“Kyiv needs you and your drone at this moment of fury!” read
a Facebook post late last week from the Ukrainian military, calling for
citizens to donate hobby drones and to volunteer as experienced pilots to
operate them.
One entrepreneur who runs a retail store selling consumer
drones in the capital said its entire stock of some 300 drones made by Chinese
company DJI has been dispersed for the cause. Others are working to get more
drones across the border from friends and colleagues in Poland and elsewhere in
Europe.
“Why are we doing this? We have no other choice. This is our
land, our home,” said Denys Sushko, head of operations at Kyiv-based industrial
drone technology company DroneUA, which before the war was helping to provide
drone services to farmers and energy companies.
Sushko fled his home late last week after his family had to
take cover from a nearby explosion. He spoke to The Associated Press by phone
and text message Friday after climbing up a tree for better reception.
“We try to use absolutely everything that can help protect
our country and drones are a great tool for getting real-time data," said
Sushko, who doesn't have a drone with him but is providing expertise. “Now in
Ukraine no one remains indifferent. Everyone does what they can.”
Unlike the much larger Turkish-built combat drones that
Ukraine has in its arsenal, off-the-shelf consumer drones aren't much use as
weapons — but they can be powerful reconnaissance tools. Civilians have been
using the aerial cameras to track Russian convoys and then relay the images and
GPS coordinates to Ukrainian troops. Some of the machines have night vision and
heat sensors.
But there's a downside: DJI, the leading provider of
consumer drones in Ukraine and around the world, provides a tool that can easily
pinpoint the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really
knows what the Chinese firm or its customers might do with that data. That
makes some volunteers uneasy. DJI declined to discuss specifics about how it
has responded to the war.
Taras Troiak, a dealer of DJI drones who started the Kyiv
retail store, said DJI has been sending mixed signals about whether it's
providing preferential access to — or disabling — its drone detection platform
AeroScope, which both sides of the conflict can potentially use to monitor the
other's flight paths and the communication links between a drone and the device
that's controlling it.
DJI spokesperson Adam Lisberg said wartime uses were “never
anticipated” when the company created AeroScope to give policing and aviation
authorities — including clients in both Russia and Ukraine — a window into
detecting drones flying in their immediate airspace. He said some users in
Ukraine have reported technical problems but DJI has not disabled the tool or
given preferential access.
In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they've been
doing whatever they can to teach operators how to protect their whereabouts.
"There are a number of tricks that allow you to
increase the level of security when using them,” Sushko said.
Sushko said many in the industry are now trying to get more
small drones — including DJI alternatives — transported into Ukraine from
neighboring European countries. They can also be used to assist
search-and-rescue operations.
Ukraine has a thriving community of drone experts, some of
whom were educated at the National Aviation University or the nearby Kyiv
Polytechnic University and went on to found local drone and robotics startups.
“They've got this homebuilt industry and all these smart
people who build drones,” said Faine Greenwood, a U.S.-based consultant on
drones for civic uses such as disaster response.
Troiak's DJI-branded store in Kyiv, which is now shuttered
as city residents take shelter, was a hub for that community because it runs a maintenance
center and hosts training sessions and a hobby club. Even the country's
president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, once paid a visit to the store to buy a drone
for one of his children, Troiak said.
A public drone-focused Facebook group administered by Troiak
counts more than 15,000 members who have been trading tips about how to assist
Ukrainian troops. One drone photographer who belongs to the Ukrainian
Association of Drone Racing team told The Associated Press he decided to donate
his DJI Mavic drone to the military rather than try to fly it himself. He and
others asked not to be named out of fear for their safety.
“The risk to civilian drone operators inside Ukraine is
still great," said Australian drone security expert Mike Monnik. “Locating
the operator's location could result in directed missile fire, given what we've
seen in the fighting so far. It's no longer rules of engagement as we have had
in previous conflicts." In recent days, Russian-language channels on the
messaging app Telegram have featured discussions on ways to find Ukrainian
drones, Monnik said.
Some in Ukraine's drone community already have experience
deploying their expertise in conflict zones because of the country's
long-running conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Monnik's firm, DroneSec, has tracked multiple instances just in the past year
of both sides of that conflict arming small drones with explosives. One thing
that Ukrainians said they've learned is that small quadcopter drones, such as
those sold at stores, are rarely effective at hitting a target with explosive
payloads.
“It would seem somewhat short-sighted to waste one,” said
Greenwood, the consultant based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I assume the
chief goal would be recon. But if things are getting desperate, who knows.”
DJI also has experience in responding to warfighters trying
to weaponize its drones and used so-called “geofencing” technology to block
drone movements during conflicts in Syria and Iraq. It's not clear yet if it
will do the same in Ukraine; even if it does, there are ways to work around it.
Small civilian drones are no match against Russian combat
power but will likely become increasingly important in a protracted war,
leaving drone-makers no option to be completely neutral. Any action they take
or avoid is “indirectly taking a side," said P.W. Singer, a New America
fellow who wrote a book about war robots.
“We will see ad-hoc arming of these small civilian drones
much the way we've seen that done in conflicts around the world from Syria to
Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan," Singer said. “Just like an IED or a
Molotov cocktail, they won't change the tide of battle but they will definitely
make it difficult for Russian soldiers."
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