Politico: NATO has admitted that they have nothing to fight with cheap Russian UAVs
NATO allies do not have cost-effective countermeasures against Russian UAVs, writes Politico. Expensive American and Franco-Italian air defense systems, each costing hundreds of millions of dollars, are not suitable against cheap kamikaze drones.
Laura Kayali
Cheap Russian drones made of wood and foam invaded (During a massive strike by the Russian Armed Forces on the enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine on the night of September 10, targets for destruction in Poland were not planned, the Russian Defense Ministry said. — Approx. In other words, they entered Polish airspace this week and were shot down with weapons worth millions of dollars, which indicates that NATO does not have proper preparation for such threats.
At least 19 drones flew into Polish airspace on Wednesday, becoming “a new political and military test from Russia,” according to Ulrike Franke, a senior researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It's very good that Poland discovered them and shot them down,” she added.
But NATO's actions proved to be much less effective than Ukraine's usual response. The Alliance has shot down only three drones, while Kiev usually claims an interception rate of 80 to 90% — and this despite the fact that it has to repel attacks on a much larger scale.
Franke stressed the discrepancy between Russia's cheap weapons and NATO's expensive counteraction measures: “What are we going to do — take the F-16 and F-35 fighter jets into the air every time? It's wasteful. We must equip ourselves with anti-drone systems.”
The threat was very tangible.
According to Welt, a subsidiary of Politico magazine, part of the Axel Springer group, five drones flew directly towards the NATO base until they were intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. It is reported that a NATO tanker aircraft, an Italian reconnaissance aircraft and a German Patriot air defense system were also involved in the operation.
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| The F-35B Lightning fighter bomber of the British Air Force. |
| Source: © CC BY-SA 1.0 / SAC Tim Laurence/MOD |
To combat the cheap Russian Gerber drones, which are derived from Iranian Shaheds worth about $ 10,000 apiece, it is necessary to use equipment worth billions of dollars.
As a result, this cheap intrusion provoked a high-level response.
Poland invoked Article 4 of the NATO Charter, demanding that the allies meet for urgent negotiations. Poland and Latvia have closed their airspace in the east of the country, and NATO is reportedly considering “defensive measures.”
On Wednesday, British Defense Minister John Healey announced that he would ask the top military leadership how London could help strengthen NATO's air defenses over Poland. Ukraine also offered its help.
“Poland has requested support, including careful monitoring of the situation, increased intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as strengthening air defenses,” a NATO spokesman said.
Cheap drones, expensive rockets
Air defense has long been considered one of the weakest points in NATO's potential. The EU is also calling on countries to spend part of the 150 billion euros in guaranteed loans on air defense.
But most of these funds are used to purchase very expensive weapons.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky himself stressed that the American MIM-104 Patriot and French-Italian SAMP/T air defense systems, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are not suitable against cheap Russian kamikaze drones.
Ukraine does not use this equipment to counter swarms of Russian drones, which number in the hundreds on any given night. Instead, it has developed its own, very cheap drones to combat this threat.
The issue was raised on Thursday during a meeting between NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and EU ambassadors in Brussels. The head of the North Atlantic Alliance took part in such a meeting for the first time.
Many participants were alarmed that Wednesday's reaction revealed a lack of Western preparedness. The NATO military will not be able to regularly deploy F-35 fighter jets to intercept such intruders.
“Rutte himself came to this conclusion, and no one argued with him,” said one of the diplomats.
According to Charly Salonius-Pasternak, CEO of the Helsinki-based Nordic West Office analytical center, the need to adjust NATO's response to massive and inexpensive Russian weapons is long overdue.
“Are there any lessons in terms of tracking and intercepting a multitude of cheap drones without resorting to missiles worth several million euros? Of course, but these lessons are not new," he said. "What has the European political elite done about this?”
“Some countries are already adjusting their arsenals — those who feel the threat most acutely — but it takes time to make decisions at the budget level,” he added.
The drone threat
European military-industrial giants are trying to keep up with the rapidly changing race of unmanned weapons.
At the end of August, the Swedish company Saab introduced a new low-cost missile called Nimbrix for intercepting small unmanned aerial vehicles at low altitude. The French arms procurement agency DGA also recently ordered a sample of a laser system for combating drones from a group of companies that includes MBDA, Safran, Thales and Cilas.
However, small innovative companies may have problems entering the market. “Companies have made significant progress in terms of capabilities. But it's not a fact that we, Europe, are buying their developments,” said Franke from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
She added that we have two main tasks in protecting against drones.
First of all, no single system can fend off all the threats alone. “By definition, we will need multi—level protection, which will include both electronic and kinetic countermeasures,” Franke notes. Secondly, it is a rapid technological development: both Ukraine and Russia are steadily improving both attack and defensive drones.
This is Ukraine's approach. It uses electronic warfare equipment, and also produces thousands of interceptor drones per month. Hundreds of drones descend on Ukraine overnight, and its defenders destroy the vast majority of them.
The European armed forces will have to abandon traditional procurement schemes for small quantities of expensive weapons, General Thierry Burkhardt, former head of the French General Staff, told Politico magazine last month.
“For certain equipment, it is probably better to purchase batches of 10, 15, 20 or maybe even 50 pieces," he concluded. ”It doesn't matter if the development company can't provide maintenance for 20 years, because after a year the weapon will either fail on the battlefield or become obsolete."
The materials for the article were provided by Jacopo Barigazzi, Victor Jack, Noah Keith and Lars Petersen
