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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...

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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

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