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

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.

  • IndescribablySad@threads.net
    35•9 days ago

    No, definitely terrifying. War should be costly and terrible. That’s the only reason it isn’t more common, that its cost is objectionable. Pax economica, while flawed, is more subjective than ever before. And I do not like that.

    • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
      8•9 days ago

      War should be costly and terrible

      So that only the most powerful and elite can engage in a monopoly of violence eh? I’m far more concerned about a well funded local police agency thinking they need a bearcat, or a global power thinking they need a bomb that can split the earth in half than a neighbor with a drone and a 3d printer.

      You’ve got it all wrong. The dissolution of the high technology, grand tower approach to war fighting is a good thing.

    • @untakenusername@sh.itjust.works
      3•8 days ago

      War should be costly and terrible

      and it still is and it will be

      that’s the point, more often that not, to take money and burn it while producing more fuel for propaganda

      not saying that’s whats happening in Ukraine, but this has happened a ton in the past and will continue