01-06-2025, 09:05 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraines-dron...16890.html
It would appear Ukraine has severely restricted the Russian use of "drones" in their latest offensive by jamming their control and video links. This situation highlights one difference between Ukraine's drones and Russia's drones. While both sides rely to some extent on "commercial" FPV drones, Ukraine makes a much wider use of them. Russia has its "military grade" drones, such as the Orlan 10 and Orlan 30. https://oe.tradoc.army.mil/2024/04/18/ru...ed-system/. These Russian systems all share a design and therefore share vulnerabilities. If Ukraine can exploit a weakness in these systems and exploit it by jamming, all of them will go down at the same time. It appears that is what is happening.
Commercial drones often share similar control systems and RF protocols. However, there are many variations that by sheer dumb luck may be immune or less affected by a particular jamming approach. Commercial drones are also more easily modified because their systems are public domain (usually) and quite modular. Ukraine has shown the ability to "re-purpose" such drones and some ability to build their own drone variants. Ukraine can respond more flexibly to EW by Russia than visa-versa.
On a slightly different subject, IMO we need to be aware that the word "drone" covers a very diverse set of vehicles of vastly differing size, range, speed, altitude restrictions, payload capacity, and intended missions. A Shahed 136, an Orlan 30, a Bayraktar TB2, a Mavic 3, and a Maverick missile are all "drones" in some sense of the word. EW that "works" against some of them may do nothing on others. Many published articles make statements about "drones" that only apply to a subclass of such vehicles.
It would appear Ukraine has severely restricted the Russian use of "drones" in their latest offensive by jamming their control and video links. This situation highlights one difference between Ukraine's drones and Russia's drones. While both sides rely to some extent on "commercial" FPV drones, Ukraine makes a much wider use of them. Russia has its "military grade" drones, such as the Orlan 10 and Orlan 30. https://oe.tradoc.army.mil/2024/04/18/ru...ed-system/. These Russian systems all share a design and therefore share vulnerabilities. If Ukraine can exploit a weakness in these systems and exploit it by jamming, all of them will go down at the same time. It appears that is what is happening.
Commercial drones often share similar control systems and RF protocols. However, there are many variations that by sheer dumb luck may be immune or less affected by a particular jamming approach. Commercial drones are also more easily modified because their systems are public domain (usually) and quite modular. Ukraine has shown the ability to "re-purpose" such drones and some ability to build their own drone variants. Ukraine can respond more flexibly to EW by Russia than visa-versa.
On a slightly different subject, IMO we need to be aware that the word "drone" covers a very diverse set of vehicles of vastly differing size, range, speed, altitude restrictions, payload capacity, and intended missions. A Shahed 136, an Orlan 30, a Bayraktar TB2, a Mavic 3, and a Maverick missile are all "drones" in some sense of the word. EW that "works" against some of them may do nothing on others. Many published articles make statements about "drones" that only apply to a subclass of such vehicles.