Ukraine has in the past year carried out at least 11 drone attacks on Russian ships, its naval base in Sevastopol as well as the important military and commercial port of Novorossiysk.
London
“The war is gradually returning to Russian territory,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last Monday after two Russian government buildings were damaged and a Moscow airport was briefly forced to close following a drone attack on the capital. This was the third strike on Moscow in less than a week and the second night in a row as Ukraine ramped up efforts to take Putin’s war back to Russia. Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin claimed that there had been no serious injuries or destruction, but pictures from the scene showed a high-rise building with burnt top floors and a street-level shop with its windows blown out. State media reported that thick smoke was seen pouring out of the upper floors of the business centre immediately after the pre-dawn strike.
Although Kyiv refuses to officially take responsibility for such attacks inside Russia, many believe that this latest skirmish is part of a wider offensive aimed at shifting the focus of the conflict to the Kremlin’s doorstep. According to Ukrainian Air Forces Command spokesman YuriiIhnat said ‘‘The Russians are beginning to face the consequences of last year’s invasion of Ukraine’’. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova was less calm, furiously describing the attacks as “acts of international terrorism”. Zakharova, of course, failed to mention that for the past 18 months, Russia has unleashed multiple attacks across Ukraine, demolishing hundreds of buildings, including several Orthodox Cathedrals, and murdering thousands of innocent civilians. Last week alone, twenty-five UNESCO World Heritage sites across the city of Odesa were hit by missiles fired from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
So far, much of the war has been played out on the battle lines of eastern Ukraine, where trench warfare has been used by both sides, not unlike the front lines of the Great War. But Zelenskyy is now attempting to fuse the future with the past by using drones as part of a new strategy to strengthen the spotlight on Putin in the eyes of the Russian people. ‘‘Drone attacks on Moscow are the most graphic reminder yet to Russians that President Putin’s war is reaping the exact opposite to what it was intending to achieve’’, said the BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner last week. ‘‘Back in February 2022, when the invasion was presented as a ‘special military operation’, the Kremlin announced it was essential in order to make the homeland safer. That is now patently untrue’’, he added.
According to media reports, there have been more than 120 drone attacks this year on Russia and Russian controlled territory in Ukraine. The majority of these have been in the Bryansk and Belgorod regions, close to Russia’s western border with Ukraine, as well as in Russian-annexed Crimea. Now, Ukrainian drones are travelling 300 miles to bomb the capital.
Drones conducting surveillance or dropping ordnance have transformed the battlefield in Ukraine. They are a much cheaper way of obtaining air power and are not the reserve of military superpowers, instead offering countries like Ukraine a relatively new option in the theatre of war. While the beginning of the conflict was marked by the presence of large-scale tactical drones, such as the Turkish Bayraktar—costing an estimated $5 million each and used by Ukraine’s troops to attack columns of Russian tanks—Ukrainian skies are now mainly filled with swarms of smaller drones, often of civilian origin. For example, the “quadcopter” made by China’s DJI is popular with both sides. It is inexpensive, often sold for $1,000, and available in large numbers. The quadcopter’s cameras are used to observe the battlefield and also guide troops or artillery fire. Some are also designed to carry small explosive charges which are dropped on trenches or tanks. More than 70 percent of Russian casualties are believed to have been caused by drones.
Since the start of the war, home-made drone manufacture has become a massive growth industry in Ukraine in order to supply the numbers needed. And these are huge. It is estimated that Ukraine is losing 10,000 drones a month, so the objective is to make them quicker than Russian troops can shoot them down. More than 40 companies have sprung up across Ukraine making drones for the Defence Ministry. One company has developed a reconnaissance drone called Sirko, costing about $4,000. Production is currently being ramped up to about 2,000 a month, mostly purchased by individuals who then donate them to the military. Sirko can transmit video from up to 15 miles away and has a range of about 40 miles on one battery charge. Because the Russians have developed the skill of “spoofing”, which scrambles a drone’s navigation and thereby makes it useless, Sirko is clever enough to turn off its GPS if it’s detected by the enemy and then fly back to base.
Ukraine’s army structure has also been modified to maximise the use of drones. In each of its brigades, there is a special “Drone Assault Company” containing about 65 personnel, all trained in new “drone schools” that have sprung up over Ukraine. Training lasts about 3 weeks, the first two on simulators and the final in fields using real drones. Only the most experienced operators pilot the long-distance drones attacking Moscow. These drones can travel distances of up to 1,000 miles, putting much of western Russia in range. As they travel only at about 50mph they present Russian radars with significant problems as they are not calibrated to pick up such slow objects. This is why drones are only usually spotted when they reach the highly defended outskirts of Moscow. Destroying them at this stage can damage buildings and create dangerous debris falling on civilians.
A country with no fleet to speak of, which is outmanned and outgunned off their own coastline, Ukraine is now developing novel sea drones which are proving to be a vital tool in attacking and surveying Russian targets in the Black Sea and on the Crimean Peninsula. These relatively small unmanned vessels operate on or below sea level and are used for a variety of tasks such as clearing mines, carrying out surveillance or detonating close to targets. Ukraine’s latest sea drones weigh more than 2,000 lbs, have a maximum speed of 50 mph, a range of about 500 miles, and carry huge explosive payloads. Long range targets are typically pre-programmed into the drone’s navigation system and they are then guided to their final destination remotely by a pilot using the on-board cameras. Their speed and difficulty of detection may go some way in explaining how the sea drones that attacked the Kerch Bridge last month travelled undetected in the dark across the Black Sea.
Last October, Ukrainian sea drones were responsible for the attack on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship the Admiral Makarov, newly installed after Ukrainian forces had famously sunk the former flagship Moskva in April. Research by the BBC has revealed that Ukraine has in the past year carried out at least 11 drone attacks on Russian ships, its naval base in Sevastopol as well as the important military and commercial port of Novorossiysk. On Friday, Ukraine claimed that one of its sea drones, carrying 1,000 lbs of dynamite, badly damaged the Russian military landing ship, OlenegorskyGornyak, near Novorossiysk, issuing a video of the attack as evidence. On Friday, another Russian vessel was attacked by a Ukrainian sea drone close to the Kerch Bridge, this time a tanker carrying jet fuel. According to the SBU, Ukraine’s security service, 450 kg of TNT explosive had been used. Russian state-run media confirmed that the bridge had been closed temporarily amid warnings of an imminent attack.
“We will end this war with drones,” said Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister last week; “drones are crucial to our counter-offensive”. By announcing on Friday that Ukraine will increase its investment in drone technology tenfold from around $108 million last year to over $1 billion this year, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal illustrated beyond doubt the country’s commitment to this “game changer” in modern warfare. Whether or not drones will actually end Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that drones, large and small, are playing a pivotal role in tipping the balance of power in Ukraine’s favour.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.