At a secret workshop in Ukraine’s north-east, where about 20 people assemble hundreds of FPV (first person view) drones, there is a new design. Under the frame of the familiar quadcopter is a cylinder, the size of a forearm. Coiled up inside is fibre optic cable, 10km (6 miles) or even 20km long, to create a wired kamikaze drone.
Capt Yuriy Fedorenko, the commander of a specialist drone unit, the Achilles regiment, says fibre optic drones were an experimental response to battlefield jamming and rapidly took off late last year. With no radio connection, they cannot be jammed, are difficult to detect and able to fly in ways conventional FPV drones cannot.
“If pilots are experienced, they can fly these drones very low and between the trees in a forest or tree line. If you are flying with a regular drone, the trees block the signal unless you have a re-transmitter close,” he observes. Where tree lined supply roads were thought safer, fibre optic drones have been able to get through.
This is not new tech. We have been using wires like this in the battlefield since the 70’s. I was a TOW gunner and shot plenty of missiles that have a wire like this drone. Except, ya know it’s a missile and it moves significantly faster. TOW stands for Tube launched Opitically Wire guided missile.
Ask away if you wanna know anything about em.
Coolest thing you ever shot with a TOW? Man/building/vehicle etc
How many TOWs did you shoot over your career? What percentage missed intended target?
What’s the kill zone radius of the blast?
Thanks for your service mate.
Hurting people is wrong and should be avoided at all costs. Nothing cool about that.
But when a tank is also full of fuel and ammo, the boom is much bigger lol
I got lucky and shot around 15 to 20 for training. I lost track after 10. Some missilemen never get the chance to shoot one.
Interestingly, I had that kill zone question asked to me by another higher up (different job) and it took me a long time to come to a conclusion. The kill radius is actually not defined in the manuals. There are zones for the shooter to ensure you don’t get hit with back blast, but usually it’s assumed that the vehicle you hit will be destroyed.
Edit:
To explain further, the missile doesn’t hit the target. It flys above it and uses the munroe effect to cause an implosion (not an explosion) that makes the vehicle explode from the inside out. First munroe charge punches a hole into the vehicle, second charge gets sucked in and blow it up from inside. YouTube munroe effect to see how that shape charge works.
Would you rather have had wire drones over your TOWs?
Or just knee replacements
Already had the back replacement thank you very much lol
Edit: sorry to answer your question. Nope, ill take the missile. A drone coming at you is slow (in relation to a missile) and doesnt have a lot of explosives, other enemies will think they have a chance. You see a missile take someone out, I promise you, that you wont stick around to see it again.
Is that where the phrase “pink mist” comes from?
Yeah I probably wouldn’t stick around either.
Lol naw TOW missile just looks like a gray puff when it blows up. Not as exciting unless the thing you’re hitting is full of fuel and ammo. Then the boom is what you think it would look like (fire ball and all that).
Pink mist is for snipers. You’re so zoomed in from the scope you can actually see the splat and it looks like a pink mist. You can also achieve the same effect with large caliber weapons like a 25mm cannon. Interestingly enough, the Barrett .50 cal sniper that everyone knows is classified as a SASR, Special Application Scoped Rifle. Its not meant for people, its an “anti-material” weapon. You’re only supposed to use it to shoot out engine blocks.
I’m guessing the wired break down quickly?
Naw, that shit was super strong. If you caught your boot and pulled it would slice clean into your boot. But it was fragile enough to be cut with scissors. A little thicker than a strand of hair.
Lol, I doubt it. I’m guessing 1,000-2,000 years.
Well, since we’ve got you:
What would be the minimum reasonable distance to use a TOW (with accompanying operator control) vs something unguided (either the TOW or otherwise)?
Ooo minimum? Dont recall that exactly but I do remember the mechanism that arms the missile is activated by G force. Missile has to fly for a bit before it arms.
Second part of your question is pretty loaded. Theres tons of unguided systems that have wildly different arming mechanisms.
Really what you care about is stand off distance. Can I hit my enemy with my missile before they can get into range to shoot me?
What kind of comms do the wires allow? Sending guidance and simultaneously receiving video?
What was the physicality of wires back then (and do you know what they are today)? Would it feel like walking into a spider’s web, or how sturdy were/are those wires?
How often would a write break, and would that mean total loss of control or is there some form of fall-back?
Curious minds want to know! Thank you.
Today’s wires aren’t actually wires, they are optical fibers. It must be G.652 or G.657 from telecom use, since that’s commercially available en masse. I think most likely would be G.657.A2 because that can be bent tighter. Here’s an example data sheet from a random google search. I wrote it in a different comment already, but the core has 9 micrometer, the cladding 125 micrometer and the coating 250 micrometer diameter. For telecom applications you’d add at least a mantle, or more likely use a cable with many fibers in little pastic tubes wrapped around a metal core for stability, 12 x 12 is fairly standard. Here of course it’s just a single fiber without mantle being spooled off.
People who play War Thunder want to know lol you can actually find cut outs that show the internals online. The TOW has been around for awhile.
But the wires were for X and Y navigation. Theres an IR beacon that flashes out the back of the missile. The camera sees the beacon and when you move the controls the missile will follow. Theres a Russian T90 tank that has a defense system that spoofs the beacon. Looks like headlights, called the Shtora-1 check it out.
Wire was made out of the thinnest, strongest metal I’ve ever seen. It would cut your boot if you snagged it and pulled, but it could be cut with scissors.
If you lost a wire the missile would go erratic and would lose control depending on which wire was lost. Really depened on what youre trying to shoot over if you broke a wire. Can’t shoot over buildings.
My favorite fact though, it flys above the tank! Search YouTube for a slow mo and you’ll see what i mean. Explodes from above.
In case of FPV drones, anything up to and including gigabit TCP/IP.
Bidirectional transceivers (so both directions on a single fiber) can do 100 Gbit/s ethernet too. No way you’d do that for drones of course, but just to show how far you can get with a single fiber.
And for unidirectional we’re rapidly approaching 1.2Tb at the top end. 400Gb and 800Gb are becoming pretty standard in the datacenter world. Fiber is wild!
Yes, and that’s before muxing!
I need only 75 GHz of spectrum to send 400 Gbit/s through our country. We’ve currently got a link running between Zürich and Lugano (two amplifier sites in between, before and after the alps), and I’ve got 4400 GHz of usable spectrum with our currently deployed system, so if we needed it and spent like two million dollars we could deploy 23.2 Tbit/s within months, using just our normal commercial stuff, on a single fiber pair.