Written by an individual who has spent 6 months as a foreign volunteer FPV pilot looking into effectivity of these drones on the frontline. He claims they are pretty much a fad with limited impact. The issues are:
- unreliable / cheap hw
- limited amount of radio channels for video / control (I thought they were running custom FCs - they aren’t!)
- weather and light conditions dependent
- suseptible to electronic warfare
- lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly
- not always the chapest or quickest option
Note: I am something of an FPV “pilot” myself, I am not sure I agree with everything being said (eg imo fpv drones aren’t toys for rich people - I am definitely not rich), but interresting reading anyway. Also - I’ve never been to a war - I know crap.
As a person who develops drones, and who has already read the article about a week ago, and given a review of it in another place:
The author’s unit was quite obviously supplied with crappy drones, his description hints of many recognizable issues. Their takeoff failure rate would be considered unacceptable in some circles. Their detonation failure rate hints of sappers erring on the side of caution (sappers want to go home alive). These problems can be solved with factory made munitions and decent quality assurance.
Some of his complaints are organizational. Lacking bomber drones, they wasted FPV drones to destroy stationary / abandoned / disabled vehicles. This is not a tech issue, but an organizational issue.
He’s correct to point out that heavily loaded quadcopters won’t safely take off in adverse weather. I must remind that a catapult launched UAV plane will reliably take off in adverse weather, exceed quadcopters in range and payload capacity, so we can guess that planes taking off from launch tubes will gradually replace quadcopters taking off from grass.
He’s correct to point out that once you go below direct visibility, your 5.8 GHz video link will break. There’s at least 3 solutions around this: an airborne repeater, fiber optic cable and bombing the target from altitude. All 3 solutions are already widespread.
He mentions lack of GPS, compass, inertial navigation and pilots getting lost. This is true, GPS is suppressed on the front and will likely stay suppressed, some drones are cheap and don’t provide the pilot with obvious and simple navigational aids (they should) and some pilots do get lost when navigating (this is unavoidable, but can be reduced).
He mentions need for long training. This is the current reality, but not the reality of a tailor-made combat drone system. Today, people are fighting a war with civilian sports supplies. That’s why pilot training is important to overcome difficulties. In a few years, you can give a ready-made drone system (in a sealed container, with a factory-made warhead) to a random guy or girl from a street in the middle of a storm, and he or she can shoot down a combat helicopter from 10 kilometers distance with it. Just liking firing an NLAW can be learned in 5 minutes (but not mastered, of course), firing a drone will be possible with 5 minutes of instruction in the near future.
“Fpv drones are for rich people”
You can get into flying whoops for like $250, and if you wait it out you can spend that over the course of months:
- Radiomaster pocket and a free sim ($60)
- Cheap box goggles down the line to improve the sim and use once you get your qwad ($50 - $100)
- When you finally don’t suck you can get a mobula3 or whatever for like another $120, now you’re flying FPV
FFS, one of the most prevalent YouTube fpv channels of all time started out while the guy running it was squatting out in a box car and dealing with serious substance abuse issues.
I’ve spent far more money on old eBay servers and weed over the years. But no one calls you rich for smoking dope or playing with Linux on EoL hardware…
These drones were originally designed to be toys for rich people.
The argument he’s making in the article is that they’re using drones for hobbyists, not military grade weapons with the level of QC associated with it. So even though your points might be factual, it’s not really that relevant to the discussion.
I can’t find that controller for much less than $90 shipped.
Also as an fpv pilot, the line, “lack of qualified pilots / hard to fly” makes me want to give it a shot.
These drones were originally designed to be toys for rich people. Before they were press-ganged into service as tools of war, they were used either in aerobatic displays or in races where a group of operators would compete in flying through an obstacle course. In either case, the drones were not meant to be easy to fly. They were meant to be highly maneuverable, but also unstable. First-person view drones cannot really hover, fly slowly, or linger above a target. The assumption among hobbyists is that enthusiasts will invest the time and money to become proficient at flying. As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks. The quality of operators it prepares is questionable, and graduates of the course need extra on-the-job experience to become truly proficient. Most drone pilots I encountered did not go through this course. Instead, they learned to fly drones on the job. Even experienced operators routinely miss their targets and crash into trees, power lines, or other obstacles.
This surprised me also. FPVs can’t hover (it ain’t EZ but I thought I can)? 5 weeks for training? I believe I’ve learned to fly “acro” (on a computer) inside a month - and I am going to work… I don’t know what they mean by “highly profficient” though. There may be complexities I don’t appreciate, that aren’t mentioned…
I wonder what configurator they’re using because I’m pretty sure most have a hold mode now. And if not, why not use one that does? It won’t hold like a DJI drone, but def works.
I’d say I was a decent pilot when I was flying a lot but my skill level after a month vs a year of flying was vastly different, and I could still be a lot better.
AFAIK betaflight (IMO the most coommon fc fw) will only start supporting
POSHOLD/ALTHOLDfrom yet unreleased version 4.6. I’ve recently seen a video about it from Joshua Bardwell - its far from perfect and relies on GPS module that Ukrainians don’t use (according to the article above) to keep the cost as low as possible.I agree that there is a difference between learning to fly and learning to fly well.
Damn they’re behind. I was using emuflight for a bit and iNAV. Wonder why they aren’t using iNAV. Great for long distance. You also need a barometer for altitude.
I’d take a job building and flying drones in Ukraine.
