Rockets, missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles: most modern airborne weapons have one thing in common — they’re fast. In Russia, however, a slow-moving threat from Ukraine is making an unexpected impact.
Small, propeller planes loaded with explosives are being flown autonomously to sensitive sites deep within Russian territory. These planes damage refineries and destroy radar sites, among other targets.
Lance Landrum, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), highlighted this innovation and creativity by Ukraine during a recent virtual press conference focusing on the use of drones in Ukraine and the lessons NATO nations can take.
“Clearly, this is just one example of the innovation and creativity of Ukraine,” Landrum said. “That stems from a nation who sees the next existential threat to their survival. They’re using all capabilities.”
Landrum pointed out that gaps in Russia’s air defenses aren’t exclusive to Russia.
“We should take that to heart and not have hubris that we wouldn’t have the same problems,” Landrum said. “These drones, of all different sizes, can exploit gaps and seams in traditional air defense systems in ways that traditional offensive systems haven’t in the past.”
Landrum is not alone in his assessment. Gordon Davis Jr., a retired Army major general and another CEPA senior fellow, agrees.
“This issue of low-altitude threats is one shared by all nations,” Davis said. “We have yet to really optimize our capability to identify low-altitude, slow-moving threats and have an integrated network that can respond rapidly.”
Most modern air defenses are calibrated to detect and stop fast-moving threats, many of which would come from over the horizon. So, what’s the solution?
According to Landrum and Davis, if the United States — or any nation — wants to defend itself against slow-moving drone planes loaded with explosives, it will require an intricate and complex system of sensors and effectors.
The sensors would detect the threats and relay that data to the effectors, which may or may not be in the same location as the sensor. For instance, high-altitude balloons floating off the coast of California could be configured to detect this type of threat and then signal the effectors to act.
The effector could be kinetic, like missiles or guided-artillery shells, or non-kinetic, relying on electronic warfare countermeasures to handle the drone.
Whatever the eventual defense system against these types of threats may look like, Landrum and Davis say it’s needed now.
“No nation has that yet,” Davis said. “That’s a vulnerability at the moment that the Ukrainians are exploiting to their advantage. They’re restricted by Western policies on weapons systems given to employ munitions inside Russian territory. They’re leveraging their domestic capabilities to strike key infrastructure within Russia. Russians have a problem that we share as well, and we would do well to heed and address this problem.”
