Fiber optic drones are changing combat operations
54 comments
·March 31, 2025walterbell
rolisz
The comments from the HN link from 1 year ago aged so badly. They were all skeptical that fiber optic control would become popular.
chank
I would say not really. This pretty much only fits the exact use case for its specific niche need. E.g. operating in RF adverse/non-recoverable environments. Otherwise it's a waste. So technically it's still not "popular" in the sense of general popularity. You're not going to see your general drone pilot rushing to put fiber optic on thier drone. This also isn't a new concept. Its the same thing as wire-guided missiles that have been around since WWII.
FirmwareBurner
A lot of top comments from HN age badly or are just blatantly incorrect/false. People are captured in their own ideology which gets reinforced by the eco chamber effect here, and so refuse to acknowledge the possibility they might be wrong or that the real world is vastly different than the one in their eco chamber (like the fact that most of the world uses Windows).
Especially true for SW engineers and other privileged people (politicians are an even better example) who due to their high status and wealth assume that if they got a well paid job, then they must be super smart and right at any other topics or areas, and then end up shocked that their viewpoint gets demolished by the masses or by the end results down the line.
In a way it's like how democracy works: it doesn't matter what is right and what is wrong, the opinion that ends up denominating is what the the masses perceive as being right.
NitpickLawyer
I wonder what that "expensive controller" is, and why it can't be something like a jetson nano equivalent + yolo for <500$ at scale...
ragebol
If flying and powering and destroying a Jetson at scale cheap enough?
thenthenthen
Shenzhen speed ;)
generalizations
Truly. The US is going to have to deregulate and speed up if it doesn't want to be left behind.
0_____0
Is creation of an SEZ and causing a metro of 8 million people in about 40 years an exercise in government restraint/deregulation? The US has to make forward thinking, intentional decisions about the direction of the country, and so far it seems to be delegating direction to folks who mostly want their own enterprises to succeed.
Edit: 40 years not 4
mahkeiro
Can you give me the example of one regulation that China doesn‘t have that make them more competitive?
rapsey
When the guy in charge tries to do that he kind of gets called a fascist, an idiot and a nazi...
Klaster_1
I recommend reading these two recent reports by Shura Burtin, these go into some details about impact of drone warfare:
* https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/03/27/please-don-t-use-my-... - less focused on the subject.
* https://meduza.io/feature/2025/03/25/terminator-veschiy-film - more focus on the subject (no English version yet, use Google Translate or something).
trallnag
Fucking hell, these are some dire articles
Ostrogoth
Here is a photo of dozens of spent fiber optic lines hanging in trees in Ukraine. It’s interesting to see how quickly the FPV drone tech evolves.
gngoo
The weird part is that they are also advertised on Instagram. More than once I have gotten an ad from an account showcasing these fiber optic drones and their R&D operation. And you can openly contact them for inquries.
mindwok
I wonder if you could have a mothership drone situation, where one drone sits high and out of range, and others fly out to their targets. Would prevent the cable getting caught on stuff and stop the cable leading back to the operator.
xnx
Cables would probably snap under their own weight, right? Laser communication might be a better bet for a mothership dropping guided drone "bombs".
qingcharles
OK, this is totally wild. I did not expect them to mean the drones are tethered to the base station by fiber.
ggm
Tethered but .. not constrained by that tether. Like annoying dogs in the dog-park whose owners feel free to real out the fishing line and never reel it in.
littlecosmic
Better to find a postwar fibre optic than a postwar mine, I guess
yzydserd
What’s the old adage, is it “I don’t know how WW3 will end, but WW4 will end with rock paper scissors”?
Right now, my money’s on scissors.
ggm
I am reminded of a poetic moment from a former US army person who told me of sunlight glinting off the trail of wires left behind after practice launches of wire guided MANPAD type systems. He said they were like spider silk in the dawn.
maxglute
https://i.imgur.com/JTfpiXV.jpeg
I think this is fibres littering trees in Kursk.
nradov
Those were probably anti-tank missiles such as the BGM-71 TOW. I don't think there are any MANPADS that use wire guidance: all of the modern ones are IR.
ggm
Thank you for the acronym correction.
raducu
> He said they were like spider silk in the dawn.
Russian FPV operators have already lost their life due to this precise effect and the fact they operated from the same building multiple times.
m463
...flight of the valkyries playing in his wired earbuds...
mint2
Doesn’t this have the added benefit of the operator not broadcasting their position? So anti jamming but also anti-pilot getting shelled/counter droned? Or is tracing the drone operators not so common?
raducu
There have already been russian operators killed this way -- they re-used the same launch spot and in the morning sun the fiber optics are clearly visible from air -- their position was identified and then shelled.
fnordpiglet
Other than the fiber optic cable leading directly back to the controller?
mahkeiro
The fiber will only link to the launchpad, the pilot can be anywhere.
djhn
But isn’t the connection to the launchpad also wired? Out of latency considerations?
rapsey
Controller could just be a PC with a VPN connection to anywhere.
Klaster_1
Does it matter if the other party has drones too and knows where everyone is?
baq
This is not so simple, drones everywhere mean anti-drone drones with shotguns, too. It’s like Total Annihilation, you must outproduce the enemy or you’ll get swarmed. We’re witnessing doctrine rewriting events here.
gotts
tracing the drone operators just by a single optical fiber might be difficult but tracing their logistic is not.
abeppu
I'm surprised this works as well as they're describing! There's a single comment about risk that the fiber could become tangled or broken, but they show the drones going through dense forest. I would think that becoming tangled or snagged would rapidly become a serious issue.
ggm
The reel is on the drone. If the reel was at base, the risk would be catches limiting forward motion of the drone. But the drone is paying out fibre behind it, the risk is that mechanism fails, but thats a risk either way.
hkpack
Why would it get tangled? The reel is on the drone side, so it just unrolls freely as the drone moves forward.
rasz
IRL is messy. Iv seen a compilation of russian fiber drone fails vid recently. Sharp turns, excessive acceleration, but mostly flying near tree branches and other dynamic objects - wind gust yanking on already laid fiber.
Comes down to pilot quality, with time even fetal alcohol syndrome victims will learn how to operate them reliably.
raducu
> Iv seen a compilation of russian fiber drone fails vid recently.
One anxiety of mine is being teased by an FPV drone -- with fiber optics it's much easier to defend against as a foot soldier -- if you can loop once around a tree and find the fiber optics cable, you can easily snap it and bye bye drone.
Also, given the pilot has to be more conservative with his maneuvers, shotguns will be more effective because the target is easier to lead.
theyknowitsxmas
Way to lead the enemy to operator HQ. They don't even need to follow it just triangulate paths like good ol radio.
L_226
pretty difficult to follow 10km of unspooled cable over broken terrain when you've just had an FPV drone explode on your position
01100011
Couple of dumb thoughts:
- Can another drone grab the fiber and walk back to your base?
- Can you use the fiber to a master drone which acts as a repeater/controller for normal RF drones? Yes you can still jam them, but with the tx/rx closer to the action you need a more effective jammer.
- How much power can these types of fiber optic cable carry? A couple watts max? Yes I know that's not what the intent is I'm just curious if you could use it that way.
- On the one hand glass isn't the worst thing we could be dumping into the environment but damn that sounds like some wicked splinters... Sure, war is never kind to the environment. Just saying...
gotts
> Can another drone grab the fiber and walk back to your base?
Can not grab, it will get caught by branch trees and debris. The launch site is not where operators are located, most often it is well hidden, somewhat protected and hundreds of meters away.
> Can you use the fiber to a master drone which acts as a repeater/controller for normal RF drones?
Battery is the bottleneck, master drone has to stay long enough in the air for all drone to hit their targets.
> How much power can these types of fiber optic cable carry?
can't use it that way.
tangjurine
fiber optic is glass and doesn't conduct electricity...
hgomersall
Power over fiber is absolutely a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-over-fiber
March 2024, "Fiber optic drone control beats any RF jammer", 250 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41143322
August 2024, commercial availability, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/08/20/russia...