105
Russia Launches First Brain-Chipped Bird Drones for Surveillance Over Cities
(united24media.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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Technology
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This an an absolutely exceptional claim that would put the company decades beyond any tech I have seen. They are claiming remote control of a complicated animal in flight. They also claim it is without training and over distances impossible for a bird as small as a pigeon to carry radio gear.
This is not believable without any evidence.
Propaganda mills run 24hrs in time of war. All sectors of industry are often involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Propaganda_Works
I absolutely do not believe these claims until they're independently verified
I’m not sure propaganda has ever been more intense and widespread than it is now with ubiquitous tech addiction
Pretty sure I saw this one before… something something, wunderwaffen technology.
That is what I was getting out without trying to use the loaded words.
duh
edit: as for radio, if it's not required to be realtime it would make a lot of sense to carry sd cards instead, provides lower energy consumption too
You are putting a lot of faith in a people that can't even build a competent tank.
You do, of course, understand that this has nothing in common with building a tank?
You do also understand that (just guessing) if you're from a German instance, then probably everyone of consequence involved in designing military hardware in Russia has better knowledge of their domain area than people analogous to them from German MIC and military? Simply due to experience gained. That does apply to tanks.
Anyway. I don't know if it's real, but you just go and read whose company it is. It might be.
While it as has nothing directly to do with building a tank, the fact that russia can't design and build a tank that doesn't play turret toss when it gets hit with a shell or break down in the middle of a parade DOES have a lot in common with this - it's called brain drain.
Literally all of the smartest young people left Russia because the pay was bad and the prospects for living were better I'm the west.
You say thag everyone of consequence involved in designing military equipment in russia has better knowledge than Germany? Due to what experience, getting their World War 2 era tanks pulled out of the mud by Ukrainian tractors? They can't even build more than a handful of the newest tank and then never send them into war. They haven't fielded new equipment eccept inaccurate artillery shells.
You're wanting to claim a country that experienced that amount of brain drain is can do cutting edge brain surgery?? What, did they lobotomize you first?
Older Soviet tanks play turret toss, you know why? Their automatic loading system is optimized for fire rates, but not safety. You know why that and what that achieves? That achieves a whole lot of tanks built during Soviet times for mass ground warfare in the WWIII as it was imagined then. When it's one safer NATO tank against 5 worse but comparable (and fast-firing) Soviet tanks for the same expense, the choice (with Soviet doctrine) is obvious.
There was no brain drain then, these were all conscious design decisions making a difference of the scale of hundreds of tanks built.
Unfortunately no.
You are a few years late even in talking about tanks.
That's also something most Russians have passively understood by now about modern warfare, it's all about information, planning, coordination done by many small drones, with humans reduced to techs and operators and, of course, small assault groups. Tanks have no place in that.
Brain drain is something that was happening when plenty of Soviet-educated engineers and scientists simply had no place in ex-Soviet countries, or by any measure the offers they could get were far better in the West. Right now there's no coordinated incentive for said brain drain from the western governments. Which was a thing then.
Right now - yes, I think oil money that buys western components for weapons can buy expertise in areas of interest.
I know I'm just theorizing
This is a remote control situation. The bird would do bird things once out of a control signal. They aren't claiming full override and programming. I could easily see strapping a camera to a pigeon and training it. Maybe even remotely monitoring it and using a pre-trained electrical pulse to change direction.
These claims are beyond that. This is possibly the equivalent of scientist cures cancer where a reported misunderstands what is actually being presented.
yea true, they did mention preloading flight paths, so it might be radio-less (apart from gps ig)
Indeed "thousands of km" is far fetched:
some of which are expected to be sent thousands of kilometers away while others remain in Moscow for further trials.
Well... The electronics are solar powered, so it's not like batteries would run out. I'm not sure there are really limits on the flight range of a pigeon. I have to assume they'd be allowed to eat.
I don't think they could cross an ocean.
How would they be controlled though?
I have no idea, controlling an animal's brain is obviously the hard part too believe. But I don't see how that affects their range. It's a bird, birds naturally migrate thousands of miles.
It would effect their range because they would either need heavy equipment, like a fuckin star link dish strapped to their backs, or heavy radio equipment of some kind or something. Even if the "brain chip" is microscopic, you still need it to be able to send and receive a signal I would think, unless they intend to just operate it when it happens to be near a WiFi signal or something I guess?
Cruise missiles often use pre-programmed guidance systems, or total automation with just set of GPS waypoints to reach. That's a pretty sensible appropriate because the nature of the device is as a long range weapon that often ventures far into enemy territory. If you needed to stay in constant communication, radio jamming would become a serious liability. I'd imagine this is very similar in its design goals, so they'd likely use a similar approach.
At any rate, I don't expect the guidance to be the hard part, GPS navigation is not that hard to implement. (or GLONASS, in this particular case)
Also... If the US were doing this, they actually could use star link. Star link direct to cell phone connectivity is actually in beta right now and it works. If the pigeon could carry a striped down iPhone (it doesn't need a screen, speaker, microphone, etc), then it could actually carry a communications device that could be in constant contact. I wouldn't recommend Russia try that on starlink though, given that it's an American company.
Or you could I dunno, use a drone? What benefit is there to use a pigeon for any of this? The issue isn't the payload it's the platform.
Sure, fine. At no point was I making any argument for or against this technology. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe it's a waste of time, maybe it's the future of aerial surveillance, maybe it's just propaganda.
The only argument I'm making here is that there's nothing far fetched about a pigeon flying thousands of kilometers, that's totally normal. I'm pretty confident in this because I have first hand evidence that birds are actually really good at flying, and sometimes they fly very long distances.
So no benefit for using a pigeon.
Did you read my comment? My entire point was essentially that I don't care. I'm not weighing in on that.
Edit: Though, I take that back now, just because you made such a big assertion, I'll play devil's advocate.
Let's say you were using a drone for surveillance, what kind of range can you get in a drone? Looking around online, it appears that 200 km is considered extreme range for commercial drones, it's hard to find anything greater than that. That said, military drones tend to have much greater range upwards of 1500 km.
On the other hand, I see no maximum range for a pigeon, at all. There's a maximum distance it can travel per day and a maximum distance between landings that will keep it from crossing oceans. But that's it.
Secondly, a drone can be shot down. If spotted it will be targeted. So they're vulnerable. The pigeon on the other hand, if spotted, it will be ignored - because it's a pigeon. It's essentially a perfect stealth platform.
So there are two potential advantages if someone got this to work. There would of course also be drawbacks, and ultimately, who knows if it would turn out to be a viable system. But saying there's "no benefit" is silly.
Happy we agree there's no material benefit to using live animals to do an imperfect job of what cheap drones are already doing.
Haha, your username is ironic, you're not even honest to yourself!
That's not what I said, before or after my edit.
Or just preprogram the commands before installing and let it run autonomously.
If it's like the bug experiments, they aren't controlling its muscles granularly but guiding the whole critter through pain/aversion. Going left hurts, bird goes right type deal
I've heard of the particular people behind that particular company achieving similar things 12 years ago with, eh, humans. That's of the "bloody regime horror stories" genre. There will be no proof.
Also honestly
why not? They have plenty of money and expertise. Something you don't want to believe? Too bad, neither do I.