The label “drone” in fact covers a whole family of weapons designed to do different things over different ranges. The battlefield ones that Ukraine will make millions of this year are small enough to be picked up with one hand, going on a one-way mission with an explosive against targets as far as almost 20 miles away. Then there are longer-range ones, including those Britain is buying on Kyiv’s behalf, such as the Helsing HX-2, which flies more than 60 miles, and has considerable built-in autonomy for seeking targets. There are also drones with ranges of more than 900 miles, which Ukraine has used to hit Moscow as well as arms dumps of fuel installations in European Russia.
As western countries try to keep up with these developments, Russia has also been impressively innovative in this lethal contest. The appearance during summer 2023 of the Lancet, which is able to “loiter” airborne for up to an hour while seeking targets, struck fear into many Ukrainian units. Western intelligence experts also concede that Russian electronic warfare efforts since then — regularly used to jam the signals between operator and aircraft — have often been better than theirs.
In order to leverage this advantage, the Russians have deployed battlefield drones piloted via fibre-optic cable that unspools as it flies towards its target, forming an unjammable link with their operators.Russia hit back at Ukraine with missile and drone attacks on eastern, central and southern parts of the country early on Saturday. In Kharkiv, three people were killed and at least 21 were injured. “It was a brilliant operation,” Barrons said of Ukraine’s strike, “but I know they’re only going to do it once, and those Russian missiles will come every day.”
Last month, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Kateryna Chernohorenko, told me Russian jamming meant its troops need to focus more on drones that can function without operators.
She referred to a system called Avengers, a visual database of all Russian equipment units that is uploaded before firing and allows the drone to seek its own targets in the final stages of flight, when counter-measures are at their most intense and control is often lost. The next great development of this contest, “autonomy”, will increasingly take humans out of the loop.
Arms races followed by cycles of innovation and counter-measure are a constant in military history. Israel’s 1982 Lebanon campaign marked the dawn of uncrewed aircraft as a key factor in modern war: dozens of them were used over the Bekaa valley to pinpoint a dense network of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles for destruction and save pilots from getting shot down.
On the back of this success, Israeli defence firms sold hundreds of drones to western countries — they could be used for observation, flew too high to be hit with gunfire and could circle for hours at a fraction of the cost of a fighter jet. Things did not progress much further until 2000 when, having sighted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan with a Predator uncrewed aircraft, the CIA realised that arming the Predator was essential, adding the ability to strike instantly when such a fleeting figure was spotted.
During the US “war on terror”, that aircraft, and its successor, the Reaper, flew thousands of strike missions over Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and other arenas of the counterterrorism battle, such as Somalia. But this system of war relied upon the enemy lacking its own advanced anti-aircraft systems, or indeed combat jets, which can easily destroy something like a Reaper.
During the past 18 months, for example, the Houthi rebels, who have anti-aircraft missiles, have shot down 19 American Reapers over Yemen, at a cost of $30 million each. The Bayraktar TB2, a similar aircraft developed by Turkey and used to great effect during the 2020 Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, was also quickly dealt with by the Russians when Ukraine tried to use them in 2022.
The label “drone” in fact covers a whole family of weapons designed to do different things over different ranges. The battlefield ones that Ukraine will make millions of this year are small enough to be picked up with one hand, going on a one-way mission with an explosive against targets as far as almost 20 miles away. Then there are longer-range ones, including those Britain is buying on Kyiv’s behalf, such as the Helsing HX-2, which flies more than 60 miles, and has considerable built-in autonomy for seeking targets. There are also drones with ranges of more than 900 miles, which Ukraine has used to hit Moscow as well as arms dumps of fuel installations in European Russia.
As western countries try to keep up with these developments, Russia has also been impressively innovative in this lethal contest. The appearance during summer 2023 of the Lancet, which is able to “loiter” airborne for up to an hour while seeking targets, struck fear into many Ukrainian units. Western intelligence experts also concede that Russian electronic warfare efforts since then — regularly used to jam the signals between operator and aircraft — have often been better than theirs.
In order to leverage this advantage, the Russians have deployed battlefield drones piloted via fibre-optic cable that unspools as it flies towards its target, forming an unjammable link with their operators.Russia hit back at Ukraine with missile and drone attacks on eastern, central and southern parts of the country early on Saturday. In Kharkiv, three people were killed and at least 21 were injured. “It was a brilliant operation,” Barrons said of Ukraine’s strike, “but I know they’re only going to do it once, and those Russian missiles will come every day.”
Last month, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Kateryna Chernohorenko, told me Russian jamming meant its troops need to focus more on drones that can function without operators.
She referred to a system called Avengers, a visual database of all Russian equipment units that is uploaded before firing and allows the drone to seek its own targets in the final stages of flight, when counter-measures are at their most intense and control is often lost. The next great development of this contest, “autonomy”, will increasingly take humans out of the loop.
Arms races followed by cycles of innovation and counter-measure are a constant in military history. Israel’s 1982 Lebanon campaign marked the dawn of uncrewed aircraft as a key factor in modern war: dozens of them were used over the Bekaa valley to pinpoint a dense network of Syrian anti-aircraft missiles for destruction and save pilots from getting shot down.
On the back of this success, Israeli defence firms sold hundreds of drones to western countries — they could be used for observation, flew too high to be hit with gunfire and could circle for hours at a fraction of the cost of a fighter jet. Things did not progress much further until 2000 when, having sighted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan with a Predator uncrewed aircraft, the CIA realised that arming the Predator was essential, adding the ability to strike instantly when such a fleeting figure was spotted.
During the US “war on terror”, that aircraft, and its successor, the Reaper, flew thousands of strike missions over Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and other arenas of the counterterrorism battle, such as Somalia. But this system of war relied upon the enemy lacking its own advanced anti-aircraft systems, or indeed combat jets, which can easily destroy something like a Reaper.
During the past 18 months, for example, the Houthi rebels, who have anti-aircraft missiles, have shot down 19 American Reapers over Yemen, at a cost of $30 million each. The Bayraktar TB2, a similar aircraft developed by Turkey and used to great effect during the 2020 Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, was also quickly dealt with by the Russians when Ukraine tried to use them in 2022.
DFR Lab sent the image through Microsoft Azure's Face Verification program and found that it was "highly unlikely" that the person in the second photo was the same as the first woman. The fact-checker Logically AI also found the claim to be false. The woman, Olena Kurilo, was also captured in a video after the airstrike and shown to have the injuries. The next bit isn’t clear, but Durov reportedly claimed that his resignation, dated March 21st, was an April Fools’ prank. TechCrunch implies that it was a matter of principle, but it’s hard to be clear on the wheres, whos and whys. Similarly, on April 17th, the Moscow Times quoted Durov as saying that he quit the company after being pressured to reveal account details about Ukrainians protesting the then-president Viktor Yanukovych. In this regard, Sebi collaborated with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to reduce the vulnerability of the securities market to manipulation through misuse of mass communication medium like bulk SMS. However, the perpetrators of such frauds are now adopting new methods and technologies to defraud the investors. Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, said: "Back in the Wild West period of content moderation, like 2014 or 2015, maybe they could have gotten away with it, but it stands in marked contrast with how other companies run themselves today."
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