[Phlarp]

Birdshot is very effective against plastic propellers and soft side lipo batteries, which are both virtually universal critical components on FPV quadcopters.

3 flights actually seems pretty good given the conditions-- I suspect they aren't walking out to fetch any crashed or malfunctioning devices in an active combat zone and the analog video signals are exceptionally easy to interfere with.

[causality0]

Sure, but how does the effective range of birdshot compare to useful flight altitudes? How difficult is compensating for drift and elevation? What's the ideal shot size and choke for killing drones? If someone with the best anti-drone load out sees a drone, how long and how many rounds does it take on average to down one?

[Phlarp]

"The best anti-drone load out" in the context of FPV quadcopters is going to be a radio transmitter configured to overwhelm their video or hijack control through frequency hopping attacks. The marginal cost of taking down the drone is virtually zero, radio jamming provides a continuous wide area of denial without user input and can't be overwhelmed by a swarm of attacking drones like a point defense turret could be.

The RC control channel is unencrypted and the video feed is analog. If I'm being attacked by FPV drones I'll take a freshly certified ham radio operator over a world champion duck hunter any day.

[causality0]

The RC control channel is unencrypted and the video feed is analog.

This is completely wrong, as long as you're talking about the most common drones in Ukraine, the DJI Mavic Mini and Mini 2.

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1607790/FULLTEXT...

[Phlarp]

While I'm sure there are some DJIs being used for recon, my understanding of the situation is that the overwhelming majority of drones used as guidance / delivery systems for munitions are hobbyist style DIY fpv drones. They are less expensive, have significantly higher payload carry capability and can be constructed from more generally available and interchangeable components[1][2][3]

For these types of drones all the consumer and FOSS control links are unencrypted and critically vulnerable to frequency hopping hijacking attacks [4]

The video and control for all of these systems (including DJI) can be disrupted by jamming consumer and hobbyist frequencies; 300-975mhz, 2.4ghz, and 5.8ghz.

As with any information coming from active modern war zones, the incidence of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda will be high.

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2023/03/24/russia...

[2]https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/03/24/...

[3]https://dronedj.com/2023/03/01/ukraine-reportedly-assembles-...

[4]https://www.vox.com/2016/10/28/13406082/hackers-control-cons...