Thread by @GrandpaRoy2

Russian operators often claim that the Ukrainians hijacked their drone to explain its loss to their boss.
One of their own describes what really happens.

“So, we found out that you cannot hijack commercial drones (Mavics, Autelis, and Matrices) in the sense of taking control.
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“What can you do then?
The simplest thing is to let it fly away with the wind into the sunset. Again, to understand the problem, you need to know your hardware!
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“The Mavic 3 (the most common series on the front) determines its position in space by barometer (altitude), signals from navigation satellites (altitude, speed relative to the ground, drone's geographic location), and the Visual Positioning system…
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“…(machine vision cameras that memorize the surface beneath the drone and keep it in the position specified by the operator, simply by remembering what it is hovering over).
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“When all systems work normally, even a tea mushroom could control the drone — it hovers by itself, holds position and altitude, counters the wind up to critical values.
Now we introduce satellite failure into the equation. Complete failure.
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“On the 1.5 GHz frequency, a powerful emitter broadcasts white or pink noise. Satellites are far in space, their signals are weak. Jamming navigation is technically the easiest task.
But the Mavic has in reserve what is popularly called ‘vision-position.’
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“The drone remembers what it is hovering over and clearly sees these objects with its machine vision cameras.
Now introduce night, haze, scratched lenses from a previous landing in a cornfield, or lenses smeared with dirty hands on the belly.
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“Or a low-contrast underlying surface: lake, sea, snowy field, etc. Or high altitude (the manufacturer claims 250 meters, we practically believe in 200m max). And the drone cannot understand where it is. No satellite signals, no visual cues.
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“The drone only knows its altitude from the barometer. It is physical and cannot be jammed by radio interference.
And the drone, holding altitude, moves with the air mass. In other words, it is simply blown away. The drone switches to ATTI mode, meaning ‘altitude hold.’
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“The girl-fixer on the controller shouts ‘Alarm!!’ The fighter who held the Mavic five times and flew it up and down three times gets lost. Meanwhile, the drone is carried by the wind beyond the controller's range.
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“If the wind direction matches, to an inexperienced warrior it looks like: I raised the drone, and it rushed toward the Ukrainians. Hijacked, bastards.
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“And the fighter must do as Stitch in the picture [below] so the commander immediately understands the technological power of the Ukrainians.
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“To an experienced warrior, it looks like this: satellites dropped out, the drone fell into ATTI, I took the sticks and, like an FPV drone (which, by the way, still holds altitude), manually held it in the desired place.
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“And in general, I have flown in ATTI all my life; we have never seen satellites here.
So, if you look at the process from the point of view of hardware and physics, not magic — everything is clear, this is not even close to a hijack.”
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Source t.me/johnsnow2squad…