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The Russia-Ukraine conflict, now in its fourth year, has changed the nature of warfare and spurred the development of interceptor drone technology that is proving important in the Middle East.
A recent visit by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the Gulf, which included the signing of a defence agreement with Saudi Arabia, highlighted the eastern European nation’s status as a world-leader in neutralising offensive drones.
As well as hardware and technology, Ukraine has reserves of expertise that can prove invaluable as Iranian drone attacks on the Gulf states continue.
“Having the technology is great, but what the Gulf states really need is the expertise of the Ukrainian drone operators,” said Connor Hunter, operations and business development director at Securewest International, a global risk management specialist in the UK.
“They’re world-leading experts. It’s the training, it’s the defence experience that they have. It’s teaching these Gulf states how to do it themselves.”
Rise of drone warfare
While drones have been used as far back as in the First World War, their significance in warfare has grown by orders of magnitude since the 2000s.
Iranian-designed Shahed drones, which typically follow a pre-programmed route, have been used widely by the Russians in the war with Ukraine, and in recent weeks by the Iranians themselves against, among others, the Gulf states and Israel.
Hundreds of costly US missiles have been used to take out Shaheds, but Ukrainian interceptor drones offer a much cheaper alternative.
“The US Patriot [interceptor] missiles, the classic large missile used for air defence, cost $3 million to $4 million and those Shahed drones used by the Iranians cost as low as $20,000 to mass produce,” Mr Hunter said.
In three days alone, early on in the continuing conflict, the US reportedly used 800 Patriot interceptor missiles to defend against the barrage of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles.
In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukrainian interceptor drones have in some locations been downing more than two-thirds of the drones sent over by Russia.
Among Ukraine’s interceptor drones is P1-SUN, produced by SkyFall, which travels at up to 400kph. It costs only $1,000 and yet is said by its maker to have neutralised about 2,500 Shahed and other drones over Ukraine.
This and other keenly priced models provide a cheap alternative to using western missiles or fighter jets to destroy Shahed drones, which may also be neutralised by vehicle-mounted guns.
A SkyFall representative recently told Reuters that the company was looking to export its low-cost drones because its manufacturing capability, running into tens of thousands every month, aided by 3d printing, exceeds domestic demand.
The Sting interceptor, at $2,100, is another cheap anti-drone weapon that Ukraine has developed since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.
Adapting to evolving conflict
Mr Zelenskyy said last month that Ukraine could supply Gulf states with as many as 1,000 interceptor drones a day to help them fend off attacks from Iran.
It is this combination of low-cost and mass production that analysts see as key to many of the changes in the nature of warfare that have been seen in recent conflicts.
“The way [the Ukrainians] have adapted so quickly is what’s particularly impressive. It’s that continuous adaptation, continuous improvement,” Mr Hunter said.
Interceptor drones are typically operated by a person wearing first-person view (FPV) goggles, which receive live footage from a drone-mounted camera. The craft may be guided to collide with the offensive drone and may contain a warhead to cause an explosion.
As well as being effective against smaller, slower attack drones, such as the Shahed, which often fly along predictable routes, interceptor drones can also be used against small unmanned systems such as reconnaissance drones.
“In these cases, interceptor drones offer a much more cost-effective way of defending against high volumes of low-cost threats,” Mr Hunter said.
“However, interceptor drones are less suited to larger, faster or more complex aerial threats. Targets such as high-speed cruise missiles, fast jet aircraft or larger military unmanned aerial vehicles operating at higher altitude or speed typically require more traditional air defence systems, including radar-guided missile interceptors.”
Crucial line of defence
So interceptor drones are, he said, one layer within a tiered air defence system, dealing with lower-cost, high-volume threats and leaving more advanced and expensive systems to take out higher-end targets.
The expertise in drones that Ukraine has built up, in part through hundreds of defence technology start-ups supported through government initiatives, is such that Kyiv reportedly hopes that this can be used as leverage with security partners that want to build-up their own defences.
Indeed western nations including the UK have begun manufacturing Ukrainian drones under licence.
As well as being a world leader in interceptor drones, Ukraine has successfully used drones in offensive operations in its conflict with Russia, including in the Black Sea.
Ukraine offers not just technology, but also operational know-how. Mr Zelenskyy said last month that 201 Ukrainian anti-drone defence experts were in the Middle East, including in the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to assist nations defending themselves against Iranian attacks.
The use of drones and aerial surveillance in the Ukraine-Russia conflict means that vehicles and personnel well behind the front line can be targeted by attack drones.
As a result, Ukrainian personnel have sometimes had to carry out extended tours of duty in dug outs because troops are at such high risk when moving.
The innovation that Ukraine has demonstrated has resulted in calls for major western powers, including the United States, to take a leaf from Kyiv’s book.
Blaine Holt, a retired US Air Force brigadier general now involved in a start-up, recently told the conservative US television channel Newsmax TV that nations would not secure the victory that they wanted if they were “throwing a $4 million missile at a $20,000 drone”. His country, he said, had “to be lean, agile”.
“We have to get into reform and we have to find new ways of fighting and that is very obvious with the wars that we’ve seen over the past six years,” he said.
“We need to shift a lot of resources into laser weaponry. We need to be better at electronic warfare. We need to get into the drone business because we’re a little bit behind. Hypersonics at the higher end needs to be invested in. We’ve got to reform the entire defence-industrial base.”
So even the world’s pre-eminent military power may be learning lessons from Ukraine as the country advances low-cost interceptor drone technology in the face of a continued onslaught from Russia.
