DJI is blocking operations of Ukrainian AeroScope complexes [GT from Ukrainian]

DJI is blocking operations of Ukrainian AeroScope complexes [GT from Ukrainian](epravda.com.ua)

29 points by bberkgaut 4 years ago | 13 comments

sbierwagen 4 years ago |

DJI civilian drones broadcast transponder data, as required by the FAA and many other nations' FAA-equivalents. DJI apparently encrypts these signals, and sells an expensive product to receive and decrypt them: https://www.dji.com/aeroscope Decoding transponder data presumably gives better accuracy than regular radio-directionfinding, which militaries have used in combat for 80 years now.

(UA has been operating consumer drones on the front lines, because they're suicidal, desperate, or both. Consumer drones use narrowband transmissions on unlicensed radio bands, making them easy to jam and track. Military drones use spread-spectrum transmissions on restricted channels, making them harder to jam and detect, but are generally a hundred or a thousand times more expensive per unit.)

Like anything expensive sold to institutions, I assume DJI Aeroscope has some kind of yearly support contract, and the field terminal regularly phones home. It sounds like DJI has remotely terminated UA transponder receivers, and not done that with RU units, which UA is unhappy about. We also see the downsides of installing infrastructure operated by a hostile foreign power.

dharmab 4 years ago | |

How is operating consumer drones "suicidal"? My impression was that the Russian Armed Forces have a deficit of sophisticated radio equipment, so the risk of position finding is lower than expected.

brokenmachine 4 years ago | | |

I read a comment somewhere that these DJI drones send out the location of both the drone and the operator.

Can't say I'd be a fan of using that in a warzone, although I believe they can be hacked to not do that.

rasz 4 years ago | |

>UA has been operating consumer drones on the front lines, because they're suicidal, desperate, or both.

Pretty much every army on a budged uses DJI drones, because they make the best civilian UAVs period.

https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1509849258811445252

"The Ukrainian forces attacked an UAV unit of the Russian army. The drones themselves were not abandoned, however a control unit for an Eleron-3 light reconnaissance drone was captured and a cargo truck was destroyed."

Five Mavic 3 boxes visible.

Polish domestic military UAVs video feed quality looks downright pathetic when compared even to something like 6 year old <$1K Mavic Pro. https://www.wbgroup.pl/en/produkt/flyeye-unmanned-aerial-sys... ~$150K a pop.

dharmab 4 years ago | | |

At least in the United States, released footage from military aircraft cameras is heavily blurred and degraded to obscure the true capabilities of the camera. The real images are crisp with extraordinary detail. I don't know if this applies to Poland's equipment.

jet_32951 4 years ago | |

CCP's position on the war defined. Listening to the politicians is a waste of time: what they do is the only touchstone.

car_analogy 4 years ago |

Auto-translated: https://www-epravda-com-ua.translate.goog/rus/publications/2...

natch 4 years ago |

In case it isn’t known by everyone, DJI is a Chinese company.

So it would appear this development is conveniently in line with the Beijing Communist Party’s policy of enabling the rape and butchering of Ukraine.

And possibly one of the first real world examples, if intentional (note I didn’t say it was intentional but we don’t have evidence that it’s not, and no need to point out the converse), of the dangers of using technology sourced from a brutal dictatorship.