4 FEBRUARY 2023
The government decided to introduce the Delta system in Ukrainian Defence Forces on Saturday, 4 February.
Source: Government portal
Details: The resolution was adopted following a proposal by Oleksii Reznikov, Minister of Defence of Ukraine.
Delta is a situational awareness platform created by the Defence Technology Innovation and Development Centre of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine.
“The Centre of the Ministry of Defense is constantly improving the Delta platform and adding new functionality that gives our military a significant advantage over the enemy,” the government said.
In addition to the use of the platform by the military, the government has authorised the deployment of Delta in the cloud outside Ukraine. This will allow the system to be protected from Russian missile and cyber attacks.
Background:
- On 20 December 2022, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine said that Ukraine presented the Delta situational awareness system, which provides real-time coordination of troops, to the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organisation (NC3O).
- It was noted that the Delta system has been under development by the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 2016 and was significantly updated with the beginning of a full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in February 2022. The system currently provides real-time data to field commanders and enables faster and more informed decision-making by integrating multiple data sources.
- On 3 January, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Ukraine created an improvised intelligence network to coordinate combat units on the battlefield; it turned out to be a cut-price version of a network on which the Pentagon has spent decades and billions of dollars. WSJ also cited Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of Aerorozvidka, a nongovernmental organisation that has been helping the Ukrainian army with surveillance drones since 2014, that almost every unit that participated in the battles for Kyiv in the spring used the Delta program.
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I think Delta has been used quite extensively for some years already,
even volunteer battalions used it as I saw in several YouTube/Telegram videos, probably against the rules.
In 2022, most of this video’s, for example uploaded by the Terra drone group have all display blurred, but they are most likely showing the Delta system in action.
I think it is really awesome that Ukraine managed to create such a magnificent system that many Western armies failed to develop, including the Dutch army that has spent hundreds of millions and eventually gave up on the idea.
I do have a lot of questions though, especially on how reliable it is as thousands of people have access to it in Ukraine. They can all add for example a tank they have spotted and remove it from the system if it retreats or gets destroyed.
Also, imagine that there is one mole sharing intel to Russia: does it mean Russia will know the positions of the entire Ukrainian military?
Probably people that are a lot smarter than I have thought this through, but I am still curious.
Well, I don’t have access to the details of this system, although if it were important enough for me, I could, seeing that I have a good friend at the SBU. But, I’d at least have to be in the country, because he doesn’t divulge certain info online, via phone or snail mail. So, I can’t answer your interesting questions, Bert. I can’t imagine the Ukrainians using something that could harm them, so they’ve got to have some type of security integrated. No doubt, Delta is part of why they are kicking mafia ass.