And here I thought drones were radio controlled…
They were, now they aren’t.
You can interfere wirh radio waves, but not a fiberoptic line
My scissor begs to differ.
And how long are you going to survive in the no man’s land, operating your scissors?
I think I could manage a good few seconds.
Man, that’s gotta be hell on any wildlife left living in the areas in which it’s used. (I mean, I get the necessity, but dang)
Tillers too when this war ends (with Russia’s defeat) and it’s time to plant crops.
the whole war is really bad for the environment. not just locally. tanks don’t run on solar. burning fuel depots, etc…
we need to stop putin and his enablers.
There’s also a good chance a lot of these areas are smattered with land mines too.
The real problem is always in the comments
Then the crops grow, and they’re all full of microscopic glass fibre. Then the foodstuffs are shipped to the world. Then the foods are eaten and the GF joins the microplastics in our bloodstream.
Each cable can generate 80kg of fertilizer
Win-win
Huh?
I believe the implication is that when the Drone kills a soldier their body will fertilize the ground.
Presumably a corpse.
So whilst the drones are super-effictive (for now) they pose several serious problems - 1. Fibres can get tangled, maybe even affecting vehicles or other machinery, cars, whatever and 2. If you can view these from the air, you can use an fpv drone to trace them back to the operator (meaning they’ll need to change position more frequently and probablyclean up before returning to old positions). 3. That’s gonna be a heck of a cleanup operation.
A war always is a “heck of a cleanup”. These cables are by far not the worst part of it.
Us stupid humans will always find a way to kill each other.
The only question is what survives from the planet, not from our species…
None of your points are even remotely close to an actual problem, let alone a serious one lol
Given how thin those are, and how many there are it might be a waste of time to try to follow them.
They usually carry the spool on the drone so they don’t really get tangled because the feed end is at the source of the movement. It can always let out more slack to continue forward.
It looks like spiderwebs which immediately made me think of No Doubt.
Leave a message and I’ll call you back
I gotta screen my phone calls
What? Why is there so much fiber optic cable?
From Internet (not op):
Fiber-optic first-person-view drones are jam-proof. Sending and receiving signals along millimeters-thick but miles-long optical fibers, these FPV drones are impervious to the radio interference that can ground wireless FPV drones. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to defeat a fiber-optic drone.
So that’s where all of the USA’s fiber rollouts ended up
Just need sissors and a pogo stick to bring one down.
Russians can just mark their location to make it easier.
Are they tethered to the operator?
The drones have a spool of fiber optic cable. Some spools can reach 40km. The spool unwinds as the drone flies and yes it would either lead back to the operator or they could in theory have a node that it connects to and then from there connect to operator via cable or wireless. Really fascinating stuff imo
Now I’m curious how much a 40km long spool costs
Looking at Alibaba, the “bare fiber for FPV drone” cost around $600 for a 50km spool.
Very expensive probably. They are selling 1000 feet (I think that’s like 300m) on Amazon for between 300-900 USD.
Wait that seems like way too much. You can get 40km cabled so with a mantle for 5000 USD
Found something even better, here’s a spool of fiber from Corning (they are the industry leader) 24 km for 600 USD
Or random alibaba listing: 50 km for 134 USD plus shipping, minimum order 5 spools
Still way cheaper than the $58k it costs for a switchblade drone.
If you take the amazon price as reference. It comes out about the same when adjusted for length, maybe slightly more expensive.
Just several hundred dollars, and a visit from the ATF.
The drones are fly-by-wire
It’s initially a cool idea, but don’t the fiber optic lines give away the location of the drone operator? Or, at least where the drones are stored?
Sure, you hope out there in the open, you can follow them back to where they took off. And if you manage not to get spotted by a drone and blown up, you get to try killing the enemy in their tranches.
You know, just a casual, stress-free, totally low-risk Sunday stroll.
I think even a drone can follow the lines from reflections in the sunlight. Then, find where they converge and send in artillery, an air strike, or a drone strike.
Not from what I have read. They are only a couple of millimeters thick and a single strand can be hard to spot and follow on foot especially when it’s hanging off of trees and the like. I doubt you are seeing a tiny strand like that through fpv drone goggles. Could be wrong though.
What I do know is that Ukraine is using them and I’m inclined to believe they wouldn’t use something that wasn’t worth it for very long.
You can see an example here: https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1irsodi/the_ghost_of_khortytsia_battalion_of_the_karadag/
When there are lots of cables going in one direction, you can follow them as they reflect sunlight. I imagine the closer to the drone storage, the more prevalent all the fiber optic cables will be.
Not even that, looking online the cable is only 0.5mm thick.
I’ve seen some videos that show clearly how the cables reflect sunlight and become easy to see. You can see it in this video as well if you watch around 7 seconds and look towards the sun: You’ll see a bunch of strands in the background that are only visible due to the reflected sunlight.
There’s a difference between able to see a section of fibre and being able to follow it miles back to the operator.
Absolutely! My point was only that they can, in the right conditions, be very easy to spot. I’ve seen a video where the lines were also easy to follow along the treetops. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to follow the lines for many kilometres to their origin, but it does mean that if you have a rough idea of where to look for a drone team, the lines could reveal where they are.
Easy issue to solve since the fiber spool doesnt have to be attached to the remote controller… all a drone following fiber back would spot is a router looking thing at best.
They spot targets first then send these fiber optic guides drones on a one way trip to killsville.
At least that’s my understanding. I doubt they launch them from some central drone storage location, these drones are carried by a small team, fired off, then the team leaves the area.
I could be wrong though, I’m not an expert.
