Image: Defense Blog
What’s new: A report that Russian drones are using a magnetic compass bolted on a location where the operator can look down at it to help ensure the drone stays on course.
Why it’s important: It is evidence of the increasingly contested navigation warfare environment.
What else to know:
- In her book “Little Blue Dot” Katherine Dunn reports that Ukrainian drone operators have done the same thing.
- “The prudent navigator uses all means available to determine their position.”
Russia’s cutting-edge drone upgrade is a $2 camping compass
- Ukrainian defense advisor Serhii Beskrestnov said Russia fitted Molniya attack drones with a magnetic compass read periodically by an onboard camera.
- The modification is designed to help the drone hold its course when satellite navigation signals are jammed or unavailable.
Somewhere in a Russian drone factory, an engineer looked at a satellite-jamming crisis that has cost the Kremlin countless drones and countless rubles, and solved it with the same tool Boy Scouts use to find their way out of the woods.
A Ukrainian radio technology specialist says Russia has started bolting a basic magnetic compass onto its cheap Molniya attack drones, with an onboard camera that periodically tilts down to read it, giving the drone a way to hold its bearings even when every satellite signal it depends on has been jammed into static.
