Russia’s drone swarms pierce Ukraine’s defences at record rate

Russia’s “swarm” tactics against Ukraine are increasingly cutting through Ukraine’s defences, with drones striking targets at three times the typical rate in recent months, according to official data.

Mass attacks of Shaheds, an Iranian-designed drone now manufactured in Russia, appear to be overwhelming Ukraine’s beleaguered air defences, with the drone hit rate reaching its highest levels since Moscow’s invasion.

Ukrainian air force data suggests about 15 per cent of the drones penetrated defences on average between April and June — rising from just 5 per cent in the previous three months.

The sheer volume of Russian attacks has also increased sharply this year, with a heavy assault on Sunday night into Monday morning including 426 Shahed style attack drones, Ukraine’s air force reported.

The success of the drones in recent months demonstrates how cheap mass can overwhelm even sophisticated and layered air defences, and has shown Moscow’s ability to rapidly adapt fighting techniques to stretch Kyiv’s resources.

Russia’s tactical innovations to significantly increase the effectiveness of the slow-moving Shaheds has included modifications to allow them to fly faster and beyond the range of the truck-mounted machine guns that Ukraine typically uses to down them.

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“The problem is not [that] the Ukraine air defence is getting worse. Instead, what we see is that new swarming tactics and drones are now flying in higher altitude, [which] makes them more effective,” said Yasir Atalan, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has aggregated Ukraine’s dataset of Russian air attacks.

Russia has named its domestically produced and adapted Shaheds the Geran, or geranium, in keeping with the Soviet practice of naming weaponry after flowers. The Geran-3, a turbo-engined variant that can fly up to 800km an hour in a dive, has been used against Kyiv in recent weeks, according to analysts.

Increased domestic production of the Shaheds has allowed Russia to overwhelm air defences with swarms — July 9 saw a record attack when Russian forces fired 728 Shahed drones and decoys, as well as seven Iskander cruise missiles and six Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles.

“The increase in sheer size in launches saturates the defence systems which increases the hit rate,” Atalan added. 

Ukraine’s defences against Shaheds currently include using electronic warfare to jam their GPS guidance systems, machine guns and anti-aircraft guns including the advanced Oerlikon Skynex, an advanced air defence cannon produced by Germany’s Rheinmetall.

On Sunday night and Monday morning, around 5.4 per cent of the more than 400 Russian drones hit their targets — a better than average rate than recent months.

The steady drumbeat of nightly attacks is apparently designed to wear down Ukraine’s will to fight and force Kyiv into concessions to end the war.

Russian cruise and ballistic missiles are intermixed with the Shaheds in an effort to further confuse air defences. While the hit rates for more sophisticated missiles are unchanged, it comes against a backdrop of uncertainty over US supplies of Patriot anti-missile interceptors.

“Capacity is among the most pressing and urgent concerns for the missile defence world right now,” said Tom Karako of the CSIS. “There is a line down the block and around the corner to get more [Patriot] interceptors. Many of them will be waiting for a while.” 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on July 10 that Ukraine was “already shooting down dozens of Shaheds” with its domestically made interceptor drones in each Russian attack. Earlier this month he announced a deal with Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of US-based Swift Beat, to co-produce hundreds of thousands of drones for Ukraine, including interceptor drones.

Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine’s air defence forces “are achieving good results” with the new interceptor drones and that they “are performing particularly well, with hundreds of Russian-Iranian Shaheds shot down” in a week.

“Every meeting with partners this week was about scaling up this technology,” he added.

Oleksandr Matviienko, a drone expert at Counteroffensive Pro, a Ukrainian defence tech newsletter, said that to be effective, the new anti-drone drones would need to reach altitudes of 6km and speeds of 200kph to intercept Shaheds.

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These interceptor drones would be better placed to defend against saturation attacks, which can otherwise overwhelm Ukrainian mobile fire teams using machine guns and second world war anti-aircraft tactics.

“Instead of deploying 500 drones nationwide like they used to, Russian forces now target one or two cities at a time,” he said.

Andrew Turner, chief executive of Saibre Capital and a former air marshal in the Royal Air Force, said evolution of Ukraine’s drone and missile defences is typical of the constant competition between new innovations in aerial warfare.

“It's a persistent duel and evolution between measures versus countermeasures versus counter-countermeasures,” he said. “In Ukraine this sort of laddering is happening every 14 days, so it is moving at great speed.”