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The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source co
by Ciantic 1y ago
The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source code in Github [3], also adding an article specifically about ArduPilot and Ukraine [4]
[1]: https://ardupilot.org/ https://ardupilot.org/
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/ukraine-new-war-drone-strike/683008/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk...
[3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot
[4]: https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-powered-by-open-source-software/ https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-po...
- bamboozled 1y ago"He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot." https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo
- varjag 1y agoThe drones reportedly flew from their containers to the staging area autonomously, where they were taken over by the pilots for the attack approach.
- bamboozled 1y agoSource?
- varjag 1y agohttps://x.com/lemonodor/status/1929269307189469624 https://x.com/lemonodor/status/1929269307189469624 You can also see the careful departure of drones from containers in the videos, without extra panning or yaw. Not quite how a human operator would fly them.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoThe question was more about the human taking over near the end, no?
- brightbeige 1y agoThread without log-in https://xcancel.com/lemonodor/status/1929269307189469624 https://xcancel.com/lemonodor/status/1929269307189469624
- Maxious 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJcjt_W8iCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJcjt_W8iCo
- Ciantic 1y agoAlso this: https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-powered-by-open-source-software/ https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-po... "ArduPilot can handle tasks like stabilizing a drone in the air while the pilot focuses on moving to their next objective. Pilots can switch them into loitering mode, for example, if they need to step away or perform another task, and it has failsafe modes that keep a drone aloft if signal is lost." So it is not fully autonomous.
- originalvichy 1y agoNot for this task, but could be used autonomously. If they trusted that these planes were still in the same spot, and their GPS coordinates were accurate to 10 cm, then what they could do is just program the drones to fly a preset route at preset heights, stop over the plane's wing and then descend all the way to 0 meters.
- mandevil 1y agoEven with that level of target knowledge (I suspect the US has the investment in the sensor-targeting links to be able to use satellites to know within cm where planes were within a five minute window, but am not sure about other nations) you'd want to have some that were available for later re-targeting to handle misses. Nuclear weapons war plans solve this by relentlessly re-targeting again and again (declassified 1960's USAF war plans called for over 70 different missiles to hit Moscow alone) but with the smaller damage radius of conventional weapons you either end up with a second strike to make sure you get all the survivors of the first strike- or have a trained human who knows the targeting priority in the loop available to update targeting on the fly.
- varjag 1y agoGPS can't be relied on in that heavily denied area. And indeed the screenshots show drones in failsafe mode.
- ladyanita22 1y agoSo what about the AI part that has been mentioned by several outlets?
- boxed 1y agoI would assume someone speculated and then the hype brain took over and everyone reported it as AI. I've had that happen to the company I work at and we literally have zero AI stuff.
- dboreham 1y agoHype Brain :) And the language changed just a little bit..
- shagmin 1y agoFrom my understanding that was to be used as a last resort.
- DyslexicAtheist 1y agothere was this German talking head "Nico Lange" who made this claim first without providing evidence for it. He is an ex politician and a regular in the Munich Security Conference and I assume this is who was (mainly) responsible for spreading it. AI gets so much boost from this nonsense. Because now it's about saving our lives.
- netsharc 1y agoSun Tzu says it better: "A military operation involves deception." He could be telling the truth, he could be lying... A drone programmed to automatically boot up , check its location, and if it's at the right coordinates, take off and crash at some other coordinates (the airfield) is more satisfying to "fans" of automated warfare. For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but now you're approaching dangerous territory of "What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield"... The reports also mention the truck roof opening remotely, one could also use GPS coordinates to trigger this. But doing it manually from a distance, after checking the surveillance cameras that the coast is clear, is more reliable. I guess they used smartphones and SIM cards with mobile data for the remote communication...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoThey did more than crash at coordinates, they targeted specific parts of the different aircraft.
- RenThraysk 1y agoOnly need one camera drone capable of identifying targets. And just tells another drone to bomb it.
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago..in theory. In practice, building such a complex system in a fail safe way is not that easy.
- RenThraysk 1y agoStill only need one camera drone if a human is spotting targets.
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoIn theory. In practice you would not allow a single camera drone to be the single point of failure of a mission with such lengthy and risky planning, and dire consequences.
- randomtoast 1y agoHow could they be navigated from such a long distance? Satellite communication? Wouldn't the lag be too high?
- yieldcrv 1y agoEveryone was right next to the bases in Russia
- sorenjan 1y agoVia the regular mobile network according to one article I read. The Ukrainians said that all operators where safely out of Russia when the news broke, so I doubt they where at the airfields several hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine.
- mrandish 1y agoTo reduce latency, I wonder if the phones were connecting to a covert site in Russia which had a high-bandwidth, lower-latency wired link, maybe a front company established in Russia for the operation with servers and broadband internet connections. Or maybe just a colocated server at a major backbone site in Russia was rented by a Russian front company. Seems like the kind of thing intelligence services do. While I'm sure Russia has more restrictions on renting colocated servers than the U.S., it's still something that needs to happen every day. Russia also has a fairly robust underground economy of less-than-legitimate companies doing illicit things, so there have to be ways for those companies to avoid restrictions (probably involving bribing certain people). If the attack was coordinated this way, I assume whoever sold the colo to Ukrainian intelligence thought they were simply setting up yet another server for a shady Russian scam company. Foreign intelligence services often avoid scrutiny by using the same methods as domestic criminals in the target country.
- randomtoast 1y agoOkay, and GPS is restricted near military installations, but mobile internet remains accessible?
- 1y ago
- barbazoo 1y agoWhen you watch some of the footage I feel like it’s clear that there were at least some human controlled drones there.
- ajross 1y agoTo be clear, that's because Ardupilot is a really pretty routine UAV navigation project with obvious civilian/industrial/enthusiast application. People hack on Ardupilot because it's fun to see your drone fly around on its own. That you can also put a grenade on it is sort of an obvious extension, but the payload is very much a separate feature.
- ivape 1y agoSo what did they do, just stick GPS coordinates and the drones were that successful autonomously (talking of the Russian fighter base attack from the last 48 hours)? I'd be shocked if they didn't manually pilot these things.
- masom 1y agoOpenCV and other onboard computer softwares can be trained to recognize shapes, 10+ years ago there was a demo of a NodeCopter controlled small drone following red flags. Stick the GPS coord, fly there, and once in a geofence look for a shape to crash into doesn't seem impossible given what was possible 10 years ago.
- m4rtink 1y agoThere is often quite heavy GPS jamming or spoofing. Also in some of the published videos I think you can see a "no GPS lock" status message - but maybe they just did not bother with GPS if all the drones were manually piloted anyway.
- mrandish 1y agoYes, I assumed they didn't need GPS because they knew exactly where the trucks that were the launch sites were to be placed and they knew approximately their targets would be sitting on a certain section of airport tarmac. The pilots would have had a detailed satellite photo map of their entire route until visual target ID was possible. While GPS was probably partially jammed, that deep in Russia I doubt it would have been as severe as near the front lines. Plus there wouldn't have been heavy jamming of the local drone control frequencies because they weren't expecting a drone attack there. To me the more interesting question is how they managed sending the real-time video feeds and control data. Since the trucks were mobile, I assume it had to be via a bunch of mobile phones signed up to Russian service providers since Starlink doesn't work inside Russia. To reduce latency, I wonder if the phones were connecting to a covert site in Russia which had a high-bandwidth wired link, maybe a front company established for the operation with servers and broadband internet connections.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- ZhiqiangWang 1y agoAndrew Tridgell, from rsync/samba to drone ....
- aiiizzz 1y agoWhat goes on in a person's mind when they pivot to making killing machines?
- mensetmanusman 1y agoI would rather the enemy die than myself and my family.
- aiiizzz 1y agoThat's a false dichotomy.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoApparently, there were hundred+ drone pilots available who were spread across several timezones should the AI not be able to find their way visually. If you see some of the streaming video snippets, it says GPS fix unavailable likely due to jamming of GNSS systems and disabling of civilian GLONASS near bases. As such, Russian domestic cell carriers were reportedly used to stream video and for manual terminal guidance following visual cues, hence the daylight timing of the raid.
- throwoutway 1y agoSource on the 100+ drone pilots an cell carriers? I've been hoping to find an article on how they staged the pilots for manual guidance. I imagined they would have had to tunnelled all that traffic to each operator from the truck, but the cell towers is clever
- mikhailfranco 1y agoOne report said the drone attack was sequential, not swarming. So perhaps only one remote operator per truck, with about 2-3 minutes between each drone launch, depending on how far the previous one had to go to reach its target.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoInteresting. I guess they could have 2-3x less operators than 1:1. If the Russians shutdown the cell phone networks nationwide, that might've stopped most of it except for drones that had INS and/or ability to visually follow "terrain map" under AI guidance.