Documentation From Russia-Ukraine War Confirms Feasibility Of Fiber-Optic "FPV" Multirotor Drone Use In Coastal Attacks
🇨🇳 🇹🇼 Extensions
This extensions-themed post is an extension of material that has appeared in another newsletter/section and other parts of my website more generally. While my newsletters/sections are primarily categorized by region, these can only appear in one newsletter/section, given how the Substack platform is configured, even as these may be highly relevant to readers who are primarily interested in other parts of the world.
In several recent posts, I have discussed how technological change increasingly affords both China and Taiwan new opportunities to attack targets across the Taiwan Strait, which is some 130-180 kilometers wide at its narrowest points. Opportunities include the use of uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) to launch armed “first-person video” (“FPV”) multirotor drones, among other types of strike munitions and uncrewed aircraft-turned-strike munitions, to attack terrestrial targets across the Taiwan Strait.
Newly available images and video indicate that Ukraine has begun to use armed “FPV” multirotor drones of the fiber-optic cable communication uplink/downlink variety to attack terrestrial targets along the Black Sea coastline. It bears emphasis that Ukraine’s use of USV-launched strike munitions, including armed “FPV” multirotor drones, is not a new development; only the first publicly available documentation of a USV-launched armed “FPV” multirotor drone of the fiber-optic communication uplink/downlink variety is particularly notable at this time.
The newly available documentation reinforces my characterization of such approaches to attacking terrestrial targets across the Taiwan Strait as being very much within the realm of possibility. As I mentioned in some of my previous posts, both China and Taiwan can also use uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV)-launched strike munitions, including submerged-launch capable armed multirotor drone designs. Some water-resistant designs are even being offered to consumers for recreational purposes. The potential military applications of such armed multirotor drones in the Taiwan Strait and beyond, when launched from a UUV or even a submersible USV, are obvious.
