According to American experts, the drones shot down over the Kremlin may have been launched from Russia. Supporting that assumption is that the flying objects must have overcome a number of defense systems in and around Moscow, said Dana Goward, president of the nonprofit foundation Resilient Navigation and Timing, which advocates for stronger GPS systems.
Since 2015 at the latest, “spoofing” is used to protect the Kremlin, in which control systems are also tricked by drones with GPS jamming signals. The drones that arrived at the Kremlin could therefore have flown without GPS and were instead manually controlled – indicating a nearby start.
Footage of drones flying over the Kremlin is circulating on social media. Government experts, but also analysts who rely on freely available sources, are now looking to movies for clues about the origin of flying objects.
Russia blames Ukraine
Russia has accused Ukraine of trying to assassinate President Vladimir Putin with a drone strike on the Kremlin. Ukraine rejected this. The US, for its part, has denounced Russian accusations that they are the masterminds as lies.
Drone expert Goward said the drones could have been aimed at the Kremlin and left to their own devices “kamikaze style”. “It is amazing that this drone can fly from Moscow to the Kremlin without being detected and destroyed,” said Blake Resnick, founder and chief executive of drone maker BRINC.
In that context, he also mentions the lack of GPS control or any communication with a ground station. The comparatively small size of the devices and the low flying altitude could have made this possible.