Radio technology specialist, military engineer and engineer Sergey «Flash» Beskrestnov said that Russian engineers have begun serially installing an additional camera in the tail of Zala reconnaissance UAVs that tracks the approach of Ukrainian FPVs. This, together with «machine vision», allows them to perform evasive maneuvers.
Radio technology specialist, military engineer and engineer Sergey «Flash» Beskrestnov said that Russian engineers have begun serially installing an additional camera in the tail of Zala reconnaissance UAVs that tracks the approach of Ukrainian FPVs. This, together with «machine vision», allows them to perform evasive maneuvers.
«Our adversary has switched to producing the Zala UAV with a serially built-in system for evading our anti-aircraft drones. Model Z16», — Serhiy Flash reported in his Telegram. He added that a new interface module with two HDMIs is used for this.
In 2024, the Ukrainian military began using FPV drones as air defense means to shoot down Russian Zala, Orlan, and Lancet drones.
The success of Ukrainian FPV drones has alarmed Russian pro-war propaganda Telegram channels, who write that this is becoming a serious problem for them. They are concerned that FPVs will begin to threaten not only unmanned aircraft, but also military aircraft, in particular Russian helicopters.
Therefore, Russian designers began to invent means of countering anti-aircraft FPVs. The Military portal first reported on the atypical activity of Russian reconnaissance in October last year, but now there is final confirmation of the appearance of a new technology on Russian UAVs. The technology is built on the basis of «machine vision», which provides optical detection and selects a command for one of the evasive maneuvers.
The idea is that thanks to the additional camera, the Russian drone will notice the approach of the anti-aircraft FPV in advance and begin to make sharp evasive maneuvers until the Ukrainian drone runs out of battery.
The computer will see the drone through the camera and, based on its position, give the command to perform one of the evasive maneuvers.
«Of course, this is a challenge for us. What to do? Add our own machine vision system to our drones, which will react to the evasive maneuver and finish off Zala. In my dreams, this should be done by the engineering department. Setting tasks to develop countermeasures one step ahead of the enemy», — commented Serhiy Flash.
Previously, Ukrainian developers from the Sky Hunter company presented an automatic system that will help shoot down enemy drones with anti-aircraft FPV drones with virtually no human intervention.
