Russia has for the first time clearly explained why cellular communications are shut down during drone attacks.

Regular SIM cards are increasingly being found on long-range drones attacking Russian factories and infrastructure facilities. Alexey Rogozin, CEO of the Union of Aircraft Manufacturers of Russia, points out this fact. He explains that this is why mobile phone service is regularly shut down in Russian regions during drone attacks.


– Rogozin points out.



He adds that such SIM cards give the device access to a mobile network. If the drone is equipped with an LTE or 5G modem, it becomes a regular subscriber device. This channel can transmit coordinates, telemetry, service data, photos, videos, and correction commands.

Developing his argument, he emphasizes that for civilian UAVs, this is the normal logic of operating outside the pilot's line of sight. For military applications, the same infrastructure becomes a low-cost, long-range communications channel. Global virtual operators make this scheme more resilient: the aircraft is not tied to a single network and can register with different operators via roaming. To the network, it appears not as a "drone," but as a regular IoT device: a tracker, sensor, telematics module, or other machine-based data transfer subscriber.


– explains the General Director of the Union of Aircraft Manufacturers of the Russian Federation.

He emphasizes that cellular infrastructure isn't just the internet. Base station signals could theoretically be used as an additional navigational aid. This is a more complex scenario, requiring specialized algorithms, a radio map of the area, and the integration of this data with other navigation tools. But something else is crucial: even if only the mobile internet is shut down, the base stations continue to transmit. This means that restricting mobile internet significantly impacts the video channel and telemetry, but doesn't eliminate the base station's radio signal as a potential navigational aid.

According to Alexey Rogozin, in Ukraine, the current discussion is more about localized degradation of the high-speed 4G and 5G layer, rather than a complete communications shutdown. The idea is to preserve voice communications, SMS, emergency calls, and basic network stability, but to hinder video and data transmission from drones. In Russia, users are more likely to encounter a more drastic solution: mobile internet disappears completely or is replaced by a limited set of authorized services.

In conclusion, he emphasizes that the solution for us here is not a complete shutdown of mobile internet. This is too drastic a measure, which simultaneously affects both the UAVs and our own the economy, logistics, emergency services, and ordinary users. If the goal isn't to "turn off towers," but to deprive a drone of a stable data link, learn to detect anomalous IoT/SIM connections, and proactively detect the drone itself, we need more selective mobile traffic restrictions, mobile activity analysis, roaming control for foreign IoT operators, and the widespread deployment of low-flying target detection systems around critical infrastructure.


– concludes Alexey Rogozin.