By the time you hear the UAV coming, it’s often too late. It’ll be upon you in seconds — not enough time to react. All you can hope for is that the operator is bad at their job and the explosion misses your vitals.
With a good detector though, you can spot a drone coming from kilometers away, giving you time to scatter, jump into a dugout, switch on the jammer, or just grab the shotgun. When dealing with FPVs or drones with similar roles, maximizing reaction time is critical — both for troops on the front line and civilians like first responders and journalists.
Drone detectors have been a staple technology in Ukraine for years. These tools typically pick up on the signals transmitted between drones and their operators to provide a heads-up. As drone control systems and tactics evolve complexity, so too must detectors.
Kara Dag Technologies bills itself as a leader in this space — Euromaidan Press reviewed positive feedback from an investor and testimonials about its Obriy series of detectors, whose latest Obriy 1.3C and 1.4C iterations recently dropped. Several warfighters said the system “performed well in field conditions” while a foreign volunteer said "they save lives on a daily basis, especially in Kherson."
“It’s every unit that you can imagine,” co-founder Andriy Poberezhniuk told Euromaidan Press in an interview. “Brigades, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), military intelligence (HUR), police, rescue teams, medics, and so on.”
Antenna covers of anodized aluminum offer more robustness and sensitivity than the more commonly used plastic sheaths, while the option of having a built-in or external screen offers flexibility to the users. However, Poberezhniuk emphasized the range of frequencies the Obriy’s latest models are able to detect.
“Basically, it's one of the widest ranges for detection in the Ukrainian market,” he said. “And probably elsewhere too just because famous companies mostly target off-the-shelf drones like DJI Mavic and so on, with limited frequency coverage.”
Casting a wider net
Drones such as FPVs send a continuous video feed back to their operator. The frequencies of most common video feeds range from about 1 GHz to 6 GHz and tend to cluster within certain sub-ranges. Some detectors on the market are tailored to pick up on signals within these specific bands.
Kara Dag Technologies says it has moved beyond these ranges. The latest Obriy 1.3C and 1.4C models are meant to detect just about every frequency between 1 and 6 GHz. Poberezhniuk said that the number of drones that use less common frequencies is on the rise. The next version aims to detect everything from 300 MHz through 6 GHz, with further bandwidth expansions after that.
“It's important because if there will be drones with new unique signatures, we will most likely capture them... The trend is moving farther away from common signatures,” he said.
Because of these trends, soon, even that may not be enough, according to Callsign Archean, an EW specialist and platoon commander with the Azov Corps. "If we talk about detection today, we'd like to see solutions from 200 MHz to 15 GHz," he said at the Invest in Bravery Summit in Kyiv.
Many FPV drones use an analog video feed as it’s cost-effective and reliable. The detector can not only spot these signals, but intercept them and show Ukrainian users what the Russian pilot is seeing.
Other FPV drones use a digital feed. This is more prone to interruption but the signal is encrypted and cannot be tapped into by a low-cost device. However, the detector can still spot these signals and give a heads-up to soldiers that something is coming their way.
Detectors have a much harder time seeing the widely-fielded fiber-optic drones, which have no need for radio communication. Front line researcher Rob Lee previously said that in some Russian units, up to 50% of Russian FPVs use optic fiber.
Poberezhniuk acknowledges that fiber-optic drones are “very hard to detect” but is betting that these drones will not overtake radio-guided ones. Fiber-optic drones have greater takeoff weight leaving less room for payload, and the fibers can be cut by opposing forces, natural obstacles, or even inclement weather.
Battlefield integration
Kara Dag Technologies has stationary and handheld detectors, and is now working on a pilot project to mount these systems on more expensive UAVs to give them an extra layer of protection against cheap FPVs coming to knock them out of the sky.
Another challenge is getting detection systems to work in an environment with ubiquitous electronic warfare (EW). Jammers interfere with detectors and may even cause some to “burn out,” though Kara Dag promises in marketing material that their Obriy will not burn out from jammers. Soldiers must be careful when they switch detectors and jammers on and off.
Poberezhniuk said that the company’s goal is to allow operators to use EW more effectively. For example, if the detector is wired into a separate jamming device, it can automatically switch on the jammer to block certain frequencies, as soon as it detects them.
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“The idea is that you have a jammer. It has a set battery life. When do you want to run it? It’s a kind of gamble,” he said. “Usually when you drive a car you run it, just because you're an easy target because they see you.”
“So the idea is that a detector can remove the human error factor,” he added. “No threat, no activation.”
Responding to global threats
Poberezhniuk and his business partner started developing the Obriy prototype after the Russians attacked en masse in 2022. The fact that drones would become a big part of the battlefield became apparent to Ukrainians mere months into the full-scale invasion.
The Russians soon caught on and began massing drones and anti-drone systems of their own. It took the rest of the world longer to realize that these layered, cheap, scalable systems changed how modern warfare works.
Now, pro-Iranian militias are using FPV drones to strike at bases in the Middle East. While the proliferation of drones doesn’t guarantee their effective use, it does create an extra layer of danger for both civilians and militaries around the world.
Poberezhniuk sees a global need for effective detection systems, likening it to wearing a helmet or body armor, giving people a greater chance of staying alive.
“We aim to disrupt this market. We want to make it more affordable because of the coming threats. I mean I'm afraid that terrorists will start to use (FPV drones),” he said. “This is a dangerous new field.”
Adding machine learning
Kara Dag Technologies has these things in mind as it develops the next version, the Obriy 1.5. While the current version can do basic classification, the company is developing its own AI model that could analyze the frequencies and tell users more precisely what specific drone is flying at them.
Drones evolve constantly — in Ukraine, their controls and telemetry change on a weekly basis. That means constant updates are needed. Poberezhniuk’s company uses a subscription model that lets users receive all the updates as soon as they’re released.
In the future, he wants to add more layers of detection to the system beyond radio signals, such as visual and acoustic signatures.
Part of the company’s goal is to be able to make use of signals data collected from detectors on different parts of the battlefield or even from different wars on separate continents. Over the course of its deployment, the Obriy system has collected quite a library of signals data, which is only going to grow.
“The idea is… you have this exchange of information, so you have access to unique frequencies,” Poberezhniuk said. “You will be prepared if something is new on this part of the front line but it was detected two days ago in another part of your country or the world.”
Company profiles are produced in cooperation with featured companies. Euromaidan Press retains editorial control over framing and factual accuracy.
