Ukraine used ArduPilot to help it wipe out Russian targets. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Open source software used by hobbyist drones powered an attack that wiped out a third of Russia’s strategic long range bombers on Sunday afternoon, in one of the most daring and technically coordinated attacks in the war.

In broad daylight on Sunday, explosions rocked air bases in Belaya, Olenya, and Ivanovo in Russia, which are hundreds of miles from Ukraine. The Security Services of Ukraine’s (SBU) Operation Spider Web was a coordinated assault on Russian targets it claimed was more than a year in the making, which was carried out using a nearly 20-year-old piece of open source drone autopilot software called ArduPilot.

ArduPilot’s original creators were in awe of the attack. “That’s ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy,” Chris Anderson said in a comment on LinkedIn below footage of the attack.

  • bitcrafter@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    Me: “I bet that this Lemmy post will feature an interesting discussion about the ethics of developing open source software that you know is actively being used to destroy things in real life. This seems like something seriously worth pondering, so I really cannot wait to see what people have to say about it!”

    Me: (Clicks on link, reads through comments.)

    Me: “Oh… oh no…”

  • Jakob Fel@retrolemmy.com
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    4 days ago

    I wouldn’t want to claim this as a win for the open source community. Ukraine keeps pushing for war when peace talks should be the goal. Putin may not be listening either but it’s no surprise when Ukraine keeps pushing for escalation. Neither side has any excuses left at this point. Let’s not give open source software a bad name by supporting warmongering.

    • dmalteseknight@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      You mean surrender. You wish for Ukraine to surrender stolen territory. You also assume Russia would not use the time of peace to regroup rearm and reinvade.

      Everyone wants peace. Putin wanted peace from the beginning but the pesky sovereign nation wanted to keep it’s sovereignty.

      • andybytes@programming.dev
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        3 days ago

        Hahahah sure America cares about national sovereignty. Boy, you are a cute cup cupcake, pumpkin. You got the newborn babe smell. Rules based order, gotcha.

      • andybytes@programming.dev
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        3 days ago

        The Book of History never closes. No war is ever won. In 2014, the United States CIA supported a coup that put into power the nationalist who are neo-Nazis. Liberals are not pro-peace, they are pro-war and anti-working class. Ukraine is not a democracy. The United States is willing to sacrifice the whole nation for a proxy war. We are just using them. It’s so funny how you all get jazzed up. It’s like when liberals kept telling us, we have to save the poor women in Afghanistan. America is not a democracy. America is an imperialist empire and Nazis are the useful idiots of empire. It could be argued that there hasn’t been any real human progress. Nowadays, because we keep escalating, we’ve got space nukes. What a miserable world. All the suckers that go along with it.

      • GolfNovemberUniform@infosec.pub
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        3 days ago

        Not many people know but Ukraine is not very interested in peace either. Their demands are almost as unrealistic as Russia’s.

        • Kissaki@programming.dev
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          2 days ago

          How do you conclude from unrealistic demands to no interest in peace?

          What do you think the prospects of short and long-term peace are? What would you be willing to sacrifice for temporary “peace”?

          They probably know better than us. No?

      • Jakob Fel@retrolemmy.com
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        3 days ago

        Ooh, how dare I not fall in line for a narrative that is designed to launder money and keep people dying in the process? The audacity!

        • MoreZombies@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          If Russia stopped invading them, do you think Ukraine would suddenly try to invade Russia in turn?

          • Jakob Fel@retrolemmy.com
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            2 days ago

            They’d continue to cozy up to NATO, persecute Russian nationals (even peaceful citizens) and give Putin the legitimate reasons you claim he doesn’t have.

            • MoreZombies@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              I claimed what? I don’t understand why you’re advocating for the aggressor and their invasion of another country, and doing so on a retro gaming instance.

              So again - what the fuck?

              • Jakob Fel@retrolemmy.com
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                2 days ago

                “You”, collectively, referring to all the warmongering hypocrites who want to keep the war going for no reason other than sLaVa uKrAiNi.

                I’d love to focus on retro games, tech and other cool stuff that interests me. Problem is, even after blocking all sorts of instances and communities, and building up a word filter, I still see political (or in this case, geopolitical) posts all over the cesspit that is Lemmy.

                • MoreZombies@lemm.ee
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                  2 days ago

                  At no point have I ever said I want the war.

                  It looks like our difference in opinion is I want the people actually causing the war to stop.