‘They cannot be jammed’: fibre optic drones pose new threat in Ukraine
‘They cannot be jammed’: fibre optic drones pose new threat in Ukraine
Experimental kamikaze FPV drones have been developed that can penetrate spaces previously thought safe
At a secret workshop in Ukraine’s north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 10km (6 miles) or even 20km long, to create a wired kamikaze drone.
Capt Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a specialist drone unit, the Achilles regiment, says fibre optic drones were an experimental response to battlefield jamming and rapidly took off late last year. With no radio connection, they cannot be jammed, are difficult to detect and able to fly in ways conventional FPV drones cannot.
“If pilots are experienced, they can fly these drones very low and between the trees in a forest or tree line. If you are flying with a regular drone, the trees block the signal unless you have a re-transmitter close,” he observes. Where tree lined supply roads were thought safer, fibre optic drones have been able to get through.
Mankind invents their own problems.... fantastic... 🙄
Next evolution, carrier drones. Larger fiber drones that carry smaller radio drones and can also act as a repeater when needed.
This is getting scary lol
So basically we need a REALLY big wall
This kind of idea is between genius and stupid.
It's a cheap an easy solution to a lot of problem, and it sounds like the kind of proposal an intern would do
Sure, but a 20km attack radius in terms of something that can fly seems... Idk less than effective.
It would work for precision bombing nearby targets, but for long range strikes like Ukraine does, they need to be untethered.
But in those cases, i doubt they run remotely, rather they set a GPS destination and they use a combination of astral navigation and inertial navigation to hit their intended target, just like missiles.
Just much slower, smaller and lower flying missiles. Can't shoot what you can't see on radar.
They are generally tactical weapons, not strategic.
Drone manufacturer: "We're having trouble with our drones getting jammed, any ideas?"
Intern: "I always use CAT6 for my pc"
Drone manufacturer: "You goddamn genius!"
Kids these days relying on wireless everything and don't realize the security and reliability of a wired connection.
This has been going on for a few months now. Why is this a "new threat" ?
There have even already been battlefield videos where you see tons of fibre optic in the air.
On the scale of human warfare, "a few months" is pretty new. Frankly, its fairly new on the timescale of the Ukraine war at this point.
What does that look like? Can't imagine what tons of fiber in the air looks like, do you have a video you can share with the rest of the class
Wouldn't the fiber lead directly back to the pilot, though? You'd have to constantly be moving locations, otherwise they could just follow the wire.
Edit: I know, I know, the more I've thought about it--and despite them actually proving it's possible to do as mentioned in the article--it's just not very practical to do in many situations. As one commenter mentioned below, after seeing pictures of some trees, numerous drones create a web among trees/bushes/etc. So tracing lines when drones are launched from multiple locations would be extremely difficult and they could even set up ambushed at certain points if they saw enemy scouts doing it.
This is not new tech. We have been using wires like this in the battlefield since the 70's. I was a TOW gunner and shot plenty of missiles that have a wire like this drone. Except, ya know it's a missile and it moves significantly faster. TOW stands for Tube launched Opitically Wire guided missile.
Ask away if you wanna know anything about em.
What kind of comms do the wires allow? Sending guidance and simultaneously receiving video?
What was the physicality of wires back then (and do you know what they are today)? Would it feel like walking into a spider's web, or how sturdy were/are those wires?
How often would a write break, and would that mean total loss of control or is there some form of fall-back?
Curious minds want to know! Thank you.
From the article :
There are examples of drone operators from earlier this year being able to trace the cables back to the positions from where they were launched and target the enemy crews. But if this technique was a successful one, fibre optic drones would have disappeared as soon as they appeared on the battlefield, when – from presidents to workshops – all the talk is of increasing numbers.
Not just that but the pilot can be on the other side of the world from wherever the fiber leads out.
Most likely the fiber is coming out of a bunker that just has some switches and a TACLANE or something similar. Doesn't take much infra...you need that, some sort of low-latency network connection, and room for drones to take off.
Once it's set up, the site can be unmanned. Hell they can rig it to blow itself up after the mission is complete, so that nothing can be recovered from the infra if it's found.
For that matter, most of the drones flight path could be pre- programmed...the pilot only there as a contingency. Doing that, one operator could control several drones simultaneously.
It's real long, like miles of fairly small transparent cable.
Could have controller-> radio -> base station-> fibre —> drone
You won't be able to just follow the wire, it's millimeter thin and extremely light. And drone operators need to constantly move anyway.
If they're up to 20 km it could take you a while and they're very small and difficult to see, possibly going through difficult terrain.
Couldn't they just make it standard practice to reel in the wire after detonation? Sure, it could snap, but that would still be only partial direction information.
I assume there are ways of doible backing in some unexpected direction first before flying out of one thicket into another and maybe then to the enemy? I am just guessing what is practical though
Knowing how fragile fibre cable is especially when bent at weird angles (which is prone to happen in flight), this doesn't sound like the most genius idea. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
It has been in use for a few months already and has proven to be very reliant. Force upon the cable seems to unroll the spool before breaking the cable.
And there's even more fun stuff. Ukrainian drones are currently playing around with visual target locking in case of signal loss. It works very well for tank mounted scramblers.
Its not brand new stuff. It works, no need to wait and see at all.
If it was that bad, they wouldn't be using it. Consider that the same is true for regular munitions. They're meant to be disposable, so if they have a few duds, it's probably not the end of the world.
There are some turning radius limitations but otherwise these drones are doing just fine from both sides. We don't have to wait and see anything.
Madyar has been running these for a while and it looks like Code 9.2 Achilles also.