FPV Killed the EW star? EW Killed the FPV Star?
Weaponized civilian First Person View drones (FPV drones) have dramatically reshaped the landscape of the war in Ukraine, particularly from the summer of 2023 onwards. Prior to this revolution, various types of commercial drones played critical roles, primarily as ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets. Since 2014, a cornerstone of Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) defense has been Electronic Warfare (EW), broadly encompassing. The iterative, lethal dance between drones and EW since February 2014 has unfolded a rich tapestry for observers, revealing insights into the potential future of warfare where EW and drones intertwine.
In the conflict’s nascent stages, Ukrainian forces extensively utilized commercial off-the-shelf drones, such as those from DJI, for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes. Russia’s counterplay involved deploying military-grade EW systems alongside law enforcement tools like Aeroscope. The latter, while originally a benign tool used by law enforcement to detect and track illegal drone flights, revealed its strategic potential by pinpointing both the drone and its operator. This turned a security feature into a significant tactical asset, providing Russian artillery units with precise coordinates for their targets. To circumvent this vulnerability, volunteer groups innovated, creating drones impervious to Aeroscope and, to some extent, resilient against military EW. Nevertheless, until 2022, all civilian drones were considered a last-resort asset used by volunteers to compensate for the lack of proper military systems. In all honesty, the impact of civilian drones during this period was not comparable to what occurred 8 or 9 years later.
The situation shifted dramatically with the escalation of Russian aggression from February 24, 2022 onwards. Russian forces found themselves unexpectedly vulnerable to civilian drones, being their “thunder run” strategy (or Operation Vistula version 2022, if you will) not particularly compatible with the mobility limitations of most military EW systems. What remains unexplained is the apparent neglect of the need for a significant number of Aeroscope terminals. This oversight could be attributed to a dismissive attitude among Russian officers towards the capabilities of civilian drones in a high-intensity conflict. This opened a window of opportunity that allowed numerous volunteers and military personnel to gain a decisive intelligence advantage for their forces using hundreds of cameras perfectly still in the sky and connected to simple yet effective battlefield management systems. Coupled with an increasing number of attacks using grenade tosses and, finally, “kamikaze” drones, Russian officers became increasingly aware of the extent of the civilian drone threat.
As the front lines stabilized following strategic withdrawals and counteroffensives, the nature of drone warfare evolved. Russian defenses adapted, deploying more sophisticated C-UAS systems and beginning to leverage drones themselves, setting the stage for a nuanced “Cat and Mouse” game. EW efforts primarily focused on jamming control and video radio links. However, the proprietary nature of DJI’s OcuSync protocol, which was not designed to withstand dense jamming environments, led to a strategic pivot towards FPV drones with modular construction, enabling rapid adaptation to EW countermeasures.
Russian awakening to drones happened at the same time as the front freezing, especially after the October 22 Kharkiv counteroffensive. Sluggish Russian offensives cost dearly, and an increasing part of casualties were caused directly or indirectly by drone operators. It needs to be noted that commercial products such as DJI Mavics were “anonymized” (firmware hacked) everywhere, rendering Aeroscope useless. Nevertheless, Russians started to adopt commercial drones and develop their own Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs), leveraging their EW and artillery advantages and trying to compensate for their delay in combat drone usage. Cat and Mouse games really started on both sides.
The main EW usage during all of 2023 has been jamming, either control radio link or video radio link. When jammers usage surpassed a certain density, DJI’s OcuSync radio protocol could not cope with it. Being proprietary, it’s not modifiable in frequency band or power, and both control and video signals use it. A jammer can attack both signals simultaneously and the drone becomes unrecoverable most of the time. As a result, DJIs have been used more and more far from the contact line and in ISR roles. Meanwhile, the modular construction of FPVs allowed for rapid evolution to enhance their resilience against EW.
Analog video signal has become the most popular option by far until 2024. It offers the drone operator a a brief window to correct the drone’s path upon detecting interferences before signal loss. Besides, there are more powerful options for the drone maker (5 watts VTX are offered); finally, 1.2 GHz is gaining more and more popularity against the previously reigning 5.8 GHz bandwidth due to its superior obstacle penetration and lesser jammer coverage. However, the analog VTX’s lack of encryption meant it could be intercepted by any receiver, exposing the drone’s visual feed. Various mitigation strategies were explored, from encryption layers to digital protocols such as HDZero, Walksnail or new Open Source alternatives.
In war zone, the most popular control radio protocol is ELRS. Being Open Source, it is not only offers more affordable hardware than its main rival (TBS Crossfire), but also it’s modifiable via software. It has been adapted in order to use frequency bands different than the original (868/915 MHz). This produces a serious headache for EW operators, since they have to cover a much wider band. During March 2024, final tests of 433 MHz ELRS pairs are underway, further challenging traditional EW methods.
Nevertheless, the most important disruption of all is distributed mass. Instead of a swarm blitzkrieg with clouds of drones hitting everywhere during very short bursts, an ever-growing number of drones are sparsely covering more space during much more time (24/7, weather permitting). Distributed mass is the main culprit of the actual and operational transparent battlefield, and more and more numerous “kamikaze” drones hit a constantly expanded range of targets. Electronic warfare is adapting to this new reality, confronting mass with mass.
There are just too many commercial drones to deal with just with previous radio frequency detectors and jammers. Even with substantial drone friendly fire from brute force jamming, previous systems are just not enough. Until now, hacksymmetrical warfare is being won, well, by the hackers. Their development cycle is just too quick for conventional electronic warfare. Consequently, both sides are either developing or acquiring civilian RF detecting equipment, while war startups and even small groups develop in a very hacker way new, simple and good enough jammers that stack one layer after another to the battlefield’s electronic defense.
Two examples: more and more affordable short-range jammers are installed on vehicles, from tanks to armored personnel carriers and now to trucks, pickups, and even 4x4s. Being limited and unsophisticated, such systems at least contribute in a certain way to drone threat mitigation. Likewise, more and more individuals on the front line carry simple, commercial RF scanners with them. Configured to detect drones across various frequency bands, these devices, though far from perfect, have begun to save lives by providing precious additional seconds of warning before a drone’s imminent attack.
The electronic battlefield is now a huge game of masses of cats and mice. Being commercial drones so disruptive and threatening, drone operators are high priority targets. Because of that, operators have had to reinvent camouflage techniques, and the hackers that make their drones evolve are working on every modification of RF equipment that offers an advantage. Besides the mentioned frequency band modification, hackers have developed and refined two-way, two-signal repeaters for drones. Such systems are attached to another drone that floats stationary close to the operator and well above the ground, and relay both signals to and from the drone. Repeaters more than double the practical range of drone comms and thus EW cats have to search in a much wider area than before.
Hackers and war startups are raising their antes. They want first to erode jammers’ effect, implementing terminal targeting autonomy capabilities (that are already being announced mid-March), and during the next months more and more developed home-on-jam systems will be fielded. Home-on-jam capabilities will target autonomously any jamming emission in range. After these advances that let the mouse hunt the cat, what will happen to the EW cat? Will FPV kill the EW star?
We cannot be sure. The challenge is going to be unprecedented, but on both sides of the line, the same people are struggling all the time: hackers. Finally, civilian hackers have fully entered into all kinds of warfare, from narco and organized crime to full-fledged wars, passing through a wide gray zone full of plausible deniabilities. While drones were the most visible and impactful part of this process, the true protagonists are, as always, humans. Ukraine is just the first war of the hackers.
The corollary for us Westerners cannot be but threatening and even ominous. We have no masses, no drone masses or EW ones. What is worse, the best hackers in the entire world are totally disconnected from defense systems development. The Ukrainian experience, where a vibrant war startup scene has emerged, suggests a model for integrating maverick hackers into our defense strategy. As the first hacker war continues to unfold, it serves as a reminder that in the era of electronic and drone warfare, the most critical assets are not just the technologies we deploy but the human ingenuity that powers them.
