How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by JohnBooty » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #435

JohnBooty wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could certainly train AI to navigate that particular maze of netting, but I'm far from convinced you could train an AI to navigate a near-infinite variety of novel, hostile measures not present in the training corpus. It seems trivial to confuse a Tesla's AI. I'm assuming they're fairly near the top of the game when it comes to that, yes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1MigIJXJx8 This sort of intentionally host…

Self-driving cars are a political problem, not a technical one. We have self-driving cars on Mars. Autonomous drones, yeah, well... https://www.tudelft.nl/en/2025/lr/autonomous-drone-from-tu-d...

Perseverance "self drives" at 0.1mph on a nearly flat, static landscape with zero other threats or moving objects.

(Sure, it's a hostile landscape with regards to dust/temperature/radiation. And getting to Mars and landing safely is a fiendishly difficult task. But those aren't concerns of the self-driving system...)

https://science.nasa.gov/resource/how-perseverance-drives-on...

The problem space is truly not comparable to that of a drone that needs to navigate an actively hostile, evolving environment in three dimensions at two orders of magnitude greater speed.

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

#452

Post by originalvichy » Sat, Jun 07, 2025, 10:51 PM UTC

bigyabai wrote: post #217

originalvichy wrote: post #130

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.

If GPS geolocation makes you scared then don't look up what America did when we invented the JDAM...

It’s not GPS geolocation, it’s the fact that the use of supply chains for injecting a container filled with drones is easier to sneak in when you’re a massive exporter like China. Nukes might already be flying before China has to resort to these tactics against the US, but there are other potential victims like Taiwan or other neighbours who can have major hubs and infrastructure damaged like this before a major attack.

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

#453

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Jun 08, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #394

heavyset_go wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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?

This no longer sounds cheap or relatively straight forward, it sounds more like an engineering challenge the requires technical expertise and skill to pull off, as well as considerable amounts of money.

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

#454

Post by rasz » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 5:27 PM UTC

quanto wrote: post #421

hkpack wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. All parts are produced in other countries as well, although with slightly higher prices.

I would like to see evidence behind this claim on two fronts: 1. all parts are produced in other countries 2. slightly higher prices There are countries (including Ukraine) that produce on-board flight controllers, but the controllers themselves often rely on components from China. I actually do think it is feasible to create a passable quadrotor using non-Chinese components only but I do not know of a rigorous study…

https://militarnyi.com/uk/articles/niyakogo-kytayu-ukrayinsk...

You can source camera sensor from Japan and microcontrollers from France (made at ST Crolles). Your $1 camera becomes $10, $1 micros (s because basic ESC uses 4-5) become $10, $1 Chinese clone IMU becomes $10 TDK IMU, ESC mosfets go from $0.4 to $1.5 (you need 24 of those). Even magnets in the motor are easily doable https://www.kumarmagnet.com/ukraine/neodymium-magnet.html

All the parts are still manufactured in the West/Japan/Korea/Taiwan. Made in China 2025 just means Chinese clones/substitutes are 2-10 times cheaper. In 2015 people laughed and dismissed MIC 2025 as unrealistic, but here we are in 2025 and Chinese products do in fact come with up to 100% domestic electronic components! One stupid example from today, hackaday article https://hackaday.com/2025/06/08/simple-triggering-for-saleae... comment mentions Kingst LA2016. Sigrok wiki https://sigrok.org/wiki/Kingst_LA2016 has pictured of same product at v1.3 and v3.2. v3.2 uses COREBAI clone of Cypress FX2LP and Pango Micro FPGA (https://www.pangomicro.com/en/about/index/) instead of "Intel" Cyclone IV.

EEVBlog did a Deye SUN-5K-SG04LP1 5kW hybrid solar inverter teardown some time ago, almost every semi component made in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0_cTg36A2Q