"Ukrainian drone enthusiasts sign up to repel Russian forces"
"“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."
"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, can easily pinpoint
the location of an inexperienced drone operator, and no one really knows what the Chinese firm 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. In the meantime, Ukrainian drone experts said they've been doing whatever they can to teach operators how
to protect their whereabouts."
"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."
"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."
"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."