Ukraine's New Secret Weapon Is Blasting Russian Truck Convoys
The Hornet drone is highly autonomous and immune to jamming
After capturing the ruins of Pokrovsk and neighboring Myrnohrad late last year, the Russian Center Group of Forces—tens of thousands of troops and thousands of vehicles—is poised to march on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last free cities in Donetsk Oblast.
But that march requires supplies, lots of them, all shipped by trucks and Buhanka vans from railheads farther to the east along the highways leading to and through Donetsk City and then toward Pokrovsk, 25 miles to the northwest.
The truck routes are critical chokepoints. The Russians know it. Which is why they’ve blanketed the routes in radio jamming signals meant to ground incoming drones. But jamming only works against munitions that rely on external aids for navigation and targeting: positioning satellites or some remote human operator.
So the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps and presumably other units deployed a new secret weapon: the Hornet, an inertially guided, A.I.-assisted attack drone developed by U.S. firm Swift Beat, founded by former Google chief Eric Schmidt.
