One Russian Drone Team’s ‘Warhorse’ Is A Pink Motorbike With A Sidecar

A truck from 1952. An open-top off-road vehicle that’s only slightly younger—and turquoise. A compact car with an anti-tank mine in the back, just waiting to cook off. After losing 20,000 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment, far more than they can replace with similar combat-ready vehicles, Russian forces in Ukraine increasingly ride into battle in civilian-style vehicles that are highly vulnerable to Ukrainian mines, artillery and drones.

One Russian drone unit’s pink motorcycle is, in this remarkable context, tragically unremarkable.

A Russian soldier showed off his pink bike and its crude, handmade sidecar in a video translated by the Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “I’d like to show you our warhorse,” the soldier said. “On which we also ride out to the task.”

The bike, an ex-Ukrainian trophy the Russians captured or stole, carries drone operators on reconnaissance missions, the soldier said. Presumably, the operators ride out to positions close to the front line in order to launch their short-range drones.

“This vehicle is a beast,” the soldier insisted, pointing out the sidecar with its spare gas can and attached box of smoke grenades for obscuring the bike and its riders from Ukrainian drones. “Just in case,” the soldier said ominously.

But the soldier admitted the bike is an expedient—and a desperate one, at that. “There’s nothing else for us to ride,” he said.

Armored bikes

When they first deployed modern war bikes on a large scale last year, some Russian troops tried adding armor. But as armies repeatedly learned in the roughly 100-year history of armored motorcycles, “the high mass of the vehicle made steering difficult,” according to Tanks Encyclopedia. “Cross-country mobility was minimal.”

Today it’s rare to see up-armored motorcycles in service with Russian regiments in Ukraine. It’s all too common to see unarmored motorcycles. One recent failed assault on Ukrainian lines involved a staggering 31 bikes, few of which survived the attack as Ukrainian artillery and explosive drones rained down.

The ongoing de-mechanization of the Russian military—from one of the world’s leading users of heavy armored vehicles to a force that routinely sends troops into battle in compact cars—is one of the major factors in the slowing pace of Russian advances on the most important battlefields in eastern Ukraine.

Russia still has a manpower and firepower advantage over Ukraine, a country with a third of Russia’s population. But this advantage erodes by the day as more Russians roll into battle in the same vehicles civilians ride to work.