Budget Drones in Ukraine Are Redefining Warfare | Hacker News Reader

Budget Drones in Ukraine Are Redefining Warfare

spectrum.ieee.org

13 pointsmfiguiere13 comments

I'm glad Ukraine is able to use these, but they're hardly the ones who "redefin[ed] warfare" this way.

> In its heyday in 2017, ISIL launched 60 to 100 drone attacks per month across Syria and northern Iraq. The group flew a combination of modified commercial drones, most often Chinese-made DJI Phantom quadcopters, and bespoke drones manufactured in its own workshops.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/12/how-the-army-out-innovated...

A drone operator with the Ukrainian Army’s 93rd Brigade attaches grenades to a DJI Mavic 3 drone

Perhaps I am mistaken but wasn't China aligning with Russia and if so does that present a risk of using DJI drones that could possibly be remotely bricked by China? Or firmware updated to reduce accuracy or randomly glitch out in specific GPS zones?

This is under the assumption that anything electronic that is created by a country can be remotely bricked by it's creator. This logic doesn't make sense. Everyone would be doing it with everything; cellphones, tanks, tvs, airplanes, microwaves. The list of things you could theoretically brick is endless.

No assumptions on my part. DJI drones do dial home and get updates from cloud storage. [1] It would be trivial to deliver custom payloads to anyone in Ukraine. Perhaps they have considered this and neutered the dial-home capabilities.

[1] - https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/25/dji_data_security_aud...

Less trivial than just shooting them out of the sky or jamming gps signals? They are only using them because they are cheap. They don't have much choice in this war.

DJI drones are being used because they are the best there is on civilian market, and still better than most overpriced millspec stuff.

DJI has been leaning into military usage for years now. This is DJI funded drone competition https://www.robomaster.com/en-US/robo/overview where uni students (from ~hundred top Chinese technical universities) build and operate a small tank/flyer drone unit against opponent squad. Tactics, fully automated avoid and evade systems, autoaim guns, its all there. Winners automatically get job offers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o_WYEoxWGY

With all the money and equipment being donated I am surprised that they need budget drones

Off the shelf $300 FPV drones are outgunning this https://gagadget.com/en/170708-aerovironment-received-206-mi... $6000.

This is how this works: https://twitter.com/M0nstas/status/1657270184338497537 https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1658906844167905284 https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/16585330182884147...

Switchblade 300 has small anti personnel warhead. DIY UKR drones are carrying hilariously big mortar shells with equally oversized batteries, here one that failed to detonate https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1658962434235801605

As for DJI drones for observation duty, russian sources estimate average drone lasting a week when operating by Arty units and ~one day in infantry. Drones like Matrice are >$10K.

I get the feeling that the high sticker price for the donated equipment is more an artifact of western military procurement processes than a measure of how much stuff they are getting.

If you consider tanks, for example, the donations tend to be in the low double-digit range. The single biggest contributor is actually Russia, since the Ukrainians have captured quite a large number. They also had really big reserves of all sorts of equipment before the war.

> With all the money and equipment being donated I am surprised that they need budget drones

Why risk a decent piece of equipment attriting the enemy's static defences when you can slam a $100 RPG into a tank or APC worth >1 million with a $300 FPV drone.

The cost benefit analysis is off the charts for that. I would be keeping most of my good stuff for an offensive.

The most surprising thing that came out of this is that $300 fpv drones ARE the good stuff.

New Chinese budget drones with 4K cameras are now only €20, controlled via smartphone

Cheap, almost disposable eyes for every soldier or platoon could easily be a game changer in a way a million dollar drone can't. Just having a drone to look around a corner on demand could be a big deal.

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