Drones have been integral to warfare in Ukraine, used by both sides for intelligence gathering and air attacks. Cheap and accessible, they are capable of taking out some of Nato’s most powerful weaponry.
Talks between European leaders and Donald Trump’s top team about efforts to end the war in Ukraine continue, with the UK leading efforts to secure a coalition peacekeeping military force.
10p weapon that can fry drones
The “RapidDestroyer” is a new type of Radiofrequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) designed to combat drones.
It is also fairly cheap, at an estimated cost of 10p per shot fired, which the MOD says means it could provide a “cost-effective complement to traditional missile-based air defence systems.”
Across the entire RapidDestroyer project, more than 100 drones have been tracked, targetted and defeated using the weapon.
The UK Government has invested more than £40m in RFDEW research which it says will support 135 highly skilled jobs in Northern Ireland and the south east of England.
“It was a really good trial, which showed it is capable of knocking drones out,” one defence insider said.
The RapidDestroyer will now need to undertake further tests before it is rolled out widely, at home or abroad.
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Drones have caused chaos at UK airports, with Gatwick brought to a standstill in 2018 and cancelling flights again in 2023 over sightings near the airfield.
Late last year, a series of mystery drones were reported over US Air Force bases in the UK, with British troops drafted in to help find out who was responsible.
Effective but ‘not a silver bullet’
“If you have a high value system such as this microwave weapon, it’ll become a high value target and more effort will be used to defeat the counter-UAS,” he said.
“You’ll also see a growth in ‘counter-counter efforts’, to keep your drones flying against this system. The first thing that comes to mind is maybe the development of ‘faraday cages’ around the drones so that they are less susceptible to electromagnetic waves used in microwaves.”
“It’s going to be a fairly large, cumbersome and vulnerable vehicle or fixed installation,” he said.
“Human ingenuity usually finds a way to defeat most counter measures. On an economic point also, how many of these systems would there be and how scalable is the production?”
Why drones are so important to warfare
Drones have been used to launch attacks by both Russian and Ukrainian troops, and flown over targets to help with planning and intelligence.
Ukraine had to defend against attacks from more than 18,000 drones last year, according to UK defence intelligence.
Drones have caused, or contributed to, 80 per cent of combat casualties in the Ukraine war, according to Roman Kostenko, the chair of the defence and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s parliament.
They have evolved rapidly since the war began, as both sides race to outsmart eachother’s drone technology.
Most recently, fibre optic cables – usually used to deliver broadband to UK homes have been attached top drones to protect their communications and keep them functional.
Ukraine has expanded its arsenal of dronesFirst person view (FPV) drones are of some the most important weapons on the battlefields of Ukraine, used along with drones for gathering intelligence and to launch attacks by both Russian and Ukrainian troops.
But they have a key vulnerability: the link between the drone operator and the device itself.
Drones traditionally use radio signals to send information between the two, transmitting instruction from the pilot to the device, and information back from the drone to the pilot.
But these communications have been subjected to “jamming”, where an enemy system deliberately disrupts the signals governing the drone to render them useless.
Around a year ago, Russia innovated the use of fibre optic cables to communicate between the device and operator – similar to using a trailing landline to relay information, rather than a mobile phone.
This has led to thin wires draped over trees and land across Ukrainian battlefields.
However, he warned that their “wide cone of effect” could “create more problems than it solves.”
“For certain circumstances, like bases out in the desert, or at a kinetic front line where you’re not hugely concerned about stuff that’s going in the direction of the enemy, or for warships at sea, yes, absolutely, they offer a significant increase in counter-drone capability, but they are not a one-size-fits-all solution,” he told the Financial Times.
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