How Ukraine and NATO defend against Russian drones

Like two airplanes violently circle a military truck, two soldiers flee the vehicle and a third drone arrives, causing the other two to suddenly fall and produce a mountain of smoke.

This is NATO military drone training in the Netherlands. In life, the soldiers would have been killed before the third drone appeared. But the exercise is testing the latest anti-drone technology.

Thursday’s exercise came on the same day Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly said he would increase drone production tenfold to around 1.4 million this year in his bid to take over Ukraine.

It is “cat and mouse.” [game]that punching counterpunch measured in days. So technology needs to work harder to keep up,” said Matt Roper, head of joint intelligence, surveillance and intelligence in NATO’s cyber and technology department.

“Russia has shown itself to be a capable adversary in the area of ​​electronic warfare,” he told Euronews Next.

“We have learned and gained a lot of experience by watching what is happening in Ukraine, and we are adapting”.

More than 50 counter-drone technologies were demonstrated in the annual NATO exercise with more than 19 NATO member states present, as well as, for the first time, Ukraine.

The main problem of the war in Ukraine now is airplanessaid Yaroslav, from the Innovation Center of Ukraine at the Ministry of Defense, who did not want to give his name.

‘Pandora’s Box’

“They are always in heaven. They monitor our location in the frontal area, like 20 km deep,” he told Euronews Next.

“They give us that [many] problems. Our guns cannot work because immediately if they are found, the missile will go there which is a big problem”.

Yaroslav says the biggest threat is ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) drones, which are used for surveillance.

He has been close to the border for the first time to test Ukrainian technology and said that ISR drones cannot be seen or heard.

“They work at very high distances, like from 1km to 5km, and they can be far from your jamming device. And it’s not easy to jam,” he said, referring to the ability of interfering with them.

To overcome this, he said Ukraine is looking at other options, especially drones that will hit an ISR drone to destroy it.

Another type of drone that is causing concern for NATO and other nations is the low-cost first person drone (FPV). FPV drones are controlled by pilots on the ground and are loaded with explosives.

On Wednesday, Ukraine used several of these drones to cause a large explosion at a military base in the Tver region of Russia.

FPVs are made of “common materials, some common parts, which are very difficult to control, and there are so many different types of these that it’s very difficult to put them all together,” he said. Yaroslav, who added that you will not attack them. they have explosive devices and you cannot close them easily.

“Pandora’s Box [is] it is already open. It is impossible to close it again,” he warned.

“If someone decides to attack some domestic objects in Europe … even FPV drones, it would be very difficult to protect it. I don’t want to use the word impossible, but next to impossible,” he said.

“You can shoot a few of them, but not all of them. So it’s a big threat. We need to realize this. We need to prepare”.

‘Irresponsible use’

A possible attack in Europe is of growing concern following reports that Russia has violated NATO airspace.

Earlier this month, at least one Russian Shahed plane crashed in Romania near the Ukrainian border, and the president of Latvia said that a military plane had crashed in the eastern part of the country.

“We know that Russia is developing their use of drones in and around Ukraine. We know that they represent a real source of danger and threat to the independence treaty,” Roper said.

“And we know that there have been several incidents that have given communities in border areas anxiety, where pieces of weapons equipment and drones have ended up well within their own borders.

He added: “NATO takes a very bleak view of that and considers the irresponsible use of those systems by Russia and has clarified that discussion.”

‘Transition point’

Roper said “we’re in a transition phase” right now, from research and development to operational capabilities.

Some of those capabilities are demonstrated in NATO exercises.

One demonstrated technology can listen to a drone, decide to intercept it in flight, remove the drone from the pilot, and reprogram and control it to fly it to another location.

It is currently used in 27 countries around the world in major armies and special forces.

“Nothing is easy to do when you try to take a flight in real time outside of a factory or laboratory conditions against the wishes of the pilot,” said Simon Foreman, director of operations at the company D-Fend Solutions .

“This is modern technology and there are some difficult drones that we have to deal with. But that’s what cyber is,” he said.

The next ‘water’ moment

Another technology featured in the program is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify and differentiate between types of drones.

Scottish company Quell AI has not yet officially launched its product but its Chief Operating Officer Bobby Hamilton said this type of technology is needed to defend against drones and protection from land lines.

“Our models are trained to identify … but also to help keep tracks on targets and then detect them remotely and get situational awareness for the user,” Hamilton told Euronews Next.

AI in drones is the “next level of water technology” for NATO, said Roper, in terms of how it is integrated and how it will combat AI drones.

On the one hand, it can be used for defense purposes to easily detect drones but on the attacker side, AI, machine learning, and computer vision can be used on drones to target bombs and explosives to target the area something.

“It changes the environment in terms of how we’re going to deal with threats when we know there’s a very sophisticated level of AI deployed on an adversary’s aircraft,” Roper said.