// ARS TECHNICA — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Ukraine’s fiber-optic drones get squeezed by AI data center demand
Ukraine competes with Russia and data centers for China’s optical fiber supply.
Impervious to battlefield jamming, drones physically connected to human operators by miles of fiber-optic cables have become such a common weapon of war in Ukraine that trees and fields are strewn with tangled cables thinner than fishing lines. But importing such fiber-optic material from China has become more costly as drone warfare’s needs compete with global demand from AI data centers for the same limited supply—and so Ukrainian drone makers have been adapting.
Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the Ukrainians have been forced out of necessity to continually develop battlefield innovations involving first-person view (FPV) quadcopter drones and other heavier types of drones. But it was the Russian military that first deployed unjammable fiber-optic drones to repel Ukrainian forces’ cross-border incursion into the Kursk Oblast in 2024. The Ukrainians quickly followed suit in developing their own fiber-optic drones, given the drones’ capability to shrug off electronic warfare jamming that could neutralize radio-controlled drones.
Russia and Ukraine have relied on Chinese suppliers for some off-the-shelf drones and a wide array of drone components, including bulk orders of fiber wound around very large spools or sometimes small finished spools ready for installation on drones. The finished spools can hold enough fiber-optic cable for drones to regularly operate at ranges of dozens of miles, and sometimes up to 62 miles (100 kilometers) in extreme cases, as reported by the independent Russian publication The Insider.
Ukraine and Russia have been producing an estimated 50,000 fiber-optic drones per month in recent years. That’s a lot of optical fiber that has effectively become a one-time battlefield consumable.
But China’s economic and security ties with Russia have enabled Russia to import significantly larger amounts of fiber-optic cable than Ukraine—at least according to China’s official customs data. For example, Russia imported 328,000 miles of fiber-optic cable from China in August 2025 alone, compared to Ukraine getting just 72 miles of cable from Chinese companies, according to The Washington Post.
To get a better sense of how drone warfare has increased demand for optical fiber technology, Russia alone bought more than 37 million miles (60 million kilometers) of fiber-optic cable in 2025, according to The Insider and Russian business publication Vedomosti. That means Russia’s purchases amounted to more than 10 percent of all fiber produced worldwide last year, when it had previously never accounted for more than 1 percent of global demand.
The global AI boom and ongoing data center buildout have also strained optical fiber supply, with an expected worldwide shortfall of 111 million miles (180 million kilometers) in 2026, according to the market research firm TrendForce. That has further increased the cost of optical fiber purchased by Russia and Ukraine, including the bend-insensitive fiber that is especially coveted for fiber-optic drones.
One Ukrainian drone manufacturer navigating these supply chain challenges is BlueBird Tech, which produces fiber-optic drones along with other military drones, a ground robot, drone detection systems, and electronic warfare systems. Ars reached out to BlueBird Tech to learn more.
The following Q&A represents written responses from Oleksiy, a BlueBird Tech R&D representative, after an initial conversation with Ars. The responses have been lightly edited for clarity. Oleksiy is only being identified by first name for security reasons.