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Russia is using a new drone to try to evade Ukrainian jamming equipment.
Rather than being controlled wirelessly, the new drone use miles of fibre-optic cable. The cables unravel as drones fly toward a target.
First-person view (FPV) drones are now the biggest killer on the battlefield, and the use of them in Ukraine is not new; but the use of fibre-optic drones is.
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With both sides getting better at jamming the drone UAVs, Russia has reverted to this simpler and far less vulnerable means of controlling them.
Fibre-optic cable – seen in a video being wound onto spools in factories in China – can be produced at speed, taking less than an hour to produce six miles of cable.
Russia has reportedly taken delivery of 1,300 coils of this cable in October alone.
The spool cartridges are fitted to FPV drones, with the fibre-optic strand unfurling as the UAV flies towards its target.
Much like some wire-guided anti-tank missiles, the cable is robust enough not to break or snag as it spools out and it also provides another benefit – a far clearer video feed of the target.
It’s not yet clear if the Ukrainian military is adopting the same tactic, but in the technological game of cat-and-mouse that’s characterised this conflict, where one side goes, the other usually follows.
– Reported by British Forces Net
