Russia tries to hunt Ukrainian drone operators with its new “Cobra” system

Russia has developed a new system to detect Ukrainian drone operators, Russian state media reported, as the race to produce more effective battlefield drones heats up, Newsweek reports.

The “Cobra” system looks outwardly like a game console, but has the ability to track Ukrainian drone operators and pinpoint “their coordinates on a map in real time,” the system’s developer, named only as Stanislav, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

The “Cobra” is already in testing, and will then head for “experimental combat operation” on the battlefields of Ukraine, the news agency reported. The plan is for the system to then be mass-produced, according to RIA.

The nearly two and a half years of full-scale war in Ukraine has spurred unprecedented drone innovation, with both Moscow and Kyiv battling it out with uncrewed vehicles in the air, on land, and in the waters of the Black Sea.

Ukraine has used unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in many different roles along the front lines. The airborne drones cover nearly every aspect of combat, from helping out with reconnaissance to suicide drone strikes and guiding artillery fire.

Russia has also plugged away with its drone programs. Moscow and Kyiv are thought to burn through hundreds of drones each day.

Upgrades are constant, and can include increasing the range of UAVs, the accuracy of strikes, how silent they are when approaching a target, being able to operate better during nighttime missions, or being resistant to jamming efforts by the enemy.

Kyiv’s first person view (FPV) drones have become infamous for providing dramatic footage of the conflict while they help coordinate artillery strikes or careen into Russian armored vehicles.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Kyiv’s minister of digital transformation, heading up Ukraine’s drone efforts against Russia, told Newsweek in December that “they work sometimes even more efficiently than artillery.”

“FPV drones are indeed a tech revolution, even though the tech itself is quite easy. But it turned out to be very efficient,” Fedorov added. Ukraine’s drone operators are one of the “highest priority targets on the front,” RIA reported, adding the Ukrainian teams piloting the aerial drone fleet are “extremely difficult” for Russian forces to detect.

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