Ukrainian Intelligence Dismantled Iranian Drone and Found Something Unusual | Hacker News Reader

Ukrainian Intelligence Dismantled Iranian Drone and Found Something Unusual

en.defence-ua.com

42 pointshdivider15 comments

Clickbait title. Here's the meat:

> the "internals" of Mohajer-6 turned out to be imported, for the most part. The engine is Austrian, and the cameras are of Japanese, Chinese and American origins.

This isn't all that surprising, building hundreds of drones for < $5000 USD in commercial parts is going to be more cost-effective than buying a handful of purpose built drones for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

A drone having "Japanese, Chinese and American origins" is a lot less sinister sounding when you say "it's a Raspberry Pi hooked up to a 200D, zip tied and hot-glued to a fibre glass body".

But the Austrian Rotax motor could easily be sanctioned

I suspect that may be easier to sanction the motors, but a part of me wonders how much of this stuff mighty already be warehoused within the borders anyway.

I suppose the idea is that, eventually, they will run out of stock (maybe?) but the other benefit of being off-the-shelf is there's probably about a dozen replacement parts from different manufacturers that could be used instead.

I thought selling anything to Iran is already mostly verboten, even civilian gear.

Some reseller is going to have egg on their face that their equipment wound up in a drone.

Sanctioning a motor is becoming akin to sanctioning 3M glue.

An interesting side effect of the Ruslan drones using off the shelf DSLRs is that evidently speed cameras in Sweden are being destroyed for the cameras and those cameras are showing up in drone wreckage in Ukraine.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/speed-cameras-stolen-from-swed...

The article largely contradicts the claim that cameras stolen in Sweden are ending up in Russian drones.

They both just happen to use the same incredibly common camera models.

It's worth noting that the mass hysteria regarding Russia in Nordic countries has reached absurd levels, as of a couple of weeks ago every hobbyist drone sighting is a sign of a Russian intelligence operation.

Some guy steals a few cameras? Oh yeah, must be the Russian drones again.

> The article largely contradicts the claim that cameras stolen in Sweden are ending up in Russian drones.

To clarify this part. The article claimed that Sweden has Nikon cameras while the drones have Canon. (The article does also make the claim that the stolen cameras may end up being used in drones but always with the word may).

It's not just this article either. No matter where you read in Swedish medias, it's always speculation.

There's zero evidence between a connection between these thefts and Russia. The mere idea is ridiculous, Russia could just order Canon DSLRs online.

It would be unusual if the insides were all made in Iran.

There’s nothing in the slightest unusual about opening a drone to find off the shelf parts.

This is the Mohajer-6(cross shape), not the Shahed-136s(delta shaped) which are wreaking havoc on power infrastructure.

I think the right characterization is that it's something like the Turkish TB-2 rather than a suicide drone or a munition as such.

Wish we would ever see how reverse engineering the flight control works. Clever kids with spare time hack iPhones in a matter of days, wonder how military compares :)

What a lame article.

It's like a sentence spun into 1000 words.

Why not show us a photo of these parts? Surely that would help apply pressure?!

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