The DJI Mavic 3 range of commercial drones represent 56.8% of all battlefield commercial drone detections, according to a presentation by Danielle McCormick, Head of C-sUAS at Edgesource, speaking at SAE Media Group’s Counter UAS Technology Europe Conference in London. The Mavic 3 makes up 81.2% of all Russian drones detected.
The company supplied five detection systems to Ukraine in May 2022 and has been collating information on the change in Russia’s use of commercial drones in the war over the last nine months. A number of important trends have been noticed over this time.
- This new type of drone, which was only launched in late 2022, has recently replaced the Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4 Pro V2 as Russia’s most ubiquitous battlefield commercial drone.
- Between June 2022 and March 2023 there has been a 108% increase in overall drone detections, with a 165% increase in unique aircraft detected and a 12% decrease in overall unique models.
- Hostile detections have increased 271% over this time, with an increase of 1,244% in hostile unique aircraft noted.
- There has been a recent increase in the sophistication of spoofing techniques, giving detectors more granular false data on drone identifying codes.
- Operators have changed their flight profiles, flying closer to buildings to take advantage of sensor blind spots
- Operators are also switching controllers in the middle of a route to complicate tracking and tracing or to cover greater distances.
