Ukraine's surprise attack on Russian airfields wrecked dozens of bombers with more than 100 drones in the country's most spectacular long-range retaliation yet. It got the job done with ArduPilot, an open-source software package more often used by hobbyists.
ArduPilot's original creators were in awe of the attack. "That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy," Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack.
On X, he tagged his the co-creators Jordi Muñoz and Jason Short in a post about the attack. "Not in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. I just wanted to make flying robots," Short said in a reply to Anderson. "Ardupilot powered drones just took out half the Russian strategic bomber fleet."
The technical innovation in the latest attack is that the drones are much smaller than usual and not dependent for positioning on Starlink, a satellite internet network owned by Elon Musk.
As for ArduPilot, though, "trusted, versatile, and open source," goes the blurb. The adversary appears is using it too: 404 Media's Matthew Gault adds: "Website analytics from 2023 showed that the project was very popular in both Ukraine and Russia."
Previously: Disney's amazing new drone show
