Every soldier watching footage from Ukraine already knows what FPV (first-person view) drones are doing to the battlefield. A $400 quadcopter with a grenade strapped to it destroys a multi-million-dollar armoured vehicle. Troops in the open are hunted individually. Columns of armour are picked apart before they close with the enemy. The videos circulate through soldier group chats, often faster than any official summary.

What those videos do not show, and what formal headquarters briefings rarely articulate plainly, is the targeting authority problem at the centre of FPV employment. This paper names it directly.

When a soldier flies an armed FPV drone, they are making a targeting decision that Western military doctrine currently requires a qualified observer, formal training, and delegated command authority to make. The technology has moved faster than the doctrine. In Ukraine, the consequences of that gap have already been documented in detail by the United Nations (UN) and multiple independent defence research institutions. Civilians, soldiers on the wrong side of a low-resolution camera image, and friendly forces have died as a result.

This paper is written for soldiers, section commanders, and platoon commanders who have been handed an FPV controller, as well as for commanders and doctrine writers who have not yet resolved the governance question it raises. Its purpose is to clearly articulate the doctrinal gap, present the available international evidence, survey how comparable militaries are approaching the problem, and identify what needs to happen before the gap leads to a catastrophic incident in our own force.

It is also worth stating what this paper is not arguing. The Australian Army has recognised the capability imperative. Work is underway within Land Combat College (LCC) to develop training and governance frameworks for FPV systems. That work is necessary and welcome. The argument advanced here operates at a different level: not how we train soldiers to fly FPV drones, but who is legally and doctrinally authorised to decide to strike a target from one, and under what framework that decision is made.

These are complementary questions, not competing ones. The LCC framework addresses the training and fielding problem; this paper addresses the targeting authority and legal accountability problem that sits above it. A brief acknowledgement of that distinction up front will help anchor this argument inside current institutional thinking rather than in apparent opposition to it.

The Doctrinal Problem: The Observer-Delivery Distinction

In conventional fire support doctrine, the authority to engage a target is structurally separated from the capacity to deliver the weapon. This separation is intentional and longstanding. A Mortar Fire Controller (MFC) or Forward Observer (FO) identifies a target, confirms its validity against the applicable Rules of Engagement (ROE), and calls for fire via a formal fire mission order. The mortar section or gun line receives the firing data and executes. They do not select the target. That authority belongs to the qualified observer.

For larger-calibre or more complex fires, the requirements are even more stringent. Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs) and Forward Air Controllers (FACs) undergo extensive qualification and must hold specific delegated authority from commanders at the appropriate level. The Joint Fires Observer (JFO) role emerged, in part, to extend qualified observer capacity to a broader range of units without diluting the training standard for the most demanding fire support roles.

The distinction between training, qualification, and authority is important and often conflated. Training refers to the acquisition of skills; qualification refers to the formal certification that those skills meet a defined standard; authority refers to the delegated command authority to make a targeting decision.[i] A soldier may be trained to fly an FPV drone without being qualified in a targeting sense, and qualified in a targeting sense without holding the authority to engage a specific target set. This paper is primarily concerned with the question of authority.

The logic underpinning this architecture is multi-layered. It ensures that a person with formal legal training, situational awareness, and accountability applies trained judgement to each targeting decision. It creates an auditable chain of responsibility. It provides a structural check against misidentification. And it ensures that commanders at the appropriate level bear responsibility for fires conducted within their area.

For the doctrinal definitions underpinning these roles, see the relevant publications governing fire support, targeting, and the use of force.[ii] The targeting decision-making cycle – find, fix, track, target, engage, assess – assigns specific responsibilities at each phase.

An FPV drone collapses that architecture into a single person. The pilot acquires the target through FPV goggles in real time, at speed, under cognitive stress, viewing a compressed two-dimensional image. They make a targeting decision and deliver the weapon immediately. There is no interposed authority. There is no fire mission call. There is no second pair of trained eyes confirming target identity. The engagement cycle, from target acquisition to weapon impact, may be measured in seconds.

Any soldier trained to fly an FPV drone is, in the absence of a governing framework, a de facto targeting authority, regardless of their trade, rank, ROE training, or knowledge of the legal framework governing the use of force. The weapon effects of a standard armed FPV payload – typically equivalent to a 60mm mortar round or an RPG warhead – are lethal and irreversible. The qualification bar to fly an FPV drone commercially is zero. In most current force structures, the qualification bar to fly one as a military targeting authority has not yet been formally codified.

Evidence from Ukraine

The Russia-Ukraine War has produced the most extensive open-source record of FPV drone operations in sustained high-intensity combat. The following findings draw on peer-reviewed institutions, UN reporting, and credible defence analysis organisations.

Scale and Tempo

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces have industrialised FPV production to tens of thousands of units per month. Ukraine has embedded FPV teams directly into assault brigades at the sub-unit level. Reporting from the Hudson Institute notes that in some Ukrainian units, up to sixty per cent of assets deployed in assaults now consist of drones.

The number of individual soldiers with a controller in their hands, and therefore with de facto targeting authority, has expanded exponentially. Training pipelines and targeting doctrine have not kept pace. As one Ukrainian defence official acknowledged, the rapid development of AI-enabled drones had ‘outpaced the doctrine’ currently in place.

Attempts to Preserve the Observer-Delivery Split

Some Ukrainian units have imposed structure on the targeting problem. A reconnaissance drone operator identifies a target and passes the location to an officer on duty, who authorises a separate FPV pilot to execute the engagement. This is a functional analogue of the observer-delivery distinction, and it is the correct model. A Ukrainian reconnaissance drone operator described the process in October 2024: when a target is identified from the surveillance platform, the information is passed to the officer on duty, who then commands separate pilots to prosecute the engagement.

This approach preserves command accountability and provides a structural check on targeting decisions. However, it is the exception rather than the rule, and it breaks down under operational tempo and when opportunity targets appear that were not planned for.

Civilian Casualties and IHL Violations

The most significant finding from Ukraine concerns compliance with International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) published detailed findings in 2025 documenting that FPV drone operators, despite having first-person visual access to their targets, struck civilians with no signs of direct participation in hostilities. Documented victims included people on bicycles, in private vehicles, on regular public buses, in ambulances, and conducting humanitarian activities. The UN assessed that some of these incidents may constitute deliberate attacks on civilians, a war crime.

This finding warrants particular attention. An FPV system provides the pilot with direct visual confirmation that conventional indirect-fire weapons entirely lack, yet targeting errors still occurred at scale. The factors driving this include cognitive stress during high-speed decision-making, the compression of complex environments into a two-dimensional, low-resolution image, the absence of a qualified second authority to confirm target identity before engagement, inadequate ROE training for personnel who received piloting training without targeting-authority training, and, in some documented cases, a command culture that incentivised engagement without a commensurate structural check on targeting accuracy.

Opportunity Targeting and Command Failure

This reporting documents FPV pilots diverting to engage civilian or ambiguous targets of opportunity when battery life was low and the assigned target had not been located. The pilot made the decision at the point of engagement, without command authority, under time pressure, based solely on what appeared through the goggles. This is the default failure mode of an unmanaged FPV employment model and is not unique to poorly disciplined forces. It is a predictable consequence of a system that places lethal authority with an individual who has not been trained or qualified to exercise it, in circumstances where no structural check exists.

AI Integration and the Deteriorating Human Role

The targeting problem is being compounded by the rapid integration of artificial intelligence. AI track-and-intercept modules now allow pilots of any skill level to designate a target on a screen, with the AI handling terminal guidance. Fiber-optic drones with lock-on capability continue to seek their designated target even if communications are severed. Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation confirmed in May 2025 that AI-guided FPVs launched from carrier platforms – drones that identify, select, and engage their own targets – had been used operationally.

This trajectory means the targeting authority problem is not static: it is accelerating. Forces that do not resolve the human authority question for manually-piloted FPV systems now will face a materially more difficult version of the same question when AI-assisted targeting becomes standard. Based on Ukrainian evidence, that horizon is approximately two to three years.

How Comparable Militaries Are Approaching the Problem

Ukraine is the most extensively documented case, but it is not the only relevant data point. Several allied and partner militaries are actively working through the same questions.

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) has stood up a dedicated Attack Drone Team within Weapons Training Battalion at Quantico with an explicit mission to develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures for FPV employment and to become the institutional experts responsible for teaching the rest of the Corps.

The intent is to replicate the role the Marine Corps Shooting Team played in the rollout of the M27 Infantry Assault Rifle: establishing the standard and then distributing it. The Marine training chief publicly expressed a desire to extend drone access to non-commissioned officers (NCOs), framing the challenge as the development of appropriate training standards and conditions before authority is delegated downward.

In September 2025, the USMC issued MARADMIN 416/25, providing formal guidance on the fielding of the NEROS Archer FPV system and referencing the Secretary of Defense memorandum on unleashing US military drone dominance. The Archer guidance represents an early attempt to establish a doctrinal and safety framework for FPV employment at the unit level. Notably, it cites the MCTOG Attack Drone Employment Pamphlet as a governing doctrinal reference, suggesting the Corps recognises that employment guidance must precede or accompany fielding rather than follow it.

The British Army has established a drone academy in partnership with JHUB to deliver distributed, scalable FPV foundation training, while the Land Warfare Centre also conducts training in tactical drone employment. A Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) commentary published in July 2025 noted that the UK approach, which conditions course entry on demonstrated basic drone skills rather than a prerequisite formal course, self-selects soldiers committed to developing and maintaining the capability. The RUSI commentary also highlighted that regulatory barriers to training, including civilian airspace restrictions and range safety orders, have slowed the Army's ability to build the depth of experience required for meaningful targeting proficiency.

The UK experience is instructive. Training infrastructure and regulatory frameworks designed for conventional aviation do not align neatly with the employment tempo or model of FPV drones. The friction those frameworks introduce can be appropriate safety engineering or counterproductive bureaucratic inertia. Distinguishing between the two requires deliberate institutional analysis, not default compliance.

The French Army has invested in mobile micro-factory capability to produce FPV drones at the unit level to sustain operational tempo and tactical autonomy. Army Recognition reported in 2025 that the French approach emphasises front-line production capacity and tactical independence. However, a subsequent analysis of French Army combat exercises in early 2026 found that shortcomings in drone warfare remained evident, suggesting that the production and employment model had advanced faster than the doctrinal and command frameworks governing it.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have extensive experience integrating drone systems into a mature targeting architecture, drawing on decades of development in uncrewed systems governance. IDF employment models, while not fully transparent in open-source materials, are characterised by a sophisticated command-and-control framework that reflects hard-earned lessons from persistent ISR operations and precision-strike requirements in complex urban environments. The IDF approach integrates drone targeting within an existing Joint Fires architecture rather than treating it as a parallel or disconnected capability.

Iranian proxy forces have approached the problem from the opposite direction, deliberately distributing drone capabilities to non-state actors and militia elements with minimal command-and-control architecture. This model achieves tactical scale at the cost of targeting accountability and IHL compliance, and its outcomes have been consistent with that trade-off. It represents the logical endpoint of a model that treats FPV employment as a distributed individual capability rather than an integrated fires function.

A Note on the Limits of the Ukraine Lesson Set

Most of the evidence cited in this paper comes from a largely linear European theatre with relatively defined frontages, accessible logistics, and a degree of physical proximity between command elements and tactical operators. It is worth explicitly acknowledging that the lessons from Ukraine will not transfer without significant adaptation to the operating environment most relevant to Australia.

Operations across a 3,000-nautical-mile frontage spanning archipelagic terrain, littoral environments, and jungle to Australia's north and north-east require fundamentally different command-and-control architectures, communications constraints, and decision-making timelines.

The tactical micro-lessons, including the value of the observer-delivery split and the risk of autonomous targeting by undertrained operators, remain valid. However, the command frameworks, communications infrastructure, and authority-delegation models required to implement them in the Indo-Pacific environment will need to be designed for that environment, not transplanted from a European land war.

Risk Assessment

The following risks arise directly from unmanaged FPV drone targeting authority within a force structure that has not yet formalised its governing framework.

• Targeting by personnel without formal targeting authority. In the absence of a governing framework, any soldier with an FPV controller is making targeting decisions that require qualification and delegated authority. The likelihood is assessed as high within current force structures. The potential consequences, including IHL violations and command accountability failures, are severe.
• Engaging opportunity targets outside sanctioned target sets. Operational tempo, cognitive stress, and the absence of an authority check create consistent pressure to engage targets not included in the authorised mission. This is the documented Russian failure mode in Ukraine. The likelihood is high. The consequences, including civilian casualties and uncontrolled escalation, are severe.
• Civilian casualties and IHL violations. The UN HRMMU findings confirm that even a weapons system with direct visual target acquisition produces civilian casualties at scale when the structural authority check is absent. The likelihood is high in unmanaged employment. The consequences include individual criminal liability and command responsibility up the chain.
• Operating in contested airspace without deconfliction protocols creates a documented risk of engaging friendly forces or assets. CSIS analysis of the Ukraine conflict identifies fratricide as a statistically significant contributor to drone losses on both sides. The likelihood is medium to high in a joint or coalition environment. The consequence is severe.
• Command accountability gaps. Without a formal SOP defining who authorises FPV engagements and how that authority is recorded, accountability for targeting decisions defaults to the individual pilot, who is typically the least senior, least legally trained, and least protected element of the chain. The likelihood of this gap existing is currently high. The consequence is both institutional and individual.
• AI-assisted targeting is removing meaningful human authority. The trajectory documented in Ukraine indicates that AI-assisted terminal guidance will become standard within two to three years. Forces that have not resolved the human authority question for manually piloted systems will face an accelerated version of the same problem when AI systems make targeting decisions faster than any human authority check can operate. The likelihood is medium now and rising rapidly.

Command and Control Options

Three command-and-control models are available to the FPV targeting authority. They are not mutually exclusive and may be applied to different mission types within the same force.

Embed Within the Fire Support Team (Recommended Default)

FPV pilots operate as a subordinate element of an established fire support team under the authority of the qualified FO, MFC, or JTAC. The observer identifies the target, confirms ROE compliance, and authorises the engagement. The pilot then executes. The observer-delivery distinction is maintained. Command accountability is clear and auditable.

This model is operationally slower and requires reliable communication between the observer and the pilot. It is incompatible with some distributed or degraded-communications employment concepts. These are real constraints. However, they do not justify abandoning the authority architecture: they require the architecture to be designed to function within those constraints, including pre-authorised target sets, time-sensitive targeting protocols, and delegated engagement authority at appropriate command levels.

This is the model some Ukrainian units have adopted for deliberate operations, and the documented evidence shows it produces the best targeting outcomes. It should be the default for all deliberate operations.

Grid Reference Handoff with Designated Target Set (Conditional)

A qualified authority provides the FPV pilot with a specific grid and target description before launch. The pilot is authorised to engage that target. Engaging any other target requires a fresh authority handover. This model allows physical separation of the pilot and observer and is faster than a full fire mission process.

It does not resolve the opportunity-target problem. Pilots will encounter additional targets during flight. The discipline to abort rather than engage an unsanctioned target depends on training, command culture, and an explicit authority framework that empowers pilots to decline engagements. Most failures in this model arise from command cultures that reward aggressive initiative without providing the structural authority check that prevents such initiative from producing unauthorised engagements.

This model is appropriate for well-defined counter-vehicle or counter-emplacement tasks with a confirmed target. It is not appropriate for general area operations or free-roam employment.

Pilot as Autonomous Targeting Authority (Not Recommended)

This model – the de facto default in an unmanaged deployment – grants the FPV pilot full targeting authority based on their own visual assessment. It is the model documented in the UN findings on civilian casualties. It is the model Russian FPV operators have used when diverting to civilian targets of opportunity with a low battery. It is operationally flexible yet legally indefensible. It should not be adopted as a governance model under any circumstances, absent fundamental changes to training, qualification, and legal frameworks that do not currently exist in any comparable force.

Fire Control as Engineered Friction: What Must Be Preserved at the Lowest Tactical Level

It is worth drawing out a point that runs implicitly through the preceding analysis but deserves explicit statement. Existing fire control and deconfliction doctrine is not bureaucratic overhead. It is deliberately engineered friction, inserted into the lethal decision-making cycle because human beings under stress – with incomplete information and viewing compressed two-dimensional imagery – will make targeting errors that result in civilian casualties, fratricide, or disproportionate engagement.

That friction is the mechanism by which commanders retain meaningful authority over the use of lethal force. The question for FPV integration is not whether to preserve that friction, but how to preserve its essential function while adapting it to an employment model that operates at speeds and within organisational levels for which existing frameworks were not designed.

The answer is not to remove friction. The answer is to engineer it differently: pre-authorised target sets with clear boundary conditions; delegated authority to designated FPV authority holders at the section or platoon level, analogous to the JFO role; authority-check processes that function in degraded communications environments; and a command culture that treats an abort decision as operationally correct rather than a failure of initiative.

The goal is to integrate FPV drones into the combined arms team, with the right controls at the lowest possible tactical level, without adding complexity or disruption that would defeat the capability advantage. Getting that balance right is the doctrinal design challenge. It is achievable. It requires institutional effort. It has not yet been done.

Suggested Actions

Short Term (0-90 days)

• Develop and promulgate an FPV Drone Targeting Authority SOP that defines: qualification requirements for FPV pilots exercising targeting authority; the chain of command for fire missions; procedures for opportunity target engagement and explicit authority to abort; and airspace deconfliction requirements.
• Develop a mandatory targeting and ROE module for all FPV-qualified personnel, to be completed before any operational employment.
• Engage Army Legal to produce legal guidance on command responsibility for FPV engagements and the applicability of existing fire support accountability frameworks.
• Coordinate with LCC to ensure the targeting authority framework is integrated with – rather than developed independently of – the training and governance work already underway.

Medium Term (90 days to 12 months)

• Formalise FPV targeting authority within the standing fire support doctrine, defining where the FPV pilot sits in the observer-delivery chain.
• Establish a formal qualification pathway for FPV targeting authority, analogous to MFC, FO, or JTAC qualification standards, for pilots to be granted independent targeting authority.
• Develop a policy position on AI-assisted targeting: under what conditions, with what human authority, and with what accountability mechanisms AI guidance modes may be activated.
• Develop an adapted command-and-control model for FPV employment in the Indo-Pacific environment, accounting for the communications and span-of-control constraints of dispersed operations across a 3,000 nautical mile frontage.

Areas for Further Research

The following areas extend beyond the scope of this paper but represent productive lines of inquiry for doctrine writers and researchers:

• Formal delegation models for FPV targeting authority, including whether a new qualification category analogous to the JFO role should be established.
• How team-based FPV employment changes accountability structures, and whether a two-operator model (observer and pilot) should be mandated for all live engagements.
• The points at which AI-assisted and autonomous targeting break rather than extend existing assumptions about authority, and what new frameworks are required.
• Historical comparisons with earlier transitions in fire support authority: the introduction of armed UAVs, precision-guided mortars, and the development of the JTAC and JFO qualification structures provide direct analogues.
• The application of the targeting authority framework to the specific geographic and operational context of Australia's likely operating environments, with particular attention to communications constraints and span of control across an archipelagic littoral theatre.

Conclusion

The FPV drone does not create a new category of lethal force. It delivers existing lethal force through a new mechanism, at a new price point, and available to a much broader range of operators. What is new is the targeting-authority architecture that must surround that delivery. By collapsing the observer-delivery distinction into a single individual, FPV operations strip away the structural safeguards that Western military doctrine has spent decades engineering to ensure that fires are authorised, proportionate, discriminate, and legally defensible.

The Russia-Ukraine War provides a detailed, documented, and current record of what happens when that architecture is not managed. The UN has documented civilian casualties at scale, including probable war crimes. Allied militaries – the USMC, the British Army, and the French Army – are actively building the frameworks that should precede or accompany fielding. The question for any force that has or intends to field FPV capability is whether it resolves these questions before an incident demands it, or after.

The argument advanced here is not novel. It is the same argument that fire support doctrine has made about conventional fires for fifty years: that the authority to engage a target is not a technical question but a command question. The urgency lies in applying that settled principle to a capability that is proliferating faster than the governance frameworks designed to regulate it.

If you have been handed an FPV controller and no one has clearly explained who authorises your targeting decisions, under what framework, and with what accountability, that conversation needs to happen before you fly in a live environment. That is not a question about your competence as a pilot. It is a question about whether your chain of command has discharged its responsibility to you.

Further Reading:

Still interested? 

Why not read this 2025 article by Thomas Parker, titled: ‘Unmanned but Unused: Unlocking drone Capability for Australian Army’. 

Cove+ also offers courses on Modern Warfare, Ethics, and Autonomous Systems through ADELE (O:S).

End Notes