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By Philip Butterworth-Hayes
On my way to the Eurosatory defence show in Paris last week I met a Ukrainian defence procurement official.
“We have one major priority,” he told me. “We need a network of affordable counter UAS systems which can be fielded on a large scale to identify and take down kamikaze drone threats as soon as they are launched against us. It’s no use waiting until the last kilometre or so. For one thing, our current jammers have a range of one kilometre but Russian attack drones go into autonomous mode 5km away, so the jammers are not effective. Russia is now using more effective stand-off weapon systems which are proving very difficult to track, so we need networks of passive sensors which can alert us to possible attacks as soon as they emerge.”
Would he have found such as system at the Eurosatory show?
While there were some examples of long range, ground-based air defence system concepts on display their missiles were too big and too expensive to meet the challenge of low-cost AI-enabled drone swarms. Instead, what he would have found is a host of new products that western suppliers have developed to protect expensive armoured vehicles from occasional drone attacks, with new mobile weapon stations integrating passive sensors – or active sensors which can operate in short bursts – integrated with airburst ammunition loaded cannons.
These at least are starting to close the affordability gap, in which a USD1,000 drone can take out a USD3 million armoured vehicle. And they could, in theory, form the basis of a network of more mobile air defence systems deployed not just on the battlefield but as measures of last resort to defend critical assets, such as electricity generating stations, many kilometres away from the front.
It is the theoretical effectiveness of these combined systems that prompted one visiting general to the show to assert that the days of drone supremacy in current wars are limited. French Army Chief of Staff General Pierre Schill told visiting reporters :“The life of impunity of small, very simple drones over the battlefield is a snapshot in time,” he said. “Right now it’s being exploited, that’s clear, and we have to protect ourselves. Today, the sword, in the sense of the aerial drone, is powerful, more powerful than the shield. The shield is going to grow.”
But as the C-UAS challenge in Ukraine changes every four weeks, according to some estimates, this is a bold prediction. And drones have changed warfare in ways which many defence departments have not yet fully understood: long-range, low-cost drones are not just tactical weapons they are simultaneously strategic threats used against civilian infrastructure with growing effectiveness.
Over the past two years, European and US defence companies have been busy developing new technologies to make passive and active sensors more mobile around the battlefield, none more so than Germany’s Alpine Eagle, which was at the show to demonstrate its air defence drone – equipped with small but powerful radars for 360% surveillance above the battlefield, which would go some of the way to meeting the needs of Ukrainian procurement officials.
Alpine Eagle is just one application which exploits a new generation of lightweight, robust radar systems. Echodyne was at the show to demonstrate how its portfolio of short, medium range and airborne advanced metamaterial electronically scanned array (MESA) radars that can be integrated into a wide range of ground-based and airborne air defence networks. The company’s products fall outside US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) provisions,
Thales had on display its 6×6 Griffon Vehicule d’Observation d’Artillerie (VOA), brimming with sensors to designate ground and air targets, featuring a lightweight Thales MURIN surveillance radar capable of identifying targets 24km in the distance.
Another battlefield drone-scanner was demonstrated by Patria with its Multi-Static Coherent Location (MUSCL) mast-mounted system which can detect NATO class 1 mini and small drones at between 20 and 40km. Hensoldt, meanwhile, featured its TRML-4D C-band ground defence radar using AESA technology can detect up to 1,500 airborne threats out to a range of 250km