Ukraine Is Using Drones To Ram Drones Like An Old-School Navy

To deal with the increasing frequency and ferocity of Russian drone strikes, Ukraine is beginning to turn to one of the oldest plays in the military book: go straight at the problem, ramming speed! Just as cheap drones have challenged the value of much more expensive planes and helicopters, now Ukraine is using even cheaper drones to challenge the value of Russia’s Iranian-designed Shahed drones. Essentially, an entirely new class of air defense is being concepted, tested, and deployed in real time, in the middle of a conflict. How it pans out may shape the future of air warfare.

Both sides have been constantly innovating in response to the other’s capabilities. Ukraine smuggled a couple of cheap FPV drones deep into Russia, knocking out some of the invader’s most precious nuclear-capable warplanes. Russia and Ukraine have relied heavily on electronic warfare to jam and disable drones in the air, but developments in radio spectrum usage and the advent of fiber-optic cables into the mix have made the little fliers ever harder to knock down. Meanwhile, even as Russia ramps up the scale of its drone attacks, a wavering Trump administration has been uneven in its weapons deliveries to the beleaguered defender; precious $4 million Patriot anti-air missiles need to be conserved for Russia’s more powerful bombers.

All combined, that’s made it tough for Ukraine to defend itself against the Shahed menace. But if nothing else, the Ukrainians have been creative in their defense. And so now, they are thinking like old-school Roman triremes: just whack the other vehicle with your own.

So-called interceptor drones take a variety of forms. They seem to have begun as off-the-shelf FPV drones being used as flying battering rams, but are now reaching the point where purpose-built ones are going into mass-production. Like classic interceptor warplanes of the 20^th Century, the basic idea is that these things are very, very fast — specifically, faster than their targets, especially the dreaded Shahed drone.

That speed does two things: it gets the good drone over the bad drone before the latter can reach its target, and it means the interceptor can outmaneuver its opponent. Currently, both fixed- and rotary-wing designs are being explored as Ukraine, and defense companies sensing an opportunity, continue to iterate. For reference, a Shahed drone has a max speed of around 115 mph; some current interceptors can hit 205 mph.

But interceptors have an even better advantage over their nemesis. A Shahed drone costs about $50,000. That’s really cheap by the standards of long-range munitions! Know what’s even cheaper? $5,000, which is about what one of these interceptors costs. That gives Ukraine the edge in the financial war per encounter. Actually, it’s better than that, since interceptors might just be able to have multiple encounters.

A traditional air defense missile will fly over to something in the sky that it doesn’t like and then blow up. Which is great, except for all the problems that creates. First up, obviously, is the fact that the missile will never come home again. Second, and worse, is that all that fiery wreckage will descend over a broad swath of the ground below, possibly hitting friendly troops, infrastructure, or civilians. Since Russia often targets cities, the defensive encounter often happens over heavily populated areas.

Interceptor drones can reduce both problems. At least theoretically, a flying ram with a tough outer shell should be able to hit its target, re-stabilize, and then fly off to its next target, and on and on until it flies back home in one piece. In practice, it doesn’t seem like this has worked out too well yet, but expect a lot of innovation in this area. If this capability can be worked out, then reusable air defenses become a whole new dimension of modern warfare. Even better, a Shahed drone that gets knocked off-balance will simply fall intact and in one piece, reducing the damage below. Of course, versions of interceptors that do blow themselves up, like a traditional ordnance, are being tried out as well.

Russia, of course, is moving to respond. For one thing, it is developing its own interceptor drones to deal with Ukraine’s attacks onto its turf. These appear to be mostly in R&D for now, but expect them to start getting off assembly lines and into the air soon enough. For another, Russia has begun using more complex maneuvering in its Shahed flights, making a simple ramming more difficult. What’s more, Russia is poking at the idea of making jet-propelled Shaheds, which would be so fast that no interceptor could catch it.

That last one, though, comes at a cost. Literally. The whole point of using Shahed kamikazes instead of guided missiles is that they are cheaper. If Russia starts collapsing the distinction between the two, then that probably also brings the price closer together, invalidating the whole point. Again, there’s going to be a lot of iteration in this area in the near future.

But interceptor drones are only going to ramp up, and fast. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants his country to produce 1,000 of them per day. The UK government is stepping in to help, promising to send this new technology into mass production specifically for Ukraine’s benefit. Defense companies across the West are coming out with their own products. Three years in, this war is still changing the face of warfare.