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.
Channels are not fully encrypted, end-to-end. All communications on a Telegram channel can be seen by anyone on the channel and are also visible to Telegram. Telegram may be asked by a government to hand over the communications from a channel. Telegram has a history of standing up to Russian government requests for data, but how comfortable you are relying on that history to predict future behavior is up to you. Because Telegram has this data, it may also be stolen by hackers or leaked by an internal employee. "The argument from Telegram is, 'You should trust us because we tell you that we're trustworthy,'" Maréchal said. "It's really in the eye of the beholder whether that's something you want to buy into." Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Kyiv-based lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties, called Durov’s position "very weak," and urged concrete improvements. In 2018, Russia banned Telegram although it reversed the prohibition two years later. Telegram, which does little policing of its content, has also became a hub for Russian propaganda and misinformation. Many pro-Kremlin channels have become popular, alongside accounts of journalists and other independent observers.
from us
