Ukraine's Palm-Sized Receiver Hijacks Russian Drone Camera Feeds Mid-Flight

A Kyiv startup is handing Ukrainian drone crews a cheat code against the drones hunting them. CODE380 built a pocket-sized receiver called the D·Vision SDR that snags live camera feeds off many Russian drones mid-flight and pipes them onto a screen. The trick works because those drones broadcast their video unencrypted over the open air, so anyone holding the right hardware can watch right along with the pilot.

That turns the tables fast. A Ukrainian unit gets eyes on where an incoming drone is pointed and what its operator is trying to hit before impact — the surveillance tool becomes the surveilled. It's cheap, passive and brutally simple: no jamming, no hacking, just listening.

The device's selling point is how little it weighs. At roughly 10 ounces, it's less than half the heft of rival Ukrainian models, one of which tips the scale at a couple of pounds, according to Defense News. For troops already hauling gear on foot, that difference is the whole ballgame.

CODE380's receiver also tunes into radio channels Russia's newer Molniya drones adopted for video in June, per Defense News. Serhii 'Flash' Beskrestnov, a radio specialist advising Ukraine's president, flagged the gap in a June Facebook post, saying most detectors either miss those frequencies entirely or catch them poorly. He also cautioned that leaning too hard on any single detector can get people killed.

Beskrestnov has warned the window may close. If Russia shifts from analog to digital video, receivers like this one go dark. Some Molniyas are already flying a different path — the New York Times reported in August that certain models are AI-guided, run on Nvidia chips and emit no signals at all.

For now, CODE380 is riding a real battlefield edge. The next round belongs to whoever adapts first.