New generation drones change the situation on the Russian battlefield

Russia claims to have destroyed 90% of Ukraine’s drones through jamming. That figure is unconfirmed, but a report from RUSI, a UK-based think tank, found that in the early months of the war, drones had an average lifespan of just three days before being disabled.

Even some specialized military drones are vulnerable. The US sent RQ-11 Raven reconnaissance drones to Ukraine in 2016, but they were quickly shelved because they could not operate under heavy electronic countermeasures from the Russian military.

Inherent weaknesses

In the early days of the war, drones, mostly Mavic models made by China’s DJI, helped Kiev’s tank-hunting teams stalk their prey in cities and towns. They also performed reconnaissance and surveillance missions, indirectly locating artillery, tanks, and mortars.

However, even before the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, military researchers noted that radio communications were the “Achilles’ heel” of consumer drones. Meanwhile, Russia is an electronic warfare powerhouse, possessing a series of powerful jamming systems capable of cutting off communication signals, or emitting sound with wavelengths that overwhelm drone control signals, as well as GPS signals.

Atlas Dynamics is currently supplying 200 military drones per month to Ukraine and plans to increase its production capacity to 800 in the next few months.

“In some areas of Ukraine, DJI drones can’t even take off because of interference on all frequencies,” said Ivan Tolchinsky, a former Israeli Defense Forces sniper and founder of Atlas Dynamics, a company that supplies drones to the Ukrainian military.

To solve this problem, drones are equipped with new frequency-hopping systems that can scan radio waves, detect which frequencies are being jammed, and automatically switch to a new frequency. However, this is not a long-term solution in the war.

Decentralized distributed communication

Atlas Dynamics is developing the next generation of tri-rotor drones based on the mesh broadcasting principle - a setup where each transmitter acts as a node that communicates with its neighbors, forming a powerful communication network.

For example, a drone in a deep valley might not be able to communicate directly with its operator, but it could still communicate with another drone above it to receive commands from the commander. This could theoretically happen in multiple “hops.”

The company is currently testing a setup that includes up to 5 drones/network with a single operator.

With the new generation, only 1 operator is needed to command a network of 5-50 drones operating at the same time.

“The idea is to increase the network capacity to 50 drones at a time, but more importantly, to create a common ecosystem,” Tolchinsky said, referring to the different drones operating in the same network to specialize in different tasks for each device. For example, a high-flying drone maintains communication, while lower-flying drones are equipped with different types of sensors, capable of connecting even robots on the ground.

The operator then becomes a “swarm” commander, managing the group of drones that do most of the work themselves and only need to make important decisions.

Integrated chip optimizes hardware power

According to Atlas Dynamics, the drones will be equipped with programmable gate array (FPGA) chips, which are essentially microchips that allow for the creation of specialized processors that efficiently leverage hardware power for a specific application without having to build a multi-billion dollar factory.

The technology has been researched and developed by the startup for the past five years, since before the war broke out, and is expected to be officially released later this year.

Tolchinsky said the core issue of the next generation of drones is not only to equip new, more advanced equipment, but also to reduce the maximum cost of each device, so that users no longer have to worry about expensive aircraft being shot down.

“There are some very expensive drones in Ukraine, but they don’t operate because they’re afraid of malfunctioning or being shot down. They have to use something cheap enough,” said the former Israeli sniper.

The traditional military sector has faced a trend of increasingly complex and expensive equipment. For example, the Predator 1 spy plane started out as a $1 million camera-equipped hovercraft, but quickly evolved into the $22 million Reaper stealth machine.

But military drone manufacturers can’t afford to keep pushing prices up when they face competition from low-cost civilian drone manufacturers. Not to mention, when war breaks out, cheap and efficient equipment will have an advantage over sophisticated but expensive hardware.

(According to Popular Mechanics)

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