Joker-10: What's Known About Russia’s Unique Hibernating FPV Drone

Small, cheap first-person view (FPV) drones have become the bane of troops and vehicles on the battlefields of the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, with their presence, along with their larger, more expensive military-grade cousins, rewriting the rules of modern warfare.

The Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions, a Russian drone manufacturer known for the development of the Joker series of multipurpose UAVs, has created a new model known as the Joker-10.

The UAV, said to already be in use by Russian forces on the battlefield, has a reported carrying capacity of up to 5 kg, and a flight speed of about 100 km per hour fully loaded, or 200 km per hour empty.

The drone features unique design solutions allowing it to hibernate while lying in wait for up to a month before being remotely activated.

“Our drone is equipped with two vital features. The first is a hibernator unit which allows operators to turn the drone on and off from a distance. That is, not just turn the motors on and off, but to turn off power to the device completely. Essentially, it’s like remotely pulling the battery out of the drone,” General Director Dmitry Kuzyakin told Sputnik.

“The drone can lay in wait for launch for up to one week in winter, and up to a month in the summer,” Kuzyakin explained, adding that the drone is resistant to rain and snow.

In hibernation mode, the UAV can communicate with operators through passive means. “It’s passive, there are practically no radio emissions, and therefore it is extremely difficult to detect during hibernation,” he said.

The ability to remotely bring the UAV out of hibernation allows crews to place sleeping Joker-10s in frontline areas and leave, without being detected by Ukrainian electronic intelligence gathering units hunting for Russian drone operators. This means by the time the drones are turned on, operators are nowhere in sight for the other side to pick up on any radio emissions.

If necessary, the drone can also be flown to its waiting area and switch off remotely.

The second innovation in the Joker-10 mentioned by Kuzyakin is its electronic detonator system, which the director said makes it possible to remotely destroy it and prevent it from falling into enemy hands. “To date, the enemy has not gotten its hands on a single one of our drones, because the driver is guaranteed to be triggered either by a timer, or by an impact, or by the operator’s command. It will also go off if one tries to destroy it or cut its wires,” he said.

The Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions unveiled the Joker lineup of FPV drones last May, taking a cue from foreign developments in commercial-grade sporting drones, as well as Western UAV technology deployed by the Ukrainian military, to create a “universal” series of drones for operations from reconnaissance to mining, kamikaze attacks, and the hauling of specialized equipment. All Joker-series drones feature standardized firmware configuration and payload mounting systems to ease operations, differing mainly in weight and payload characteristics. “The Joker can be anything, like its card namesake,” Kuzyakin said in a media interview last May.

In January, the company revealed efforts to develop a series of optical guidance systems to turn loitering munitions into autonomous homing aerial torpedoes, and said they’re being tested in the warzone, and meant to target everything from stationary targets to moving or even airborne marks.