How Russia is ramping up efforts to counter drones in Ukraine

Russian forces in Ukraine have been utilising a multi-pronged approach to degrading Ukrainian drones. The approach has included attacking the physical infrastructure used to extend their range, home-made and commercial electronic warfare (EW) systems at tactical echelons, and sniper pairs to shoot larger systems.

The development of counter-drone efforts has occurred organically and shifted from a previous reliance upon Russia’s battalion- and brigade-level EW which was doctrinally responsible for counter-drone effects at the start of the invasion.

A factor that has driven tactical counter-drone adaptations has been the increase in the scale of drone usage which has exposed units without tactical capabilities.

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Russia entered the war with military off-the shelf tactical C-UAS weapons such as the Harpoon-3 which appeared to be concentrated among its more capable units. The system resembles a rifle and can be used accordingly or as part of a stationary network for point defence.

The Harpoon-3, and others like it, provide line-of-sight jamming against the typical frequencies used by small drones at ranges of between 1–3km. Russia has also been using its larger and more powerful EW systems such as the R-330Zh (also known as Zhitel) and Polye-21 for wide-area suppression, especially of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).

The scarcity of tactical systems like Harpoon, the widespread use of small drones and the reduced vulnerability of FPVs to GNSS jamming has led to an influx of Chinese jamming systems, commercially available frequency analysers and home-made omnidirectional jammers that intend to reduce the effects of FPVs at tactical echelons.

Soft-kill systems have been coupled with hard-kill approaches. For larger drones such as Ukraine’s Baba Yaga, a hexacopter used for strikes and reconnaissance, Russian snipers have reportedly engaged in shooting them down. They must do so, however, with a single shot or risk being hunted as Russia’s Dmitry Rogozin, former head of Roscosmos and a frontline tech developer, warned in a recent Telegram post.

Other kinetic methods have included the use of interceptor drones designed to fly into Ukrainian systems including the Baba Yaga. Drone-on-drone interceptions have been observed at times throughout the war, however, some videos do appear to show systems designed with an explosive payload to intercept others and destroy them in the air.

There has also been evidence of Russian units using anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to strike repeater systems that can be used to extend the range of FPVs. In the available account of this, Russia’s EW troops identified the repeater, presumably through spectrum analysis, on a cell phone tower. The tower was then engaged with an ATGM. If the attack was as successful, as the Russian MoD has claimed, it would have reduced the range of FPVs in the area of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast.

Russia’s EW units have also been responsible for identifying Ukrainian repeater drones and bringing them down. Earlier in the war, video footage showed the location and destruction of the command infrastructure of Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2s, indicating that Russian forces are able to identify repeaters and command links of drones and use kinetic or soft-kill means to take those systems out of action.

It is apparent that a lot of the innovation and adaptation occurring in Ukraine has been driven from the ground up meaning that conditions almost certainly vary along the frontline. Interceptor drones might be common in one area and non-existent in another, for instance. Nonetheless, it stands to reason that the counter-drone war has been far from stable and that it has been defined by rapid adaptation that could only occur on the frontline.

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R-330Zh