They should always have had a second, back-up option, because relying on such a brittle a thing as satellite comms when fighting a military power like Russia was bound to have issues.
I'm pretty sure they know that. Especially as Starlink is brittle mostly because of its (rather disgusting at this point) founder figure and his ramblings. But this is armchair advice: what other options do they have and how do you fund them?
(most of Starlink for the Ukrainian army is being paid for by Poland)
> This isn't true either by $amount or number of dishes
"Poland is the largest single contributor, paying approximately $50 million per year through its Digital Affairs Ministry for Starlink services in Ukraine. Poland has provided over 20,000 Starlink terminals and covers the ongoing subscription costs. As of recent reports, Poland has spent nearly 323 million PLN ($84 million) on more than 24,500 Starlink terminals over the past two years." (reuters)
Or, if you'd like somewhat outdated info from Wikipedia: "As of December 2023, Poland remains the largest single contributor of Starlink terminals to Ukraine, providing 19,500 out of 47,000 delivered"
Which is why they don't use it for that. Too susceptible to jamming and Elon's politics on a given day. All their drones will be fly by (fiber optic) wire now.
Many use cases are better served without fiber (as fiber causes limited range, limited payload and need for unhampered (not through tree branches for example) access to target
> You're just gonna have a kilometers long "wire" to control a drone?
Yup. Fiber optic cables are lightweight and thin, so you can stick 10 km+ in a spindle on the drone that unwinds as you fly.
> I'd much rather just lose some drones to jamming. They seem to be cheap and replaceable.
They *are* cheap and replaceable, but you don't send them out for the fun of it. If the drones don't hit the vehicles/soldiers/whatever that you send them at, those enemy assets are going to kill your own soldiers. Especially now that many vehicles on the front lines are equipped with jammers, have non-radio comms is super useful for making sure the drone actually gets where it needs to go.
That said only about 20% of FPV drones are fiber optic at the moment, because radio does have a lot of advantages when it comes to range and maneuverability.
In general, your notions of front-line combat strategy is wrong.
People on both sides used the fiber-optic platforms to target the RF Jammers/platforms first, and then deploy normal FPV platforms to chase down the soldiers.
Note, one may buy a fiber network link kit for drones for around $650 USD off China online stores. Try to be more precise if you don't know something. =3
The drone tactics are changing by the week, to not say by the day, as I just saw a video 3-4 days ago of an Ukrainian soldier who had just cut the wire on a Russia fiber-optic drone and then a second fiber-optic drone came and took his life. So making generalisations like that might not be always right on the spot.
Surprised that no-one posted the video of the UA drone ambushing three Russian drones that were sitting on the ground, ready for an ambush. Here it is [1]. This is really next-level warfare from both sides directly involved. Non-fiber optic, as far as I can tell, at least not the Russian ones.
You seem to sound dismissive, and it did sound wild to me too, yet that is indeed happening and well documented. The “wires” are kilometer long thin fiber optic cables that are spooled off the drones. See for example: https://www.businessinsider.com/unjammable-fiber-optic-drone...
Optical fiber have serious disadvantages, but it gives reliable and very high quality digital link, length depend on how much fiber drone could have onboard.
- For quadrocopters practical up to 30 km; for terrain drones (wheel or caterpillar), could be 60 km or even 90 km.
Sorry if I've misunderstood sarcasm and taken your comment at face value, but are you really unaware of current developments? There are fields literally covered with thick webs of optical fibre near front lines. "Fibre optic drone" even has its own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optic_drone
I understand that keeping track of news can be difficult, and staying out of that depressing information cycle has clear mental health benefits. However, when joining discussions about current conflicts, it's worth acknowledging any resulting knowledge gaps.
I had no idea. A kilometers long wire sounded completely infeasible to me, though clearly I underestimated the fiber optics.
I would have thought kilometers of wire would be too heavy to keep on a spool on the drone itself, and without the spool on the drone you probably can't have fly by wire. That's why I was dismissive, it sounded to me like a completely infeasible idea.
Fair enough, I remember being sceptical myself when I first read about that. Well, learnt something new today, at least. (In that WP article I see that wire-guided war devices are much older invention than I thought.)
