Ukraine used ArduPilot to help it wipe out Russian targets. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Open source software used by hobbyist drones powered an attack that wiped out a third of Russia’s strategic long range bombers on Sunday afternoon, in one of the most daring and technically coordinated attacks in the war.

In broad daylight on Sunday, explosions rocked air bases in Belaya, Olenya, and Ivanovo in Russia, which are hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Security Services of Ukraine’s (SBU) Operation Spider Web was a coordinated assault on Russian targets it claimed was more than a year in the making, which was carried out using a nearly 20-year-old piece of open source drone autopilot software called ArduPilot.

ArduPilot’s original creators were in awe of the attack. “That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy,” Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack.

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[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (3 children)

How could so many operators coordinate and then disappear? Seems that there were no Ukrainians nearby. FPV operating via Internet would be impossible due to lags and unstable signal.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 days ago

Looking at the video footage they flew extremely slowly at the end. The planes were stationary so they positioned themselves above the planes and then slowly descended.

[–] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've read they attach fiber cables to drones to avoid interference

[–] eRac 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This attack hit airbases all over Russia. Smuggling operators into Siberia to fly the drones seems unreasonable.

[–] Tenkard@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah you're definitely right

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

ArduPilot sounds like it could make high latency piloting possible:

ArduPilot can handle tasks like stabilizing a drone in the air while the pilot focuses on moving to their next objective. Pilots can switch them into loitering mode, for example, if they need to step away or perform another task, and it has failsafe modes that keep a drone aloft if signal is lost.