Ukraine's Massive Drone Attack Was Powered by Open Source Software 245
An anonymous reader shares a report: Open source software used by hobbyist drones powered an attack that wiped out a third of Russia's strategic long range bombers on Sunday afternoon, in one of the most daring and technically coordinated attacks in the war. In broad daylight on Sunday, explosions rocked air bases in Belaya, Olenya, and Ivanovo in Russia, which are hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Security Services of Ukraine's (SBU) Operation Spider Web was a coordinated assault on Russian targets it claimed was more than a year in the making, which was carried out using a nearly 20-year-old piece of open source drone autopilot software called ArduPilot.
ArduPilot's original creators were in awe of the attack. "That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy," Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack. On X, he tagged his the co-creators Jordi Munoz and Jason Short in a post about the attack. "Not in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. I just wanted to make flying robots," Short said in a reply to Anderson. "Ardupilot powered drones just took out half the Russian strategic bomber fleet."
ArduPilot is an open source software system that takes its name from the Arduino hardware systems it was originally designed to work with. It began in 2007 when Anderson launched the website DIYdrones.com and cobbled together a UAV autopilot system out of a Lego Mindstorms set.
ArduPilot's original creators were in awe of the attack. "That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy," Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack. On X, he tagged his the co-creators Jordi Munoz and Jason Short in a post about the attack. "Not in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. I just wanted to make flying robots," Short said in a reply to Anderson. "Ardupilot powered drones just took out half the Russian strategic bomber fleet."
ArduPilot is an open source software system that takes its name from the Arduino hardware systems it was originally designed to work with. It began in 2007 when Anderson launched the website DIYdrones.com and cobbled together a UAV autopilot system out of a Lego Mindstorms set.
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck Russia.
Re: (Score:2)
You must be American. See there are places with laws different from those in America. We call those places “countries” and some of these countries speak languages that might sound funny to you. We call those funny sounding things “languages”.
Also in domestic news, new federal employees must now write an essay praising dear leader. https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com]
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also in domestic news, new federal employees must now write an essay praising dear leader. https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com]
From your linked article:
According to the memo, the feral government's strategy to hire people to the civil service, dubbed the "Merit Hiring Plan," will require certain applicants to write four 200-word essays about their work ethic, skills and experience, commitment to the Constitution, and plans to "advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities."
Probably not a typo.
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3) commitment to the Constitution, and plans to 4) "advance the President's Executive Orders and policy priorities."
Is it a test as to how they plan on dealing with the direct conflict between these two?
Only hire people who say 4 is more important than 3
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Also in domestic news, new federal employees must now write an essay praising dear leader. https://www.newsweek.com/trump... [newsweek.com]
I'd like to read Trump's answer to question #1:
1. How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the Federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic, or personal experience.
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Dude, no country allows people to promote violence. This woman called for people to burn down hotels containing asylum seekers.
You do not have an absolute right to say anything you like. (And even when you have a legal right to, that doesn't mean the rest of the world has no right to judge you on your words and want nothing to do with you. But that's not the case here - someone was jailed for promoting violence. Good.)
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Dude, no country allows people to promote violence. This woman called for people to burn down hotels containing asylum seekers.
Dude, that's so wrong.
Brandenburg v. Ohio [wikipedia.org], 395 U.S. 444 (1969), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[1] The Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".[2][3]:âS702âS Specifically, the Court struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence.
People in the US can promote and even advocate violence. They just can't do that when there's both the intent and likelihood of triggering imminent lawless action. See also Hess v. Indiana, 414 U.S. 105 (1973), where someone who advocated lawless action was allowed to do that because the action wasn't imminent.
Now he'll be a target (Score:2)
Hopefully the Russians choose not to go looking for this guy.
Re:Now he'll be a target (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now he'll be a target (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should they? First, Ardupilot has been forked countless times already, and second, they probably use it too.
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It would be supremely ironic if not only did they use it but contributed to it too!
I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you need has been out there for a long time. The reason we're not drowning in a sea of drone-based terror attacks is that most people just want to live and aren't actually interested in killing anyone until they get motivated to do so.
Ukraine's motivated. As impressed as I am by what they've achieved, I'm surprised we haven't seen more autonomous weaponry. The tools already exist to geofence a drone so you can be confident that as it goes on its killing spree, it's doing so in an area you have declared free of invalid targets. A drone dropping silently from altitude to 360 no-scope Russian soldiers as it randomly dances around to make it hard to hit is something I'd expected to happen by now.
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I'd say it's conclusive proof that Open Source is bad for you, or at least bad for Vlad_Putin and his minions.
Re:I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score:5, Insightful)
Handguns were once 'the great equalizer', giving the power of a soldier to the common man, and not really requiring a great deal of skill or strength to use. You still need the nerve, and you're still going to be in a dangerous situation.
With a drone, I could have it fly to wait on somebody's roof for them to come home, use license plate and facial recognition for target confirmation, and then shoot them in the face as they walk to their front door.
It's horrifying. It's also equality in a way that handguns could never supply. Anybody with access to an electronics store and the Internet can do it with some effort.
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You'll be happy to know Ukraine is doing something very similar: drones with guns [forbes.com]. They also have machine guns mounted on mobile drones [newsweek.com].
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Re: I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score:2)
Re: I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score:2)
Putin treats dead soldiers as heroes
So then why do so many of them end up buried at the side of some backwoods, likely unnamed, road in Ukraine, instead of being taken back home for a proper funeral? And why is it that their surviving family never gets any of the money that they were supposed to (but weren't anyways) get paid during their time of service?
Re:I've been mocked for saying it for years (Score:4, Interesting)
Do be serious. Putin cares nothing about all those dead soldiers. But really, who cares what Putin thinks of his boys when they are in a country where they should not be and committing genocide?
As for "why target soldiers". Well because there, right on the front line, ever moving forward and nibbling at Ukrainian territory. They gave to be stopped, or at least slowed down massively.
Be sure Ukraine puts a lot of effort into hitting guns, radars, anti-aircraft systems etc. Not to mention recently far away airbases and bridges.
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Me too.
I think it is still coming. Normal criminals are not that creative. They're just working stiffs working mostly pretty terrible jobs. But some enterprising asshole will figure out the FPV-flying-grenade to take out a rival dealer or something, and then it is a proven method, and more of them will start thinking about how to use them.
And then there will be a booming civil drone defense business, as every wealthy person and office building s
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Criminals already use drones for smuggling drugs, as well as smuggling various contraband into jails.
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To quote sci-fi author William Gibson:
"...the street finds its own uses for things"
"The future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed."
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Everything you need has been out there for a long time. The reason we're not drowning in a sea of drone-based terror attacks is that most people just want to live and aren't actually interested in killing anyone until they get motivated to do so.
The same could be said for airline-based terror attacks, but we spend billions of dollars a year to confiscate bottled water, grope people and march them through nudie scanners.
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The drones do not need to randomly hop around.
They are so silent, you only hear them when they are in 30m or perhaps 50m range.
They do not pop up on (most) radar as most of it is plastics. So you need infrared scanners. And even if they do not hop around, and you can see it: a normal gun and a conscripted soldier or "released prisoner" most likely won't hit it.
So they need a "specialist" or two, who carries a shotgun.
Anti drone war fare will be lots of funny Gedankenexperiment(s).
In Europe, the "rules" woul
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I'm sure that if that happens people are going to be impressed by the result. Very impressed. It's just that they won't be favorably impressed.
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You can't shield that well. Navigation signals are ridiculously weak.
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And do reasonability checks with inertial guidance systems. I was doing that a decade ago, so I'm pretty sure it's just another GitHub download by now.
You can also have your drone accept an encrypted abort code. Presumably you're watching from a safe distance.
Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife and I have been laughing with glee and high-fiving each other over Ukraine having just handed Putin his ass. If what I've read is true, Russia doesn't even have the capability of replacing the destroyed aircraft. Having the feat accomplished via Open Source software is the icing, sprinkles, and candles on the 'Fuck You' cake that Putin is being forced to chow down on. I hope he chokes on it.
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On the one hand, I think it's awesome and hilarious that Russia's strategic bomber fleet got so smashed.
But that fleet hasn't been moving the front lines in Ukraine. Troops on the ground have been doing that, and apparently those front lines are still moving in Russia's favor. Also, strategic bombers being destroyed shifts the calculus of Russia's engagement with third countries. I'm worried that it increases the risk of broader war without significant progress in Ukraine. Maybe I'll be wrong, and Ukrai
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Correct.
Cruise missiles and the "new" hypersonic weapons.
That is why they are so far behind the frontline, they just used to launch, fly a bit around, and 2000km or 3000km away from Kiev they would launch the missiles.
Not sure what is known on your side of the planet. The attacked air bases were even up in Siberia. The Ukrainians used ordinary cargo trucks with modified roofs. In other words: they trucked the drones in trucks thousands of miles pretending to be ordinary cargo trucks behind the front lines.
T
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This attack wasn't about stymying their nucelar capability. It was to reduce their ability to yeet cruise missiles endlessly from 2000+ miles deep in their territory. And in that, it was immensely successful.
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these were nuclear capable strategic bombers. you do not touch them unless you want to invite untold trouble. ukraine is fucked anyway (mostly by its most dear "friends").
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these were nuclear capable strategic bombers. you do not touch them unless you want to invite untold trouble.
LOL seems they got slightly more than touched.
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LOL seems they got slightly more than touched.
The word you are looking for is: torched!
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They were retrofitted to start missiles, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles.
Were they still capable to carry nukes? No idea!
And no one cares.
The less the Russians have of that stuff, the better for all of the world - including Russian citizens.
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well, hate to break it to you but it didn't. all you have is a seconds long video showing a few planes burning criculated ad nauseam and tons of headlines. russia says 4 are irrecoverable. well, let's make that 10, since only 2 airfields out of 6 planned were hit. they still have 48 more. that's not "wiping off" one leg of their nuclear triad by any stretch. plus they still have 2 more.
What Russia says is a waste of everyone's time. They lie habitually about everything. In the next day or two there will most likely be more information released and independent confirmation.
it is a tough blow, and an embarassment if you like, but it's also an embarassent for nato and the us (who, opensource stories or not, necessarily had a hand in this) for violating the strategic arms agreement that supposedly intends to avoid nuclear war and mutual destruction and was still tacitly being observed (at least by the russians).
If you want people to care about evidence free nonsense you peddle suggest first starting start with basic grammar.
https://writer.com/blog/capita... [writer.com]
i guess now these bombers won't be in the open any more, susceptible to be monitored and watched. but it in no way "cripples" or "wipes" russia's nuclear capability, nor does it change the situation on the ground. it just makes our world more dangerous. way more dangerous. this was reckless.
Nobody is talking about wiping out nuclear capabilities. This is however significantly less airframes available to lob missiles at Ukraine. If they are lucky at any give
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You don't have to 100% destroy the planes to give Ukraine breathing space. You don't even need to completely wreck a single plane. Even minor repairable damage to some of the planes could be a significant boost to Ukraine, and still a great victory in terms of cost/benefit (plus no casualties on Ukraine's side).
Wikipedia states Russia has 55 Tupolev Tu-95 planes in service as of 2020. If the 4 "irrecoverable planes" are Tu-95 planes, that'd be a near 10% reduction in their in service Tu-95 planes. Similar
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this is sold in western media as another heroic gest, but it escapes nobody that it wouldn't have been at all possible without us/nato intervention. your "could be a significant boost" is hardly worth the strategic escalation that this implies and the media and audience here seems happily oblivious of. i would dispute any advantages but even if there were, i see no positive cost/benefit ratio here, quite the contrary. time will tell.
Re:Awesome! It gets better! (Score:2)
Today Ukraines Security Service (SBU) blew up Crimean bridge Column by Bomb
You will see it later on News, but on Ukrainian news it already News:"
The SBU announced that it had carried out a new unique special operation and had attacked the Krimsky area - once again under water.
The operation lasted for several months. SBU agents replaced the pillars of this illegal facility. And today, without daily casualties among the civilian population, at 4:44 am
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They can produce about two of those crafts per year. In theory.
But at the moment no assembly line is running, so finding the engineers and workers to start production is probably impossible, so you are right!
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Go ahead and use the not so constructive words. It's okay in war, and at this point, in politics.
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"Yes, neither Trump nor Putin are only bad and yes, Zelensky most probably is corrupt."
LOL BOTH SIDES!
"Meanwhile, I don't want Russia to break up either."
What do you mean by "Russia"?
"What I can say, in short, is that I love how precise this strike was and how little human collateral there was."
Considering that "media coverage is biased" how can you say this?
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I'm sure that media coverage is biased, but an attack on bombers on the ground is almost certain to have fewer casualties than shooting them out of the air, as long as you use conventional explosives.
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Re: Awesome! (Score:2)
Ukraine needs friends.
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"I mean just like Trump, media coverage on Putin is biased"
Yes, it's insane how maibstream outlets such as the NYT are normalizing Trump. The guy has his own crypto meme coin for crying out loud. The corruption is so open and brazen it's laughable, but the MSM is still obsessing over Biden's age, while Donnie boy re-truths that Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with a clone.
What an eff'ing joke America turned into.
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Why would you not want Russia to break up. I'm sure the people in regions outside Moscow would rather get a share of the money raised from exploiting the resources they have rather than all the profit goes to Moscow and they live in shit. I'm sure those same peoples would rather not live under the tyranny of the Moscovites. Why do you want to deny them their independence and freedom?
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> Yes, neither Trump nor Putin are only bad and yes, Zelensky most probably is corrupt.
Both sides! *facepalm*
I'm pretty sure if he was the Russian trolls would have flooded the zone with evidence by now. I'm not suggesting he's perfect, but the idea he's even slightly in the same zone as the other two is increasingly implausable.
> Meanwhile, I don't want Russia to break up either.
Why not? It's proven itself to be incapable of self-governance without turning into a horrific militaristic dictatorship. T
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We have reams of proof of Stumpy and Vlad's corruption.
We have bullshit and innuendo for the opposite case.
Put up or shut up.
And frankly, I'm coming around to the idea of partitioning Russia. Russian folks, at least the ones I know, are lovely people. But left to their own devices, they have given the world some of the ugliest, nastiest governments across centuries.
At some point, removing their ability to keep doing so is
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so they finally stop deluding themselves into thinking they were, as a nation, adequate human beings.
i think you unwittingly hit the nail on the head here: the west's delusion that they're somehow superior, while they're descending into irrelevance. "we stand taller and see further", right? it just amazes me how and by what rationale you can call a whole nation "inadequate human beings"?
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i think you unwittingly hit the nail on the head here: the west's delusion that they're somehow superior, while they're descending into irrelevance. "we stand taller and see further", right? it just amazes me how and by what rationale you can call a whole nation "inadequate human beings"?
It's easy to call a whole nation "inadequate human beings" when their collective actions confirm the observation.
Would you also cry if someone called Nazi Germany "inadequate human beings" ... Nazi's after all friends and allies of the USSR so maybe you would.
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Don't get too close though, just in case...
don't worry, unlike you i actually have a life, and a happy one. did you ask for help yet?
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shouldn't you be worrying about why you are so unhappy as to waste your time and the little sanity you might have left stalking random total strangers on the internet? mind you, go ahead, it doesn't bother me, but i can't see how that is doing you any good ...
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What surprises me again and again is how some people rationalize all that is happening.
I mean just like Trump, media coverage on Putin is biased, no doubt about that... As it is on Zelensky. There is always more to know. Yes, neither Trump nor Putin are only bad and yes, Zelensky most probably is corrupt.
But to look at what happened with Crimea and now with Ukraine proper and go "Well, the Ukrainians should stop fighting to save lives!" or "NATO virtually forced Putin into this attack!" is so ludicrous, I usually just don't know how to respond without using some very not so constructive words.
I don't relish the war as such. But it seems clear to me that the Russians need to get taken down a peg so they finally stop deluding themselves into thinking they were, as a nation, adequate human beings.
Meanwhile, I don't want Russia to break up either.
What I can say, in short, is that I love how precise this strike was and how little human collateral there was.
That was a sensible and measured reply, and there was nothing trollish about it. I have no clue why you were modded down.
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
NATO didn't "push" anything, in fact it wasn't util years and years after the breakup of the USSR that NATO accepted more countries in and that's because they lobbied for years to make it happen (Vilnius Group [wikipedia.org])
Why did they lobby so much for NATO membership? Well it's because Russia has a habit of fucking with it's neighbors and if you're a part of NATO you don't get fucked with. Montenegro, Georgia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Chechnya there's a long list of Russia doing it's "special operations" since 1990.
NATO has never aggressed against Russia and there is no world where it would do so unprovoked so any fear Russia has is just an excuse. If Russia doesn't want NATO to expand maybe they need to ask themselves why every former Soviet Bloc wants NATO protection?
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If Russia doesn't want NATO to expand maybe they need to ask themselves why every former Soviet Bloc wants NATO protection?
qft
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do be aware that Ukraine will not be the only one doing this shit over the next 10 years. As much as we all applaud Ukraine for doing this as they are 'our guys', everything they do is also going to be something the bad guys will do.
Russia could technically fill up a truck with a bunch of off the shelf drones and explosives in (and bought in) the US and start blowing stuff up. As long as the targets have no active anti-drone defenses it'll probably be successful and probably also very hard to trace back to them. Just get some poor sob to the your truck somewhere for a pittance in cash after you've finished prepping.
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genii
This pluralization makes no sense as "genie" comes from Arabic, not Latin.
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Any connection between genii and jinn is dubious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Guess who else needs to build hangars to protect their air assets.
We actually [google.com] have those for B2's [google.com] (they spend most of their time in there to protect their RAM coatings). Also I hear that some drones went into hangers through open doors so....
Also, before anyone brings it up, no START did not require that bombers be out in the open. It only required that they be inspectable by either satellite or by inspectors. And Russia withdrew from it in 2023 anyway.
Ubomtu? (Score:2)
Since the drones were used to destroy (Score:2)
The minute FOSS is used to harm civilians I will revoke my approval
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it's a war, civilians will and have been harmed, the question is intent and scale
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Unfortunately, we give approval to all uses of our software when we publish it as open source. This is one of the greatest unsolved problems of open source: licensing it for specific uses only and having a kill switch if that is violated. It crops up first when we say "non-commercial use only", but keeps coming up when we hit uses for war or doxxing or any other thing for which you think, "Hey, I didn't want that to be used that way." The only recourse is to only publish non-open software where they need a
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There is, it involves overcoming your entitlement.
Year 2025 : GNU was was begin (Score:2)
Since the drones were end-user devices, you can direct your complaints to
What you need is the Soldierbot v2.1 license, but that has different, questionable, encumbrances.
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A) you think that a military at war will look at licensing terms?
B) The point of FLOSS is for the end user to use, study, modify and redistribute without the possibility to place additional restrictions along the way.
Honestly, if I was the original author, I'd really try to legally get my hands on one of the drones, and try applying GPL terms to see their modifications. But point A will apply.
Re: Since the drones were used to destroy (Score:4, Funny)
Good luck getting a drone.
Maybe Russia can request the sources, as recipients of the binaries
Re: Since the drones were used to destroy (Score:2)
I would mod this up if I could.
That was [chef's kiss]
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Good thing no one gives a shit about your approval. And do you know civilians weren't harmed?
It wasn't a third (Score:2, Interesting)
Ukraine CLAIMED they destroyed that many. Initial news reports were careful to qualify the number by saying it was a claim from Ukrainian intelligence. Unless the number were verified by Russia (it was not), an assertion does not graduate into fact by the mere fact that it's been in the open air for a while. By and large, every intelligence agency making a public statement is lying about 90% of the time. Intelligence agencies are not in the business of providing accurate top secret information to the public
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> the US was obviously involved in this effort at least for intelligence and planning purposes, despite Trump's denial
If you were Ukraine, would you pass any intelligence about an operation you're about to engage in to Trump's CIA?
Any involvement by the US was indirect and inadvertent. The US didn't know, Ukraine would be insane to pass classified information about ongoing operations to Trump's America right now.
It's depressing, but that's where we are in the US. And until the 40% of the electorate who b
Related: fly-by-wire drones, etc. (Score:3, Informative)
Wired had a great article recently about weaponized consumer drones. You can get multiple-kilometer spools of fiber optic cable so your drone is totally immune to electronic countermeasures (jamming) because it's not using RF. Lots of other ways to build some serious weapons at low cost.
https://www.wired.com/story/dr... [wired.com]
Copy of the GPL? (Score:2)
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Nope, no violation.
Every drone came with source code included: Python.
They only have to pry it from the dead cold rotor blades of the drones.
What I love best about this (Score:4, Funny)
I love that the raid was surgically conducted against the armed forces of a vicious Russian dictator. I love that there were no civilian casualties. I love the the weapon of choice was a hobbyist-style drone. I love that the software was open source. But what I love best is that at the very moment Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were heaping abuse on Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, yelling at him, lying about him and dismissing him with the sneering claim that "he has no cards to play", Zelenskyy held his temper. He had to grit his teeth and sit there quietly while those unspeakable cretins humiliated him and his people in front of the whole world.
It must have been at least a little easier to endure the humiliation knowing that preparation for an attack that would eliminate roughly a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet with the loss of zero Ukrainian lives was in its final stages.
I wonder who they'll get to play Trump and Vance in the movie. Because there absolutely will be a movie. Probably a mini-series, too.
I was wondering how they communicated... (Score:2)
"Early analysis from Russian military bloggers on Telegram indicates that the drones communicated back to their Ukrainian handlers via Russian mobile networks using a simple modem that’s connected to a Raspberry Pi-style board."
The Ardupilot software has a few advantages for this use:
"The software can connect to a DIY drone, pull up a map of the area they’re in that’s connected to GPS, and tell the drone to take off, fly around, and land. A drone pilot can use ArduFlight to create a series
Re: Its VERY comforting to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, you gave the home invaders the keys to your mom's room, didn't you?
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Uncle Pu's shills say that when a nuclear force invades your country, then you must capitulate, lest the entire Earth perish due to your obstinacy.
Often, this makes detection of Uncle Pu's shills very easy. They always say that.
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That the software of the drones that likely just started World War 3, were open source. I'm sure in 6 months to a year when the only thing left on the Earth, is all of our glowing bones... We'll be certain to remember that. FFS... YOU ARE CHEERING FOR NUCLEAR RUINATION YOU FUCKING ID10T'S! ;-D Fuck Trump, Fuck Putin, Fuck Zelensky, and fuck anyone who WANTS more war. You are all fucking morons. And I hope it gets to you LAST. So that you can SEE the full weight, of EXACTLY what you are cheering for. Fuckwits.
Giving a Nuclear armed nation an open pass to invade neighbours and launch wars of conquest inevitably leads to escalation. And that leads to Nuclear war.
The best way prevent Nuclear war is to arm and support Ukraine until Russia with draws, ideally back to the 2014 borders.
The best way to cause Nuclear war? Cut off Ukraine, let Russia take the whole lot. Then China realizes the US's resolve in particular is weak, so they take the one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invade Taiwan. And that's your shortest path
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I think that's a very simpleminded and optimistic analysis, but it's true that abandoning your allies is not a good approach. However, was Ukraine an ally? IIRC the negotiations were still in process. They were in the extremely dangerous position of "holding rich resources and being adjacent to an acquisitive power".
The analogy to Czechoslovakia prior to WWII fails because Czechoslovakia *was* a ally, per the treaty. (See "entangling alliances".)
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I think that's a very simpleminded and optimistic analysis, but it's true that abandoning your allies is not a good approach. However, was Ukraine an ally? IIRC the negotiations were still in process. They were in the extremely dangerous position of "holding rich resources and being adjacent to an acquisitive power".
The analogy to Czechoslovakia prior to WWII fails because Czechoslovakia *was* a ally, per the treaty. (See "entangling alliances".)
Ukraine was a friendly nation moving closer to the west (and the US in particular). Not a formal ally, but it had formal interactions with NATO [wikipedia.org].
I don't think Taiwan is much different. They cooperate, but there's no formal obligation for the US to defend them and the official policy is ambiguity.
And this is one of those cases where I think the "simpleminded" analysis is the right one. Even dictators need to justify their actions to their populace, meaning international politics can be very low bandwidth. Th
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I agree with most of what you say. My problem is with your last sentence. What makes you think the US under trump but even under Biden would support Taiwan militarily?
That's kind of my point. If China knew for sure that the US wouldn't intervene they'd invade Taiwan tomorrow. And if China launched a surprise invasion and conquered Taiwan in hours the US wants the option of backing down without a major loss of face.
So strategic ambiguity (plus the US doesn't want to formally ally with what China considers a rebel province) is the policy.
But if China invades Trump might still react, and that might escalate. So his non-backing of Ukraine makes the situation with China very
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No, China would not invade Taiwan tomorrow.
They have absolutely no interest in "invading" it.
They want (both sides actually want) to "reunite" the greater China.
That is not going to happen with an invasion.
About 40% of Taiwans population is for a reunion. China simply waits until it is 60% and then suddenly China and Taiwan are on the negotiation tables. Taiwan will be an "independent province" in China under its own rules, like the dozen other independent provinces.
The Chinese are not idiots. They do not r
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The best way prevent Nuclear war is to arm and support Ukraine until Russia with draws, ideally back to the 2014 borders.
It was the 2003 treaty border [wikipedia.org]. Russia agreed to it, then decided they didn't like it.
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And that's the problem with nuclear weapons.
As long as everyone with them is rational, and willing to accept defeat, they never get used. In a world without nuclear weapons, Putin's only possible response would be to redouble his war efforts - which, of course, may not be possible.
In a world with nuclear weapons, and an irrational actor facing defeat, an irrational act can have devastating world-wide consequences.
What civilization hasn't figured out yet is how to deal with an irrational nuclear weapons own
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What do you think will happen if Putin gets more pissed off than he already is, and lobs a few nukes at Kiev? And then Ukraine lobs the couple of nukes they grabbed when the USSR fell on Moscow?
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What do YOU think would happen if Ukraine simply capitulated three years ago when the Russians rolled in? How many more countries would be subjugated, men killed, women and children raped, in the name of Greater Glory to Mother Russia? Or do you believe that appeasing Russia would stop them.
Consider reviewing the Budapest Memorandum, Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, Ukraine in 2022.
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Oh appeasing Russia would surely stop them. Just like appeasing Hitler in Munich 1938 prevented the WW2.
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I assume it the Ukrainians indeed have some "left over nukes", they are already deployed in Russia. At least a few of them.
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Please calm down. Your ulcer will kill you sooner than WW3.
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you are going to make a lot of friends here ...
In related news ... (Score:3)
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you must be new here ...
Re: Can we stop with the propaganda? (Score:2)
How many A-50s does Russia have left?
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All variations of those type of plane: about 90 - 100. They lost roughly 1/3rd.
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chill. the whole word, even all the greedy big companies, run on opensource at least to some degree, most of them heavily and for the more fundamental libraries. this story is just citing the obvious to prolong the spin.