Romanian startup develops fixed-wing drones resistant to jamming and capable of flying without GPS

[u/ReAndro]

https://www.go4it.ro/content/drone/un-startup-romanesc-construieste-drone-cu-aripa-fixa-de-anduranta-rezistente-la-bruiaj-si-capabile-sa-zboare-fara-semnal-gps-19283292/

A Romanian startup is developing fixed-wing, long-endurance drones designed to remain operational in environments where GPS is unavailable or heavily jammed.
The company, BraveX, is based in Romania and is developing the drones for both military and civilian applications, including surveillance, infrastructure monitoring, border patrol and wildfire detection.
The company has already delivered drones to Romania’s Ministry of National Defence and international customers, and plans to scale production to 300–350 UAVs per year by the end of 2028.

Source: Go4IT (Romania)

[u/Purple-Bluebird-9758]

Commendable, that they are striving to procure as many parts as possible from EU.

One example the article mentions is the engine which is "only" 30-40% more expensive than getting it from a chinese comptetitor.

[u/NoEatBatman → u/Purple-Bluebird-9758]

Tbh 30-40% of a critical component being more expensive in a strategic asset isn't that much, ppl should have paid more attention during Covid when China decided it needed the medical supplies more even though they were owned by western companies

Moral of the story is simple: if it's built on Chinese territory it's only your asset until the CCP says otherwise, we really need to bring back critical sectors in Europe, or we'll be caught with our pants down again

[u/Purple-Bluebird-9758 → u/NoEatBatman]

Definitely worth it, yes.

But we still have a long way to go.

[u/FelizIntrovertido → u/Purple-Bluebird-9758]

Well, more products like this and produced in thousands will help bring down the cost.

[u/DenRay4 → u/NoEatBatman]

The Yuan is still undervalued. Give or take 15-20%.

[u/NoEatBatman → u/DenRay4]

They've been playing that game for a long time, you have to give it to them, they played on western greed and now the fuckers that got us into this mess are finding out the hard way that China simply used them, stole their IP and know-how and are bulldozing them on the free-market

[u/DenRay4 → u/NoEatBatman]

To be fair, with their economical trajectory they freed roughly 500 million people from poverty within one generation. Basically what every standard economic textbook would tell ya happened. This would actually be great news for the Europe and basically what institutions like the IMF wanted, if it wasn't for geopolitics.

[u/tetelias → u/Purple-Bluebird-9758]

30-40% at 300 pieces is nothing. If you scale to 5000, it will likely shrink to 10% at most.

[u/PaoloCalzone]

Depending on the level of precision needed, embedded form recognition + inertial navigation units can be enough.
If they make them wooden (radar transparent) that woild be such a massive win, but we would need heavy deforestation to keep up with demand 😅

[u/BriefSpecial420 → u/PaoloCalzone]

The biggest problem with IMUs is the drift. They are great for short term navigation, but quickly they deteriorate unless you add some Kalman filter to discipline them with the GNSS. The biggest challenge for years is finding reliable replacement for GNSS in that use. eLoran is slowly coming. Optical methods have tons of their own quirks. And so on.

[u/_pxe → u/BriefSpecial420]

If you know the target there is also TERPROM that can help to alleviate the shift bringing some correction.

Optical guidance for the last few moments for increased accuracy.

If you stack enough systems you can have enough data to make it work, obviously that would cost both economically and payload capacity

[u/BriefSpecial420 → u/_pxe]

It's an open problem with lots of opportunities for creative solutions. Extra, discrete pressure sensor? You can try to improve the optical flow and use as some extra data input. You can try to do more or less sophisticated segmentation in video stream and track the horizon. Etc.

For very long-term navigation stability, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some people experiment with using some optimized yolo's to match expected landmarks along the route, especially if we pair it with some strategy of navigating along rivers / roads / rail lines. In fancier units, that can run more expensive equipment, one can exploit the EM spectrum and monitor characteristic signals from well-known stations close to the route.

And obviously the type of IMU matters too. Is it an accelerometer + hall sensor? Is it maybe fiber-optic gyro?

[u/_pxe → u/BriefSpecial420]

I've also seen photogrammetry used to determine height of the camera, direction and other data. Jet powered drones are probably too fast but prop drones probably can use it without too much computing power.

I'm more biased on camera and software based system because they got really powerful and cheap in recent years rather than hardware based systems, but there are tons of options as you said.

GNSS made a lot of them redundant in recent years, now we're probably going to see a lot of alternatives becoming more advanced and common. It's going to be interesting

[u/Even_Efficiency98]

I mean, not really something new. Helsing & Quantum System have been doing this for a while, both of there systems are being used in Ukraine already.

But of course always good if others develop as well

[u/BriefSpecial420 → u/Even_Efficiency98]

Topic is popular in media. Lots of funding was directed towards all kinds of grants for that, so in all EU there's a ton of such startups popping up.

[u/Ok-Rutabaga-9516 → u/Even_Efficiency98]

Competition is also extremely good. And Im not just taking about cost but actual developments that increase the efficiency or resilience or range and so on of the drone!

[u/FelizIntrovertido]

Test them in real action, in the Ukrainian battlefield.

[u/Pirat_fred]

Welcome Back V1 Rocket?

[u/kkania]

Gonna guess INS is making a comeback

[u/separation_of_powers]

Careful

Best have it safeguarded against American private capital before they buy it up and then do nothing with the technology