Dutch Uncle
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All long wars produce leaps in technology. WWI produced the airplane and submarine, WWII jets, radar and atomic weapons, Vietnam sensors and electronic intelligence. From Afghanistan and Iraq, the US gained drones and satellite tracking. Now, lesser actors are expanding that tech into low cost options.
Iran is mass-producing the Shahed-136 "kamikaze" drone and selling them to Putin for use in Ukraine. Not only does this support Iran's technology industry but allows them more R&D funds. The Russians, too, are experimenting with the new tech. Note that the off-the-shelf tech can have negative consequences for non-combatants by terrorists.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/shahed-136-with-cellular-modem-found-in-ukraine-what-it-means
Shahed-136 With Cellular Modem Found In Ukraine: What It Means
Here are the possibilities of what the addition of improvised cellular communications to Russia’s Shahed drones means.
Iran is mass-producing the Shahed-136 "kamikaze" drone and selling them to Putin for use in Ukraine. Not only does this support Iran's technology industry but allows them more R&D funds. The Russians, too, are experimenting with the new tech. Note that the off-the-shelf tech can have negative consequences for non-combatants by terrorists.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/shahed-136-with-cellular-modem-found-in-ukraine-what-it-means
Shahed-136 With Cellular Modem Found In Ukraine: What It Means
Here are the possibilities of what the addition of improvised cellular communications to Russia’s Shahed drones means.
The largest single attack against Ukraine by Russian Shahed-136 type drones last week led to an unusual discovery. Technicians from a Ukrainian drone training and development company said they found a 4G modem with a SIM card from the Ukrainian Kyivstar telecom firm inside some of the downed drones. This could have implications of varying degrees of impact.
The Victory Drone company initially suggested on Telegram that the SIM card and modem could be used by Russia to track the remains of down drones, gain additional navigation via cell phones or telemetry “to adjust the flight mission in real-time.”...
...From observing the drones’ seemingly jury-rigged innards, the Victory Drone technicians concluded “we are dealing with Russian Federation experiments, and not a serial product.”
As to why Shahed-136s would be equipped with cellular communications, there are a number of possibilities. Doing this to track drones after they crash, assuming they remain intact at all and this modification is not noticed, seems unlikely, although it's possible. Using cell towers to help navigate may be possible, but that would require integration with the drone's autopilot among other modifications. Still, even updating the drone's position intermittently using network-provided geolocation could help correct for GPS disruption and error. This is especially relevant as Russia is trying to overcome GPS-denial tactics.
But using cellular networks to enhance drone capabilities is not a new idea, it's something we have discussed for years. Drones can leverage cellular data in lieu or in addition to traditional datalinks. In urban environments, where cellular coverage is very robust, this can be highly beneficial as the dense urban environment means line-of-sight datalinks are severely limited in range, especially when operating very near or even inside structures. A drone that requires constant man-in-the-loop control can get that via the commercially available bandwidth phone companies provide anywhere in a city. This greatly expands the flexibility of drone operations in these environments. Obviously, there are also emerging security risks when it comes to how nefarious actors could potentially leverage this off-the-shelf capability....
