Drone wars feed need to constantly improve; Russia, Ukraine seek best in class

TAMPA, Fla. — Those in military circles describe it as a real-life version of whack-a-mole, played for the highest stakes.

Counterdrone technology emerged at the forefront at the Special Operations Forces Week conference, where defense industry leaders pointed to the war in Ukraine as proof of why their drone-killing products are vital to fight the battles of today and tomorrow.

Insiders say the sector is in constant flux, with adversaries such as Russia and China developing capabilities to beat defensive programs — counter-counterdrone systems — and the U.S. and its allies adjusting their approaches to overcome those responses.

The back-and-forth of drones and counterdrone tools could define warfare in the 21st century. Drone technology has been arguably the biggest variable in the Russia-Ukraine war. The conflict otherwise has been marked by traditional 20th-century-era tactics, artillery bombardments and defensive trenches.

U.S. strategists say Russia’s introduction of relatively cheap, plentiful Iranian-supplied drones sparked one crisis for Ukrainian defenders before they could adjust their defensive targeting strategies. The Kremlin was drawn into the drone war when, in a still-murky incident, two apparently Ukrainian-launched drones this month exploded on the doorstep of the Russian seat of power in the heart of Moscow. Kremlin officials said it was an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin.

Drones in mass numbers can defeat even the most sophisticated defensive systems, even if just one in 50 reaches a target. War videos show that Ukrainian drones can “loiter” above enemy-held territory, ready to drop their payloads when suitable targets come into range.

“This war is a war of drones. They are the superweapon here,” Anton Gerashchenko, a senior adviser in the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told Newsweek this year.

Ukrainian forces have made great use of American-made and Turkish drones throughout the 15-month fight, but manufacturers say they have had to make on-the-fly tweaks to their products in response to Russian moves.

“It is absolutely whack-a-mole, and we learned a lot going into Ukraine about the Russian jamming activities — jamming GPS all over the place, jamming [communications], links and so on, other techniques they use. And we’ve had the great fortune of that being fed back to us and then quickly adapting the system,” said Brett Hush, senior vice president and general manager for tactical missile systems at AeroVironment, a California-based firm whose Switchblade unmanned craft has played a central role in Ukrainian efforts to beat back the Russian invasion.

“We’re constantly getting feedback. They’re doing this, so now we’re going to do this,” Mr. Hush told The Washington Times on the sprawling convention floor. “I don’t see that ending. That’s going to be continual. What’s the adversary doing? And what do I have to do with my system?”

The U.S. and its adversaries are pursuing many of the same means to deal with unmanned aerial systems, whether a single drone or a swarm of craft explicitly designed to overwhelm defenses. Jamming communications signals is one method to sever the link between a drone and its human operators or its link to GPS targeting coordinates. After a series of early missteps, Russia reportedly moved some electronic warfare systems to the front lines to disorient and disable Ukrainian drones before they could reach their targets.

The Pentagon has put a premium on all those technologies with well-funded research programs aimed at defeating all sizes and types of drones. That research also includes work on overcoming counterdrone efforts, highlighting the constant push-and-pull as both sides of the fight gain more advanced capabilities.

Crowded skies

Cutting off communication between an armed drone and its human operators comes with potential pitfalls, industry insiders say. As autonomous systems and artificial intelligence grow more prevalent on the battlefield, drones can be pre-programmed to fly to specific targets, meaning that even craft cut off from external communication theoretically could still reach their destinations and inflict damage.

Before developing a plan to beat enemy drones, specialists say, it’s vital to determine what represents a threat and what doesn’t. The proliferation of small, cheap, commercially available drones is leading to increasingly crowded skies, meaning military personnel or domestic law enforcement could waste time locating and identifying a harmless craft piloted by a teenager with an iPhone.

James Carroll, vice president of federal programs with the California company Vigilant Drone Defense, said his firm aims to make those distinctions quickly. Mr. Carroll said his drone-defeating products can jam virtually all commercially available craft, meaning anything that remains should be considered a threat.

“I’m jamming all of the commercial, off-the-shelf frequencies. … He’s not getting through my stuff,” Mr. Carroll said in an interview at the conference. “However, if it penetrates me, now we know we’ve got some military-grade technology.

“The only thing that’s going to get through is bad guys. So now we can start escalating,” he said. “That’s been one of the problems with drones. How do we identify a threat? There’s thousands of drones out here flying. What are the bad ones?”

One of the best ways to gain knowledge about a suspected threat is to analyze the physical drone. That’s often impossible in combat zones because enemy drones can be disabled far from the front lines or destroyed before reaching their destinations.

In some ways, a similar problem manifested itself over U.S. skies this year. After a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. in late January and early February, the Pentagon took an aggressive stance toward any unknown objects flying over the homeland. That resulted in numerous craft being shot down over the U.S. and Canada during a frantic Super Bowl weekend. Each of those unknown craft was essentially blown to bits.

If drones of unknown origin cross U.S. skies, then capturing and analyzing them could prove vital. Max Klein, chief technology officer with the Alabama-based company SCI Technology, said his firm’s approach can do that.

With the tagline “We Stop Drones,” SCI’s autonomous AeroGuard system can trail an unknown object and capture it with a physical net before towing it through the skies and ultimately to the ground.

“We can recover the target and take it to a safe location,” Mr. Klein said in an interview. “The kinetic capture allows us to have total physical control over that target.

“Shooting things out of the sky is a military favorite,” he said. “It works great, highly effective. But also, what comes up has to come down, and the collateral damage tends to be much larger.”

As drone technology advances, industry leaders say one of the only guarantees is the need for constant reassessment and refinement.

“We’ll do something, and our threat will do something else to counter, and we’ll counter and, unfortunately, that’s the nature of the beast,” Mr. Carroll said. “There’s no perfect solution. It’s going to take multiple solutions to solve our problem.”