How To Defend Kyiv From Shaheds

There are two key technological problems that Ukraine and the Ukrainian defense industry have not yet solved, and which have a significant impact on the course of the war and on Ukraine's position in future peace talks.

These two problems are the “Shaheds” and ways to effectively fight them.

It has been two and a half years since Iranian long-range kamikaze drones appeared in Ukrainian skies, but Ukraine has not yet been able to achieve parity with the enemy in this type of weaponry; and during this time, no effective ways to combat the Shaheds have been found.

I have written many times why Ukrainian long-range drone attacks cannot compare with Russian ones either qualitatively or quantitatively. There are many reasons, the first and most important of which is the lack of quality management both in the development and production of long-range attack drones and in the use of Ukrainian “Shaheds”.

Almost all law enforcement agencies and two dozen enterprises are engaged in the topic of long-range drone strikes (deep strike). The dilution of resources produces a “zoo” of drones of low quality and high cost, unable to overcome the dense air defense and electronic warfare system of the Moscow region (in particular), while the capabilities of two dozen semi-garage-made cottage industries physically cannot meet the Ukrainian defense forces' demand for hundreds of such vehicles per day.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia plans to increase the rate of use of “Shaheds” in Ukraine from 200 to 500 devices per day in the near future. In order to increase the efficiency of domestic drone strikes and to regularly strike military facilities in Moscow (which is also very important as a political argument), it is necessary to consolidate the efforts of developers and manufacturers, to reduce the “zoo” of drones to one or two models, the quality and capabilities of which should be equal to those of Russian “Shaheds” at the very least. That is, it is extremely necessary to effectively manage this industry and unite all military units under a single Long-Range Unmanned Bombardment Command.

Although not new, this idea is logical. Such consolidated holdings of weapons developers and manufacturers exist in all developed countries, and in our adversary as well. And unified bomber commands have been known since ancient times, as soon as bombers (manned) appeared. It is only in our country that the topic of deep strike is dealt with in every power structure, because it is a beautiful publicity first of all. Beautiful, but ineffective — we can see it from the results.

We can also see the low effectiveness of countermeasures against enemy combat drones. In two and a half years, we have progressed from arrogant mocking denial of the very threat posed by Iranian drones to the mass use of combat chariots armed with large-caliber machine guns and small-caliber anti-aircraft guns. And, in fact, that’s all: neither anti-aircraft missiles comparable in cost to the Shaheds nor interceptor drones have been created.

And here, in terms of cost/effectiveness, we lose three times to our adversary, who, having created mass serial production of Iranian Shaheds, was able to increase the number of daily launches to such an extent that no anti-aircraft missiles in the world would be enough to repel even a week-long attack.

In addition, mass production has allowed the enemy to reduce the cost of the Shahed to such a level that even the cheapest anti-aircraft missile or the cheapest anti-aircraft interceptor drone will be obviously more expensive than the Shahed itself (with the exception of cheap fpv birds, but they are ineffective against the Shaheds).

The third factor is the cost of maintaining the ground infrastructure for countering Shaheds. Today it is thousands of crews with small arms; tomorrow — even if anti-aircraft missiles or interceptor drones comparable in cost to the Shaheds become available — hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional crews armed with new weapons will be needed.

It’s expensive!

The problem is that right now, the crews hunting for the Shaheds — mobile fire teams with small arms or squads armed with man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) or teams armed with fpv interceptor drones — can only operate effectively in the direct line of sight of the target. In other words, these teams must constantly follow the targets, and there must be many such teams.

This approach is obviously extremely costly and ineffective. The problem can be solved by creating a long-range reusable interceptor drone of the airplane type, fast enough to pursue the Shahed, but with a long flight time in the target search mode, equipped with powerful optics, good navigation and communication equipment, target sensors, and armed with non-lethal weapons.

Rejection of the disposability inherent in anti-aircraft missiles and copter-type kamikaze drones will make such an air defense system a rather inexpensive solution, even if the unmanned interceptor aircraft is equipped with the maximum set of expensive equipment.

“Non-lethal weapons” can be of different types. I will not describe the options here, so as not to give the enemy a card in his hands. But the mere non-use of explosives on board the drone, in case of some accident (fall), will make such a device relatively safe for the crew and for those on the ground.

For reliable defense of a large city, such as Kyiv, from “Shahed” raids, ten mobile groups armed with reusable interceptor drones with a flight radius of up to 30 kilometers will be enough. That is, the entire air defense system of the capital against the Shaheds may include only 140 men (a company), 30 vehicles and 30 interceptor planes (including spare ones). And this is a different story altogether.

Separately, it is worth mentioning jamming and spoofing of satellite coordinates (electronic warfare). Today, this method of fighting the “Shaheds” is clearly favored because it is easier (although not cheap at all) to stuff the country's territory with powerful jammers and have a switch in Kyiv.

However, the result of total jamming is unsatisfactory because the “Shaheds” have no problem flying to the same Kyiv without using satellite navigation, and only in the target area do they begin to circle in search of reliable signals to adjust the route to the target. Of course, some drones do not reach their targets as a result of suppression and spoofing, and even fly to Belarus (for example), but still a large percentage of kamikaze drones “fall as debris”.

At the same time, dense suppression of satellite navigation signals or spoofing all over Ukraine (out of sheer panic) harms our own military navigation systems, our use of high-precision munitions (the same Himars) and the use of drones, be they of reconnaissance, combat or interceptor type.

It is obvious that achieving parity with the enemy in the use of long-range kamikaze drones and fighting the enemy's “Shaheds” is primarily a state management task, not a technical one. There are technical solutions, they are known, but nobody needs them.