Ukraine's drone warfare evolves: Skynode-S modules leading the charge

The war in Ukraine has predominantly turned into a drone conflict, and these drones are continually evolving. The widespread use of signal jammers has necessitated the development of alternative solutions to circumvent this issue. One such solution is the high degree of autonomy offered by Skynode-S modules. Here's an explanation of what they are and how they function.

Drones in Ukraine have been employed as substitutes for military precision weapons. It has become standard practice to use FPV drones equipped with outdated anti-tank grenades, such as the PG-7VL, or cumulative warheads removed from World War II-era hand grenades.

These types of drones, costing a few thousand pounds at most, are perfectly suited for targeting individual soldiers, BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, tanks—even the latest T-90M type—or even downing helicopters.

The problem arose when the Russians began to extensively use drone control signal and GPS signal jammers. Since then, there have been phases of both operator powerlessness and renewed dominance when operators adjusted the control frequency beyond the range of the Russian jammers.

To minimise the inefficacy of FPV drones in such an environment, Ukrainians and the Western companies supporting them have sought alternative solutions. Currently, the most promising options are twofold: one involves drone communication through extended fibre optic cables, and the other is Skynode-S modules developed by the American-Swiss company Auterion.

The key development turned out to be an independent module that can be integrated with any drone thanks to the open architecture developed by Auterion since 2008.

As company director and founder Lorenz Meier admitted in an interview with Breaking Defense, "Initially, the module was designed in more peaceful times and was intended, for example, for disaster area searches or urban navigation. However, since then the world has become a more dangerous place, and the freedoms we take for granted must be protected."

The company managed to create an independent module designed in line with Modular Open Systems Architecture (MOSA) principles, allowing for easy integration with other systems. The system's openness was tested during a recent hackathon in Poland conducted by the Pentagon's Defence Innovation Unit.

Teams from over a dozen different companies and universities were able to create navigation applications that ran on Auterion’s operating system and tested them in real-world scenarios on actual drones. Interestingly, the core of this system is Auterion's open-source software and the MavLink communication protocol, written by Meier during his postgraduate studies in Zurich before founding Auterion.

This module ensures the Skynode-S can pair with any drone. The module itself relies on artificial intelligence algorithms that, when using a high-resolution camera, can distinguish a given object from its background and track it.

As Lorenz Meier admits, today’s computers are proficient at identifying cute cats, puppies, or objects, but they struggle with three-dimensional objects, especially those that are camouflaged, partially hidden, poorly lit, or moving. However, after six months of intensive work and many setbacks, the company achieved the desired results for use in Ukraine.

This means that the drone attacks autonomously during the final phase of flight, so, for example, a bubble of interference of about 30 metres around Russian vehicles is not an issue. However, it is important to note that drones with the Skynode-S module are not completely autonomous, as it is a human operator who designates the target for attack, thus avoiding moral dilemmas.

Additionally, the Skynode-S module also provides navigation based on triangulating the drone's position using radio beacons and computer vision algorithms that match observed terrain with satellite maps.

The company is also working on targeting radio signal emitters, which in practice will make the drone function similarly to anti-radiation missiles like the AGM-88 HARM. As a result, FPV drones will be capable of directly targeting Russian radars or jammers.