this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2025
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Ukraine used ArduPilot to help it wipe out Russian targets. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Open source software used by hobbyist drones powered an attack that wiped out a third of Russia’s strategic long range bombers on Sunday afternoon, in one of the most daring and technically coordinated attacks in the war.

In broad daylight on Sunday, explosions rocked air bases in Belaya, Olenya, and Ivanovo in Russia, which are hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Security Services of Ukraine’s (SBU) Operation Spider Web was a coordinated assault on Russian targets it claimed was more than a year in the making, which was carried out using a nearly 20-year-old piece of open source drone autopilot software called ArduPilot.

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.

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Despite the name ArduPilot it appears to be based on Raspberry Pi:

https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardupilot-and-blueos-for-companion-computers/134879

The hardware is built on top of this:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/Ochin-Tiny-Carrier-Board-V2-for-Raspberry-Pi-CM4-p-5887.html

Very impressive project, based on several other open source projects.
It's amazing how you can develop projects of such sophistication both cheap and fast, exclusively based on opensource. 👍😀

Imagine the time and cost it would take, if Ukraine had to build this from the bottom!
If it was an American manufacturer, it would probably be a billion dollar project.

Edit PS:
Although this seems well documented, this is probably not a beginner project.
But for a team with some previous knowledge of working with similar things, I bet it's relatively easy.

[–] TunaLobster@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

It primarily runs on STM32 microcontrollers. Hardware ranges from $200 whoop quads to six figure, professional grade aircraft.

[–] KeenFlame@feddit.nu 3 points 4 days ago

That's wild, I was just reading about blueos for a project and that's what they used? These kids are so fucking impressive

[–] brisk@aussie.zone 3 points 4 days ago

It supports other hardware including more "embedded" systems. I've run it on a RasPi clone and on an F4 Clone