RPA FPV (Remote Piloted Aircraft First Person View) drones are equipped with a web camera and are operator-controlled. These drones are inexpensive to manufacture, already can be mass-produced, and have a wide range of conventional and military applications.

The emergence of the new satellite mega-constellations Starlink (USA), and OneWeb (Europe) made it possible to control FPV drones from any distance. Essentially, the drone sends video stream from its camera via satellite link to the operator, who may be located thousand miles away, and operator responds with commands to the drone. In practical terms this means that drone, which is somewhere in a remote area of Yukon, can be controlled from a comfortable office in Edmonton or in Halifax. This lets to use drones for variety of tasks in hard to access, remote, or dangerous places, which are it is too dangerous, too difficult, too expensive, or simply impossible to send humans.

Some Ukrainian FPV drones already have a range over 1000 kilometers, and can stay in the air for hours. Use of such drones makes any place in Canada easily accessible. Continuous control of the drone can be provided during 16 hours or more by operators who work regular business hours in their offices from Maritimes to Pacific Coast.

USV drones operate on the same principles, but are floating remote controlled boats rather than aircraft; UUV drones are unmanned submarines, which travel at small depth, and still use satellite link for communication with the operator. In some cases UUV are commanded over the wire, or operate independently using the elements of AI when they are used for deep water tasks. The applications that can be implemented by using Ukrainian drones, technologies and experience, or using these drones as a platform can be reviewed here. ABATROSS plans to gradually implement these applications.