Ukrainian drone operators piloting their plane not linked to the threat of Russian jamming are often not sure to know where their drones are really, which means that they have to use other benchmarks to find their way, said a operator at Business Insider.
Directional benchmarks may include “strange aspect buildings” or intersections. Operators use them when they cannot use GPS to locate themselves and cannot be sure exactly where their drones are on the fields and trees that look like Dimko Zhluktenko, A drone operator With the unanswered system for Ukraine, told Bi.
Drones Warfare is an important part of the Russian war against Ukraine, and the two parties create and quickly develop new types of drones and counter-drone technologies. Countermeasures include electronic warfare such as jamming, which may target connections between the drone and its operator or the plane GPS navigation system.
The commander of the group of special forces “Hostri Kartuzy” with the callal of call “Kum” pilots a drone in Lyptsi, Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine. Tanya Dzafofuwa / Susilne Ukraine / JSC “UA: PBC” / Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
GPS, a satellite navigation system, is used in ammunition, drones and civilian technology such as digital cards. It plays an essential function in military systems and civil society, but military leaders are reconciling more and more reality that modern battlefields can be GS environments.
The weapons that depend on the GPS, including sophisticated American weapons, have encountered problems on the Ukrainian battlefields.
“On the front line, there is literally no GPS,” said Zhluktenko. “So a key problem is that when you fly without GPS, the drone thinks it is in a position when in fact, it is completely in another position.”
Electronic war can make location data unreliable, and wind and other factors can eliminate a drone out of course, excluding synchronized with the operator’s expectations.
Without GPS, operators must look at what their drone’s camera shows them and compare it to satellite images and cards to determine where it is.
“And that is why you have to look at the visual markers you have of the camera: a lake, a bizarre building, a strange intersection, and you discuss all these markers and use them to navigate the front line.”
“The operator, he looks at the camera, looks at the card and determines where the drone is and where to go next,” he said. It is not an easy task, and in certain sectors of the front, it can be extremely difficult.
Eastern Ukraine, where most fights take place, is very flat and has a largely uniform landscape, which makes operators difficult to find these exceptional characteristics and learn where they are.
Zhluktenko said that in the east of the country, “one of the key problems is that all these places, they seem exactly. It is the same type of field, the same type of forest, and there is literally no visual marker to understand where you are.”
The flat landscape also made other parts of the war more difficult, such as the reservoir and armored assaults. Drones can see them coming from afar.
A Ukrainian soldier holding a drone in the Oblast of Donetsk, Ukraine. Wolfgang Schwan / Anadolu via Getty Images
Another Ukrainian drone operator, who spoke to Bi under the cover of anonymity, shared similar experiences, explaining that without GPS, drone operators “must be oriented using benchmarks”. They said they can include “a building or a lake or a river or a house”.
Drones were used in this war more than in any other war through history. From quadcopters to octocoptera to large fixed sail aircraft, drones perform recognition operations, collect targeting data, abandon bombs and explode on targets, and they are only air.
These relatively cheap weapons have eliminated assets worth millions of dollars and destroys targets far from the front. They radically change war.
And they were essential for Ukraine, which suffered from shortages of other weapons. Major-General Peter Boysen, the commander-in-chief of Denmark, an important Ukrainian partner, said this month that attack drones represent more than 70% of Ukrainian victims.
The proliferation of drones means that the Russian and Ukrainian industries are in a race to find ways to blur and stop drones in the other country. They also develop new resistant drones or capable of overcoming these efforts.
New drone systems include fiber optic drones, which have a cable between the operator and the drone that prevents them from being blocked and AI compatible drones.
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