“Pew, pew, pew!” says a woman in sneakers and high-waisted pink pants happily in a video uploaded to TikTok. He stands on what appears to be an industrial rooftop, demonstrating how to employ a black device that looks like a giant laser gun. “Jammer gun, good,” he adds, giving a thumbs up. “Contact me!”
Nowadays, almost every product imaginable can be purchased on TikTok straight from Chinese factories, from industrial chemicals to mystical crystals and custom Pilates reformers. The app’s lineup now appears to also include drone jammers and other drone-related equipment, with clear military and security applications.
In recent months, TikTok has become an unlikely showroom for the drone economy that is fueling conflicts like Russia’s war in Ukraine. Eager to reach customers in every way possible, tiny Chinese drone makers are publicly broadcasting tools of current warfare, including anti-drone guns, jammers and sensors, but presenting them to the breezy rhythm of lifestyle consumer advertising. The result is a surreal combination of e-commerce and battlefield combat.
WIRED reviewed dozens of videos from TikTok accounts purporting to sell various types of anti-drone equipment, including products that look like a rubber dome on a tripod, a huge, boxy “jammer gun” and a backpack with 12 antennas. Video subtitles are often in Chinese and English, but others also include translations into Russian, Ukrainian, or other languages. One video featuring bouncy industrial house music shows what a user described as a “9-band anti-drone FPV jammer,” a device used to jam and block the radio and navigation signals used by tiny drones to communicate.
Drone dependencies
Both Russia and Ukraine are racing to escalate domestic drone production and strengthen their defenses against drone attacks. However, much of this production still relies on Chinese components. Processors, sensors, speed controllers, cameras and radio modules on both sides of the war come largely from the same cluster of factories in and around Shenzhen, China’s hardware manufacturing capital.
“Even though Kiev has tried to diversify supplies away from Chinese sources, Ukraine still relies heavily on large Chinese companies for cheap drones and drone parts,” says Aosheng Pushtasheri, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies focusing on emerging technologies and national security.
Beijing restricts the export of technology for both civilian and military purposes, including drones and related components, and has repeatedly tightened these regulations since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in early 2022. In September 2024, China control was extended to discuss key parts needed to produce battlefield drones, such as flight controllers and engines. Around the same time, the U.S. government announced imposed sanctions on two Chinese companies for allegedly selling drone parts to Russia.
Despite the restrictions, trade data suggests that Chinese drones continue to flow into Russia and Ukraine through intermediaries, Pusztaszer says. In the first half of 2024, Chinese companies officially sold drones worth only about PLN 200,000 to Kiev. dollars. However, the Ukrainian government gives a much higher estimate – closer to $1.1 billion. “This vulnerability suggests that fully assembled Chinese drones and drone components may end up in Ukraine through third-party sellers,” he explains.
Jamming enabled
University of Maryland engineering professor Houbing Herbert Song, who has researched anti-drone technology, tells WIRED that the products featured in the TikTok videos appear to be a combination of detection equipment and jamming equipment, with the latter distorting the signals the drones employ to operate.
Drones typically employ radio waves to communicate with a remote operator. Some jammers work transmitting radio waves at the same frequency that the drone uses, which may cause the drone to start working lose contact your operator and make them stop responding. However, if the drone can still connect to a navigation system such as a Global Positioning System (GPS), some drones they can land on their own or return to the starting point. Other jammers attempt to disrupt or “spoof” the GPS signals used by drones for navigation, cheating the drone thinks it is somewhere else.