Kyiv accuses the world market leader for civilian drones of supporting Russia’s attacks. DJI vehemently denies this. The allegation is explosive because the Beijing government is close to Moscow.
Members of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine mounted a Molotov cocktail on this DJI drone.
The accusation has it all. Ukraine accuses Chinese drone company DJI of aiding Russia in its war. Specifically, she writes Cyber Defense Agency in its weekly situation report on Monday, an investigation confirmed that DJI was “supporting” the Russians in their attacks on Ukrainian drones and their operators.
According to Ukrainian information, Russia uses the DJI drone detection system Aeroscope to find Ukrainian drones and their pilots on the ground – and then shoot at them. According to the manufacturer, the system records, among other things, the identification number and position of all newer drones within a radius of up to 50 kilometers. Normally, Aeroscope is used to protect airports or government buildings, for example. Aeroscopes used by Ukraine, it says situation picturehave been “switched off” since the beginning of March, according to several sources.
DJI is the world’s largest manufacturer of civilian drones. According to the company, the company comes from the southern Chinese tech metropolis Shenzhen Drone Analyst to a market share of 54 percent, and even 94 percent for drones for private customers.
Drones for reconnaissance and weapons
Civilian drones are now being used more extensively in Ukraine than ever before in a war, says Faine Greenwood, an expert on the use of civilian drones in crisis areas. Both Ukraine and Russia use thousands of such drones, mostly for reconnaissance, but also to transport smaller weapons such as Molotov cocktails or grenades.
As early as mid-March, the Ukrainian minister for digital transformation on Twitter in an open letter DJI claims the Russian army uses Aeroscope systems “to guide their missiles” and kill civilians. At the time, Mikhail Fedorov did not claim that DJI supported Russia and that Ukrainian aeroscopes had been shut down.
The minister also demanded, among other things, that DJI provide the identification numbers of all its products used in Ukraine and that the company block all products purchased and activated outside of Ukraine, especially those from Russia.
No-fly zone for drones offered
DJI, in its response on Twitter, denied having changed in any way the functioning of Aeroscope in Ukraine. All recent DJI drones send signals to Aeroscope receivers, DJI wrote, and this feature cannot be turned off.
— DJI (@DJIGlobal) March 16, 2022
According to DJI, it has neither the required ID nor the option to deactivate all Russian drones or aeroscopes, for example. To do this, the products would have to be connected to DJI servers and receive the appropriate updates. On the phone, a DJI spokesman says anyone doing anything remotely sensitive or professional is operating offline.
The company only offered Minister Fedorov to set up a no-fly zone for its drones over Ukraine. DJI already had that done in Syria and Iraq. But even Ukrainian drones could no longer fly with it. And it is considered easy for hackers to fly through appropriate zones despite a no-fly zone.
It is undisputed that several drone detection systems in Ukraine actually failed at times. According to Taras Trojak, a long-standing DJI sales partner in Ukraine until recently, three aeroscopes at Ukrainian nuclear power plants failed between the end of February and mid-March. DJI suspected an internet or power failure as the reason.
Ex-distribution partner criticized DJI
Troyak contradicts this statement on the phone. The operators of the three nuclear power plants had assured his service staff that both the internet and the power supply were working. The commissioning of new aeroscopes did not work either. “DJI refused any help,” claims Trojak. Only when the incidents caused by him and a Ukrainian software engineer Facebook and Twitter became public, that has changed. “After that everything worked again, that’s a fact.”
Troyak and the software engineer also claim that according to reports from the Ukrainian army, Russia modified aeroscope systems so that it could use the positional information to guide its artillery fire. Troyak says his former contact at DJI, who was responsible for Russia and Ukraine, reported to him in late 2019 that Russia had ordered 200 aeroscopes with “built-in integration”.
These devices are now coupled to 120-millimeter caliber cannons, Ukrainian intelligence officials have told him. According to Trojak, this makes it possible to automatically shoot at the take-off and landing points of drones. This is exactly where the pilot typically stands to position or collect his drone. “Russia has already tested this system in Syria,” Troyak claims. Minister Fedorov also wrote in his open letter to DJI that Russia uses aeroscopes from Syria.
This video is intended to show how the landing pad of a drone is automatically shot at using the detection system Aeroscope.
The DJI spokesman mentioned does not want to say whether the company sold aeroscopes to the armies of Russia and Ukraine. The company does not talk about individual customers. DJI always emphasizes that it develops its products for civilian purposes and that they are not suitable for military use. However, many armies around the world have purchased DJI drones, from the US to Finland to Australia.
A former longtime DJI employee at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters, who only wants to speak anonymously, wonders what the manufacturer is really doing about its products being bought by the Russian military – or armies in general. “Internally, the company said we don’t want to sell to the military. But how that was implemented was never clear.”
The DJI spokesman denies that. The company is working hard to ensure that all distribution and sales channels follow the company’s policy that DJI products should help the world, not cause harm.
Allegations against DJI are highly political
The Ukrainian accusation that DJI supports Russia is politically explosive for at least four reasons. First, China is known to support Russia. Only last week, after a visit by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that relations should be further intensified.
Second, in mid-March, the US claimed that Russia had asked China for military assistance, including drones. Beijing denied this comprehensively. Thirdly, DJI has received money from Chinese sovereign wealth funds in recent years, contrary to its constant assurances, as research by the “Washington Post” showed in early February. One of the funds specializes in investments in the field of so-called military-civilian fusion. Under this doctrine, China wants to encourage manufacturers of commercial products to also develop and produce for the defense sector.
Fourth, DJI has been in the U.S.’s sights for years. In 2017, the Department of Defense imposed a far-reaching ban on purchases in the name of national security. In 2020, Washington imposed export sanctions on DJI – as it had on Huawei before it – by putting the company on the so-called “entity list”. And in 2021, a ban on investments in DJI followed over alleged involvement in mass surveillance of the persecuted Uyghur minority.
