Thread by @DanielR33187703

A number of companies have been making money from the war in Ukraine. This is a series of threads that look at various videos posted by two companies who supply equipment related to drones. The goal is to obtain a better idea of what is happening.

1. The Chinese company Skywalker Technology sells kits for controlling drones using fibre optics. Shown here is a quadrotor with a spool holding a few km of optical fibre. The fibre leads to a base station so control signals can be sent to the drone and video sent back.

2. In April 2024 Skywalker posted a video showing a heavy drone carrying mortar shells over what appears to be an abandoned building site beside an orchard and greenhouses. There are logos for Skywalker and a company called Drone System Innos (DSI). Who is DSI?

3. DSI does not have much presence. However, it had a booth at the 2024 DronTech in Bangkok. The associated profile gives its location in Tianjin, China and mentions the DS-1650 and DS-1200 drones. There is also a link (sort of) to . Who is dstechuas? dstechuas.com

4. DSTECHUAS is maker of fixed-wing VTOL and multirotor drones. Their website also mentions Drone System Innos and shows their factory. This shop is well used and very typical of shops found in older industrial parks (making it really hard to geolocate).

5. A few photos and videos take place on a small boardwalk that is covered by a shade sail. My hunch was that this is a convenient location for a photo because their home or office is nearby, i.e., they walked here. This would be very tough to locate but other details helped.

6. Specifically, DSTECHUAS also posted a number of photos & videos from other locations. For example, here is one frame from a long video. This video provides plenty of landmarks allowing its location to be determined.

7. This shows the exact location of the ground crew. It is beside the Duliujian river in Tianjin. DSTECHUAS posted videos of several VTOL flights that used this location. GPS coordinates are 39.225721, 117.617751.

8. There were several other videos showing various drones flying at this site. Concerning the tall buildings on the right side, China has huge numbers of these so they are generally not helpful for finding a location (bridges & electrical towers are much more useful).

9. This area is easily located by the gantry cranes since these are typically used at train depots.

10. DSTECHUAS also showed a photo of this drone controller.

11. It is straightforward to locate the map shown on the controller’s display. It is this part of Tianjin.

12. After finding the locations of (far too) many videos and photos a pattern emerges. All of the locations are clumped around one area of Tianjin. Since people tend not to travel far from home to fly their drones, it is likely the company office is nearby.

13. As expected, the location of the sail shade and boardwalk are in the same area. This was found simply by looking at the satellite images. 39.057709,117.042478

14. DS Tech UAS also posted photos of their workshop or office. Outside the door there is a distinctive metal fence and low brick wall. The drone is quite nice.

15. There are also a few photos taken of the outside of the workshop. Several distinctive features, especially the large electrical towers, give a good idea of what to look for on satellite images.

16. Street-view images in China are limited but we got lucky here. The DSTECHUAS office is located not far from the sail shade (39.0589183, 117.0426728). However, it turns out this was the location of their old office.

17. It seems business has been very good recently so they have moved into a much fancier building. Here, they set up a drone in the second-floor lobby of building #15. This building would have been tough to track down but a photo of their new-year’s decorations was very helpful.

18. The door has nice decorations and the room number confirms they are on the second floor. More interestingly, there are three names for the business. DSİ Drone System Innos, DS Innovations Co. Ltd. and Dongshengtai (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd.

19. This last name revealed a bunch of information including the office’s location (39.085393, 117.036587). This location is a big step up from assembling drones in their apartment and a grubby industrial building. Business must be going very well.

20. Stop by in a day or two for part 2 of this series where we will have a brief look at what this company with three names has been making.

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