Fog Blinded Ukraine's Drones. So The Pilots Homed In On The Russians' Radio Chatter.

Signals intelligence can pinpoint Russian vehicles for the drones to attack.

A FPV drone strikes in fog. Via Kriegsforscher

Ukraine’s drones are everywhere all the time along the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 45-month wide war on Ukraine. But a first-person-view drone performs only as well as its operator can see.

And the winter fog that has blanketed much of the front line for weeks now limits visibility to around 50 yards, according to Ukrainian drone operator Kriegsforscher. This bad weather can “significantly degrade” drone operations, Carnegie Endowment analyst Michael Kofman wrote.

It’s a problem for Ukraine’s faltering defense—one the Ukrainians are mitigating with admirable ingenuity. Deploying ground robots to spot targets for aerial robots. And, more recently, using signals intelligence—radio eavesdropping, basically—to locate Russian assault groups before sending in the drones mostly blind.

The armed forces of Ukraine “have awful weather conditions during the day and night,” Kriegsforscher wrote on Friday. “But with the help of SIGINT and other tools, we are able to destroy the enemy.”