Ukraine and the drone war, Kiev’s strategy to escape the Russians

Some of the remotely piloted aircraft currently used on the battlefield against Russia are on display in the Ukrainian stand. The interest of military experts from all over the world is very high: these drones represent concrete evidence of how the conflict has transformed into a permanent technological war, where innovation runs at such a speed as to render solutions considered cutting-edge obsolete in just a few months. “These aircraft are no longer just instruments for the line of contact – explains the official who, for security reasons, chose to remain anonymous – but vectors capable of redefining the strategic map of the conflict. It is with aircraft like the Liutyi, capable of carrying a 50 kilo warhead, that our armed forces have struck key targets in the heart of Russian territory, including oil refineries and plants near Moscow and St. Petersburg. Jet models such as the Peklo, capable of flying up to 700 kilometers per hour with a range of 700 kilometers.”

I volumes of fire testify to an unprecedented quantitative escalation on both frontsas the Kiev government representative explains: “Russia sends between 300 and 400 drones to the Ukrainian skies per night, combining Shahed attack aircraft, decoys and reconnaissance drones. On our front, we respond by launching thousands of drones per day including FPV aircraft, interceptors and reconnaissance systems”. Numbers that are also confirmed by Adrian Yablonskyi, manager of Skyfall, a Ukrainian company that specializes in the construction of remotely guided aerial platforms. “At the beginning of the conflict we built a few hundred a month, based on a technology that today I could define as medieval, despite just four years having passed since the start of the war. Today we produce hundreds of thousands of pieces a month including the smallest model supplied to the Ukrainian army, the Shrike, 25 centimeters long, with an ammunition load of up to 3 kilos, a cruising speed of up to 120 km/h and a travel distance of up to 30 kilometres”.

Thanks to the use of these economical interceptor drones developed in-house, Kiev guarantees a kill rate of Russian kamikaze aircraft of 95 percentneutralizing between 250 and 270 drones out of an average wave of 300. However, electronic warfare makes the life of these devices very short: a reconnaissance drone at the front today has an estimated life expectancy of between three and five days. This dynamic highlights a profound economic disproportion. As the Ukrainian representative underlines: “Thinking of countering mass attacks with traditional weapon systems alone is unsustainable. Moving on to the conflict in the Middle East, if a city like Dubai were to face an attack from 300 drones in one night and tried to stop them with multi-million dollar Patriot missiles, the financial cost would be devastating. Sustainability passes through cheap FPV drones, created with costs around 500 dollars, capable of inflicting enormous damage for a negligible price.”

Despite the technological updating and production capacity achieved by Ukraine, for the Ministry of Defense it is now a potentially infinite conflict. “More than anything else, it is an exhausting process destined not to stop due to the technology that continues to evolve – concludes the Kiev official – and which could soon threaten other European countries, from the Baltic countries to Poland, to Italy itself. Now with low-cost and mass-produced drones, every place in the world is potentially a military target”. Precisely for this reason Kiev aims to guide its partners from Europe and NATO, making its direct experience in the field available to combine Western technology with the ability acquired in producing economical, effective and scalable drones on an industrial scale with the aim of always using them to defend its territories. (Of Alessandro Allocca)