Russian Hackers Render American Drones Useless in Ukraine

AeroVironment’s survellience drones were so bad, the government of Ukraine wanted to just give them back to the United States, after being harangued by mischievous Russian hackers, which rendered the toys r us grade drones utterly useless.

Kiev purchased 72 piece of shit Raven RQ-11b (they named it to sound official, but it’s really a fucking useless toy) from AeroVironment, ticker symbol $AVAV, and regret ever doing so. That’ll teach them for buying low quality crap from our B grade defense contractors. Had they purchased via $LMT, they’d be crushing helmets right now.

“From the beginning, it was the wrong decision to use these drones in our (conflict),” Chazin, an advisor to the chief of the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces, told Reuters.
The hand-launched Ravens were one of the recent highlights of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, aiming to give Kiev’s military portable, light-weight, unarmed surveillance drones that were small enough to be used widely in the field. They are made by AeroVironment.

The Air Force command of Ukraine’s armed forces acknowledged to Reuters that the Ravens supplied by the United States had a fundamental drawback: Russia and the separatist forces it supports can intercept and jam their video feeds and data.

“The complex is analog, therefore command channels and data are not protected from interception and suppression by modern means of electronic warfare,” it said.
Chazin said they were largely in storage and called them a vulnerability, allowing the enemy to see Ukrainian military positions and, when it wanted, easily take them down. They had short battery life and were unable to reliably fulfill the key mission of gaining intelligence on artillery positions, he said.

“(Analog) basically puts you back in the stone age of the UAVs,” said James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, using an acronym for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones.
“I’m not being critical of the Raven. I love the Raven … But it’s a cheap, disposable UAV. And for more intense conflict, that may not cut the ice anymore.”

What a piece of shit. The people at AeroVironment should be ashamed of themselves for selling such trash, making America look like stone aged fools. I guess we’re so accustomed to fighting rock throwers in the Middle East, we’ve become lazy and complacent when it comes to dealing with true defense threats.

According to our government of whiners, Russia is just having a ball taking down our drones, using them against our Ukraine allies, and also hacking the DNC  and John ‘I don’t need pizza right now’ Podesta’s email box for both fun and leisure.

Shares of $AVAV were down a bit yesterday. If Trump is paying attention to this embarrassment, they’ll be getting axed during the next round of contracts.