A technology from 20 years ago brought Ukraine to the Russian bombers. Moscow's response comes from China: a laser cannon. What just recently seemed like science fiction (drones launched from trucks, guided by open-source code from twenty years ago facing laser weapons) is now a reality. Cheap drones and open-source software. As the media outlet 404 reported, behind the flight of the army of drones was not a sophisticated and secret technology. On the contrary, the devices were powered by ArduPilot, an open-source software created two decades ago by unmanned aviation enthusiasts.

The use of this software, a free system originally designed for civil tasks such as agriculture, rescue, or mapping, allowed Ukraine to coordinate that swarm of drones with autonomous navigation functions, aerial stabilization, standby modes, and contingencies for signal loss, even in a hostile environment saturated with interference and without GPS.$ETH