The Telegram Wrap: Shahed Antennas, Fibre Optic & Spectrozir

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22 Mar 2025

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There’s no denying that the Russia — Ukraine conflict has been shared in extensive detail on social media. As such, one of the best ways to stay ahead of what’s happening across the front lines of Ukraine is to turn our OSINT skills to social media and analyse social media posts to find out about the conflict.

The Telegram wrap is a recurring piece that looks at interesting pieces of Ukrainian language information that have been posted to Telegram recently. With this, we aim to cover all the latest developments regarding drones and usage of the radio spectrum.

One thing to remember though. The posts are taken from Telegram and written up without any fact-checking or additional analysis performed, so you’ll need to draw your own conclusions regarding authenticity and credibility.

While there’s been plenty of drone footage throughout the war, the first post of interest shows something we haven’t seen much of. There have been rumours for some time that Shahed drones are using radio datalinks to send in-flight video to ground stations.

LTE modems appear to be the material of choice for the Datalinks. Source: Telegram
The original footage was released by Russia which claimed it was taken over Kropyvnytsyki mid-attack. However, a later correction from the Ukrainians noted that it was taken in January over the city of Sumy. Issues with EW mean that often, the video link is unable to be received, meaning that they work best closest to the border zone.

The clip is short, at under ten seconds in length however, despite this, it’s a dramatic clip that gives some good insight into air defence strategies. Despite radar and thermal imaging being prolific during the conflict, the video shows that old-fashioned searchlights are still heavily in use.

The intelligence world works in mysterious ways. Source: Telegram.

Shahed Antennas

Electronic Warfare is all about the edge. It’s a shift of tactics that on a peer-state level is often a constantly changing thing. As such, gathering intelligence is an essential part of staying ahead of your opponent. While this can often involve the analysis of tactics, it can also involve the analysis of captured or stolen enemy equipment.

However, this war is different. With so much off-the-shelf equipment being used, rather than using James Bond intelligence strategies to gain information, sometimes you can just buy it from the retailer.

Coming from a donated “source”, this post covers the antenna system on a Shahed drone, which includes some high-quality images of the hardware. It notes that the system is heavy, weighing in at over 1kg. Unfortunately, component identification numbers have been removed, so we’ll have to wait to give it a proper analysis. If you’re a radio nerd though, give it a look and see if you recognise anything.

The thin fibre-optic strands reveal the intensity of the drone war. Source: Telegram

Fibre Optics

They say a picture often says a thousand words. And while you wouldn’t expect to gather too much from a post that contains a single sentence, the last two articles have shown this isn't always the case.

Its brevity hides the seriousness as it references and displays used fibre optic cables from previous drone attacks. In earlier articles, we’ve discussed the concept of environmental issues that come with modern warfare strategies.

The sheer array of fibre optics in the images gives a visual display of exactly how prolific this has been. It’s also a great reminder of the fact that for Ukraine, the work does not stop when the invader is defeated and that much remediation work will be required post-conflict.

Somewhat useful for drones, probably terrible for HIMARS. Source: Telegram

The Mesh Gang

Last week we saw that simple strategies like nets still play an active role in basic drone defence. This week, we see that this has been put on steroids.

This post advises that there are now dedicated Russian units that have the sole role of installing and maintaining mesh tunnels.

Presumably, to assist with drone defence, the imagery shows teams installing the mesh above ground, with one image even showing a drone inbound.

The Spectrozir

Ukraine has been incredibly adaptable when it comes to fielding new software to assist with its war effort. From the purpose-built software packages belonging to projects like IT Army through to simple projects that make drone detection affordable but more importantly, available.

This post discusses the Spectrozir which is another Ukrainian design system. While the post has only basic information, it includes a weblink and perusing that tells us much more information about the system.

Spectrozir is a Ukrainian design that looks to be a cheap and cheerful drone detection platform. Source: Telegram.

It’s an easy-to-assemble, software-defined radio that works as a basic drone detection system. SDR is extremely useful for this type of thing as it allows coverage of wide parts of the spectrum in a visual fashion that’s easy to identify.

On the website, the Spectrozir is powered by a HackRF SDR and covers the 13cm band (roughly 2.4ghz). The HackRF is a broadband system and assuming suitable antennas, should work well at detecting drones with control frequencies around 300Mhz through to 6GHZ.

Send The News

Have you got an interesting tip? Seen an intriguing Social Media post that you think needs some extra attention or research? We’re always looking for new stories that focus on current events and issues.

So, if you find something that you think is worth a story, send an email or find us on Twitter / X to send your story.

If you’d like to review the source channel on Telegram for today’s material, you can do so by visiting this link.

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