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DJI civilian drones broadcast transponder data, as required by the FAA and many other nations' FAA-equivalents. DJI apparently encrypts these signals, and sells
by sbierwagen 5y ago
DJI civilian drones broadcast transponder data, as required by the FAA and many other nations' FAA-equivalents. DJI apparently encrypts these signals, and sells an expensive product to receive and decrypt them: https://www.dji.com/aeroscope https://www.dji.com/aeroscope Decoding transponder data presumably gives better accuracy than regular radio-directionfinding, which militaries have used in combat for 80 years now.
(UA has been operating consumer drones on the front lines, because they're suicidal, desperate, or both. Consumer drones use narrowband transmissions on unlicensed radio bands, making them easy to jam and track. Military drones use spread-spectrum transmissions on restricted channels, making them harder to jam and detect, but are generally a hundred or a thousand times more expensive per unit.)
Like anything expensive sold to institutions, I assume DJI Aeroscope has some kind of yearly support contract, and the field terminal regularly phones home. It sounds like DJI has remotely terminated UA transponder receivers, and not done that with RU units, which UA is unhappy about. We also see the downsides of installing infrastructure operated by a hostile foreign power.
- dharmab 5y agoHow is operating consumer drones "suicidal"? My impression was that the Russian Armed Forces have a deficit of sophisticated radio equipment, so the risk of position finding is lower than expected.
- brokenmachine 5y agoI read a comment somewhere that these DJI drones send out the location of both the drone and the operator. Can't say I'd be a fan of using that in a warzone, although I believe they can be hacked to not do that.
- sbierwagen 5y agoI read that, thought "no way", but sure enough, straight from the FAA page on drone remote ID https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id/ https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id/ >From takeoff to shutdown, drone broadcasts: >Drone ID >Drone location and altitude >Drone velocity >Control station location and elevation >Time mark >Emergency status
- rasz 5y agoIs there really GPS radio in the transmitter, or are they using drone takeoff location? or GPS coordinates supplied by the phone used for video feed? DJI drones use external GPS modules (separate pcb + ribbon connection), it would be trivial to make modchips spoofing current coordinates by offsetting them by some fixed vector.
- sbierwagen 5y agoThe DJI transmitter is a joystick module that doesn't have a screen. You plug in a smartphone and install the DJI app to see what the drone sees. If they're being smart, they would be comparing GPS location from the phone against the GPS chip in the drone to see if you're doing anything funny.
- rasz 5y agoSpoofing on the phone side should be even simpler (Mock Location App).
- jet_32951 5y agoCCP's position on the war defined. Listening to the politicians is a waste of time: what they do is the only touchstone.
- rasz 5y ago>UA has been operating consumer drones on the front lines, because they're suicidal, desperate, or both. Pretty much every army on a budged uses DJI drones, because they make the best civilian UAVs period. https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1509849258811445252 https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1509849258811445252 "The Ukrainian forces attacked an UAV unit of the Russian army. The drones themselves were not abandoned, however a control unit for an Eleron-3 light reconnaissance drone was captured and a cargo truck was destroyed." Five Mavic 3 boxes visible. Polish domestic military UAVs video feed quality looks downright pathetic when compared even to something like 6 year old <$1K Mavic Pro. https://www.wbgroup.pl/en/produkt/flyeye-unmanned-aerial-system/ https://www.wbgroup.pl/en/produkt/flyeye-unmanned-aerial-sys... ~$150K a pop.
- dharmab 5y agoAt least in the United States, released footage from military aircraft cameras is heavily blurred and degraded to obscure the true capabilities of the camera. The real images are crisp with extraordinary detail. I don't know if this applies to Poland's equipment.
- rasz 5y agoUS has very strict rules when selling advanced weapons, and usually doesnt need to advertise them (for example General Atomics Reaper). Manufacturers from other countries without solid track record dont have this luxury, hence extensive demonstrations on the trade show floors and in the field.