Ukrainian drone can be hidden under water and hit from depth

A new video from Ukrainian war and drone expert Serhii “flash” beskrestnov shows what looks like a fun toy: a quadkopter drone that lands in a pool of water, drowns, and then begins its rotors and rises back to air. It is hardly a unique or innovative skill, as we shall see. The question is why someone who focuses strongly on the latest developments in the battlefield will highlight such a tool.

As with many drones, this new toy can be more dangerous than it first appears.

Drone

The new drone looks like the last embodiment of a long fiction: ‘Diving Aircraft’ or ‘Flying submarine’ which can pass from air to underwater mode. There has been a startling number of such cars over the years, dating from the 1920s. Most never make it over the drawing board, and there are more examples in scientific fiction than real life. Some, like Reid RF-1 from the 1960s, were actually built and operated. But design compromises imply that such a craft are poor as under and a plane-RF-1 flew only about 75 meters.

The concept continued to repeat, including wild ideas as a jet warrior submerged in the Saab who could be hidden in Fjords. This would have received distributed operations on a new level, but unfortunately no equipment was built.

Submersible drones are more practical, though not much more. In principle, multicopters can ‘fly’ in the water as they can in the air, and without the need for a pressure pilot capsule, with weight and buoyancy problems that this brings, the design is much simpler. In theory at least one quadkopter can fly to a given place, dive under water and work in submarine mode. Of course water is much denser than the air and swimming speed is slow, so the batteries are rapidly exhausted.

Some diving multicopter appeared in 2010, including Navator by Prof Javier Diez of Rutgers University. In 2015, the Diez team ‘received a grant from the Naval Research Office (ONR) to continue the project in order to develop a drone of opposite measures, but that does not seem to advance.

Videos from China show similar concepts, although the specifications are not encouraging: this model looks good, but the flight time is given only 6.5 minutes. Chinese spry is sold as a drone of waterproof waterproof, but can go under water (see video at the bottom) and can remain there if it were to be neutrally soft ..

The American Navy has made better progress with fixed wing drones, including the Flimmer and Flying sea glider in 2017. Again, although performance does not appear to have deserved development beyond the prototype phase.

Technology has something in common with drones controlled by an optical fiber cable. We know it can work, the prototypes have flown, but there was no demand for it. This changed with optical fiber control last year after the two sides in the Ukraine conflict began to campaign FPV fiber drones because they are immune to blocking and detecting radio frequency. If Ukraine is developing diving drones, maybe they see a special niche for them.

Butcher bird

Shrike is a well -placed FPV model of Ukraine, called for the bird of Shrike or butcher, known for leaving its impulse preaves in thorns or prickly wire to eat later. He was one of the first to make the step not being made by volunteers to produce under a government contract. In 2023, the Minister of Digital Transformation and Supremo Supremo Mykhailo Fedorov announced that more than 1,500 FPV Shrike were ordered under his Drone Army initiative. . A video from October 2023 showed 35 Shrika by hitting a Russian column and destroying eight tanks and four staff carriers, and the strike of the strike.

This origin suggests that the diving video is not the work of a drone hobby, but it can be something bigger.

According to Serhii Flash, the video shows a “Shrike (Special Publication)”. In a title he notes that “The demonstration in the video is not as impressive as the appearance of drones that leave under water in a lake,“Suggesting that he may have seen this demonstrated.

Multicopters make weak submarines, but this may not be important. What matters is that the drone is able to sit in the water and remio hidden for a period of time.

As mentioned earlier, Ukraine is increasingly waiting for drowsy drones. An FPV drone has been landed near a road or track used by the enemy and remains with its engines outside until the discovery drones reveal an approaching vehicle. The operator then activates the FPV and conducts an attack.

The new special edition of Shrika is not limited to the sleepy on the ground or to the buildings where they can be discovered. They can be wiped in lakes, ponds, canals or many craters filled with water. This makes the task of controlling a way for potential drones to wait much more challenging.

Ukraine has also recently begun placing FPV attack drones from its indefinite boats. The Special Shrika edition can be secretly thrown into the coastal areas, ready to be activated when Russian vehicles appear on the ground or boats approaching water.

Dipped drones can be a warm ability. But if the cost and complexity of making a wood water are relatively low, then, like the FPV of the fibers, they can multiply rapidly. As with fiber drones, they seem difficult to oppose-unless Hunter-Killer’s submerged FPV can develop…