The Ukrainian investigative project Trap Aggressor reported that one of the manufacturers of Russian drones uses the services of the American satellite company Iridium.
The investigation says the Russian company AFM-Servers, co-owned by businessman Amir Valiev, has contracts with Russian law enforcement agencies and “systematically cooperates with the FSB.”
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The authors of the “Trap Aggressor” project refer to a video posted on YouTube in which Valiev presents a Ptero drone designed for surveillance. In the recording, he admits that the drone uses a satellite system provided by the American company Iridium.
Meanwhile, Iridium itself still has an office in Moscow and had a contract to provide satellite communications to the Russian National Guard in 2022. In addition, one of Iridium’s subsidiaries provided communications for the Russian Foreign Ministry, the publication said.
In addition, according to the authors of the investigation, the company AFM-Servers manufactures the Kartograf drone, which the Russian army uses for reconnaissance during the war against Ukraine.
In the spring of this year, the Ukrainian military claimed to have shot down such a drone near Kryvyi Rih in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
The authors of the investigation claim that it is an “unmanned secret Russian complex of the Ptero family” that was “secretly developed for the needs of the Russian Federal Security Service.”
The investigation did not say whether the US Iridium satellite system was used to fly the Kartograph drone.
However, the publication claims that the Kartograph drone is “literally stuffed with Western components.” Among other things, the project source claims it uses a Japanese spark plug, American chips and wireless modules, and a German-made engine.
Iridium has not yet commented on the findings of the authors of the Trap Aggressor investigation.
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2023-09-29 15:23:00
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