seen in Butcher’s zone. “They [Shaheds] are rarely in our AO [Area of Operations], so we don’t get many opportunities to go after them,” says Butcher “They tend to be used to strike cities and civilian targets in the rear as opposed to front-line work. They’re tools of terror as opposed to tactical weapons, in my opinion.” The interceptor pilots maintain their vigil, sometimes flying twenty sorties a day. Unlike other teams who have safe houses at the rear and who rotate out every three or four days, their work is continuous.

One day this will all be over. Some people might have had enough flying, but Butcher wants to carry on being a drone operator after the war. “I plan to continue working with drones in some capacity,” says Butcher. “That was part of my motivation for getting into drones. I figured if I survived the war, it would be good to come out of it with an employable skill.” He already has a combat record in drone warfare that few non-Ukrainians can match. If NATO militaries want to learn about how to fight the wars of the future, Butcher’s knowledge is likely to be in high demand.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/04/04/a-canadian-dreamed-of-being-a-fighter-pilot-now-he-dogfights-with-russian-drones

The writer, David Hambling, is a technology journalist and author based in South London. He writes for The Economist magazine, New Scientist, WIRED, Aviation Week, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science among others. In 2015 he wrote “Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world” about how the cheaper drones will change the face of battle. He writes and talks about the subject quite a bit.

This is a relatively new aspect of drone warfare. It is reminiscent of the early days of WWI when reconnaissance pilots and observers would take shots at each other and rather quickly evolved into full scale aerial warfare with dedicated pilots and machines. It is particularly well suited for Ukraine. Using missiles to shoot down other missiles and drones is prohibitively expensive. And the anti-aircraft missiles are becoming scarce. But the Ukrainians can mass produce drones and they have gained the expertise to use them effectively. It is becoming an important part of a strategy of total national defense, a strategy that all of European NATO should be studying intensely.

TTG