Russias FLIR Thermal FPV Binokl UAV

I am not entirely sure if this is really out there in any numbers, I can’t find images of it in use. But it does show how easy it is to put American-made products into a drone. This easy in fact.

The Binokl UAV claims a range of up to 5 kilometres and can stay in the air for up to 40 minutes.

It’s all off-the-shelf bits, RadioMaster remote control, iFlight Crystal glasses, and a FLIR thermal imaging camera.

TASS had this to say about it earlier this year.

Small-size reconnaissance drones dubbed Binokl (Binocular) have begun arriving for Russian troops in the special military operation zone in Ukraine, a spokesman for the drone manufacturer told TASS on Tuesday.

The latest drones produced by the Russian tech firm Syomka s Vozdukha are two to three times cheaper than the Chinese DJI Mavic unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) actively employed in combat operations, company spokesman Dmitry Zubarev said.

The Russian drone is outfitted with a compact thermal imager capable of ferreting out enemy forces and capabilities in any time of the day or night and also has a grenade-dropping capability.

“The deliveries of these Binokl drones have begun. These drones can operate both day and night and the contracts have already been signed. There are few of our devices there [in the special military operation zone] but their number is gradually increasing,” he said, specifying that the deliveries involved several dozen UAVs.

The Binokl drone was unveiled at the Aeronet exhibition in Moscow in November.

I know from a chum that the supply of similar machines from China has been constrained to the rest of the world as places like Alibaba can’t keep up with the demand from Ukraine.

If you can order enough for them to listen to you it is straightforward to start building up systems like Binokl