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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#371

Post by acdha »

detritus wrote: post #239
acdha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yeah, it’s frankly a big terrifying. Nukes are at least plausibly hard to shield from detection but drones don’t have a unique signature and there’s so much dual-use stuff that it seems too plausible that someone could get stuff through customs by claiming it’s civilian and then arming it right before use.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#372

Post by dmkolobov »

nradov wrote: post #270
RenThraysk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are just continuing to spout nonsense. Camera drone hovers above target and kamakazi drone intersects the line between camera and target, and drops.

You are just continuing to spout nonsense. All of the drones have cameras. Using a single designated camera drone is a stupid idea, overly complex and completely unnecessary.

I think the problem is an assumption that people are too stupid to grasp their brilliant idea.

That being said, having all drones equipped with cameras could enable a more robust version of what they’re talking about:

If uplink with human operators is lost, but short-range comms between drones exist, they could use their video feeds to autonomously coordinate amongst themselves.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#373

Post by [deleted] »

hofrogs wrote: post #169
giantrobot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#374

Post by ethbr1 »

nostrademons wrote: post #361
ethbr1 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "unique" part is two-fold. 1. It's cheap. 2. It's anonymous. The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. 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-dro…

> The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. Also motivation and incentives. The reason we haven't seen many drone attacks on civilians is that it is far more lucrative to get civilians to buy your product than to kill them, and the companies that actually have the resources to mount a credible drone attack are making a lot m…

The calculus to make a terrorist is simple

   non-terror life opportunity
   vs
   terror life opportunity
Why you tend to have domestic terror in places with bad economies (and high economic equality). And why beliefs often drive it (religious, political, etc.), by adding righteousness to the terror side of the equation.

But requisite minimum skillset is also a consideration, and that's where drones are dangerous.

We're talking (play videogames and some soldering) instead of (chemistry or biology).

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#375

Post by unrealhoang »

xeromal wrote: post #275
D-Coder wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whoever is on the other side of those shipping containers Could take a while to figure that out. It took days/weeks to figure out the 9/11 attacks with some certainty.

I'm not sure what that does for whoever initiates the attack. They still eventually get found out and unless they've managed to conquer the US, everyone is now bankrupt.

> everyone is now bankrupt

A good reason enough for a lot of people, no?

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#376

Post by bufferoverflow »

drdrey wrote: post #360
stego-tech wrote: post #226

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 c…

are jammers really that expensive? They shouldn't be particularly sophisticated

Doesn't work on fiberoptic drones. Doesn't work on drones that use laser/optical comms.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#377

Post by BobaFloutist »

Sporktacular wrote: post #126

“In the perfect world, the drone should take off, fly, find the target, strike it, and report back on the task,” Burukin says. “That’s where the development is heading.” That's the problem in a nutshell. A few years back, few would argue against keeping a human in the kill/no-kill decision chain. It just took one war to get pop tech authors writing on it without even a mention of the ethical considerations or autonom…

I mean I think it's relevant that these machines weren't actually used to kill.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#378

Post by burnt-resistor »

Ciantic wrote: post #19

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] [1]: https://ardupilot.org/ [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk... [3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot [4]: https://www.404media.co/ukra…

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.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#379

Post by [deleted] »

stego-tech wrote: post #226

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 c…

[deleted]

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#380

Post by heavyset_go »

nostrademons wrote: post #359
stego-tech wrote: post #226

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 c…

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…

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.

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