Putin’s forces 'terrorised by Martians' in Ukraine war zone – 'Invisible to detectors'

Russian forces are expressing terror over a new type of Ukrainian killer drones they call “Martians”. Vladimir Putin’s fighters say they cannot track the unmanned aircraft which are also invulnerable to electronic warfare interference.

Reports allege the Ukrainian drones operate without GPS, using an optical odometry system from NASA’s Martian helicopters and Qualcomm chips. The new type of AI-driven UAV has alarmed Russian military bloggers who are both fearful and envious of its capabilities. One of the bloggers said: “At the final stage of the attack, the drone turns off communication and becomes fully autonomous. It compares images from its cameras with a pre-loaded map of heights and terrain in real time. This makes the drone invisible to detectors and invulnerable to electronic warfare systems.”

NASA’s Ingenuity was a small autonomous helicopter carried to Mars with the Perseverance rover. It made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021, and ultimately completed 72 flights before its mission ended in January 2024. It relied on autonomous onboard navigation because Mars has no GPS and communications delays make manual piloting impossible in real time.

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