- Ukrainian troops need heavy-duty nets to block enemy attack drones.
- They’re getting over 1,000 tons from Denmark for free, thanks to Brexit and a lone gardener.
- He and other volunteers are trucking heavy-duty trawl nets stuck in harbors to the front lines.
Carl Futtrup is no military man. The 53-year-old gardener spends most days on mowers and tractors, tending to fields in a town on the western edge of Copenhagen, Denmark.
But Futtrup, like many Europeans, has kept a close eye on Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in 2022 and donated gear to the front lines.
Before Christmas last year, he caught wind of an unusual request from Ukrainians in the trenches. They needed nets — thick ones strong enough to stop the munition-laden drones that have become the battlefield’s leading killer. Soldiers were draping them across fortified positions and combat vehicles as a final defense, and Futtrup heard they were saving lives.
“They write to me that they want more because, without this, all other donations are worthless,” Futtrup told Business Insider.
Thyborøn, a fishing village of some 2,000 people in Jutland, just happened to have 450 tons of those nets sitting unused at the harbor. These were trawling nets, made of nylon fibers up to four millimeters thick for hauling hundreds of fish at a time from the deep sea.
Futtrup found Thyborøn’s fishermen on Facebook and asked if they were open to making a donation. They agreed.
Now, the nets are in Ukraine, being used to snag Russian drones similar to insects on flypaper. They’re just the first tranche of what Futtrup and other volunteers hope will be a total of 2.1 million pounds of Danish commercial nets — left over from Brexit fishing disputes — lining Ukrainian fortifications.
As drones dominate the battlefield, defensive netting has become a hot commodity on the ground.
“They’re really effective because the drones are still using propellers, and the nets catch the propellers,” said Mykhaylo Ardashyn, a senior soldier in the Separate Artillery Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard. “Even after an explosion, the net will not be destroyed or burned completely, and some fibers can still catch other drones.”
There are times when a snagged drone might even fail to explode, he told BI.
Ardashyn, who primarily helps his brigade procure supplies, said Futtrup’s donated nets are being deployed on his units’ section of the front line. The brigade is fighting near Pokrovsk.
Fishing nets aren’t new to the war. Ukrainians have been using them in fortified positions since the full-scale invasion began, but primarily to provide camouflage.
Recently, Ardashyn said, there’s been an increased demand for heavy-duty nets as troops realized they can be a reliable option to counter uncrewed aerial systems. The need is exacerbated by the growing use of fiber-optic drones, which can bypass electronic jamming and have to be blocked or disabled.
“We are talking about big nets,” Ardashyn said. “Not those that people use by hand, but the really big ones, like from ships. The material is strong enough that it can handle a drone falling from the sky.”
Some units have started draping thick nets on the tree lines along supply routes to hinder ambushes from skilled Russian drone pilots. Others have shrouded their fortified positions completely in netting.
Moscow’s troops are using them too, said Federico Borsari, a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis who studies drone warfare in Ukraine.
“The Russians are using nets to cover entire roads and protect their logistics from Ukrainian first-person view UAVs, with mixed results depending on the area,” he told BI. But it’s unlikely that either side will have enough time or resources to cover their entire rear with nets, he added.
Troops also use them to protect armored vehicles, relying on a combination of nets and metal frames — once mocked as “cope cages” — to lower the chances of direct impact from a drone. Even a foot or two distance from a vehicle’s armored body can reduce a drone’s explosive power.
“The amount of nets needed is increasing exponentially,” Ardashyn said.
Brexit’s loss, Ukraine’s gain
Back in Denmark, Futtrup has been contacting other local harbors and secured another 600 tons of trawl nets to send to Ukraine via truck. He’s been speaking with Ukrainian media, such as the Kyiv Post, trying to raise funds from volunteers and the Danish government for transportation.
It’s a heavy expense for the gardener, with costs for the second shipment totaling about 90,000 euros. Futtrup estimates that each truck can carry up to 20 tons of nets, and each trip will cost about 3,000 euros, or $3,200. A typical trawl net is about 1,300 feet long.
The nets themselves are free. Carsten Bach, a parliament member of the Danish right-wing Liberal Alliance opposition party, told BI that most of the donated nets sat in storage for years after Brexit cut off British fishing waters from Danish fishermen.
“Some of the fishermen put a lot of value in these nets. It’s quite a large investment for a small company or a single-person fisherman,” said Bach, who is his party’s spokesman on both defense and food. The fishing industry contributes about 0.75% of Denmark’s GDP, but the country is the world’s fifth largest exporter of fish products.
Bach said many fishermen chose to keep their nets, hoping that a new agreement with the UK could restore access to their old fishing spots.
However, Danish environmental laws require such equipment to be disposed of or recycled eventually. And Bach said fishermen typically must pay a large fee for this service.
The politician, who is helping Futtrup submit a financing proposal to the Danish government, said it’s therefore likely these trawl nets won’t be a renewable resource for Ukraine.
“There will not, in the future, be as large a volume of fishing equipment like this for disposal in Denmark,” Bach said.
Danish nets won’t last forever
Still, Futtrup’s nets are supplying at least 13 units on the front lines, said Bernard Christensen, who runs the Swedish non-governmental organization Brave Ukraine.
“This is our main vein for the foreseeable future,” he told BI.
Christensen, a Swede living in Ukraine, has been helping brigades find sources for heavy-duty nets. One brigade typically requests about 50 to 80 tons of netting, and they can be difficult to procure locally, he said. Russian-controlled territory blocks much of Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
A unit commander overseeing fortifications and mine-laying in the Donetsk direction told BI that his battalion needs about three truckloads, or roughly 60 tons of nets, a month.
“We have no local sources for these nets, they can only be obtained from abroad,” said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his work. His identity is known to BI.
He said it takes his men about three to four days to set up one truckload, often in miles-long “tunnels” of netting along roads to protect vehicles against drone strikes.
But even with volunteer donations, there’s barely enough to go around.
“Many units desperately need these marine nets,” he added.
That means Futtrup’s nets will eventually run out, and Christensen must search elsewhere soon. Brave Ukraine is looking to acquire nets from organizations cleaning up the western Swedish coast, he said.
Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the Washington-based think tank Defense Priorities, told Business Insider that Ukraine’s demand for fishing nets is an example of how the fighting there has democratized modern warfare.
“In the United States, military and political leaders are always searching for the next best weapon or military system, the one platform that will give the United States insurmountable advantages,” she said. “But what the Ukraine war has shown is that while these types of high-tech solutions to military challenges have their place, low-tech and inexpensive alternatives can sometimes work just as well.”
Investing billions of dollars into advanced platforms may not be enough to win a future war, since they might be defeated by a less capable adversary with a simple or cheap defense, she added.
“Fishing nets might not be the right response for the US military, but in this case and others, the Pentagon should spend more time exploring less advanced options rather than defaulting immediately to complex and bespoke designs,” Kavanagh said.
Meanwhile, Futtrup said he’s pouring his energy into securing the money to truck over the donated nets. He hopes to acquire 50,000 euros from Swedish and Danish government agencies.
“Ukraine is part of Europe, and the country is only 1,250 kilometers from Copenhagen,” he said.
“As long as there is demand for fishing nets in Ukraine, I will send them, until there is no more to be found in Denmark either,” he added.
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