Is it literally just a drone with a wired connection to the controller? How does that even work? Doesn’t that make for a very limited range?
Instead of radio waves they have a spool of wire. Prevents jammers from jamming the drones using electromagnetic waves.
Unclear on the specific specs of the drones Hezbollah uses, but the distance seems to be in the ballpark of 3-20 miles.
Pic of the drum that holds the spool. It literally just unspools km after km of hair thin optical fiber as it flies around. The added weight does limit range.
Kinda crazy you can fit 20km of wire in a container that size but I’m always surprised when i cut 4 heads of cabbage and it’s enough to feed 50 people, volume be crazy
They’re apparently seeing 50/60km fiber spools on the frontline in Ukraine now.
When the technician installed our fibre optic connection he showed us the actual glass part of the cable and it is miniscule
when i cut 4 heads of cabbage and it’s enough to feed 50 people, volume be crazy
You can feed so many people with this mfer, especially with a soup
just dont hold them in closed space later
It’s so funny because when I was in university there were multiple courses dedicated to electromagnetic warfare, specifically around taking down drones or assuming control over them using man in the middle attacks.
All to be countered by this simple, yet intuitive solution
mfs reinvented the kite
But wouldn’t it get stuck in a tree or something? I suppose you have to operate it from high ground?
Since the cable unspools from the drone, getting it tangled isn’t really an issue, unless you somehow loop the drone around and get the cable caught up in the rotors.
Oooohhh ok now I get it. Thanks!
Also, there are usually three kinds of drones. Monitor or overwatch drones, drop drones, and missile or suicide drones. Overwatch drones go up, do a set pattern, identify targets for the suicide drones or drop drones to hit. None of them require advanced flight knowledge or the kind of maneuvers that would be tangled in the trees.
The Ukrainians have a squad that is notorious for being able to get suicide drones inside very small windows on buildings, but this kind of high intensity maneuvering is pretty easily countered with cheap netting. The fact of the matter is that setting up an electronic jamming perimeter with netting prevents most drone attacks, but the issue is that setting these up while pushing out is extremely dangerous, as you are extremely vulnerable to wired drop drones.
And even if your front line is protected from drones, the 8km of open road to your logistics base aren’t! :)
Why not have the spool on the ground to make the drones lighter?
The entire length of the fiber would have to be dragged along with the drone if you did it that way. With the spool on the drone, the unspooled fiber falls to the ground and is stationary.
Spooling from the drone prevents movement restriction due to entanglement.
Why not have a spool on both ends?
Split the difference, spool in the middle
Now you need to engineer Your fiber optic line to have enough tensile strength to support the entire spool.
I’ll let the boffins sort that out, I’m the ideas guy
Spool remotely
50ft out your line snags on a branch and now the entire spool on your controller is useless!
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Unclear on the specific specs of the drones Hezbollah uses, but the distance seems to be in the ballpark of 3-20 miles.
The Electronic Intifada reported that the drones are built from components stripped from other common commodities[1], meaning the drone supply chain cannot be targeted by sanctions while also allowing the drones to be customized to the mission. They also report that the fibre optics enable zero-latency communication between the drones and their operators, and in addition the drones can operate low to the ground[2] and in hilly/city terrain that might otherwise naturally block radio frequencies[3]
EDIT: Deeper dive into the supply chain and construction of the drones[4]
“Using common parts that are in all kinds of other things”
The photo shows an off the shelf drone frame with off the shelf motors, propellers and antennas.
I’d love to think they are building their own flight controllers from cellphone parts and winding their own brushless motors, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
“they are using common parts used in common appliances”
Name even one part aside from maybe the batteries.
I can’t see the videos, but
Name even one part aside from maybe the batteries.
The motors? The camera? The antennae/rf circuitry? The frame could be out of so many different materials. Also, I think it’s fair to call drone parts “common”
I can only go on what is reported. I also don’t think it’s something so guerrilla as winding motors, but a mixture of smuggling and repurposing. To your point there are several[1] reports[2] of busting European drone smuggling networks destined for Lebanon.
At the same time Hezbollah makes their own claims such as this propaganda video they released of their drone manufacturing facilities, and an article with some more context.
The release appears intended to emphasize Hezbollah’s claim of maintaining localized production and logistical independence despite regional conflict and repeated Israeli assertions that the group’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded.
Hezbollah has long stated that it developed an internal weapons production network focused on drones, rockets, and precision-guided systems. In previous speeches, the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah described the movement as possessing domestically rooted infrastructure capable of sustaining operations under blockade or wartime conditions.
I wonder how long it will be before Israel orders the United States to try to classify fibre optic cable as a controlled technology requiring permits to manufacture and distribute. It wouldn’t work of course, but I wonder if they’ll try anyway.
Fiber optic implies the existence of sugar sonic.
The slickest basketball name still up for grabs
I’m sure there’s fanart of that somewhere on the internet.
Is it literally just a drone with a wired connection to the controller
yes
How does that even work?
pretty well if your goal is to avoid being jammed
Doesn’t that make for a very limited range?
yes but even a 1km spool of fiber for an hd video feed is pretty cheap and portable
What I’m wondering is could you use the fibre optic line to trace back the launch site of the drone? Is there a way to cover up your tracks? I guess you would just always be moving around your launch sites so tracing would be pointless.
I thought this, too. But the wires are so thin it’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack lol.
They could also just pull the wire back when the job is done, hook up a spool to an electric drill, and watch that thing fly back
in addition to the other options i would just not sit in the same place i launched a midrange drone attack from.
The vehicle you might use to trace the cable back just got blown up.
Sure, but as you noted you just move where you launch from. These can be launched in numbers from the back of a truck, miles away. In these conflicts with a small front, that miles away is “miles inside enemy territory”. And since it was launched from the back of a truck, even if you could somehow trace the wire miles inside enemy territory, by the time you do that said truck is long gone. You could bomb the position but…now you’re just bombing an empty field that tomorrow more trucks could just roll around the craters and launch more drones. And now it’s launching new drones at your position from again a different field.
It’s honestly amazing how simple and effective this technology is. I don’t even know how you counter it. Maybe smaller drones that automatically target behind these drones to try to cut the wires? Sounds expensive
I don’t even know how you counter it.
Other drones… with scissors. Snip snip.
An EVA
