How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
440 comments
·June 3, 2025stego-tech
nostrademons
I'm also fascinated by the political implications on state formation, state size, and form of government.
State formation tends to track the relative military effectiveness of large highly-trained standing armies vs. small distributed arms making. The Roman Empire collapsed when they ran out of money to pay their legions. The smaller tribes and kingdoms of the Early Middle Ages unified into the larger kingdoms of the High Middle Ages as the longbow and mounted knight gave the advantage again to large, highly trained standing armies. These collapsed into the city-states of the Rennaissance because the gunpowder musket rendered all the armor of the knights useless. Then the nation-state took over as mechanized arms and airplanes became military weapons, and needed the resources of a large territory to produce them.
It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce, easy to use, and extremely lethal to existing weapon systems, will produce a similar political revolution. And it seems tailor-made for smaller political units: drones can lay waste to an invading army, but they suck at power projection because their range is only ~10-20 miles. Might we see a return to city-states as the primary form of political organization? Maybe all the arguments about whether Russia vs. the U.S. vs. China will come out on top are moot, because the very concept of a nation-state will disintegrate, and instead we'll have Beijing vs. Shanghai vs. Shenzhen vs. Moscow vs. Kiev vs. the Bay Area vs. NYC vs. Washington DC? Drones are also ideal for defending shipping lanes, so perhaps we'll see a loose confederation of economically-bound city-states, but each having their own culture and social laws.
heavyset_go
IMO the supply chain for drones requires the stability and resource extraction on the scale of a state. SoCs, radios, optics, batteries etc all require high tech manufacturing.
Guerilla use of drones need off the shelf microcontrollers from somewhere, they aren't fabbing them in their backyard.
klooney
> supply chain for drones requires the stability and resource extraction on the scale of a state
It's all about China. They have the ability to cut off drone production for the rest of the world.
lukan
"It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce"
If you can buy the parts, then yes, but producing a complete drone all on your own is not that easy I think.
Still easier than a stealth air plane or a cruise missile, though. So your predictions might come true, because I also see most state armies being really slow to adopt to this new reality.
vasco
> As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale.
How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? Any Christmas market in central Europe these days is surrounded by car barriers to prevent mass run-overs, but what do you do when soon someone has the idea of dropping some molotov cocktails from drones in public places? Answering my own question I guess you can already throw one manually without a drone. Securing public places is weird, I'm glad it's not my job.
GoatInGrey
It's going to be an analogue of the situation with firearms today where the assailant has an asymmetrical advantage over civilians but not the countermeasure (police).
Also, the US military has been stockpiling kinetic drone countermeasures for about four years now. The idea is you get a hardened, ~11 pound autonomous drone that slams into the target at roughly 90 mph and physically destroys it before returning home. Add on 1-2 year-old US EW technology that now disables autonomous drones (yep, even autonomous drones), and you can establish a very comprehensive defense. The point I'm making here is that the tech is not only possible, but it exists.
Is it perfect? No. Though defense against firearms and explosives today isn't perfect either. Namely because of response times of the countermeasure. So in that sense, we aren't entering a uniquely dangerous situation.
Edit:
I think what will happen is that the first time a UAS is used on civilians, flying drones around population centers will be banned without permit. That way, if a drone is seen flying without a permit, it gets taken down on sight.
ethbr1
The "unique" part is two-fold.
1. It's cheap.
2. It's anonymous.
And eventually terrorists catch up. (Probably after the Russia-Ukraine war ends and some skilled people from both sides are unemployed)
It's infeasible to blanket every inch of civilian space with kinetic or EW anti-drone systems.
They may become commonplace at mass events (concerts, parades, gatherings, etc.) but will never cover all soft targets.
And unlike the nearest analog in chemical weapons, drones are dual-use, stable, and easily assembled.
The only reason the 1995 Tokyo Subway attacks [0] weren't worse was because of ineptitude.
Someone could be a quarter as intelligent and successfully fly an FPV drone into a target.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Ch...
seadan83
> How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case?
You can't, and you don't. That is why it is called terrorism. Safety and freedom are sometimes antagonistic goals. This is an example. Terrorism is defended against by not changing society despite the terrorism. It is violence with a political goal, if the politics do not change, the terrorism fails. Not every soft target can (nor should be) hardened, there will always be soft targets.
I-M-S
Interesting, my take is completely the opposite - you defend against terrorism precisely by changing the society as the material circumstances change, so that the disenfranchised can have their interests represented and achieve a political goal without having to blow stuff up.
hyperbovine
bdelmas
Thank you for the video! This is so much coming. Plus with thermal cameras too which is even more scary.
On the same topic it reminds me Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (from 2005!) where an AI called "Masse Kernels" was automatically creating missions sent to different PMCs, managing war assets, supervising the war effort, coms, and the like... Feels also that's coming, at least in some forms for now.
jfoster
In Ukraine one way that they partially secure bunkers or buildings is by putting up nets around them.
nkmnz
fwiw, I think the car barriers never had the purpose to stop cars, but to show people that at least on some level someone cares about their perceived safety.
forgotTheLast
Those barriers do serve their purpose but it's rarely a terrorist threat. Just do a web search for "drunk driver bollard".
netsharc
Feels chicken-and-eggy.
At the weekend, I was at a small town which had a half a mile long main road blocked off for a market day. They put up bollards to do so.
Chances are, there were 0 persons planning a car attack on it. So there was an element of "We don't think anything's going to happen, but if it were to happen, we're prepared.". A bit like having a fire extinguisher when there's never been a fire.
But would seeing the bollards also have the effect of discouraging the insane people of the idea of driving the car through the crowds the next time a market day is held?
Oppositely, if they didn't put up any barriers, a psychopath seeing this and the realization that cars can be weapons might give them the idea of "I know what I can do for my act of terrorism..."
dyauspitr
Well you can’t just throw a Molotov because in that case you’re going to get caught. You can place a drone, go home and have it drop the Molotov the next day and no one would know who did it.
stego-tech
I mean…you can’t, at least not right now, not for civvies. Let’s consider some of the current countermeasures:
* Flak/Shrapnel/Birdshot: An excellent last-minute defense if you’re calm enough to line up an accurate shot, but data shows that equipping civilians with these sorts of weapons en masse is a bad idea for safety and well-being. That’s a no-go.
* Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before drones adapt by flying under the nets or changing payload to something to dissolve it. A kamikaze drone could also be enough to destroy an opening for more to swarm. In a civilian context, they’re an excellent deterrent for high-population areas, for now, albeit unsightly.
* Buildings: Safest for now, provided the structure is relatively hardened and the windows are secured. But most civilian structures aren’t guarded against explosions or external attacks, and even those that are require a human to vacate it eventually. Once inside however, there’s more options for stopping an attack - for now - like interior netting, small arms with pellets or buckshot, or even lasers to blind the optical sensors. Impractical for civilian deployment at scale, presently, and highly variable.
* Jammers: Good against piloted drones, but as the article points out, the current crop of dev work is geared towards autonomous slaughterbots instead of human decision-making. Jammers are restricted by most countries and, if left functioning after an attack, could hinder first responders. If left on constantly, would disrupt civilian work. So that’s a no-go.
* LASERS! Probably the best deterrent in the short term for civilians, I would wager. A randomized strobe of a high-powered IR laser could devastate a swarm of drones’ optics, making navigation or target acquisition difficult or impossible. Sticking a piece of protective glass on the sensor would likely nullify it long enough to finish its mission, though.
And that’s what distresses me, ultimately. The future depicted in Slaughterbots or Horizon is rapidly approaching, where autonomous drones can murder with impunity and are affordable enough that any threat actor could get their hands on it. Combined with modern databases of humans - faces, biometrics, profiles, locations, habits, schedules - we’re nearing an era where assassination or murder is a drone away.
That is what horrifies me. And if there’s one thing my time in the defense industry taught me, it’s that nobody is trustworthy with that kind of power. Companies making these absolutely will use them (or condone their use) against dissidents, opposition, regulators, and governments. Pandora’s Box is already open, and I don’t think enough folks appreciate the horrors it will bring.
southernplaces7
>Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before drones adapt by flying under the nets or changing payload to something to dissolve it.
Worth noting here that the Ukrainian armed forces have already repeatedly deployed drones with the ability to spray pretty impressive amounts of napalm all over their targets from fairly high altitudes. Fittingly, they've been called "Dragon drones", and I wouldn't want to be under any anti-drone net if one of those arrives.
tim333
For civvies the protection is the same as stopping someone shooting you with a rifle - have the cops jail the perpetrator.
ljsprague
[flagged]
dang
Wtf? You can't post like this to Hacker News and we ban accounts that do.
Worse, you've been posting similar things elsewhere too (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43848538).
I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things, but if you keep posting ideological and/or political flamebait, and especially religious or nationalistic slurs, we will. Therefore, if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
sach1
[flagged]
myflash13
This article did not even cover some of the weird solutions being deployed against drones. For example, Russia has surrounded many of their critical infrastructure sites with huge nets (similar to golf course barrier netting). They have also developed anti-drone drones that drop nets from above, catching and tangling target drones in a bunch of netting that simply snags the blades.
sreekanth850
In my opinion, AA guns will become again popular to counter drone swarms. None of the modern weapons are that effective like old AA Guns.India proved this with Pakisthan massive drone attacks recently.
rollcat
> They have also developed anti-drone drones that drop nets from above, catching and tangling target drones in a bunch of netting that simply snags the blades.
Yeah if we could just all agree that from now on, all warfare is limited to drone-on-drone engagements.
vasco
If we could agree on that we'd agree on simply simulating war, no need to actually send drones. But it's unlikely to happen for the same reason hero fights instead of army fights didn't happen like in the movies. Ultimately war is about a difference of opinion strong enough to not care about loss of life, so after a country would lose the simulation they'd just go onto the real war part anyway.
Y_Y
> The programming can be set-and-forget, meaning operations can be staged months ahead of deployment and make it difficult to find or prevent.
This is something I haven't considered before. What's the worst case here? Is it feasible for me to go live on a farm in <country I want to harm>, buy a fleet of DJI drones at flea markets etc, stick something harmful to them, then hide them in the woods.
I can move away, wait a year or two, and then have them fly to the nearest metro area and wreak havoc. This seems to be cheap and relatively straightforward, and hard to detect. What am I missing?
wongarsu
In a pre-drone world you can get explosives, divide them into X equal sized packages, add a timer set to the same point in time to each, then travel around the country hiding them in high-traffic areas.
Yes, that approach is inferior to the drone version. You have to hide them inconspicuously, and a bomb sniffing dog could find them. But you can visit a lot of places in a single European country or US state within one day, and unless the country is already on high alert you can hide something for that time span in public. Yet this doesn't happen. Even regular bombings are rare.
The reasons are manifold: In most places getting explosives isn't actually all that easy (unless you go the homemade route) and is a good method to get attention from authorities. But another factor is that there just doesn't seem to be a large interest in doing that kind of complex attack unless there is already an ongoing civil war. Actual terrorism is fairly rare, and the terrorists tend to be not all that sophisticated.
Are these kinds of drone attacks a scary new possibility? Yes, absolutely! Are they likely to happen? Not really. We might see it as a method to assassinate officials (imagine staging drones at a place where you know the US President will hold a speech in a couple months), but I doubt it will play a major role against the general population
impossiblefork
Attentive people would find the bombs. Especially if they're on alert, which everyone who knows about terrorism will be at least to some degree.
Back in the day, if you forgot a bag on a British bus the driver would get it and run after you, so that it wouldn't be a bomb issue taking the whole day.
adammarples
The drone scenario is very different, all you have to do is get close-ish to your target. This is very different than having a stick of c4 sit on your target for months. You have to get them to drone-range, say in the back of a lorry, on a roof somewhere, in a box. Then the programming and or AI can kick in and do the last mile for you, whenever you need. Case in point is the Ukrainian attack on the air fields, they parked a lorry nearby.
rurp
Not much. Autonomous targeting and control are quite new and currently take a fair bit of knowledge and skill to get right, but I expect those barriers to lower dramatically in the coming years. There might be power issues with such a long delay, but I'm not sure. I think the main drawback once this tech gets slightly more widespread is that most people who want to terrorize cities don't want to wait a year or two to do it.
For long running conflicts (Israel vs Iran for example) I expect we'll see some fascinating and horrifying attacks in the near to medium term. Of course anti-drone tech is also evolving quickly and I expect that to continue so the shelf life of any specific attack will probably continue to be rather short.
stavros
It doesn't really take much knowledge to set up an autonomous drone mission. It's not DJI-levels of consumer friendliness, but I know multiple people that made and fly their own drones, and it's not something you can't do with a few YouTube tutorials.
lapetitejort
What you're missing is the will to go through with it. Even state actors would get spooked spending months or years setting this up. One slip-up and you're in prison for life. When your country's existence is at stake, the process is easier.
heavyset_go
> What am I missing?
Battery degradation, a year or two's worth of leaves and debris accumulating on and around the drones, literally all of the elements affecting them, animals, etc.
stavros
If I've gone to the hassle of setting up a high tech bombing attack, wouldn't I have also gone to the trouble of putting the drone in a self-opening container?
maxglute
You can probably get unsuspecting couriers to deliver last mile. Build a drone dock with cutter to open top of boxes. Mail a weaponized drone to an address within range of target.
NoMoreNicksLeft
They're battery operated, so I think there's a time limit of a few months. Then, you want to be very careful with the infrastructure you leave behind (little pop-open doors/roofs for them to fly out of) to avoid future investigation. You're going to need some practice, your first try will just go to shit perhaps. Opsec while you're setting all this up is still a big deal that amateurs will have trouble getting right. But none of these are particularly insurmountable. With the correct software and careful planning, this will succeed at its goals.
Things you can't help: they will discover the remains of the drones, and also their origin. This evidence will eventually lead back to you (unless you have the aid of a enemy nation-state). Not a big deal if you're dying in a suicide attack, but maybe you don't want the extended vacation in the CIA's worst black ops rendition site.
MoonGhost
> jammers
Jammers don't work against optical cable or AI vision controlled drones. That's a big problem today in Ukraine for both sides.
As for defense, first of all it's detection and tracking. Copters and long range gas powered drones are very loud and easily detectable. Ukraine uses a net of cell phones. Several devices with microphones can accurately pinpoint all drone like sources in real time. That's cheap to install miles around important targets. Then we need just fast AI interceptors 'on hold', in the air if can afford. The last part is missing today, but we'll get there soon.
As for danger, etc. Small remote controlled firearms were easily available for decades. Drones _are_ trackable. When one takes off in big city Russians know immediately where. By using radio scanners. All DJI drones, and most others, communicate and simply broadcast their coordinates. This is used in Ukraine to find their operators.
krunck
What is also distressing is that drones make false flag attacks even easier. Add to that the fact of AI generated media/propaganda means no war will be factually comprehensible to anybody.
mensetmanusman
I think the idea of a false flag will also be completely destroyed by ai video tech. Once everyone knows everything is fake, how will they know that the false flag was real?
null
tim333
>horrified that we democratized violence on this scale
Violence has always been pretty democratic - you've always been able to punch someone or hit them with a rock and the US seems to have more guns than people.
Ciantic
The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source code in Github [3], also adding an article specifically about ArduPilot and Ukraine [4]
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk...
[3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot
[4]: https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-po...
burnt-resistor
Apparently, there were hundred+ drone pilots available who were spread across several timezones should the AI not be able to find their way visually. If you see some of the streaming video snippets, it says GPS fix unavailable likely due to jamming of GNSS systems and disabling of civilian GLONASS near bases. As such, Russian domestic cell carriers were reportedly used to stream video and for manual terminal guidance following visual cues, hence the daylight timing of the raid.
mikhailfranco
One report said the drone attack was sequential, not swarming. So perhaps only one remote operator per truck, with about 2-3 minutes between each drone launch, depending on how far the previous one had to go to reach its target.
throwoutway
Source on the 100+ drone pilots an cell carriers? I've been hoping to find an article on how they staged the pilots for manual guidance. I imagined they would have had to tunnelled all that traffic to each operator from the truck, but the cell towers is clever
ZhiqiangWang
Andrew Tridgell, from rsync/samba to drone ....
aiiizzz
What goes on in a person's mind when they pivot to making killing machines?
mensetmanusman
I would rather the enemy die than myself and my family.
ajross
To be clear, that's because Ardupilot is a really pretty routine UAV navigation project with obvious civilian/industrial/enthusiast application. People hack on Ardupilot because it's fun to see your drone fly around on its own. That you can also put a grenade on it is sort of an obvious extension, but the payload is very much a separate feature.
masom
I remember NodeCopter and running OpenCV to control them years ago.
https://gist.github.com/andrew/2f81952f4867d1b200bb
The big difference is they can now run this on the copter instead of being remotely controlled; a 100$ raspberry pi has enough processing power for this, and so does several other off-the-shelf mini computers powered by lithium batteries.
Crazy times.
ivape
So what did they do, just stick GPS coordinates and the drones were that successful autonomously (talking of the Russian fighter base attack from the last 48 hours)? I'd be shocked if they didn't manually pilot these things.
faitswulff
You are correct:
> ...each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot.
masom
OpenCV and other onboard computer softwares can be trained to recognize shapes, 10+ years ago there was a demo of a NodeCopter controlled small drone following red flags.
Stick the GPS coord, fly there, and once in a geofence look for a shape to crash into doesn't seem impossible given what was possible 10 years ago.
bamboozled
"He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot."
netsharc
Sun Tzu says it better:
"A military operation involves deception."
He could be telling the truth, he could be lying... A drone programmed to automatically boot up , check its location, and if it's at the right coordinates, take off and crash at some other coordinates (the airfield) is more satisfying to "fans" of automated warfare.
For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but now you're approaching dangerous territory of "What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield"...
The reports also mention the truck roof opening remotely, one could also use GPS coordinates to trigger this. But doing it manually from a distance, after checking the surveillance cameras that the coast is clear, is more reliable.
I guess they used smartphones and SIM cards with mobile data for the remote communication...
wiseowise
> For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but now you're approaching dangerous territory of "What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield"...
Civilian 737 boarding airfield where Russia keeps strategic nuclear bombings? Russians would shoot them down faster than any drone could get them.
Muromec
It's a military airfield, so no civilian 737 there. There seems to be a video from the drone, meaning some kind of connectivity was present with or without autopilot.
pjc50
> What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
Good old non-AI radar-guided missile launched by human crew of Russians.
2OEH8eoCRo0
They did more than crash at coordinates, they targeted specific parts of the different aircraft.
keepamovin
It's strange - blocking GPS is typical around military sites. So, assume the drones were hard-coded to zero a location - they couldn't do it, as GPS would be blocked. They had to be piloted. Interesting.
RenThraysk
Only need one camera drone capable of identifying targets. And just tells another drone to bomb it.
varjag
The drones reportedly flew from their containers to the staging area autonomously, where they were taken over by the pilots for the attack approach.
ladyanita22
So what about the AI part that has been mentioned by several outlets?
bamboozled
Source?
barbazoo
When you watch some of the footage I feel like it’s clear that there were at least some human controlled drones there.
randomtoast
How could they be navigated from such a long distance? Satellite communication? Wouldn't the lag be too high?
sorenjan
Via the regular mobile network according to one article I read. The Ukrainians said that all operators where safely out of Russia when the news broke, so I doubt they where at the airfields several hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine.
mrandish
To reduce latency, I wonder if the phones were connecting to a covert site in Russia which had a high-bandwidth, lower-latency wired link, maybe a front company established in Russia for the operation with servers and broadband internet connections. Or maybe just a colocated server at a major backbone site in Russia was rented by a Russian front company. Seems like the kind of thing intelligence services do. While I'm sure Russia has more restrictions on renting colocated servers than the U.S., it's still something that needs to happen every day. Russia also has a fairly robust underground economy of less-than-legitimate companies doing illicit things, so there have to be ways for those companies to avoid restrictions (probably involving bribing certain people).
If the attack was coordinated this way, I assume whoever sold the colo to Ukrainian intelligence thought they were simply setting up yet another server for a shady Russian scam company. Foreign intelligence services often avoid scrutiny by using the same methods as domestic criminals in the target country.
mensetmanusman
Yes, Ukrainian military leadership has admitted that Starlink has been so vital that they would have had no chance without it. Starlink latency can be faster than cable in some parts of the us. Remember light travels faster in air than through metal wire as radio.
yieldcrv
Everyone was right next to the bases in Russia
aaron695
[dead]
twothreeone
Assuming they were remotely operated - at least partially during the final few minutes of the attack - I wonder if the pilots remained in Ukraine or were hidden somewhere close by. I'm assuming they remained in Ukraine, thousands of kilometers away. If so, how did they pull off the remote connection over enemy territory? The only option somewhere as remote as Irkutsk seems to be Starlink, unless the trucks carried custom transceivers (which seems like it would be easily discovered during transit).
alwillis
Regarding jamming:
Now in its third generation, the Ghost Dragon has come a long way since 2022. Its original command-and-control-band radio was quickly replaced with a smart frequency-hopping system that constantly scans the available spectrum, looking for bands that aren’t jammed. It allows operators to switch among six radio-frequency bands to maintain control and also send back video even in the face of hostile jamming.
giantrobot
Over cellular modems in the drones with Russian SIM cards. The operation was prepared for months in advance. Getting a bunch of pre-paid SIM cards from the Russian equivalent to 7-11 (which might just be 7-11) was probably the easiest part of the operation.
hofrogs
Stores won't sell a SIM card without the buyer providing valid state ID, and SIM cards are disabled by carriers if they suspect you are using someone else's card and you can't provide an ID for it. This is one of the recent laws. Getting a phone number/data plan that isn't associated with your real identity (and instead registered to someone else, usually a homeless guy somewhere) isn't impossible, but those wouldn't come from a grocery store.
luma
They've been planning this for over a year and this is the SBU we're talking about. I'm pretty sure they could figure out a way to light up a data plan on a cell phone in Russia when needed.
aembleton
Stores might not sell a sim card without state ID, but you can buy eSims without ID from $1.20 with 1GB of data: https://www.esim4travel.com/russia-esim
ct0
I wonder if identity documents were taken from POW's captured at the front lines.
lordnacho
Maybe just tourist SIMs that let you roam into other countries? Buy a load of SIMs in Kazakhstan or somewhere like that, roam into Russia, now you have internet?
null
twothreeone
Isn't GSM super easy to jam? Also, there's civilian cellular coverage in Siberia? And right next to military bases?? Wow..
giantrobot
Jamming only works when there's equipment in place and activated. Prior to this attack there was no reason for Russia to even have jamming equipment located at a base deep inside their borders let alone active.
defly
Here is a list of largest volunteer funds at your disposal (military and non-military help):
Come Back Alive ex. These guys delivered first deep-strike drones https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate-en/
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation ex. Bought a famous spy satellite https://prytulafoundation.org/en
KOLO Charity Foundation managed by UA tech community https://www.koloua.com/en/
Razom Ukraine (US based) https://www.razomforukraine.org/
sreekanth850
India used oldschool L70 Guns, zu 23 and ZSU-23-4 Shilka against pakisthan's drone swarm attacks. They are modernized to track, lock, and fire automatically. But they are cheap.
pjc50
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_40_mm_Automatic_Gun_L/7...
Immediate post-WW2 vintage. The classic design of AA gun.
As far as I understand it from talking about Turkish drones, you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_TB2 style, aircraft size drones, rather than the quadcopter size ones? The latter can more easily hide in terrain.
cenamus
What kinda targeting system do they use? Probably no significant IR signature and radar one's pretty small aswell?
sreekanth850
We have multi-layered low signature and passive drone detection system, including radar, radio frequency (RF)-based systems, electro-optical sensors, IR, and video tracking. We also have Thermal imaging for all weather use. And all are integrated into a single command and control system. These upgraded Old school system proved to be worthy to shot down more than 500 turkish drones sent by Pak.
cenamus
Ah so more like traditional, larger drones with gas engines/turbines, as opposed to the quadcopters?
petra
What was the kill rate of this system ?
ahartmetz
The strength of a reflected radar signal generally decreases with the fourth power of distance: r-squared to the reflector, and r-squared back from the reflector (assuming more-or-less uniform backscattering). Which means that a low radar signature is usually still detectable, the object just needs to get moderately closer.
So being stealthy in the radar spectrum is pretty difficult, and I often wonder if stealth planes are mostly a means to transfer money from the state to defense companies.
potato3732842
There hasn't been much coverage because it's not as sexy as drones but the degree to which AA tech that was formerly the domain of well funded armies has proliferated down the economic spectrum in recent years is really hard to overstate.
dragonwriter
> There hasn't been much coverage because it's not as sexy as drones but the degree to which AA tech that was formerly the domain of well funded armies has proliferated down the economic spectrum in recent years is really hard to overstate.
A lot of the key AA tech that has suddenly become important in the era of drone swarms began proliferating to mid-tier forces around the 1980s (or earlier), and was retired by well-funded armies between then and the 2000s, because compared to SAM systems, it was suitable only for lower, slower, less capable targets.
Turns out, suddenly large numbers of lower, slower, less capable targets are being fielded, and its really expensive to take them on with SAM systems optimized for dealing with modern manned aircraft, cruise missiles, and/or ballistic missiles.
sreekanth850
Exactly, one cannot use patriot or s400 to dhot down drones, they are way expensive compared to a cheaper UAV.
null
originalvichy
If your country is an adversary of China, I would be scared. I've seen videos on YouTube of how the drones from Chinese drone light shows take off and return to their launch areas. They have remarkable accuracy.
dji4321234
These generally just use RTK and a base station; nothing interesting and extremely easily rejected by EW (since they need both accurate global positioning signal _and_ RTK signal).
Inside-out SLAM strategies and on-device ML are much more interesting and are starting to trickle into COTS drones. For example, the latest DJI drones all use SLAM for return-to-home even when GPS denied: https://www.facebook.com/reel/440875398703491 , and the latest Matrice 4 enterprise drones also have end-user ML model runtimes that can fine-tune flight plans using user-provided logic.
Inside-out last-second targeting is also very popular in Ukraine, with off-the-shelf "find the nearest car/person in analog video, lock to it on signal lost, and send Betaflight MSP stick commands to hit it" modules readily accessible on Aliexpress.
mountainriver
We do that in the US as well, it’s just more regulated (for some reason)
mensetmanusman
Drones will be fine for defending territory that you already control.
China has no intention of attacking a distant country besides taking control of Taiwan in 2027.
jxjnskkzxxhx
Boards don't hit back.
bigyabai
If GPS geolocation makes you scared then don't look up what America did when we invented the JDAM...
avereveard
Eh that's easy enough with inertial or ground navigation and some kind of beacon on the charging bay, the hard part is in enemy territory under the fog of war, jamming, and spotting targets on the fly.
overfeed
If the drones are self-guided there's nothing to jam[1], and what can you do after spotting a swarm of drones? Shoot $5m missiles at each one of them?
maxglute
Not to mention DJI has AESA radars on $8000 agricultural drones. COTS drones withsensors + sensor fusion on par with best smart munitions.
slicktux
Awesome technology! Nice to see Dead Reckoning being used with computer vision and offline maps! Something college students have been doing in robotics competitions here in the USA ;)
major505
TO know more, here is a brief presentation about drones in Ukrain War.
https://youtu.be/5xN__ozrbpk?si=vuBtFEcOlgerrVwa
I specially apretiate the small mine clearing drones.
grg0
Damn, 70% of casualties on both sides caused by drones? That really puts things into perspective.
major505
yeah, In a conventional war, it would be artilary, but Ukrain dont have enough of it, so it started using drones in its place.
Looke at the fields, now covered in optic fiber. I cant even imagine the cleaning efforts that will be needed after the war. to get rid of that.
gsekulski
Shaheds and Ukrainian long-range drones are based on inertial navigation, the drone knows its coordinates and the coordinates of the target it is to hit, and the entire route between them is covered based on data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers.
However, the decision-making based on image recognition mentioned in the article is undoubtedly more effective in more changing fields, when the target is moving
Oarch
Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.
Cthulhu_
There's a few, but they're large, expensive, require a lot of electricity and have limited range; there's the Silent Hunter [0] which is 30-100 kilowatts max power but which has a range of up to 4 kilometers. Raytheon has a 10 kilowatt palletized version that can go on a truck bed [1]; I can't find any numbers but it's listed as short-range, so I presume it's only effective at distances of less than 1 km, probably only tens or hundreds of meters. Plus they need to detect the drones first, but there's multiple ways to do that. It likely needs a network of detectors though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hunter_(laser_weapon)
[1] https://www.rtx.com/raytheon/what-we-do/integrated-air-and-m...
throwaway422432
EOS (Aust) have a 50-100kW system, 4 km range.
https://eos-aus.com/defence/high-energy-laser-weapon/
What they are good at is target tracking, having started out in satellite communication.
Their tracking system paired with a 30mm Bushmaster cannon and proximity ammo is another solution, and there are apparently 160 of them heading for Ukraine to be mounted on M113 and Kozak vehicles.
tguvot
Israel published last week that it made a trial run of the iron beam (10km range or so) during conflict with hezbollai. It had 40 intercepts and full operational deployment is scheduled for this year
glitchc
Lasers aren't effective. Most of the drone is just an empty frame. The control board is pretty tiny, as is the ordnance. Targeting those or the propulsion systems is quite difficult. Sure, you can punch holes in the chassis but it takes a lot of guesswork to hit something vital. It's the wrong weapon. Something with an area of effect, like a shotgun or a net is much better suited to stopping drones.
00N8
Are you sure about that? AFAIK effective laser drone defenses are not yet widely deployed proven technology, but I don't think small beam size is a limiting factor. Getting enough power onto the target to disable it is a big challenge, but part of that is fighting the natural tendency of the beam to spread out & be attenuated by the atmosphere - not that the beam affects too small of a spot on the drone.
Having a laser that spreads out to e.g. 30cm radius at 500m is not hard to do if you need an area of effect weapon & can push enough power (ie. your laser is powerful enough, but not so intense that it ionizes the air & blocks itself). Reflections seem like a bigger problem: If the most effective defense includes guys with shotguns &/or there are a lot of unprotected personnel in the area, how do you make sure stray reflections don't end up blinding them?
glitchc
The point is that a focused laser will put a hole through the drone, much like an armor piercing round, but that is often insufficient to disable the drone. A larger ballistic projectile (think a solid shell or a rock) is much more effective. Alternative energy weapons based on microwaves and SPL also work well.
tguvot
Israel published last week that it (trialed) deployed laser system to shoot down drones year ago at North. It had 40 intercepts or so. Full operational deployment scheduled for the end of this year
glitchc
You mean the demo done recently? The article might be misleading. The IDF tested 20 different systems produced by their military OEMs. It wasn't just lasers, and lasers are far from being the clear winner. Here's the official post, it contains a demonstration video:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/israelimod_israel-mod-complet...
null
hoseja
This is what a guy can do in his garage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBVlL0FNbSE
It punches through titanium sheet in seconds.
pjc50
The main defence drones have against both lasers and Bofors-type guns is staying low, such that they are below the horizon or behind ground clutter until as late as possible.
jvanderbot
Now imagine that but with a shotgun shooting bird/buck shot at decent ROF. Way better.
The problem with any point defense system is radiating any energy makes you a big target. So you would want a passive (EO/IR?) or triggered active/passive system.
lenerdenator
12 gauge would be fairly strong medicine, but it has to be close in. If the drone is a stabilized gun platform with the ability to aim decently well (<4 MoA @ 100 yards) that's not going to be a winning battle.
jvanderbot
Taking the discussion back to reality, almost all uses of drones at the moment are via suicide ("wire guided COTS missiles", you might call them), or just plain old recon. There are probably still plenty of grenades dropped from hover as well.
For those uses, there's a fairly decent approach ["missile"] or hover ["bomber"] stage that is probably plenty vulnerable to autonomous PDS via 12 guage medicine.
Tracking / detection could even be passive, partly acoustic, partly EO/IR, with only a small fire control radar if you really want it.
wiseowise
That’s assuming there’s a single drone and not an intelligent swarm that will circle around you.
jajko
Why nobody us building automated shotgun based solutions for anti-air defenses... maybe they need more than 100-150m reliable reach? Having 300 of those covering one airfield may not be ideal, nor cost effective, nor easy to manufacture and deploy and maintain in such numbers... we talk about russia after all, they let most of their strategic bombers arrogantly unprotected on runways with full gas tanks.
I don't think western common folks grok how depraved that country is in terms of doing good work, reward systems for such and corruption on every single level. puttin' built a mafia state and pushed this behavior from top->bottom, and these are side effects. Not some soviet competence and discipline, which wasn't stellar either but light years ahead of current state.
sreekanth850
India had successfully used its age old L70, Zu23 guns to track and shot down 500+ turkish drones sent by pak. All these legacy weapons are modernised with passive drone tracking, locking, targetting and automated firing system. https://theprint.in/defence/how-upgraded-l-70-guns-or-origin...
jvanderbot
I really don't care what Russia does, but in a future war USA is more likely to be attacked by asymmetric exploding drones than to be attacking with them. That I _do_ care about. And for that, a PDS system on a few trucks seems kind of useful. If they can be made cheaply and the expensive bits centralized, then a few $1k every 100 yards is kind of reasonable, don't you think?
robotnikman
That's basically what ammo such as AHEAD is. It bursts before reaching the target and sends out shrapnel in a shotgun-like pattern.
transcriptase
They’re parked in the open because of the treaty requiring those type of assets be observable by spy satellites. The USA in turn does the same.
XorNot
We've had acoustic gunshot detection for years at this point though. It's not like a shotgun firing is a quiet event.
jvanderbot
There's a huge difference between firing back at an enemy that is attacking, and spraying radio signals all over the horizon even though nobody is attacking yet. The former won't tell them anything new, but the latter (which I'm talking about), is (was?) considered somewhat dangerous.
When I said "triggered" I meant you would enable it when under attack, at which point it doesn't matter if they know you're there anymore.
gpderetta
Are shotgun pellets supersonic?
ianburrell
One thing I haven't seen explored is using autonomous drones as defense. Like hand sized drones optimized for speed and maneuverability intercepting larger drones. They should be super cheap. They would also be small enough for troops and vehicles to carry one.
maxglute
Anduril Anvil does drone-drone intercepts from a few years ago.
dw_arthur
I think you'll probably see mini flak guns, lasers, microwaves, and defensive kamikaze drones as the main defensive tools
bell-cot
Best-case scenario: The expensive laser system just became the most obvious and highest-value target in the area.
theptip
Depends, in this case the strategic bombers are worth more.
bell-cot
Micro-scale, very likely true.
Bigger picture - if knocking the laser defense off-line slashes the unit cost of destroying bombers, then it may be the obvious first move in any competent attack.
jajko
Take 5 drones, sneak from other directions and simply overwhelm the system. If in pair, multiply the attackers via some decoys, it becomes just a statistics game.
I can imagine this protecting some future US bases in same way C-RAM is used. But from what I read from ie Iraq veterans they had it turned off most of the time for the fear of shooting down its own planes. So much for trust in high tech if its too powerful and automated.
Chinese have some systems, but from demo I've seen the laser beam took some serious time to shoot a single missile. Drones are smaller and way more fragile (so also harder to hit) but this ain't Star trek or Star wars.
Havoc
Where can I read up on the basics of jamming & countering it?
I have some vague notion of jamming is blast a stronger signal & countering might be hopping to a different frequency but that's about it
lenerdenator
Hoping and praying someone in the administration is able to convince Trump to align closer to Ukraine (even if only slightly) because of this.
The Ukrainians pulled off an absolute coup on Sunday. A third of a nuclear-armed country's strategic bomber fleet inoperable for the foreseeable future. Someone at NORAD probably said "they should have sent a poet" while looking at the satellite imagery.
If middle powers like Ukraine can do that to Russia, they can do that to countries like the US. We need to be on their good side.
pjc50
The US seems to have given up on the concept of being on the "good side" of anyone and retreated to the safety of bullying and threatening to invade Canada (as a "joke"?)
lenerdenator
Most people have given up the concept of being on the "good side".
That's how Trumpism can gain any traction at all. The amount of international engagement Russia had as Putin made himself tsar was embarrassing, and to a person with no scruples if the money is right - like Trump - it just illustrates that the guardrails aren't really there.
timeon
> Most people have given up the concept of being on the "good side".
In US.
eastbound
> Most people have given up the concept of being on the "good side".
“The revolution eats its partisans” is the most accurate description of it. People on “the good side” turn against their peers for not being on the good side enough. To wit, people who turn away don’t generally first notice that the good side isn’t so good; they first notice being bullied by that side, then they reflect on what it means to support the good side’s points of view (spoiler: A crime against humanity).
Mossy9
Apparently the final tally was 12 planes, but still, an impressive display
technofiend
Depends on whether you mean damaged or destroyed. Ukraine reports 41 damaged, 12 destroyed.
lenerdenator
12 destroyed. Hard to tell if the others were only damaged, and of course, how badly.
The first casualty of war is the truth.
That being said, any sort of materiel loss on weaponry as important as strategic nuclear bombers is a massive problem for Russia. The logistics of repairing them, if possible, is going to be complex.
jajko
Do you know how many they still had operational? Not that many, somewhere between 50 (more realistic) and 100 (rather idealistic if the rest was fully gutted for equipment).
This was a massive damage, not directly interfering with war against Ukraine that much, but overall power projection. Plus a pretty good insult to russian's FSB and GRU services who had no clue, just like today's Crimea bridge blow.
aaronbaugher
"Display" being the operative word. Good for PR, and maybe good for NATO in some small way in the future, but it won't change the war or how many Ukrainians are getting killed. A lot of the Ukrainian "wins" in this war have been of that nature, which probably isn't surprising considering they're being planned by outsiders with other motives.
tgv
> If middle powers like Ukraine can do that to Russia, they can do that to countries like the US
Ukraine borders on Russia, but the US is separated by ocean from serious threats. Attack by UAVs of this sort seems nearly impossible.
wood_spirit
How does the ocean protect America from swarms of short range drones being launched from normal looking shipping containers on trucks being controlled from thousands of miles away?
xeromal
The first volley would work of course but then container ships are gonna be nuked from orbit after that
acdha
Don’t we receive millions of containers of cargo annually, not to mention having fewer internal movement restrictions? It certainly doesn’t seem implausible that someone could ship some drones around - the hardest part is avoiding explosives detector, but that’s a hard problem and the defense has the unenviable task of having to get it right millions of times.
wood_spirit
Countries could be forward deploying these assets covertly in deniable ways in prep for future tensions?
detritus
I've long-wondered about the use of global container logistics for moving something like a small nuclear or chemical/biological weapon and just having it wait in-situ, until it needs to be activated.
I never considered drones, which is even more obvious, in hindsight.
oneshtein
While not a land border, the Bering Strait does include two small islands, Big Diomede (Russian) and Little Diomede (US), which are only 3.8 kilometers apart.
marcusverus
The US contains, at a minimum, 10s of thousands of nationals from every middle power in the US. Sometime adversaries, like Iran and China, have more than a million nationals in the US. Every one of them has perfectly legal access to the technology which was used in this attack.
empath75
I think Ukraine could only have gotten away with this in the current situation where the US is detaching itself from supporting them, because if Russia genuinely thought that the US was behind taking out a large percentage of it's strategic nuclear fleet, the consequences of that are nightmarish to think about.
Those airplanes are one of the things that give Russia a second strike capability, and if they lose that capability, then they are going to be on a hair trigger in a nuclear crisis.
pookha
[flagged]
xg15
> Death by Kubernetes...
Technically that's already the case with the F16 I think.
dboreham
Surely death by CP/M ?
timeon
> The US intellectual class were deeply invested in this
Is this based on something or just indoctrination from young age?
koonsolo
Other countries have hangars or bunkers to store their planes. That Russia doesn't, is really beyond comprehension.
dboreham
Supposedly they had to be outside to comply with START provisions. But US keeps B-52s (and pretty much all fighters) outside. They might be under tin roofs in desert locations to keep cool. Not in bunkers.
aaronbaugher
Yeah, you can find plenty of examples of them sitting right out in the open. They're protected by two oceans, not by bunkers. A similar attack with trucks full of drones would make short work of them just as well.
koonsolo
Can you explain why they have tires on the wings?
TiredOfLife
START doesn't require that. Besides Russia quit START 2 years ago. Also wherever you got that information is 100% a russian disinfo distributor.
koonsolo
Well, Belgium stores their airplanes in hangars. It's great to protect them against the weather. You know what we don't do? Put tires on the wings.
You know what else is great about hangars? It's a super cheap defense against drone attacks that you saw from Ukraine.
Sure, you can give some examples of planes stored outside, and I can give examples of planes stored in bunkers (there are plenty of pictures from Russian airplane bunkers).
I have the feeling your comment is made in bad faith (=Russian propaganda). If not, please explain why Russians put tires on the wings.
Drone warfare has always been equal parts distressing (it’s impersonal, it’s too easy to leverage, and therefore too easy to abuse) and incredible (ultra-thin fiber as a kite line? Brilliant!) to me. These advances are no different.
That said, I do fret we’re staring down a new age of guerrilla warfare. Drones are cheap, widely available, and increasingly autonomous. Their countermeasures are either impractical for communities (AA Cannons or automated firearms) or costly (jammers, interceptors). The programming can be set-and-forget, meaning operations can be staged months ahead of deployment and make it difficult to find or prevent. The autonomy of target termination specifically raises concerns for the immediate future of violent uprisings, coups, and civil wars.
As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale.