Ukraine’s D·Vision Receiver Lets Troops Watch Russian Drone Video

Kyiv equipment startup CODE380 makes a receiver that lets Ukrainian troops view live video from many Russian drones, showing a drone’s direction and what its operator is aiming at before impact.

The D·Vision SDR picks up video sent over the air without scrambling. A unit with the receiver can watch the onboard camera feed, which may reveal what a drone is approaching before it hits.

The device weighs about 10 ounces, less than half as much as competing Ukrainian models. One competing model weighs a couple of pounds. D·Vision also covers radio channels that newer Russian Molniya drones began using for video in June.

Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a radio specialist who advises Ukraine’s president, wrote in a June Facebook post, “Most detectors don’t see these frequencies, or see them poorly.” He warned that relying too heavily on a detector could prove fatal.

Beskrestnov has also warned that a future shift from analog to digital video could leave receivers like D·Vision unable to pick up drone feeds. Separately, some Molniya drones are AI-guided, use NVIDIA chips and emit no signals.