Drone Basics

To be a competent drone operator you will have to become a weather nerd and special reconnaissance fanatic. You can modify software and add components to your unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). It all depends on how far down the rabbit hole you’d like to go. The beauty of this drone shit, is that you add no risk to high risk situations. UAV logistics provides support to mitigate vulnerabilities given by the enemy or client that can compromise your team and mission. This is all about finding, disrupting, deterring, harassing, fixing, destroying, and pursuing the enemy/client. Strong choice in words, but that’s how we think of it. In corporate espionage we try not to inflict fear with our drone, rather enable curiosity instead if you get caught. A lot of the tactical drone talk and tactics we use in corporate espionage. In this case we’re red teaming a corporate company. Just keep in mind as a drone operator passive measures requires strict execution. Active measures requires risk of detection and not getting ambushed. Drone operators determine the best Course of Action (COA). Create flexibility and provide intel that could lead to possible engagement or scouting.

Note: Grab a companion development board from arduino. Find coding on websites like github and ardupilot. There’s also coding simulators you can test hardware before you ssh’it.

Certification: FAA Part 107… Put in 20 hours of didactic studying time, take the test. Again; like degrees it just makes you trustworthy and knowledgeable.

Fleet Loadout:

-(2) Multi-role ISR drones (raspberry pi4 pwnagotchi w/ extended antennas or deauth capabilities)

-(1) Intermediate range reconnaissance drone FPV

-Payload dropping drone

-SDR onboard node attacker drone

-Swarm Drones (just for fun)

-FPV drone (initial pass thru pentester, payload breacher)

Note: Each mission is different, but in the perfect world we’d have at least 2 drones that overlap/leapfrog each other in flight, so we always have eyes in the sky. On most missions in the urban setting no one looks in the sky or hears anything 50M in the sky. It’s all about redundancy. On most of these drones we’re aware of payload weight issues and battery life.

Drones are here to provide supplemental sensors to the AO. Locating and recognizing systems, targets, and security. The capabilities are vast and they supply visuals of flanks, routes, and zone recon. Drones can determine the composition of the workforce and their daily activities through surveillance. All of this is in an effort to identify critical decision points, decoys, and disruption. Vulnerabilities while operating drones include counter sensors, weather, and other control stations that may cause interference.

It’s imperative for the drone operator to brief the rest of the team on capabilities; whether they’re attached, operational control, tactical control, or any other service. The drone operator must be able to conduct administrative drone work, flight check inspections, tactical deployment plans, and conduct strategic deployment. Organization for air mission command is daily flight schedules and empowering command tactics. Rehearsal and battle drills are the keys to the success in your corporate espionage drone operation.

Air to ground integration comes with the free “TAK” application also known as the team awareness kit. A very intricate and god sent app developed by US Air Force among others to aid in situational awareness. There’s multiple supported platforms for TAK. We run WinTAK at our HQ, pyTAK on our remote workstations, and ATAK on our android A12’s. Lastly we run iTAK on our other smartphones. They’re all connected and communicate back and forth. You’re able to leverage existing data like ESRI, KML, KMZ, offline maps, and Geospatial maps. You can also add structural building manager apps that stack blueprints on top of each other and add building markers. The UAS tool within the program allows us to add up to 3+ drones with a live feed at a time. It plays out like a video game but it’s a great tool to have, debrief your team, and brief your client at ‘Company X’ with. ATAK allows for precision targeting, surrounding land formation intelligence, situational awareness, navigation and data sharing. Once the network is established it is integrated for real-time positioning.

UAV training solutions:

-How do you train? How do opposing forces train?

-Are you using anything Counter-UAS oriented?

-Are you training for more than one drone at a time? Swarms?

-How do we evolve our UAV program?