Ukrainians with cellphones and machine guns are forcing Russia to change how it launches its drone attacks
- Ukraine has also mobilised the public for the anti-drone war with the use of apps so that ordinary people can essentially quickly report in sightings of drones
- As a result, Russia has changed its tactics, and begun sending a few drones ahead of the main attack wave to attract the attention of Ukrainian anti-aircraft sites
Ukraine’s flexible and adaptive air defences have forced Russia to change its drone tactics.
Instead of launching a few Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones at a time, Russia is sending large salvoes and carefully routing them to avoid Ukrainian defences.
Ukrainian interception rates have got “good enough that the Russians are now kind of saving up their Iranian production allocations until they have large amounts,” Justin Bronk, an air power expert at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said on an April episode of the Geopolitics Decanted podcast.
Now Russia is launching “maybe 30 or 40” at a time, Bronk said.
03:09
Ukraine denies Russia’s claim it tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with drone attack on Kremlin
This marks yet another turn in the drone war between Russia and Ukraine. In the days after Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukrainian drones armed with anti-tank missiles or even home-made bombs wreaked havoc on Russian armoured columns.