Russian jet-powered Shahed-type drones heading toward Kyiv may be using mobile phone base stations located in Belarus. The suggestion was made by Serhii Beskrestnov, a freelance adviser to the president of Ukraine on the development of technological areas of defense, who is known by the call sign Flash.
He noted that hundreds of jet-powered Shahed drones are flying toward the Ukrainian capital not by the shortest route, but along a path that allows them to remain near the Belarusian border for as long as possible.
One of the possibilities he considered is that this could be related to controlling the drones through mesh network nodes located in Belarus. However, Beskrestnov noted that the operating range of such communications systems is significantly greater than the distance to the border.
The expert suggested that the choice of route could be explained by the presence of LTE modems on the drones, which connect to base stations operated by Belarusian mobile operators during flight.
Beskrestnov stressed that this was only his hypothesis and invited other specialists to offer their own explanations.