Russia is fitting its cheap Molniya strike drones with digital video, a quiet upgrade that threatens to blind the detectors Ukrainian troops rely on to spot drones coming. Digital transmission is turning up on more and more Molniyas and will eventually replace analog altogether, making today's portable detectors useless against them, President Zelenskyy's defense-technology adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov told UNIAN.

Front-line soldiers depend on cheap detectors that pick up a drone's analog video signal, buying the seconds of warning that let them take cover. Digital video is invisible to that gear.

The Molniya is the drone Ukraine can least afford to lose track of, a $300 plywood aircraft that Russia already churns out in numbers and keeps re-engineering to slip past detection. Beskrestnov's point is that Ukraine has to answer the change before the switch is complete, not after.

Digital video slips past the detectors

"Digital video transmission is increasingly found on Molniyas," Beskrestnov said, urging Ukraine to prepare for a future in which its current gear is useless against them.

The fix, he continued, is to build digital-video detection into interception systems now, before the switch is complete. Such a system would not show what the drone sees, but it would flag the signal and point to its source.

"We will not see the image, but we will see the presence and determine the bearing, warning the user of the threat," he explained.

A $300 drone keeps outrunning detection

The Molniya is among the cheapest weapons Russia fields: an aircraft-shaped kamikaze drone built from plywood, foam, and off-the-shelf Chinese electronics, making it easy to mass-produce and upgrade. Russia launches up to 10 of them a day in the Zaporizhzhia direction alone.

It has already moved its Molniyas onto video frequencies of 4.1 to 4.5 gigahertz that most detectors barely register, and has begun fielding an autonomous, AI-guided version that flies with no radio link for a detector to catch at all.

Ukraine is racing to close the gap

Ukraine has lagged on this exact tool. It only fielded its first portable, mass-produced drone detector in July, while Russian soldiers had long carried a Chinese-made device that identifies drone types.

Each fix Ukraine builds risks being overtaken by the next cheap change Russia bolts onto a drone that costs less than a smartphone.

A Ukrainian soldier in a trench or in a vehicle can now get a short alert on their phone the moment a Russian FPV drone or glide bomb starts closing in. The system behind it, Hrafit (Graphite), pulls together data from nearly all available radio-technical intelligence and surveillance into a single picture, ArmyInform reported.

The threat no longer stops at a command post. The warning reaches the soldier at an observation point, the sector command, and the commander-in-chief at once. To use it in a position, a soldier needs only a protected smartphone and satellite internet, including Starlink, and on the ground, it comes down to one short push notification.

Hrafit answers one question: Is the sky clear?

In modern combat, a second's hesitation can be enough for an infantry soldier in a trench or a crew in a vehicle to be caught by an FPV drone or a guided glide bomb. Hrafit is the Ukrainian answer, moving situational awareness onto an ordinary phone.

Military programmers built it for Ukraine's Defense Forces to answer the one question that matters most in the field: is the sky clear? Militarnyi reported that the system is being supplied to the Armed Forces, the National Guard, the Security Service, and the Border Guard Service.

It tracks drones and glide bombs

Working in real time, Hrafit flags a wide range of incoming threats:

• FPV drones, both kamikaze and loitering types
• tactical quadcopters such as the DJI Mavic, which are often used to direct fire
• winged Russian drones like the Molniya and Privet
• guided glide bombs and other aerial munitions

Three versions run from HQ to the trench

Hrafit runs on Android, iOS, and the web, in three versions.

The full version, for analysts, commanders, and electronic warfare and air defense operators, adds reporting, filters, frequency-band analysis, and a global map of the fighting.

For instance, Hrafit Lite strips down the interface for troops on the zero line, showing only the local area, so nothing distracts from the fight.

A third module, Sova (Owl), is built for logistics crews, drivers, and medical evacuation: it runs during a drive, moves its monitoring sector across the map with the vehicle, and warns of danger along the way.

Soldiers can learn the system through an official online course in the Army+ app, which teaches them to operate and configure Hrafit and issues a completion certificate.