MULTI-CRITERIA ASSESSMENT OF LIGHT MULTIROTOR UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES FOR AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2663-4023.2026.35.1439Keywords:
unmanned aerial vehicle, aerial reconnaissance, electronic warfare, GNSS spoofing, coordinate substitution, Johnson criteria, thermal camera, multi-criteria assessment, effective observation distance, cybersecurityAbstract
The problem of justified selection of light multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of Class I (micro and mini categories) for aerial reconnaissance, surveillance, fire adjustment, humanitarian demining and signal relaying under active electronic warfare is considered. It is shown that comparisons based on rated flight range and price do not reflect the real usefulness of a platform, since the observation result is determined simultaneously by control range, flight altitude, resolution and zoom of the optical and infrared (IR) channels, object type and resilience of the navigation system to interference. A geometric model of the effective observation distance is proposed that combines control-link constraints (radio horizon, first Fresnel zone, jamming-to-signal ratio), the energy radius and the optical range normalized by the Johnson criteria for three object types (person, vehicle, building). The concept of an effective focal length that accounts for the video-stream resolution limit is introduced, explaining the limit of usefulness of hybrid digital zoom. On this basis, a ten-criterion decision matrix is formed and five DJI platforms (Mini 4 Pro, Mavic 3, Mavic 3T, Matrice 30T, Matrice 4T) are evaluated. The calculated daytime person recognition range is from 252 m to 4.2 km, and the vehicle detection range in the IR channel is from 818 m to 1084 m. Field tests under “hard” GNSS spoofing (false position in Lima, Peru) showed that Matrice 4T detects the counterfeit signal, holds position using visual sensors in daytime and remains controllable in ATTI mode at night, whereas a previous-generation DJI Mavic 3 was lost despite software disabling of navigation. With baseline weights the integral score is 0.708 for Matrice 4T and 0.631 for Matrice 30T; sensitivity analysis shows that the leader changes once the weight of the EW resilience criterion exceeds 0.05. The results can be used to justify UAV selection by units and rescue services and to formulate requirements for future platforms.
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