Combined Control of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Under Electronic Warfare Conditions

We present the concept, architecture, and algorithm of a combined UAV control scheme designed for operation under electronic warfare (EW). The core idea is a “silent” ingress to the task area via a fiber- optic link–carrying command-and-control (C2) and video with no RF emissions–and a return over a protected radio link employing anti-jamming techniques (FHSS/DSSS, narrow-beam antennas, adaptive modulation/coding, power control, AES-GCM cryptography). Onboard EO/IR perception (daylight EO RGB camera and thermal IR camera) is implemented with image fusion to improve robustness under varying illumination, smoke, or fog. GNSS-denied navigation relies on visual-inertial odometry (VIO) and lidar odometry with barometric and magnetometer corrections, reducing drift and ensuring controllability without satellite signals.

Deterministic link switching is realized by a finite state machine (FSM) with formalized criteria: fiber-based ingress, task execution, safe detachment, radio-based return, and landing/termination. We provide the structural model, inter-component interfaces, and software stack (message bus, link-mana- gement modules, sensor fusion, video streaming, security, logging).

Prototype test results (platform LX1500; 40 km mission: 20 km over fiber + 20 km over radio) show: Packet Loss Rate in RADIO_MODE reduced from 18–25 % (under jamming) to 3–5 % after JAMMING MITIGATION; SNR ≥ 10 dB restored within RADIO_RECOVERY with hysteresis τ_hold = 15 s; end-to- end video latency of 25–35 ms over fiber and 120–180 ms over radio (with C2/telemetry priority); GNSS- denied navigation drift ≤ 0.7 % of distance traveled; mission success probability 96 % over N = 50 range runs. The proposed approach increases the resilience of control and communications, reduces mission- abort risk, and scales across UAV classes (reconnaissance, delivery, surveillance).