During the war, we’ve seen the rapid development of MilTech, which is one of the locomotives of the drone industry. Drones are constantly evolving and adapting to volatile battlefield conditions.
Small quadcopters such as the DJI Mavic became a fresh breath of air for frontline intelligence and a new chapter in military history. The Mavics were almost immediately adapted to drop free-flowing bombs, but they proved to be too expensive for risky strike missions. That’s why much more primitive and cheaper FPV drones took their place in this niche.
Due to the cost of $400–$600 and ease of production, FPV drones have become widespread and a massive weapon in the troops, along with artillery and ATGM. Just in October 2023, approximately 15,000 of them were delivered to the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
With the ability to destroy both manpower and heavily armored equipment in one hit, these drones changed the realities of hostilities. In the example of the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive and Russian attempts to encircle Avdiivka, all their impacts become clear.
However, like any weapon, drones have not become a magic pill that can solve all problems. During the war, it became clear that drones could be fought with the help of electronic warfare countermeasures. They also have various limitations and are not able to operate at long distances, in bad weather conditions, or in the dark.
However, over time, the scope of restrictions began to change: the range of the flight of drones increased from the initial 3–4 kilometers to a record-setting 25 km. Another big shift that occurred this autumn was the debut on the market of multiple FPV drones designed for night assaults.
In fact, for a long time, the military on both sides has been using drones adapted to night operations, but their sorties were isolated and were mostly test flights.
For example, in July 2023, the Ukrainian organization Dyki Shershni (Wild Hornets – ed.), which develops FPV drones, announced the testing of drones with a night vision camera.
“We are not standing still, now it will be possible to inflict damage even at night. In the video, our pilot’s test flight at night. The test is passed! We are launching mass production of FPV drones with night cameras,” the developers said.
As you can see, the quality of the drone video was sufficient to position on the ground and detect large targets, for example, buildings and armored vehicles.
It is also known about the capture of similar Russian drones on the frontlines. Serhii Flash, Ukrainian military expert on radio technology, described in detail in his blog the design of drones made by the enemy.
“Their solution is built on a cheap analog night camera, the RunCam Night Eagle 3, at a price of $50, or on more expensive cameras costing $250–$400. These cameras are digital, not analog,” said Flash.
He noted that cheaper cameras do not work in complete darkness. They need twilight or bright moonlight to function. More expensive models are able to work in the dark, but the visual viewing distance remains worse than that of analog NVDs.
Due to the limited quantity of such drones and their increased cost (estimated at $300), the Russians employ them only for important tasks.
Currently, designers and enthusiasts are testing drones with twin thermal imaging and night cameras on board.
For this purpose, relatively cheap commercial Chinese thermal cameras are used, which are available on the free market. In particular, the UTi260M ($290), or the more expensive Victor 328B ($340).
In case there is no GPS signal or it’s substituted, such a solution allows the pilot to get to the necessary location due to the night camera and, at the same time, to detect subtle targets, in particular, infantry, due to thermal imaging optics.
To date, the widespread employment of precise and powerful drones has hampered both sides’ troops and severely complicated large-scale operations. Most of the necessary measures on the battlefield and in the near rear are shifted to nighttime when the activity of drones is decreased.
Until recently, the main threat to ground units at night were heavy octocopter bombers, which, due to their size and blade noise, were traditionally used to “hunt” at night. These ponderous drones mostly targeted exposed armored vehicles and infantry dugouts.
The appearance of night FPV drones will further affect the course of hostilities because they will be able to intercept maneuverable targets and fly into hard-to-reach places.
The famous Ukrainian strike drone unit “Magyar Birds” published a video from the camera of a Russian drone that tried to hit a boat with marines crossing the left bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region at night.
Its operation could be prevented only by the electronic warfare unit, which intercepted control and neutralized the drone a second before hitting.
The current measures to reduce the risks from such drones are the use of EW systems and early warning of incoming drones using pocket systems for direction-finding radio signals.
The FPV drones, which started their way as a cheap alternative to anti-tank weapons, have, with each new iteration of their development, become more complicated and more expensive to achieve new capabilities and better performance.
Currently, most serial-strike drones use an analog type of communication, which is due to their cheapness and ease of use.
However, this leads to a number of problems: this type of communication limits the number of drones that can be used simultaneously in one place in one frequency range. In addition, the communication is not encrypted, which poses a threat to video interception by the enemy and drone control.
A transition from analog to digital communication will make drones more expensive, help them encrypt the signal, and avoid the mentioned problems.
The main obstacles for strike drones on the frontlines are the EW, which suppresses all signals around it, as well as the phenomenon of radio horizon, when communication with the operator disappears when the drone approaches the ground. All this impedes pilots from targeting a drone at the final stage of a flight.
Today, these problems with relative success are solved due to repeaters and the use of non-standard communication frequencies, which enemy EW can’t suppress. However, the appearance of drone guidance systems on board is a better option, which will finally solve this issue.
Target capture and automatic targeting systems developed on the basis of neural networks are already being developed. Therefore, it remains only a matter of time before an additional chip with the necessary software will appear on board the FPV drone.
The cost of such electronics, using the example of NVIDIA Jetson Nano chips, can be between $250 and $300.
The integration of such a system will reliably bypass small electronic warfare systems designed for local protection, in particular the so-called “trench EW” and onboard electronic jamming systems, which gradually begin to appear on Russian armored vehicles.
In addition, automation of targeting and its defeat will simplify the requirements for pilot skills and increase the efficiency of hits on both static and mobile targets.
It is important to understand that in the case of improving drone specifications, even a several-time rise in the price of a copter until the incredible $1500-2000 in the niche will not make it less profitable compared to traditional weapons. To better understand, the market value of one 120mm mortar round is exactly the same: $1000–1500, a 155mm projectile costs $2,000–3,000, and the anti-tank missile to the Stugna ATGM is $20,000.
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