Putin's forces in the Ukrainian warzone have been left terrified (Image: Getty)
Russian forces are expressing terror over a new type of Ukrainian killer drones they call “Martians”. Vladimir Putin’s fighters say they cannot track the unmanned aircraft which are also invulnerable to electronic warfare interference.
Reports allege the Ukrainian drones operate without GPS, using an optical odometry system from NASA’s Martian helicopters and Qualcomm chips. The new type of AI-driven UAV has alarmed Russian military bloggers who are both fearful and envious of its capabilities. One of the bloggers said: "At the final stage of the attack, the drone turns off communication and becomes fully autonomous. It compares images from its cameras with a pre-loaded map of heights and terrain in real time. This makes the drone invisible to detectors and invulnerable to electronic warfare systems." NASA’s Ingenuity was a small autonomous helicopter carried to Mars with the Perseverance rover. It made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021, and ultimately completed 72 flights before its mission ended in January 2024.
Russian forces are expressing terror over a new type of Ukrainian killer drones they call “Martians” (Image: Getty)
It relied on autonomous onboard navigation because Mars has no GPS and communications delays make manual piloting impossible in real time.
Sergei 'Zergulio' Kolyasnikov, military correspondent for Putin's favourite newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, warned of a "qualitative change at the front."
He said: "In essence, Ukraine has introduced a new generation [of drones], which is creating serious logistics challenges.
"From what we currently know, these drones operate day and night, and are inaudible — except in the final seconds, when they dive….
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"They are undetectable by conventional detectors and are protected from electronic warfare. They are extremely high-quality, mass-produced military-grade products.
"There's a theory that they are controlled not by human operators, but by AI. If they are dropped by a Starlink-powered relay wing, their range is very long.They are very fast….and you can't escape at speed."
Russian state news outlet TASS reported today: "Ukrainian forces have begun using ‘Martian’ drones in strikes on Horlivka, a [Ukrainian] city in the [invaded] Donetsk People's Republic (DPR)….
"Their speed was put at up to 186mph which was “dangerous”. They are 'controlled by AI' and 'undetectable by electronic warfare systems'."
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