Latest news with #FPVs
Mint
3 days ago
- Mint
A never-ending supply of drones has frozen the front lines in Ukraine
In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill. The reason: rapid innovations in drone technology. From just a few commercial and homemade drones, which the Ukrainians used at the start of the war to locate invading Russian columns, unmanned vehicles now dominate the battlefield. Each side has hundreds of them constantly in the air across the 750-mile front line. Drones can lay mines, deliver everything from ammunition to medication and even evacuate wounded or dead soldiers. Crucially, drones spot any movement along the front line and are dispatched to strike enemy troops and vehicles. When Russia sent tank columns into Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine needed to find out where they were headed—and fast. Enter the humble 'wedding drone," available in stores for about $2,000 and repurposed to scan for enemy units rather than capture nuptial panoramas. Deployed by enthusiasts acting independently or attached to army units, the drones helped Ukrainian forces, which were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, to know exactly where to deploy to counter Russian arrowheads. Surveillance drones quickly became a necessity rather than a luxury. Often provided by charity funds, they were used to scan enemy positions for equipment, stores and headquarters. At first, teams of analysts would watch screens of footage stored on memory cards. Within a year of the full-scale invasion, the drones provided real-time images so artillery gunners could direct their fire onto a target. A cheap and simple tweak made the so-called wedding drones deadly. Tech buffs realized that a simple claw-like contraption, created using a 3-D printer, could be activated from the radio controller by turning on the drone's light, causing it to release a grenade. The explosion could wound or kill a soldier or even detonate an armored vehicle if dropped through its hatch. Over time, soldiers experimented with ways to add more explosives, for example by melting down explosives garnered from Soviet-era munitions and pouring them into new, lighter plastic casings. No innovation has had a bigger impact on the war in Ukraine than first-person-view, or FPV, drones. With explosives strapped to them, FPVs fly directly into their targets, turning them into low-cost suicide bombers. Though FPVs don't deliver as much explosive punch as rockets, they are far more accurate—and the sheer volume that Ukraine has manufactured means they can be deployed to similar effect. FPVs began appearing on the battlefield in 2022, but it was in late 2023 that they began reshaping it. That winter, Ukraine was desperately low on artillery ammunition, as its forces waited on the U.S. to approve another military-aid package. FPVs became a lifeline, a way to mostly hold the Russians back using technology that—unlike rockets or missiles—could be manufactured domestically and cheaply. Sitting in a bunker several miles behind the front, a drone pilot slips on FPV goggles to see the view from the drone's camera and fly it into an enemy position or asset. The Russians have since adopted FPVs en masse. Their abundance has played a central role in slowing down the movement of the front line. Anything within around 12 miles of the contact line can now become a target for FPVs. They are so cheap to make that both sides can expend them on any target—even a single infantryman. Sometimes, FPVs are a menace far further from home: Ukraine smuggled a horde of FPVs hundreds of miles beyond the front line and piloted them remotely toward their targets in its audacious attack on Russia's strategic aircraft in June. Because they are so small and fast, FPVs are difficult to shoot down. The main defense against them has been electronic jamming systems, which disrupt the communication between the drone and the pilot. Though most drone innovations in the war have come from the Ukrainian side, the Russians pioneered the most important adaptation for FPV drones—the addition of a fiber-optic cable connecting the drone to the pilot that can overcome jamming. By 2024, the threat from FPV drones had made resupplying troops at the front perilous. Ukraine found a workaround: the Vampire drone, so named in part because it can work after dark when equipped with night-vision cameras. Two-feet tall, with six or eight rotors, and able to carry up to 20 pounds, Vampires were originally used by Ukrainian forces to drop larger explosives than they could using smaller drones. The drones now bring everything from food and water to ammunition, power banks—and, in at least one case, a fire extinguisher—to the front, sparing soldiers trips through the most dangerous part of the battlefield where enemy drones might pick them off. Ukrainian troops are also beginning to use land drones to move heavier loads than the Vampires can carry. Drone manufacturers are now experimenting with remotely piloted cars, boats and all-terrain vehicles, which can be used to help with the evacuations of injured and dead soldiers.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ukraine, NATO eye tech trials for intercepting Russia's cabled drones
MILAN — NATO and Ukrainian officials are slated to stage a trial of unmanned aerial vehicle technologies aimed at addressing a dogged threat: Russian first-person-view drones with fiber-optic cables that cannot be brought down with electronic interference. An event organized by the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Center and NATO's Allied Command Transformation will be held on June 20 in Tallinn, Estonia, to demonstrate new countermeasures that have been percolating among defense firms. The envisioned countermeasures are required to have a detection range of at least 500 meters, be able to operate during the day and at night, weigh under 100 kilograms, and not exceed an overall cost of $100,000. FPV drones operating via fiber-optic cables are a new military challenge globally, as they are largely immune to jamming and interception attempts. These cheap and small weapons relay signals through a thin cable, which makes them resistant to eletro-magnetic interference. Drones were a key part of Ukraine's largest long-range attack since the onset of the war carried out on June 1, where the smuggled weapons were used to target and strike Russian warplanes and strategic sites. The appearance of command-wire drones has opened yet another chapter in the cat-and-mouse game of innovations and countermeasures in drone warfare on both sides, said Federico Borsari, resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. 'From a technical standpoint, Russia and Ukraine are now trying to push the limits of the usual tradeoff between range, speed, payload and endurance by introducing more powerful batteries to increase their capabilities and longer fiber-optic spools,' he said. He added that longer cables are useful in carrying out attacks and ambush tactics against enemy logistics where the FPVs lie dormant near roads and are activated by an operator when a convoy passes nearby. Ukrainian troops have so far favored an FPV-tracking tactic by spotting the reflective fibers spooling out behind the drones, which were easiest to find in bright sunlight, and then tracing them back to Russian operators. In one documented instance, one of the drone units of the Ukrainian National Guard Kara Dag Brigade struck a Russian base during the winter months by following a maze of fibre optics back to the hideout. However, as the use of fiber-optic FPVs has exploded, old cables are now littering parts of the battlefield, creating mazes that are almost impossible trace to their launch points. Borsari said Ukraine has also experimented with active countermeasures, including using drone interceptors and quadcopters to destroy FPVs mid-flight or when they are on the ground by dropping small bomblets on them. 'Currently, the best defense relies on a combination of passive and active countermeasures and should also incorporate robust signal intelligence and other forms of intel-gathering techniques to intercept Russian communications and locate their drone teams,' he said.
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
No ‘silver bullet' against a drone attack like Operation Spider's Web
Ukraine's audacious drone strike on Sunday that may have destroyed several Russian strategic bombers has confirmed long-held fears about first-person view drones, or FPVs, being launched from commercial containers for a surprise attack. Videos purportedly show the Ukrainian drones being launched from trucks parked near their targets thousands of miles inside Russia. Dubbed Operation Spider's Web, the attack was 18 months in the making and involved 117 Ukrainian drones launched against four airfields. Ukraine's intelligence service claims the FPVs were smuggled into Russia, where they were hidden in the roofs of wooden sheds, which were placed on trucks. Then the trucks were driven near the Russian airfields and the drones were launched remotely. Ukraine's attack has revealed that military installations far from the front lines can still be vulnerable to drone attacks. It also comes as the U.S. military struggles to prevent drone incursions at its bases. In 2024 alone, there were hundreds of incidents involving drones flying over military bases within the continental United States and Alaska, Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, head of U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, said in February. 'There were 350 detections reported last year on military installations, and that was 350 over a total of 100 different installations of all types and levels of security,' Guillot told the Senate Armed Services Committee. It's possible for an adversary to launch drones against military installations in the United States in the same way that Ukraine attacked Russian bases, said Masao Dahlgren, who writes about missile defense for the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, D.C. 'That's an assumption that we are far from the adversary, we have oceans separating us, that we're somehow far away from these threats,' Dahlgren told Task & Purpose. 'But as these kinds of incidents show, that threat is not as far as we would like to think.' Despite the urgent need, the U.S. military has not yet invested enough in low-altitude drone defenses to protect its bases at home from an attack by FPV drones, Dahlgren said. For the most part, military installations, cities, and critical infrastructure within the United States are not protected by weapon systems designed to destroy drones, such as the Low, Slow, Unmanned Aircraft Integrated Defeat System, or LIDS, Dahlgren said. The U.S. military typically deploys those types of weapons overseas because it remains focused on defeating enemy air forces instead of protecting against drone attacks launched from concealed locations. Right now, stateside military bases may be equipped with jammers and other 'soft kill' methods to stop drones, but the Defense Department needs to rapidly field more drone defenses to protect the United States as a whole, Dahlgren said. The U.S. military needs to use both aircraft and balloons equipped with sensors to counter drones because the radars that monitor U.S. airspace are not ideal for detecting low-altitude threats, as evidenced when a man managed to land a gyrocopter in front of the Capitol building in 2015, Dahlgren said. Ukraine's domestic security agency, the SBU, acknowledged that it carried out the operation, codenamed 'Spider's Web' and said it had caused considerable damage, estimated at $7 billion — Reuters (@Reuters) June 2, 2025 'The No. 1 problem in my mind is sensors,' Dahlgren said. 'These targets fly low, and if your radar, your sensor, is on the ground, you're not going to see them come over the horizon. They literally can fly under the radar until they're quite close.' In recent years, the U.S. military has been preparing to defend against small unnamed aerial systems. For example, the Army has updated the capstone event of basic training to teach soldiers how to conceal themselves from drones. While certain stateside military installations, such as nuclear missile bases, are well protected, service members at other bases wouldn't be able to do much to respond to the type of surprise drone attack that was planned over many months, like Operation Spider's Web, a former senior Defense Department official told Task & Purpose. Task & Purpose asked each of the military branches about Operation Spider's Web — specifically focusing on what countermeasures or steps could be taken to prevent a similar strike against U.S. bases at home and abroad. 'The U.S. Army actively monitors all modern warfare developments, including the recent drone attacks reported in Russia over the weekend,' said Army spokesperson Maj. Montrell Russell. 'Our primary focus is protecting our homeland, personnel, and critical assets. We regularly update our training and defensive measures to address evolving threats from unmanned aerial systems. While specific tactics cannot be disclosed for security reasons, the Army is committed to ensuring our forces are prepared for current and emerging challenges.' The Marine Corps has already fielded several systems to its installations that are designed to track, identify and defeat small drones as part of its preparations to defend airfields and other critical infrastructure against drone attacks, said Lt. Col. Eric Flanagan, a spokesman for Combat Development and Integration. Other drone countermeasures include the vehicle-mounted Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, Flanagan said. The Marine Corps is also developing a Light-MADIS, or L-MADIS, for Ultra-Light Tactical Vehicles. The Marines also announced earlier this year that deploying units would be equipped with prototype systems meant to counter small drones. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said on Tuesday that the service has budgeted money to add protections to its bases, but he added that the service needs to do more. 'We could really make it very defensible, but if all we're doing is playing defense and we can't shoot back, then that's not a use for our money,' Allvin said while speaking at a conference held by the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington, D.C. Allvin also said the Air Force needs to think about the offensive potential of small drones, noting that Operation Spider's Web has shown that 'seemingly impenetrable locations need to pay more attention to that.' Officials with the Navy deferred questions on the matter to NORTHCOM. A NORTHCOM spokesperson described the threat that small unmanned aircraft pose to military and civilian infrastructure as 'serious and growing.' The command has fielded mobile systems to help detect and neutralize drones; bolstered drone defenses at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Fort Bliss, Texas; and it continues to test new technologies, such as at the Desert Peak exercise this April at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, as part of the U.S. military's ongoing mission along the southern border. Russian investigators have questioned the drivers of the trucks from which drones were launched during a large-scale attack on military targets. From Russian media:'One of the drivers, a 55-year-old man from Chelyabinsk named Alexander Z., said that the truck belonged to a… — Special Kherson Cat (@bayraktar_1love) June 2, 2025 'We remain clear-eyed about the need to further increase our collective ability to defend installations and infrastructure against an increasing range of potential threats,' the spokesperson said. Ultimately, there is no 'silver bullet' to the threat posed by drones, said retired Army Maj. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner, former commanding general of the Fires Center of Excellence and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The threat posed by drones requires a response from the entire government, including the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Aviation Administration, and local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, Shoffner told Task & Purpose. Drones come in many different shapes and sizes, each with its own physical and electronic signature, Shoffner said. They also use a variety of methods to navigate, requiring different types of defenses. Some drones, for example, are guided by fiber optic cables, making them difficult to counter using electronic means. 'What we want are multiple lines of defense,' Shoffner said. 'We want to intercept the threat as far out as possible and as soon as possible.' The threat posed by small drones is so serious that it could change how the U.S. military approaches air defense, Dahlgren said. 'We used to consider air defense its own specialty in the armed forces,' Dahlgren said. 'You'd have like — you're an air defender. But now everyone has to be. So, there's going to be a lot of change in the pipeline, I hope.' One way of getting that sort of expertise into the 'pipeline' could be to have training that requires U.S. troops to identify and defeat short-range quad-copters through a combination of signals intelligence, electronic warfare and weapons that can destroy small drones, said Samuel Bendett, a drone expert. Ukraine's attack on Russia also shows what can happen when aircraft are not parked in protected hangars, and are then vulnerable to attacks from small drones, said Bendett, an advisor to the Russia Studies Program at CNA as a Washington DC-based not-for-profit research and analysis organization. 'This attack is probably a wake-up call for many militaries that station their long-range heavy aircraft on the open tarmac across their bases,' Bendett told Task & Purpose. 'Russian mil bloggers also pointed out that they called out the MOD [ministry of defense] for failing to keep such strategic planes in hangars, or under, even with rudimentary physical protection.' Navy SEAL Team 6 operator will be the military's new top enlisted leader Veterans receiving disability payments might have been underpaid, IG finds Guam barracks conditions are 'baffling,' Navy admiral says in email Navy fires admiral in charge of unmanned systems office after investigation The Pentagon wants troops to change duty stations less often
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Drones took off from uncrewed surface vessels: details of nighttime attack on Crimea revealed
A large-scale drone attack took place in occupied Crimea on the night of 1-2 May, targeting military sites, particularly airfields housing tactical aircraft. Source: Serhii Bratchuk, spokesman for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, on the national joint 24/7 newscast Details: Bratchuk stated that the attack had utilised a particular method: uncrewed surface vessels acted as "carrier platforms" for first-person view drones (FPVs), which were launched from them to carry out precision strikes on ground-based targets. Quote from Bratchuk: "The sham 'governor' of Sevastopol, Razvozhayev, has acknowledged that the attack took place. He's talking about Ukraine's use of naval drones. Accordingly, naval drones have become 'carriers' for our other 'mosquitoes' – FPVs, which take off from them and strike military targets in Crimea... in addition, it was loud where the airfields from which enemy tactical aircraft take off and sites such as Hvardiiske, where a missile brigade is located." Background: On the morning of 2 May, Russia's Defence Ministry reported a large-scale drone attack on Crimea, claiming that its air defence units had destroyed 121 "Ukrainian drones" over the occupied peninsula and several Russian regions. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Times of Oman
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Times of Oman
Zelenskyy proposes 30-day halt on airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure
Kyiv: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday (local time) proposed a 30-day pause on long-range drone and missile strikes on civilian infrastructure, noting that no air strikes were conducted by the Russian military during the Easter ceasefire despite committing over 2,000 other violations. Accusing Russia of continuing its ground offensive despite declaring a ceasefire on Easter, Zelenskyy expressed optimism on a pause in air strikes and said that this format is "easiest to extend." "Since the beginning of the day, the Russian army has violated Putin's ceasefire more than two thousand times," Zelenskyy wrote on X. "However, there were no air raid alerts today. Hence, this is a format of ceasefire that has been achieved and that is the easiest to extend. Ukraine proposes to cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension," he added. Zelanskyy said that if Russia rejects this step, then its only intentions are to "destroy human lives and prolong the war." "If Russia does not agree to such a step, it will be proof that it intends to continue doing only those things which destroy human lives and prolong the war," he said. Additionally, Zelenskyy listed out the alleged 2,000 instances of violence, noting that 1,355 cases of Russian shelling, 67 cases of assault and use of FPVs (first-person view). "There have already been 67 Russian assaults against our positions across various directions, with the highest number in the Pokrovsk direction. There were a total of 1,355 cases of Russian shelling, 713 of which involved heavy weaponry. The Russians also used FPVs 673 times," Zelenskyy said. Earlier, both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire. Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) accused Ukrainian troops of hitting Russian positions with guns and mortars 444 times. The MFA wrote on X, "Russia's MoD: During the night of the #EasterCeasefire, the kiev regime launched 48 fixed-wing UAVs, including one over Crimea. Ukrainian troops hit Russian positions with guns and mortars 444 times, carried out 900 quadcopter-type drone strikes," the Russian MFA said in a post on X. Zelenskyy reiterated that Russian forces had in fact intensified their attacks on Easter Day, despite President Vladimir Putin's announcement of a 30-hour ceasefire in observance of Easter. This was the second ceasefire to be announced since the conflict began in 2022. The previous attempt, during Orthodox Christmas in January 2023, also failed after both sides were unable to agree on a proposal.
