Three young Americans created a drone in 24 hours that could prove vital for Ukraine in the war against Russia.

A group of young Americans have caught the attention of U.S. Special Operations Forces — and Ukraine — after developing a GPS-independent drone in just 24 hours.

“We designed, 3D printed and built a sub-$500 drone that calculates GPS coordinates without signal using a camera + Google Maps in 24 hours.” he explained on his social networks Ian Laffey24, on February 18. A few months later, on August 18, he wrote: “We just shipped our first unit to a real military customer exactly 6 months after that first tweet.”

In February 2024, Laffey decided to put his project of developing an AI tool for emails on hold and attended a hackathon in San Francisco. There, he met a group of Ukrainians fresh from the front, who were looking for new technologies that could be useful in their country’s war against Vladimir Putin’s forces. The experiment resulted in the creation of an innovative, GPS-independent drone that caught the attention of the North American forces.

Since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has faced significant limitations, such as reliance on cheap drones using GPS signals, which is problematic because They can be easily blocked or disrupted by the enemy.

In the context of war, drones have played a central role in reconnaissance and attack tasks, which has generated a new arms race in which both sides are developing more advanced drones and technologies to counter them. A report by Royal Institute of United Services of May 2023 indicated that Ukraine could lose up to 10,000 drones per month due to electronic jamming.

Laffey, along with two other young people, managed to design in less than 24 hours an alternative system that allows drones to identify their position without the need for GPS.

The drone’s cameras take photographs of the terrain and compare them to a database of Google Maps images, using basic machine learning techniques. The system can be installed on virtually any drone for less than $500. “You can store a lot of compressed maps on a 256GB SD card if you compress them properly… We can store over 10,000 square kilometers,” he explained. Laffey in an interview with Defense One.

This development attracted the attention of a special operations group of the US Armywho began testing the drone in various exercises and experiments, as confirmed by the media Defense One. While there are still technical challenges to overcome, such as ensuring the system works at a wider range of altitudes and speeds, the young people believe these are solvable problems.

Under the name of TheseusThe three developers have had several conversations with representatives of the Ukrainian military since their first meeting and have designed the system taking into account the changing reality of the battlefield.

The story of Theseus reveals the transformation of the relationship between Pentagon with non-traditional companies and entrepreneurs. Technological advances in the defense sector are no longer reserved for large, established contractors. Advances in artificial intelligence and trends in information technology have reduced the barriers to bringing new capabilities to the battlefield.. Now, a group of young people with no military experience can create relevant solutions with cheap, readily available components in a fraction of the time and cost required by traditional contractors.

Ukrainian special forces have also come up with another solution to Russian electronic warfare, known as signal jamming. With many of their drones effectively blinded, Ukrainian drone technologists have been forced to get creative.

They developed an innovative software, called Eagle Eyeswhich allows drones to operate without the need for GPS, reducing vulnerability to Russian interference. Instead of using satellite navigation, the drones use artificial intelligence to compare live video with maps created from images collected by reconnaissance aircraft. This system not only allows the drones to continue operating despite jamming attempts, but also to autonomously identify and attack targets, including missile launchers and enemy tanks.

Kurt Volkerformer U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Business Insider that this technology could be crucial in giving Ukraine the upper hand in the conflict, although its full effectiveness remains to be seen, according to a special forces commander. white eagleThis technology is already widely used and is economical enough to equip kamikaze droneswhich are destroyed upon impact with their target, making them cheaper to operate without requiring expensive upgrades.