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Comment by jqpabc123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how they managed to control the drones from such a distance.

I'll bet Russia is curious too.

Apparently they're using a simple 4g/3g/2g modem with Russian SIM, which is the reason why all russian ISPs completely turn off mobile internet (& voice) when drone launches are detected (clearly hasn't helped here as the drones were launched from trucks super close to the targets).

These launches specifically seem to have also used on-board AI targeting models trained on photos of the plane models to hit, I assume as a fallback in case mobile connection isn't available inside the bases (and photos on some Telegram channels seem to show usage of the FOSS autopilot system ArduPilot (https://ardupilot.org))

Ah yes - this thing looks rather like the footage released https://9meters.com/technology/software/ardupilot-mission-pl...

> curious how they managed to control the drones from such a distance

The targets weren’t moving. As long as you have a cell connection in the trailer and up-to-date satellite imagery, you could send the coördinates and even flight path to the drones ahead of time and then have them deal with minor obstacles on their own.

Presumably even a slow connection the drone could send some imagery, someone confirms it / picks out a plane parked, and the drone does the thing.

Camera locking on to a parked plane, should be fairly easy to do the job.

Someone claimed they used fiber optic drones [1]. So perhaps the drones were connected to the trucks via optical fibers and the trucks carried the modems. That way, jamming over the airbases would have had no effect.

[1] https://nitter.net/bayraktar_1love/status/192915556386414634...

obviously StarLink

After a call from Putin, this won't happen again.

Right the attack Milo Minderbinder sells in 2 quarters will look just different enough to not exactly be the same thing happening again.

obviously StarLink doesn't work in the deeps of russian territories

Why, no antennas ? The shipping container has the antennas ?

Starlink is a joke here but "satellites" in general are not

Civilian StarLink doesn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield

Neither Starshield

I doubt they trust Musk with operational security anymore. It is pretty much guaranteed he would betray them to Russia.

That was my intended joke to say the least

Interesting that they claim the attack was shared with the Trump admin ahead of time. That seems very unnecessarily risky as well considering where Trump's loyalties lie

I read Ukraine leaked attack details ahead of time, except it was supposed to be 2000 mile range heavy slow drones striking in the middle of the night. Russians "somehow" got this info and prepared waiting ready until the morning with all bombers fueled up ready to take off. Drones never showed up, morning came, national aviation holiday, pilots went to celebrate, 12:00pm drones take off from trailers.

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