Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 454 posts

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

#381

Post by heavyset_go »

Y_Y wrote: post #271
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…

> 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 , 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…

> 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.

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

#382

Post by throwaway422432 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #6
Oarch wrote: post #2

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.

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 on…

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.

https://eos-aus.com/defence/counter-drone-systems/slinger/

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

#383

Post by grg0 »

bdelmas wrote: post #299
hyperbovine wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw

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.

And that video links to several petitions here: https://autonomousweapons.org/take-action/

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

#384

Post by grg0 »

major505 wrote: post #54

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.

Damn, 70% of casualties on both sides caused by drones? That really puts things into perspective.

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

#385

Post by dzhiurgis »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #349
oneshtein wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem when Russia, Israel, USA, or other nations attacks civilians, because of a military reason. Why it will be a problem in this case?

Because whether or not they're justified in doing so, Ukraine has made it clear that they have no interest in targeting civilians. They've been incredibly surgical and precise in their attacks. Unbelievably so, honestly.

Whichever way this war ends you can be sure there will be lone Ukrainian terror attacks on Russia for next 50 years. People will not forgive.

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

#386

Post by MoonGhost »

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…

> 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.

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

#387

Post by throwoutway »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #378
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…

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

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

#388

Post by sreekanth850 »

petra wrote: post #205
sreekanth850 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of them caused any casualities or any damage to infrastructure. As we have multi layered defense system with L70 and Zu23 for very short range Defense agains drones and UAV, Spyder for Short Range, Akash for Medium range, s400 for Long range and high value target, exact kill rate of Guns are unknown. In press briefing, officials said that these were so effective against drones.

That's very impressive, especially at low cost.

Yes, Cost is the main factor, one cannot use expensive air defense to shot down drones that are relatively cheap.

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

#389

Post by sreekanth850 »

_1tem wrote: post #255
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…

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.

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.

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

#390

Post by klooney »

heavyset_go wrote: post #380
nostrademons wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Post reply on HN