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Doesn't surprise me. Russia wants to use ones that won't get jammed and they can't be that hard to get.
Especially since Russia stole all those people from Ukraine.
This is why kids shouldn't have cell phones.
Russia might try to war crime them.
Ukraine should build some protections into their cell network. Like if the signal is coming from a high altitude and doesn't follow any known commercial flight path (if commercial flights are even flying in that area), or if it exceeds a certain speed that varies, and isn't on a Ukraine military whitelist, then interrupt the signal just enough to make it ineffective for combat.
I dont think you can determine altitude solely from a cell signal
It's physically possible, though depends on if the receivers care about the vertical signal direction (for determining up) and if two towers can see it at the same time (for determining how high up, if signal quality alone isn't enough to estimate it, though with these custom devices, it's probably not reliable to go by signal strength). I don't know if any go to that length, inside Ukraine or outside.
Just need 3 recievers on the ground, time synced oc, and you can find 3D position of the transmitter.
Should have been kept quiet so that kyivstar can provide warning and tracking of these systems. Maybe they did. Maybe it's already played out. I guess the story here is that Russia doesn't have a c&c radio network that works?
I've been seeing a lot of news from Ukraine that make me wonder why they're not being more secretive. Don't give the Russians anything.
This close up picture goes to show you how large those drones actually are.
going off the grass and the fence I'd say 2m wingspan
edit: 
Where's the banana for scale?
Everyone always underestimates how big drones are because they look so much like model aircraft
Specs for the USAF's main drone (MQ-9 Reaper):
Probably a mistake to reveal this info. After recovering the SIM, it may have been possible to go back and see the network traffic from the drone. That could create an opportunity to disrupt or hijack drone c&c in the future.
Most likely it is encrypted and so there isn't anything useful to learn.
Frequency of transmissions and amount of data transmitted should offer some information.
I wouldn't be so sure if they have to use Ukraine's cell network, but possibly
Man, what a waste of engineering talent. These drones are actually super cool and they're being used to suicide bomb. Ffs
The persian engineering teams should mass defect to Korea and go work at Samsung or something.
What's special about them? Seem like pretty basic drones.
The fibreglass lifting body immediately makes it more than your basic drone. Granted it's not exactly rocket science, but you still need to get the shape right, make a giant mandrel, fit all those panels and doors together nicely. And then you need to figure out a production line that makes it cheap enough to mass produce them -- after all, they get exploded.
Just imagine they used all of those tools and skills to make sailboats instead. Or still in the drone form-factor, have them circle events with a 5g cell relay on them or something. War sucks but it pays salaries, sadly.
A sailboat is probably way easier to build. Just more laborious.
I see an XT plug. Do they use AliExpress battery packs?
I mean why not use the plug most batteries come with?
Sourcing COTS hardware is a thing for sure, especially if your country is under heavy embargo for the military grade shit.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington, DC-based think tank, said in an assessment published on Thursday that Russian forces were reportedly using SIM cards from Kyivstar, the largest telecommunications operator in Ukraine, "to control Shahed drones" in Moscow's grinding war against Kyiv.
ISW cited a Ukrainian source that reported on Wednesday that "a downed Russian Shahed drone included a Kyivstar SIM card, which reportedly allows Russian forces to exploit the Kyivstar mobile network to track the drone's location and change its flight path."
Внутри найдена симка "Киевстара", предполагается, что она использовалась для передачи дрону команд во время полета https://t.co/XmVOZHhzks #RussianUkrainianWar pic.twitter.com/53fDhIXBCP
Last month, Russia launched its largest drone attack against Kyiv since the Kremlin invaded the Eastern European country in February 2022.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a post on X at the time that the country's Armed Forces and Air Defense system shot down 71 out of 75 Shahed drones launched by Russia into Ukrainian territory on the night of November 25.
Mykhailo Shamanov, a spokesperson for the Kyiv city military, told CNN that the drone attack on the Ukrainian capital is the fourth from Russia in the last month.
The original article contains 317 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 38%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Just a flying cell phone nothing abnormal....
