The unjammable drone: How fiber optics are rewiring warfare

Russia reports that it has discovered a new type of Ukrainian naval “mothership” that serves as a carrier for fiber-optic cable-tethered quadcopter drones. A first for the Black Sea theater, these drones, they claim, are specifically designed to avoid jamming.

This is seen as yet another escalation in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, with drone technology once again leading the charge in innovation.

But does this signal not just tactical innovation, but a shift toward a new era of hybrid naval warfare? A shift where traditional “blue water” fleets are increasingly vulnerable to swarms of low-cost, resilient drones? Let’s find out.

Tethered drones to attack distant targets

The drones, Business Insider reports, were discovered in the Krasnodar region, with images and video footage released by Russian news channels and military bloggers shortly after.

According to reports, the new drones were obtained after Ukrainian forces attempted an attack on the port cities of Tuapse and Novorossiysk on September 26.

The attack was aimed at damaging Russia’s oil infrastructure in the area and resulted in at least two personnel being injured. Shortly after the attack, video footage was released by Russian sources that seemed to show the disabled mothership moored near shore.

While the fate of the drone is unclear, what is interesting is the presence of several boxes with hinged lids that can be seen attached to its hull. It appears these boxes were used to house slave tethered first-person-view (FPV) drones to carry out the attack.

Other images also show some “unspent” tethered drones within the boxes, and other images show the fiber optic cable spools attached to the drones.

Similar technology has been employed by Ukraine in the past, notably the use of similar deployment techniques under June’s “Operation Spiderweb” into Russian territory.

The use of mothership drones is also nothing new, with Ukraine reporting similar naval drone carriers back in December 2024.

Spools of war

Fiber-optic drones are a new class of uncrewed platforms designed to defeat electronic warfare (EW). Unlike standard FPV drones (that rely on radio signals vulnerable to jamming), these drones are tethered to their operators via spools of ultra-thin fiber-optic cable, allowing uninterrupted control even in heavily contested airspace.

An elegant solution, but one where the trade-off is complexity. Longer cables mean more weight, which reduces speed, payload capacity, and range. To overcome these limits, both Ukraine and Russia have experimented with “motherships,” or ground- or sea-based vehicles that carry the drones close to target zones before launch.

Because fiber-optic drones are harder to produce, they are typically reserved for high-value strikes or for disabling jamming systems to clear the way for cheaper FPVs. The approach represents the latest stage in the rapid evolution of drone warfare, where both sides are layering tactics to outpace countermeasures.

Ukraine has also leaned heavily on uncrewed surface vessels as a substitute for a conventional navy, using explosive-laden sea drones to ram Russian ships. This tactic is now inspiring NATO, the US, and Taiwan to pursue similar low-cost naval platforms.

Russia, too, has begun deploying fiber-optic-guided sea drones, with its Black Sea Fleet recently testing versions designed to sink their cables as they unwind.

Cheap but risky strategy

As interesting as this new development is, it does have some inherent drawbacks that could limit its practical use large scale. The first, and most obvious, is that the cable tethers themselves are potentially fragile.

Physical damage to the cables will sever any links to the FPV drones, effectively rendering them useless. If no redundancy is built in, these drones will either become “dead in the water,” to borrow a phrase, or worse, become potential liabilities if armed with highly explosive payloads.

In fact, we have already seen countermeasures to tethered drones being deployed in Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have begun to deploy barbed wire “barriers” designed specifically to sever these cables, rendering the drones inoperable.

The tactic also relies on the contact with the “mothership” remaining stable. Given that models seen so far rely on wireless connectivity, the very same “jamming” could also sever links to it, which would counter the entire point of them.

Additionally, knocking out the “mothership” would also eliminate the threat of its “slaved” FPV drones. That said, this new drone system has obviously been successful so far, and will only improve in future iterations.

This could signal that we should expect an escalation into attacks on critical oil and port infrastructure, as seen with its recent use against Tuapse and Novorossiysk. We will likely also see proliferation in this kind of kit, as once tech is field-proven, others will adopt it, from Iran to other non-state actors.

That said, for now, these systems are limited in range and reliability. However, they hint at a future where sea control may no longer depend on fleets of steel, but on networks of cheap, autonomous craft, each capable of striking far beyond their cost.

A game-changer or just a patch?

Jamming is the deliberate disruption of a drone’s communication or navigation signals. Most drones rely on radio frequencies to receive commands from a remote operator and to transmit video or telemetry back.

In military settings, electronic warfare (EW) units use powerful transmitters to broadcast noise or false signals on the same frequencies, overwhelming or confusing the drone’s receiver.

There are two main types. The first is control jamming, which blocks or scrambles the link between the pilot and drone, causing it to lose guidance or crash. The second is GPS jamming or spoofing, which interferes with satellite navigation, making drones lose their bearings or drift off course.

On the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine both deploy truck-mounted or portable jammers that create “no-fly bubbles” extending several kilometers. These devices emit bursts of electromagnetic energy across multiple bands, effectively blinding or hijacking most standard FPV drones that depend on Wi-Fi or radio.

Fiber-optic drones bypass this vulnerability entirely. Because they’re physically connected to their operator via a cable rather than relying on radio or GPS, jamming has no effect. That’s why militaries see them as “unjammable,” though at the cost of shorter range, higher weight, and greater deployment complexity.

In this sense, the rise of this new tethered drone deployed from a remotely-controlled “mothership” is both something of a low-cost fix to jamming and, potentially, a game-changer for drone warfare.

If so, it could signal changes as significant to warfare as WWII aircraft carriers ferrying planes into range. It could, therefore, be the start of seeing these uncrewed carriers become the backbone of future littoral combat.

Only time and tide will tell, of course.