One-wayattack drones are disruptive, devastating, and cheap to make. The UK can do much more to scale up Kyiv’s output

MARCEL PLICHTA

FORMER ANALYST AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

5 September 2023 •

Ukraine has recently launched an audacious series of attacks across Russia, hitting several airfields and setting Russian aircraft alight. Ukraine didn’t use western-provided missiles for their attacks, but emerging type of weapon that can bring the war home to Russia: one-way attack (OWA) drones. 

Striking the bases and planes Russia uses to bomb Ukrainian civilians is paramount for the next phase of the war: and the UK can help. With Western support to get high-quality components, Ukraine can soon surpass Russia’s drone campaign in scale and intensity, changing the face of their campaign.

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Attack drones are a permanent feature of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since late 2022 Russia bought and launched more than 1,200 Iranian-made Shahed drones at everything from substations near Kyiv to grain silos in Odesa, Reni, and Izmail. Russian officials are eager to expand their campaign and move production from Iran to new factories in Russia. Ukraine launched high-profile drone attacks of their own, but cannot yet scale up production to match what Russia can buy and soon make. 

OWA drones sit at the intersection of lethality and sustainability. Drones with a 2-metre wingspan or above can deliver 20 to 50 kilograms of explosives hundreds of miles. Fifty kilograms may be a smaller warhead than most conventional missiles, but the effect is significant against soft targets like depots, radars, and oil facilities. 

Technology has made precision weapons like OWA drones cheap. Western-made commercial technologies to build drones are becoming widely available, even to sanctioned countries like Russia and Iran, and commercial satellite services reveal the exact coordinates of potential military and industrial targets. While OWA drones are by no means invincible – they often lack the ability to change targets once in flight and are not as hardened to air defence or electronic attack – Russia’s 1,200 Shaheds have terrorised Ukraine for months, threatened their electrical supply, and now threaten grain exports cost an estimated $60 Million USD, far less than Russia spent on their inventory of advanced missiles.

Yet OWA drones will soon become a far bigger problem for Russia. With a sufficient range, a large inventory, and clever targetters, Ukraine can start forcing Russian defenders to protect every airfield, depot, refinery, and anything else expensive. Targeting oil facilities is no joke – the Russian state relies on oil revenue and its leaders will divert precious air defense assets to defend them if they feel that there’s an enduring threat. 

Nevertheless, for these strikes have practical and symbolic importance, there needs to be a consistent tempo and sufficient mass to challenge Putin’s air defences and damage the war effort. Attacks on Russian military and industrial targets on the scale of Russia’s Shahed campaign requires hundreds of systems in the coming year, not dozens. The UK’s promised drones might also fit the bill, but there are no signs that they will be delivered anytime soon.

In short, therefore, Ukraine’s partners – including the UK – need to supply Ukrainian manufacturers with components for OWA drones. At the scale Ukraine needs to produce drones at, simply buying commercial parts is inefficient and a fundraising campaign would compete with funding streams for other kinds of drones. Unlike Ukraine’s wide variety of tactical drones, scaling production of OWA drones need standardised parts, steady supply chains, and more centralisation to take advantage of economies of scale. Navigational components alone can often cost more than an entire Shahed-136 when purchased individually, so the US, UK, and other countries should work with their manufacturers to lower costs and buy in bulk. 

Supporting Ukraine’s drone industry aligns perfectly with Ukraine’s renewed push to manufacture more systems in Ukraine itself. With Ukrainian industry already in the process of producing OWA drones, there’s a foundation to scale up and an opportunity to make Ukraine’s war effort more self-sustaining. Sending Kyiv components is also cheaper and less controversial than supplying long-range systems and does not come at the expense of the donor’s military readiness.  

Helping Ukraine make drones supports Ukraine’s fight against Russia now and will help Nato in the future. Iran’s aggressive proliferation of drones to Russia and other partners shows that cheap drones can impose costs against air defendes even in their most rudimentary form. Nato’s smallest members will jump at the chance to affordably hit targets hundreds of miles away and reduce the risk that they will one day find themselves in the same position as Ukraine.

Ukraine needs all the help it can at this vital moment. Supporting them in the new phase of drone warfare is one small way Britain can do this at a minimal cost, but with a potentially huge reward. 

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Marcel Plichta is former analyst at the US Department of Defense