So my thoughts watching this is that it wasn’t exactly a quick attack. The drones were actually being used as quadcopters, manually controlled instead of seeking a target or coordinates, and they seem to be launched sequentially, likely because they’re piloted locally by a limited pool of operatives.
This means that there was no useful jamming going on, and I wonder if any base personnel even tried to shoot them down.
I’m feeling lazy with sources, but I’ve seen reporting that they were at least partially using Ardupilot for autonomous control, and likely were moving slower since they were tethered fiber optic drones that can’t be jammed anyway. Hence, spider’s web with all the fibers on the field.
If i understand correctly they sneaked in the drones into Russia and were released behind their wall of defenses.
Yeah sure, but if you go to a military base in your country and release a swarm of drones, they’ll likely at least attempt to shoot them down, the base has its own wall of defence.
This is why they used small FPV drones and launched them just a few kilometers away. There was virtually no warning, and small low flying drones would be very difficult for any automated defensive system to detect in time.
I think the Russians also felt a false sense of security given how far these airbases are from Ukraine. They may have had defenses in place for larger drones flying all the way from Ukraine, but again, such a system would have difficulty with small drones flying at treetop level from a very short distance.
I remember reading that the drones were meant to be autonamous? (I refuse to look up how to spell that word and simply accept my incorrectness) so those pauses and such might just be whatever image recognitions is intended to identify the shape of an aircraft freaking out a bit. Would also explain sequential launches as it would stop them all dogpiling one plan and being wasted.
I saw this exact video the day of the attack, why is this article phrased as if it was released just now?
Giving The Guardian the benefit of the doubt: because they took time to verify its authenticity before reporting on it.
More likely reason: urgency and BREAKING NEWS gets more clicks.
The video from the article: https://youtu.be/aukyzgAGHM4
That’s so badass. As an FPV hobbyist this is like a fantasy. I’m curious though, why do they all say failsafe, yet they’re seemingly still in control of most of them. I see there’s no GPS lock. Maybe it calls failsafe when no GPS but doesn’t trigger the drone to shut down.
Is that even beta flight? Never seen it configured like this, I know that’s what they were using at the beginning because that was basically the only FPV software available, but maybe they have a new “military-grade” one now?
Also it’s interesting to see the different flying styles, some of them are like “let me carefully position myself slowly right next to this wing, yesss just right”, meanwhile their buddy just flies full speed ahead straight into it.
According to the Ukrainians they trained an AI on some of the target planes they had in museums (some of the strategic bombers blown up were actually handed over from Ukraine in the nineties to russia (alongside the nukes), and I guess they kept one or two as museum pieces), so it could be the AI carefully chosing the good spot to blow up
Yeah idk what config they’re using. Doesn’t look like any that I’ve used.
Haha yeah and some look like they’re just falling from the sky. Not sure how the camera is facing straight down and moving down as well unless they just disarmed and let it fall.
I read they are using ArduPilot.
Interesting. Better for positioning I think Thanks
If we’re thinking of the same ones they just look like full throttle/tilt forward to me!
I suppose all the planes where fully tanked up and ready to fly in order to be so flammable. I wonder if the damages would be so bad if a plan would be empty of fuel ?
Also, why do they put tires on top ?
Some have theorized the tires disrupt object recognition in aerial imagery analysis (and possibly munitions or drone targeting). Obviously that didn’t work here as the targets were already known and visually confirmed.
It’s not just a theory. The US military has confirmed that is what they are trying to do:
That seems like a trick that only works the first time
Maybe maybe not. Camo is just about playing the odds, nothing works from every angle or circumstance. If tires on wings means 5% more planes survive it’s probably worth it.
Wonder why they keep all the planes the same color if that is what they are trying to do. The drones just have to target the specific Pantone.
Pantone doesn’t mean much when the lighting conditions change throughout the day.
Anyone know what the tires are about?
An attempt at optical camouflage.
Seriously? Paint probably would have been easier.
You didn’t read the link.
Right? That’s still pretty clearly the outline of a plane.
cope tires, aka anti drone high-technology, there are other overhead pics of planes fully covered, which might help but from most of these shots they clearly were running low on tires and just looks really odd.
Thanks for the info.
That was really satisfying to watch
So how are them tires working for ya? 😏
Were they even operatable flight-ready aircraft?..
There is a video, with close up, of a loaded 101 cruise missile under the wing, those motherfuckers were loaded up and ready to go in the Zeus lightning operation, putin wanted it to be the biggest air attack in the war just before the “peace negotiations”. That didn’t pan out as expected lol.
The exceptions are the two AWACS who seems to be kept for cannibalism (to keep the two-three flying ones with pieces they can no longer produce).
If they weren’t then they wouldn’t be full of fuel. Also, russia has been using these to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine.
Edit: upon further viewing of the footage, some of the bombers even have missiles mounted to hard points on their wings when the drones hit them.
Yes, they got deployed a lot over the last years
