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.

  • Saleh@feddit.org
    2·
    3 days ago

    Well, there is the whole payload aspect you need to figure out.

    If you have that figured out, the rest is and has always been relatively trivial in comparison.

    The trucks in the videos clearly never went through any check of the cargo. Could have had a simple trebuchet design in there and haul some explosives onto the airfield.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 days ago

      Yeah, that’s something I feel like is being taken out of context. It’s the getting the explosives within range of the planes that was impressive to me. They could have had mortars/rockets/etc. and probably done similar damage at that range.

      I’m sure drones increase the success rate, but it wasn’t drones that made that operation a success from my understanding.

    • ansiz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      The cargo area had a false ceiling didn’t it? Like I saw one that looked like you could open the back of the ‘trailer’ but there was a fake ceiling with the drones above that.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
        2·
        3 days ago

        Afaik they had fake ceilings yeah. However noone that would bother to look, would be tricked by fake ceilings. That trick exists since horse carriages. The fake ceilings only give the driver some deniability.