Unexpected Decision: Why Russia Is Installing Extra Cameras on Its Drones

An Unexpected Decision: Why Russia Is Installing Additional Cameras on Its Drones Petro Sineokiy

The Ukrainian military has found a solution to combat Russian reconnaissance UAVs using FPV drones. Now the occupiers are thinking about how to save their drones.

Defence Express editor-in-chief Oleg Katkov told Channel 24 about this, commenting on the information that Russia has begun installing rear-view cameras on its reconnaissance drones.

Why Russia is installing additional cameras

As Katkov noted, so far it is clear that these are makeshift solutions. They probably want to capture the moment when a Ukrainian anti-aircraft FPV drone approaches the drone.

It is difficult to say how well it works. It is unclear at what point a low-resolution camera will be able to detect an FPV drone. There are also questions about the camera's direction; the fact that a separate person should monitor this, etc.

< p class = "bloquote cke-markup" > What tactics could be used here ? Let's say the enemy has spotted an anti-aircraft drone. The first thing it can do is simply increase its speed to escape. Anti-aircraft drones have a relatively short time in the air. First, they need to rise to a height of more than 1 kilometer, and then accelerate to a range of 100-180 kilometers per hour. All this eats up the battery, – Katkov said.

< p > Despite this, the field of anti-aircraft FPV drones is actively developing. There have already been samples that have exceeded the 300 km/h threshold. Therefore, this should not have been a significant problem.

There were ideas on the occupiers' social networks about installing a small electronic warfare system that could jam FPV drones. There are many questions here, too. After all, there is no free space or power supply for such things on a drone. Although it is possible to come up with something here.

The electronic warfare system works against certain frequencies. For example, they counteract standard frequencies. Ours use non-standard ones. This is common practice. Given the importance of anti-aircraft drones, it is important for them to integrate such things as machine vision and auto-guidance. Then it will be possible to ignore the conditional Russian electronic warfare on drones, which has not yet been noticed, – said Katkov.

Pay attention! Ukrainian Defense Forces units are currently using attack drones that are capable of shooting down enemy reconnaissance drones such as the Orlan-10, ZALA, etc.