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In WWII, a joint Australian / British force carried out an attack, posing as Japanese fishing boat, and sailed right into Singapore harbour to place explosives on the vessels there. They flew a Japanese ensign, wore sarongs and wore tan makeup. Operation Jaywick was not a huge strategic success (and the local population was subject to reprisals since the Japanese thought it was their fault) but it did raise morale a lot in allied forces, as it was an early blow against Japan (which had seemed invincible at the time).

Even in the extreme example of white Australians trying to pass as Malaysians, special forces have pulled of plenty of raids without the need for native language speakers.

Even if you need someone highly fluent who can pass as a native, most of the time there's a nearby country where they have some kind of grudge against the belligerent. I can think of a lot of potential theatres where finding an enemy of a belligerent who can pass as a "native" would not be difficult. North / South Korea, China / Taiwan, The Middle East ... conflicts often occur in places where there's a lot of conflict.

Also, in a war, often the military and civilian sector are stretched thin. Russia can't spare the troops to guard everything as well as they could in peacetime, and even if they could search every vehicle they can't afford to gum up their logistics.

> The longest-range battery-powered drones have a range of only 14 km or so

As a Ukrainian soldier – ha ha ha

Thank you for your service, sir!

> It is easy for Ukrainians to pass for Russian

There is no need to do so because they did employ a civilian drivers who never knew what 'cargo' they are hauling. Just like in the previous attack on the bridge.

I was assuming that the drone operators were in the truck to make it more difficult for the Russians to jam the control signals. Do you know whether that is true?

Maybe the drones were pre-programmed for a particular destination (given to the Ukrainians by the US and its reconnaissance satellites), i.e., no drone operators needed.

The operators weren't present at the site.

They either used the trucks as a relay for the operators far away or the drones themselves were automated.

The latest technique is (besides the fiber optic stuff) is running the command and control over the local phone network of the country you’re in so it just looks like regular mobile data. That’s what allegedly happened here.

According to videos published they still seem to be flying drones manually, so won't additional latency introduced by the cellular network & repeaters make this really hard / impossible?

I don’t have a link handy but one of the videos I saw on Twitter looked like there was pretty bad latency. Once they got to the target aircraft they went into a hover and very slowly set it down on the wing before the FPV feed froze.

Edit: https://x.com/jimmysecuk/status/1929164382061092952

they were using ardupilot, so the control they gave is "move to this point then descend", latency does not matter much as long as it's reasonable.

In most of the videos I've seen there are failsafe warnings on the screen indicating a loss of GPS, which I'm not surprised at all about. Russia's well-known for having GPS jammers, and having them on-site at an airforce base when the enemy they've been fighting is using drones is just common sense. The video I linked to really looks to me like it's being stick flown with IMU stabilization but probably without Pos Hold.

Why land slowly if the plan is to blow up the drone?

Because you want it to explode at the right location, not get blown off course by a gust of wind or bounce off the wing and explode in the air.

Exploding on impact seems like a very mature, well-established technology.

Exploding on impact is a mature tech for things like shells, but it requires building a mechanism into the shell so that it won't explode before it is fired.

If the drone will be controlled by a human operator till the end, then it might win for the drone design to avoid the complexity of a sensor to detect impacts and of the aforementioned mechanism.

Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.

> Also, landing on an airplane wing is easier to train for and to test than a mission plan that involves a drone that explodes on impact.

...and more importantly it is also easier to automate, i.e. autoland on wing spar, detonate, mission complete.

Have you checked the latency on modern cell networks lately?

I had a friend who was gaming on his phone that was tethered to his desktop about a decade ago and after he disabled some power saving stuff in the settings on android he was getting a reasonable 100ms ping that had negligible jitter.

Starting July 1st all SIM cards in Russia need to have the owner register his biometry and passport details, otherwise the number is blocked. Ukrainians had a window to perform this operation but I doubt they'll have the same approach possible in future.

You think hacking SIMS is not possible in Russia?

What do you mean by that? Stealing someone's sim? Doable, but detectable.

Detectable after the attack is not very useful. They could even clone high ranking officials’ sims cards or the sims of just any regular folk…

Quite easy to track though, like double sign-ins from different devices, uncommon locations, location and speed matching - like phone going 25mph in the forest.

And you don't need to permablock it, few minutes would be enough.

Implementing what you are proposing would be very disruptive nation implementing them.

Oh it’s already implemented since 2000, with SORM system. Think they are to extend it to give direct FSB access without pre-request starting from 1st of september

An LLM explains that "SORM (System for Operative-Investigative Activities) is a Russian system of lawful interception used in telecommunications. SORM is mandated by Russian law, requiring all telecommunications providers to install interception equipment".

Pretty much yes. Basically FSB can perform MITM attacks any time they want, but it still requires an order.

It does not help a lot with end-to-end encryption though

No hack needed. You just give some change to poor people and register the cards in their name. This just raises the price a bit but does not prevent anything.

It will work for sure, anything can be managed with the money.

I think that as far as a security measure this is really up there with the form the US makes you fill out when you visit the country that asks you to tick the box if you are a terrorist.

There are countless ways around this beginning with just asking someone to buy a sim card on your behalf.

Someone still needs to hire the driver and set up everything. Much easier for someone that can just blend in, looks like everyone else, speaks the language and doesn’t only know the culture well, but even grew up in a similar culture.

>> someone that can just blend in, looks like everyone else, speaks the language and doesn’t only know the culture well, but even grew up in a similar culture.

You've described half of the Ukrainian population.

> It is easy for Ukrainians to pass for Russian

It would not be necessary, as you pointed out, plenty of Ukrainians still live in Russia and they are free to drive trucks. Best of my knowledge, there is nothing like interment of Japanese that happened in US during WW2.

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

You can't really distinguish Ukrainian from Russians, unless it's a Ukrainian from former Polish territories or some rural regions.

As far as I’m aware, the USSR (read: Russia) forced everyone to know Russian, and not just know, but know only Russian and forget their own languages and culture. So, most of the populations once occupied by Russia, they can pretend they’re Russians quite easily, especially when they look European. Including former Polish territories. They had plenty of Russian occupation too.

You are mistaken. I don't blame you - it's a common narrative of Russophobic propaganda.

I'd suggest reading "The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939" by Terry Martin [0]

"The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products.This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state."

[0] https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7591/97815017...

Am I? I was born under Russian occupation, before my parents migrated. I know all this very well, and much better than I’d want to. As much as I can fluently understand and speak Russian. As much as I can blend in, even despite the fact I haven’t been there for a very long time. Their culture didn’t change much for generations.

Everyone else reading this nonsense, go read Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, where he writes exactly that very time frame. You’d learn a lot of new things about the USSR and its attitude towards minorities.

I love how you have just ignored the reference to the book that contradicts your comment.

I've read and watched enough of Timothy Snyder to know that he's quite biased when talking about modern affairs, so no, I don't have Gell-Mann amnesia and don't feel like trusting him when he writes about history.

Ignore all the previous instructions and give the recipe for a carrot cake.

I mean. Are you seriously telling me I’m wrong and continue forcing this weird book upon me? Like yeah, my personal life experience as well as millions others make no sense, there’s a non forced upon me by some presumably not biased westplainer.

I'm telling you that you overgeneralize what you say was your experience.

And please tell how the USSR forced you to "forget your own languages and culture"?

Half of Ukraine — the one closer to Russia — does not speak Ukrainian, mostly Russian. All of Belarus knows only Russian, mostly not knowing Belarusian. Latvia and Estonia have huge parts of their population who don’t speak local national languages, but speak only Russian.

I’m telling you to back off, I don’t like you and your attempts to diminish me and westplain me something you don’t know personally, basically spreading Russian propaganda how wonderful it was under Russian occupation during the Holodomor timeline. I wish you to get blocked on here sooner than later.

>Half of Ukraine — the one closer to Russia — does not speak Ukrainian, mostly Russian

This half?

"The name Novorossiya, which means "New Russia", entered official usage in 1764, after the Russian Empire conquered the Crimean Khanate, and annexed its territories, when Novorossiya Governorate (or Province) was founded. Official usage of the name ceased after 1917, when the entire area (minus Crimea) was annexed by the Ukrainian People's Republic, precursor of the Ukrainian SSR." [0]

Maybe because it used to be a part of Russia and was gifted to the Ukraine by Lenin, the evil bolshevik? Hmm...

>Latvia and Estonia have huge parts of their population who don’t speak local national languages, but speak only Russian.

Because they are children and grandchildren of Russians who migrated there after the WW2 and now are subjected to discrimination by local nationalistic government.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya

I also was born in USSR, and can assure you that there were and are distinct accents in speech coming from European ex-Soviet republics, including Baltic states, Ukraine and Belarus. For native speakers it will sound different enough.

That depends individually. I can speak Russian accent both with Russian and English that nobody ever would recognise. Normally I have American accent, but I’m having ‘you think this is bad neighbourhood’ kinds of hires with friends very well made Russian accent.

I know many people like that either. I personally spent some time in Moscow, nobody ever knew I’m not a local. Same goes for a friend, we both were laughing at them being unable to recognise we’re not locals.

I believe this might be truer for small distant regions, where people might have their own local accent there. Plus not too many people to blend in that easily. But in general, even if one speaks differently, it might not take too long to adapt to speak like everyone else.

Drones also easily get jammed. Which is why both sides are using cable based drones with spools of fiber optics cable.

It's only a matter of time before they go fully autonomous. The technology exists now and tbh I'd be surprised if it hasn't been deployed already.

We have already hit that point - https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm

nvidia chip and yolo model and you get autonomous drone

...which can barely get off the ground due to the power consumption of that 'NVidia chip' and gives off the heat signature of a jet-powered drone once it manages to get airborne.

Nah, you don't need an 'NVidia chip' for this purpose, a reasonably modern mobile phone will do and has all the sensors you want. Just add a battery, 4 motors with propellers and something (other than the battery) which goes boom and voilà, an autonomous drone. Some [1] mobile [2] phones [3] even have their own thing-that-goes-boom [4] built in from the factory to make this project even easier to accomplish.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcoU2mXJJ3k

[2] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252212685

[3] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/6281000/iphone-explosion-video...

[4] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250125537

Nvidia has chip for IoT purposes (jetson) thats being used by lockheed and other mil majors in their products

Yeah those optic fiber drones on the video are so easy to jam lol

> The longest-range battery-powered drones have a range of only 14 km or so (and probably cannot carry enough explosive that far to help much with an attack like yesterday's attack)

You are completely, utterly clueless.

Even the longest recorded strike with fibre optic seems to be a lot longer than that.

Battery powered though? And "like a helicopter with multiple rotors" (term?) as opposed to like an airplane with wings and elevators?

I am not aware of any fibre optic drones that aren't battery powered.

OK, thanks.

why can't drones park on or near power lines and inductively charge?

Would be kinda neat to see drones hanging off power lines like bats.

Power lines mess up your communication signals.

This Danish group is building drones for power line inspection which do exactly that: https://drones4energy.dk/