Solar-powered ambush drones can wait for targets like land mines

Small racing quadcopters carrying explosives, known as drones or FPV in sight in the first person, have become the dominant weapon of war in Ukraine. Now, some are equipped with solar cells so that they can wait for prolonged periods to ambush targets, transforming them into a new type of terrestrial mine.

“The drone can sit near a road or a strangulation point and when it acquires its target, it can then make a rapid sprint at the target,” said Robert Bunker in the C / O Futures American consulting cabinet.

Drone ambushes, where the devices land next to a road or on a building and await a target, are already commonly carried out by the Russian and Ukrainian forces. But even with their disabled engines, their camera and their radio communications exhaust the drone battery, which limits the waiting time to a few hours at best.

Now, Russian FPV Backstage drones have been identified with solar load panels. They cannot feed a flight drone, but will feed its other electronic devices. The Ukrainian drone war expert, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, shared images of the solar configuration on his telegram channel to warn the new development.

The panels are sold as camping supplies for around $ 50, adapting to a backpack to recharge phones and other mobile devices. Amateur sites on the Internet already show how to adjust drone solar cells.

“The first generation solar system is awkward, but it is proof of concept,” explains Bunker, noting that the configuration observed will seriously affect the aerodynamics and the elevator of the drone.

A 5 watt solar charger weighs a few hundred grams and will feed the drone on the ground. Future versions are likely to be more sophisticated.

“A drone could perhaps have a solar roll that turns around and creates a solar load surface after landing, then detach them when it goes into combat mode,” explains Bunker. “New variants will be developed [that] We haven’t even considered.

A solar assisted drone can wait for ambush targets as long as the sun shines, moving again at dawn the next day to resume its vigil. Solar cells could also slowly recharge drone batteries during a day or more, which allows it to fly, land, reload and steal.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine also have drones with artificial intelligence capacities to identify and attack objectives without a human operator. Combined with solar recharge, they could saturate the battlefield with deadly units which are transported in position and left to find targets.

“It is the evolution of a punctual mine of land, the one on which you walk, towards a mine of land which has [a] Detection capacity and pulls something, a mobile system with zone detection which can then be precisely sheltered on the acquired target, ”explains Bunker.

Unlike a traditional minefield, a field of solar drones could be repaired, filling gaps where drones have been spent or destroyed. Alternatively, the field could slowly move to the enemy over several days with successive load cycles.

Current solar drones look like experimental prototypes and only a few have been seen. But the easy accessibility of parts means that the design could spread quickly, as for other small drone improvements. Cheap and easy to build, ambush drones could soon become common.