Ukraine's drone wars: New tactics on the battlefield
6:23 AM EDT, July 2, 2024
The war in Ukraine, unprecedented in its nature, has transformed into a battleground for drone warfare, showcasing strategies that were once purely theoretical. One emerging method involves using drones to ram other drones.
Drones in Ukraine serve a wide range of purposes, one of the most critical being battlefield surveillance. They assist in locating enemy positions and guiding artillery strikes.
The second most common use is kinetic attacks on vehicles and individual soldiers. This is achieved with single-use FPV drones or more robust reusable drones, known as "Baba Yaga," which lead the charge.
Economic methods of combating drones - there are several, but using your own drone is also an option
This necessitated developing a cheap and effective way to combat drones. The simplest methods involve electronic warfare systems. Depending on their power and complexity, these systems can create an electromagnetic "bubble" with a diameter ranging from a few dozen yards to several miles, rendering the drone's control signals ineffective.
However, this solution has its drawbacks. If the enemy changes the control signal frequency or develops offline attack drones, jammers can become useless, as has already occurred. Although challenging and costly, physically destroying the drone is more reliable.
For vehicles, a practical solution is an automatic cannon with programmable ammunition paired with an advanced target detection system like Skynex. However, this system is expensive and scarce in Ukraine. On a smaller scale, soldiers can use weapon modules like SMASH, which enable the effective elimination of drones at distances of 220-550 yards, depending on the firearm's caliber.
These modules are also not widespread. The most commonly available weapon in Ukraine is the smoothbore shotgun. With standard ammunition, these can shoot down drones at 30-40 yards. New anti-drone ammunition can extend this range to about 110 yards.
Despite these advancements, the challenge remains: how can a drone, for example, be cheaply eliminated 875 yards away? One effective method has proven to be using another drone to neutralize the enemy drone. If successful, this can destroy the target's rotor blades, causing it to crash, as demonstrated in the video below.
