Ukraine is working to defeat Russian unobstructed fiber-optic drones

• The war in Ukraine gave rise to explosive-laden drones modified with fiber-optic cables.
• These drones are dangerous because they cannot be jammed by electronic warfare and are harder to detect.
• But one Ukrainian company is developing a solution so that soldiers on the front lines can find drones.

Russian forces are using explosive-laden unmanned aerial vehicles linked to their operators by fiber-optic cables to deliver non-damaging precision strikes on Ukrainian troops and military equipment, and Kyiv is looking for a way to fight back.

Fiber-optic drones have been increasingly appearing in combat over the past year, and that’s a challenge. These drones are dangerous because they cannot be silenced by traditional electronic warfare means and are difficult to defend against, underscoring the need for a solution.

Drones are a “real problem” because “we can’t detect and intercept them” electronically, Yuriy, a major in the electronic warfare unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, told Business Insider. “If we can see, we can fight.”

The problem is one that the defense industry is scrutinizing. Kara Dag, for example, is a US-Ukrainian technology company that develops software and hardware to defend against Russian drones for the military and is working on a solution, but it’s still early days.

The company’s chief technology officer, who goes by the pseudonym John for security reasons, said the current conflict is a “drone war.” He told BI Ukraine has done well in this fight with jamming techniques, but Russia has found ways to bypass some of its defenses.

Fiber-optic drones, which Russia appears to have begun using in combat last spring first person viewor FPV, drones, but instead of relying on a signal connection, they are connected by cables that maintain a stable connection. As a result, these drones exist resistant to electronic warfareas radio frequency interference, and provide high-quality video transmission.

In August, combat footage from Russian fiber-optic drones began to be distributed, indicating a longer presence on the battlefield. Both armies now use these drones.

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Fiber optic drones are very dangerous, John said, because they can fly in tunnels, close to the ground, through valleys and in other areas where other drones can lose contact with their operators. They are also difficult to detect because they do not emit any radio signals.

According to him, Russia can use these drones to destroy Ukrainian armored vehicles and study its defensive positions. Because they don’t have bandwidth issues, these drones “can transmit very high-quality images, and they can literally see everything.”

However, drones are not without their drawbacks. Yuriy shared that fiber optic drones are slower than untethered FPV drones and cannot change direction dramatically. According to him, Russia also does not have too many of these drones and does not use them in all directions of the front line. But where they are used, they are a problem.

Since jamming does not work on fiber-optic drones, work is underway to explore other options for stopping these systems, such as audio and visual detection. But such technology can be expensive and difficult to manufacture.

John said the company has developed a low-cost solution for finding fiber-optic drones. One element of this system is a set of dozens of microphones that can be focused on a single point in the sky to listen for any nearby drones. The second element is an unfocused infrared laser that shines a light on any object in a certain part of the sky, and a camera records any reflected light that comes back.

This is the only device that can be placed at a distance of about a kilometer from the positions of the troops. John said the device is undergoing laboratory testing and the next step will be to deploy it in real combat conditions on the front line next month. It is planned that in the future several thousand such devices will be produced every month.

The deployment of fiber-optic drones—and Ukraine’s subsequent efforts to counter them—underscores that both Moscow and Kyiv are constantly trying to innovate drone systems before the enemy can adapt, a trend that has been evident throughout the war.

The Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov told about this in a previous interview with BI technology and the drone race playing out this struggle as a “cat-and-mouse game.” According to him, Kyiv always tries to be a few steps ahead of Moscow.

Last month, the Ukrainian military said that it was testing fiber optic dronesadding that “FPV drones with this technology are becoming a big problem for the enemy on the front lines.”

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian government platform that promotes innovation in the country’s defense industry shared new footage demonstrations of fiber-optic drones on social networks. Russia, if it hasn’t already, may soon find itself working to counter these new drones as well.