| Delta | |
| Developer: | Aerorozvidka |
| Service Name: | System situation awareness for Ukraine Army |
| Language: | Ukrainian, English |
| Website: | https://delta.mil.gov.ua/ |
Delta is a situational awareness[1] and battlefield management system developed and used in Ukraine. The system integrates information from a broad network of participants, including troops, civilian officials, and vetted bystanders;[2] and a wide range of streams,[1] including sensors, intelligence sources, surveillance satellites and drones,[2] especially geolocated data, which it maps in real time, along with pictures of enemy assets.[1]
Delta is used by the Ukrainian military services, as part of the Russo-Ukrainian War, especially after the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for a wide range of battlefield management tasks, including the planning of operations and combat missions, coordination between units, and secure exchange of information about the location of enemy forces.[1]
On the backend side, it's a cloud native environment.[1] On the client side, it runs on regular PCs, laptop, tablets or mobile phones.[1]
Involved in the development and supervision of the system are the Center for Innovation and Development of Defense Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine,[1] the NGO Aerorozvidka and Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation.[1]
The system became broadly operational in August 2022.[2] The software was developed in coordination with NATO.[2] The system was first tested in 2017, as part of a NATO initiative "to wean troops off Russian standards of siloing information among ground units instead of sharing it".[2] Ukraine surprised NATO in quickly making this system even more accessible to troops than "more modern militaries".[2] Delta, in its prototype phase, was first "pressed to its limits" during the Ukrainian counteroffensive to the Russian Kyiv convoy.[2] The Ukrainian Defense Ministry credits Delta for helping identify 1500 confirmed, Russian targets daily during this time period.[2]
In December 2022, Delta was the target of an adversarial phishing endeavor.[3] [4]
On 4 February 2023, the Ukrainian government gave approval to full deployment of the Delta system to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and permitted hosting of Delta's cloud-components outside of Ukraine to protect it against missile and cyber attacks.[5]
Aerorozvidka specializes aerial reconnaissance and drone warfare and their main contribution to Delta likely lies in this sphere. Delta, in this view, serves as a key link between raw reconnaissance (often remote photographic telemetry), identification, prioritization, and attack, facilitating a more rapid response cycle across diverse and dispersed participants and resources, known in military parlance as the kill chain.
Systems such as Delta are poised to become a key information-management component of the rapid evolution of drone warfare on the modern battlefield.[6] Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation, would like to see 10,000 drones operating continuously along the front lines.[6] This vision entails a substantial network of digital coordination.
For reasons of ongoing operations security, the precise nature of the integration between Delta and drone warfare remains undisclosed.