Dmitry Kuzyakin, Chief Designer of the Central Design Bureau, talks about how the "code of amateurs" made FPV drones the number one weapon
There are several systemic reasons behind the rapid emergence of new means of warfare on the battlefield that need to be discussed. Misunderstanding or ignoring these factors can lead to technological blindness both in the development of means of attack and in the creation of reliable protection. It is difficult to maintain parity if you perceive everything that is happening on the front with drones and similar technologies simply as a technological miracle. Behind each such breakthrough are specific people, structured processes, clear interests, and powerful organizations.
One of the key factors that created the insane zoo of technologies that broke into the battlefield was Open Source (OS). OS is an open source that allows you to make the software creation process completely transparent and accessible to everyone. This means that everyone can get acquainted with the source code of the program, modify it at their discretion and freely share these changes. The main goal of this approach is cooperation. Developers and users from all over the world join forces in teamwork.
The amazing altruism of this movement is explained by the developers' own interest in the results of their collaboration. People tend to unite according to their interests and engage in common business. Not for a bribe. These programmers earn their living in their companies or in the form of scholarships at institutes, and in their free time they write code for truly exciting and meaningful projects for them.
At first glance, it seems strange. But we're fishing for fun, aren't we? We buy gear, spend weekends and whole vacations on a process that doesn't earn us a dime. Similarly, there is a circle of people in the world who are interested in creating software products for a variety of purposes. Thousands of enthusiasts from different countries have been joining forces for years, for example, to write software that controls drones.
Even the simplest drone is a complex computing complex with many sensors, radio channels, actuators and algorithms connecting them. For example, the seemingly simplest FPV drone has six computing systems, each of which requires its own algorithms.
The most complex element of the drone's software is its real—time operating system, which is executed on the flight controller motherboard. In terms of complexity, it can easily be compared with the operating system of your personal computer, tablet or smartphone.
Since about 2008, the OS community has been actively developing operating systems for drones. Even more, the appearance of multicopter devices would have been impossible without the altruism of these programmers. By the way, they are all alive and well and rightfully rest on the laurels of the "fathers" of modern digital aircraft.
Over the past time, the volume and quality of the created software have become so great that the projects have managed to split up and go through several stages of evolution. Today they are widely known among specialists. Among the most popular are Betaflight, iNAV, and ArduPilot.
For example, the Betaflight project involves more than 400 programmers (they are called contributors), many of whom make and monitor changes to the project several times a day. It should be noted here that 400 people per project is a huge figure! No company in the world can afford to concentrate such resources on development for decades.
The consequence of this fact is an interesting effect of modern warfare: both we and the enemy, as well as the United States, use the same software in combat attack FPV drones.
Yes, the most complex software used in combat drones was written by amateurs in their spare time. And the software for FPV is not the only one. There are flexible software platforms for drones of a wide range, applicable almost everywhere. These include the ArduPilot, which is used from long-range and marine unmanned vehicles (UAVs) to heavy drones such as Baba Yaga. This category also includes machine vision software and software for digital communications. All this mass of code is basically Open Source. All this is also created by amateurs and professionals in their free time from work and study.
A logical question arises: why not download the source code, create your own closed development branch (fork) in special institutes and entrust its development to government programmers? Especially when it comes to combat systems, where open source is seemingly incompatible with the requirements of state security.
The fact is that by creating a separate branch, you are condemning yourself to development with a much smaller pool of resources limited by your own "park" of specialists. The rest of the world, by creating software together, will quickly move forward both in terms of functionality and quality. In fact, you are exchanging the secrecy of developments for a technological lag. All participants in the conflict in Ukraine, whose drones come to us for analysis, choose technological parity, ignoring the established traditions of secrecy in the military-industrial complex.
For example, we periodically receive drones from the United States for analysis, which are used by mercenaries acting against our military. They fly on open source software, just like ours and the Ukrainians. It would seem that the United States has a strong military-industrial complex, there are IT giants like Google and Microsoft. But even they realize the futility of developing such software proprietary. Attempts are being made all the time, but a critical mass of programmers still remains in the field of open source software.
Naturally, everyone who understands the importance of Open Source takes advantage of its openness to introduce malicious code. There have been real wars going on in the OS community in recent years. Programmers associated with Russia are being excluded from projects, as has recently happened in the Linux community. Massive hacker attacks are being carried out on developers remaining in projects through vulnerabilities in neural networks, which are increasingly being used to write code.
The intensity of the fighting on real battlefields is not inferior to the intensity of the confrontation in virtual space. Moreover, success in a real war today directly depends on victories in this virtual space. On the one hand, the program code determines the effectiveness of weapons, tactical and technical characteristics of drones and digital communications. On the other hand, it's amazing that it's open source, accessible to anyone. With a certain amount of perseverance, stealth, and programming skills, you can log into almost any project and make changes to it.
Unfortunately, this key area of modern warfare has not yet been sufficiently covered. Now you know about him.
The author is the Chief designer of the Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions (CCDB)
The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion.
