ARTICLE
How Ukraine uses high-tech anti-drone guns to down Russian drones and recover intelligence from them
Alia Shoaib
Feb 18, 2023 5:57 AM
Ukraine is using anti-drone guns to remotely disable and down Russian drones, allowing them to collect a wealth of information about opposing forces.
The Ukrainian company Kvertus Technology developed the KVS G-6, a long-range anti-drone gun that uses radio signals to jam Russian drones.
The weapon, manufactured in the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, has a range of up to three kilometers, or around 1.8 miles, and can operate for up to 30 minutes at a time, according to the company.
While both Russia and Ukraine have used older anti-aircraft guns to shoot down drones, anti-drone guns disrupt drones without physically damaging them.
With the downed drones remaining intact, Ukrainian forces can recover intelligence from them.
“We are not damaging the drone. With communication lost, it just loses coordination and doesn’t know where to go. The drone lands where it is jammed, or can be carried away by the wind because it’s uncontrollable,” Yaroslav Filimonov, the director of technology at Kvertus, said, according to The Register.
In a video for Radio Free Europe demonstrating the gun, Filimonov shows the tool disconnecting a reconnaissance drone from its satellites and control station, which stops it from responding to commands.
Once disconnected, the drone loses coordination and either lands where it is jammed or is blown away by the wind.
Ukrainian forces can then take the drone and read its data to gain valuable information about it, such as where it came from and any images it might have taken, he said.
The Ukrainian border guards successfully employed an anti-drone gun to neutralize an enemy UAV earlier this week, according to Ukrinform.
The company has made more than 80 of the guns since the invasion began, and over 100 were on order, according to the video from June of last year. It is not clear how many more have since been made.
The devices cost $12,000 each, but many of the orders for the anti-drone guns have come from volunteer organizations and donors, Filimonov told Radio Free Europe.
The weapons are relatively new. The KVS G-6 was offered at least in January of last year, weeks before Russia’s invasion began, according to The Register.
Another similar weapon reported to have been used by Ukraine in the conflict is the EDM4S, which the Lithuanian-based NT Service makes. It uses electromagnetic pulses to jam and down Russian drones.
More than 100 of them have been distributed among the Ukrainian military, according to Forces News.
A more rudimentary Russian version was also pictured last year, with a video showing Russian-backed separatists claiming to have used the homemade gun to jam and capture Ukrainian drones.
Drone warfare has played a key role in the conflict, with both sides using the devices for reconnaissance or to drop bombs, among other things.
Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Insider that weapons like anti-drone guns are in high demand.
“As to their effectiveness, it’s hard to judge that based on limited open-source evidence we get. Both sides want it and decry the lack of this technology in large numbers,” he said.
A Ukrainian soldier was told his legs could be amputated. An American hospital might help him walk again
By Omar Jimenez and Linh Tran, CNN
Updated 8:57 AM EST, Sat February 18, 2023
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/us/vladyslav-orlov-ukraine-amputee/index.html
Vladyslav Orlov, an officer in Ukraine’s national guard, didn’t see what hit him, but the next thing he knew, the car he was traveling in last October was rolling over and in flames. He suspected Russian gun fire.
Pinned in the back seat, Orlov says he was initially unable to get out of the vehicle – his feet had been crushed by the car and his legs had been wounded by the explosion. Once he finally did, he and his team laid in the nearby grass watching the flames and figuring out their next steps, in disbelief they had survived.
“Sometimes I really don’t understand what has happened with me, I’m still somewhere on another planet,” Orlov, 27, told CNN.
February 24 will mark a year since Russia launched its war on Ukraine – and ahead lies what is widely expected to be a brutal spring of fighting. Thousands of troops and more than 18,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations, have lost their lives, and millions have fled. Cities and infrastructure across Ukraine have been decimated by the fighting and relentless shelling.
Orlov was eventually taken to a Ukrainian hospital. He was told he may need to have at least one leg amputated or that he may never walk again, in part due to inundated hospitals and strains on resources after months of war.
He was told that the focus was to save his life, not necessarily his limbs.
“(There are) a lot of wounded guys, you know?” Orlov told CNN. “Our doctors, everybody (is) working hard like from morning to evening, working absolutely hard but (there’s) no free space, ya know? (There’s not) enough medicine because it’s war,” he said in limited English.
So began the pursuit of another option – any option.
A 4,600 mile volunteer-led journey
Ashley Matkowsky, Orlov’s American girlfriend and a videographer who had been working in Ukraine, recorded what Orlov looked like after the attack.
That video caught the attention of some US volunteers and eventually made its way to Gary Wasserson, a retired American businessman from New York who was already coordinating volunteer aid resources to the region.
“I sprung into action and started making calls in the United States,” Wasserson told CNN.
Matkowsky, meanwhile, was working with the Ukrainian government to get permission for Orlov to leave, and helped to arrange transportation to Poland. From there, Wasserson was able to get them plane tickets to New York.
Wasserson said he sponsored Orlov to come to the United States under the “Uniting for Ukraine” program, which provides a temporary pathway for Ukrainians to come to the United States for two years if they have someone who can provide them with financial assistance. Wasserson’s toughest task was “getting the attention of Homeland Security to understand the urgency of the medical issues at hand,” he said.
“For me, I just keep pushing until I find the right buttons and fortunately everything came into place,” he said.
Taking it one step at a time
Wasserson asked the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York if they’d be able to save Orlov’s legs and, optimistic they could, he was admitted.
Dr. Duretti Fufa, an orthopedic surgeon specializing in limb reconstruction, is now helping care for Orlov. The hospital is paying for his surgical costs through their charity care program, a representative told CNN.
Fufa described Orlov’s injuries as extraordinarily complex.
“The complexity comes from the fact that he had both soft tissue wounds as well as bone defects or missing bone from the blast injuries and the multiple fractures in each of the feet,” Fufa told CNN.
Since he arrived in the United States in January, Orlov has already undergone “two very lengthy procedures to begin the major step for reconstruction of both his right and his left foot” with care that has involved multiple specialists, Fufa explained.
Orlov sees the progress so far as nothing short of amazing.
“It’s completely nice now! It’s like full foot, oh my God,” he told CNN of his still very stitched up and fragile left foot.
While Fufa is optimistic about the path forward for Orlov’s feet, she is quick to point out that while reconstruction is one thing, being able to walk again is not guaranteed just yet.
“I’ve warned him that this is such a long road that I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point we hit roadblocks where it feels like this is taking too long or that this is too challenging to continue to face,” Fufa said.
Nearly a year into the war, Orlov hopes to return
It’s been nearly a year since Russia’s war in Ukraine began and Orlov wants nothing more than to be back home, defending his country.
“I wanna try, of course,” he said.
He hopes he can walk again, but his hopes for his country are much bigger than that – he said he wants the world to know this isn’t simply about two countries in conflict.
This is “not just about war in Ukraine and Russia,” he said of the women and children’s lives that have been lost or upended by the fighting. “It’s about human rights.”