How we defeat the drones

Those who comment on the current wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza/Iran have been quick to join the prevailing orthodoxy that the proliferation of drones on the battlefield has changed conflict forever. 

Many have gone even further than this and have claimed that the advent of the drone has rendered conventional military forces obsolete, as there is nowhere to hide from the new all-seeing eye in the sky. The age of the completely transparent battlefield is upon us they say.

There’s little argument that drones, or uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) or whatever you want to call them, have had a major impact on the way conventional war is conducted. We got an early taster for it in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020, when we saw tanks and other armoured vehicles seemingly picked off at will by the new weaponry.

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However it has been more recently in Ukraine and the Middle East that these new wunderwaffen have very much stepped into the limelight.

Much of their prominence and impact comes from the fact that they have developed and expanded into what was, and to a certain extent still is, what we might call a “threat vacuum”. They have encountered few natural predators and have been, for a time anyway, at the top of the food chain. But the see-saw nature of technological advances in warfare has seen that vacuum fast filling up with countermeasures.

So, how do we defeat the drones? Let’s take a quick hop, skip, and jump through the possible defences against drone attack, current and in the future.

The first defence is not to let them get launched in the first place, and to prevent them getting to the theatre of operations at all by interdicting both their manufacture and supply routes. 

The most recent example of this was when the USA slapped new sanctions on some of those associated with Iran’s drone programme in the aftermath of their attack on Israel. The sanctions target executives of manufacturers of Iran’s Shahad-131 drones, which were used in the onslaught, plus the companies that service the engines and those providing the drones to Iranian proxy forces throughout the Middle East.

Then there are the physical measures that can be taken to stop the drones if they make it as far as the battlefield. Generally speaking this would involve targeting their launchers and operators by kinetic attack like artillery or rocket strike. Failing that they can be shot down in flight or rendered ineffective by jamming the communication links that are used to guide them.

When I attended last year’s biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London there were, perhaps unsurprisingly, many counter-drone equipments on display. One of the more interesting examples was global technology company MARSS’ counter-drone platform.

At the heart of its solutions is an “Internet of Things” platform, which fuses together AI and state of the art sensors to grant situational awareness across land, air, surface and sub-surface domains.

It was first developed to provide security for superyachts (the company has its headquarters in Monaco), but before long it was identified as a powerful solution to problems its customers were facing on land as well.  Long before hostile drones became prominent across Europe, MARSS found its clients in the Middle East were being overwhelmed by daily drone incursions and wanted something done about it.

MARSS’ platform is optimised to detect and identify drones, including the full range from micro to large tactical drones, up to 25km away.  It is capable of identifying hundreds of these objects simultaneously. Critically, it is also capable of autonomously differentiating between drones and non-threats (ie birds), only alerting the operators when a threat is identified and ignoring the false positives.

In doing so it is able to significantly increase the speed and accuracy of military and security operators responding to hostile threats, and
is also capable of integrating with soft-kill countermeasures, such as RF and GPS jamming, to kinetic effectors for complete protection.

MARSS continues to innovate with novel technologies, including its product X-Scout, an unmanned sensor drop-off unit, deliverable by a pick-up truck, whichextends the range of C2 detection and threat denial to the furthest edges of operation.

Beyond this there is avoiding being acquired and hit through the age-old skills of camouflage, spoofs, and decoys. And, if the vehicle(s) do get targeted despite the best efforts of man and beast, there is now a bourgeoning capability in active protection systems (APS) and less sophisticated countermeasures such as the “cope cages” we see increasingly on the top of vehicles.

So all is not lost when it comes to effective defence measures against drones and UAVs (and the same principles apply in regard to seaborne and ground manoeuvring attack equivalents). The world was somewhat taken by surprise when they were deployed at first but the pendulum is now swinging back in favour of defensive measures.

In war it has been ever thus.  The blossoming of drones is not unlike that of the development of aircraft in the First World War. First they were used for reconnaissance, then for bombing, and then fighter aircraft appeared to counter both. Across all domains it’s a constant technological battle where the advantage swings back and forth.

The pendulum is now swinging away from drones as countermeasures catch up, but it’s not over yet. Weapons continually evolve, but the drones are here to stay and armies around the world will have to get used to them, just as they did in the past with the tank, the machine gun, submarines, and aircraft.

Lt Col Stuart Crawford is a defence analyst and former army officer. Sign up for his podcasts and newsletters at www.DefenceReview.uk.