I can confirm, it happened a few times in Kursk, I’ve seen the videos.

However, the drone in question was a reconnaisance drone (those have long flight times). Ideally, you never see a reconnaisance drone - it sees you from beyond visual range well enough.

I believe the situation in Kursk was that Ukrainians deliberately sent a reconnaisance drone to take a close look, and perhaps also dropped a few leaflets. Russians then understood that their coordinates were known, they had no shelter available and a strike might come any second - and made the gestures to indicate surrender.

It also helped that the Russians in question were conscripts - young people undergoing military training. Support for the war is the lowest among this age group.

Yes. The protocol of “how to surrender” would also be useful to add.

Obviously, one cannot surrender to an FPV drone - it doesn’t have enough battery for the pilot to check if one follows through with the promise.

Throwing down all weapons, raising a white cloth and walking towards the opposing side might be a good enough signal for the pilot however - they might go looking for another target before the battery runs out.

For the leaflet to achieve results, it must lay out a good method of how to surrender. And that’s a lot easier with Russians since they have a language which Ukrainians understand.

To Russians, one can write “go to frequency X MHz, drop encryption and negotiate surrender” or “go to Telegram channel X to arrange surrender” but no such hope with North Koreans.

Sadly, they are not proper merceneries. A mercenary fights for money, but those guys probably know their families will be repressed if they surrender.

If I was the developer of the propaganda leaflet, I would add one sentence (after double-checking with a competent social engineer):

• “you get a new identity, at home they will think you died”

To my knowledge, Turkey has also developed laser weapons, and they have seen action in Libya.

As for possibilities of fast development - when need is great, people do things faster.

But I’m skeptical of laser weapons myself. They depend so much on weather. Air defense is expected to be reliable, not “it is snowing, we can’t shoot”. They can be used, but they always need a backup option if weather works against.

The drone “motherships” are a real thing with real benefits, however. They get around line-of-sight issues (single FPVs cannot go beyond obstacles without losing singnal, but with a mothership they can even go beyond the curvature of Earth).