The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Competence Centre was opened at the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy. This is another important step in strengthening defence readiness and developing an efficient, threat-resistant defence system. The initiative has attracted significant interest, and the first volunteers have already started the courses.
Physicist-engineer Alfonsas Juršėnas, who works with drone systems at BPTI, emphasizes the advantages of UAVs and their use in defence:
➡️ The main advantage of UAVs is their low-cost, hard-to-destroy reconnaissance capabilities, with resolution sufficient to detect and geolocate individual soldiers or equipment in the observed area.
➡️ Small UAVs can navigate the "gray zone" covered by the opponent's traditional air defences, which are still inadequate for such targets (the air defence gap for small, low-flying, and slow-flying targets).
➡️ In addition to reconnaissance, UAVs can also perform target destruction, sometimes using partial autonomy.
It is worth noting the emerging future trends for UAVs:
➡️Detecting and destroying UAVs is (and likely will remain) difficult due to their small geometric and radar cross-sections, low speed, and low flight altitude.
➡️ Jamming UAV communications will not be definitively achieved due to ever-improving communication modules that use spread-spectrum communications (e.g., frequency-hopping) and other methods.
➡️ Advancements in UAV autonomy, based on computer vision and drone control algorithms, will allow operators to select targets before entering jamming zones. Therefore, radio communication jamming will become less effective, and the requirement for operator expertise will decrease.
➡️ The emergence of drone swarms, controlled by a single operator, will eliminate the issue of only a few attack UAVs reaching a target simultaneously.
According to A. Juršėnas, further steps in integrating various drones and refining their tactical use (especially lessons learned from the ongoing war in Ukraine) are crucial for strengthening Lithuania’s defence capabilities. This is particularly important as Western and Lithuanian companies, as well as the armed forces, rapidly integrate and develop these technologies.
Two BPTI research groups (Machine Learning and Signal Processing) are currently working on drone autonomy and drone detection, using cameras and radars.
If you are interested in gaining new knowledge in operating unmanned aircraft, you can follow course information in your city and register here: https://lnkd.in/dsMpKKNq
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