"WASHINGTON -- More than three months after Russia started using large numbers of Iranian-made drones against Ukraine, the U.S. is struggling to supply effective systems that can meet the threat, Western officials and analysts said.
The Pentagon first said it would provide a counterdrone system called Vampire in August, but approved the $40 million contract for the weapons only in mid-December, the company that makes them said. The delivery of the first four systems won't take place until mid-2023, with 10 more arriving by the end of the year.
The Pentagon hasn't said why it took several months from the initial announcement to issue a contract for the counterdrone technology. The company behind the Vampire said it was just a matter of paperwork.
"It was just a process to get to the right contract vehicle and the right mechanism in order to get us turned on," said Luke Savoie, president of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance business at L3Harris Technologies Inc.
The contract underscores the challenging effort among the U.S. and allies to help Kyiv counter the threat posed by the large, slow and cheap Iranian Shahed-136 drone that Russia has deployed to attack Ukrainian electricity infrastructure. It also highlights, however, the difficulty of deploying the systems quickly and in enough numbers to mount an effective defense.
"I think Ukraine needs a lot of these systems distributed very widely across the entire depth of the front," said Sam Bendett, a drone expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a federally funded research organization in Arlington, Va. "It would need hundreds of these systems around large cities, around large military facilities, around military bases, in main infrastructure facilities and the like."
The Vampire, an acronym for Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment, uses high-definition sensors to track threats -- including drones -- then intercepts them with laser-guided munitions. The system is designed to fit in the bed of a commercial pickup, L3Harris said.
While Ukrainian forces have had some success shooting down suicide drones or loitering munitions, no system provides comprehensive defense. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky singled out the drones in his December speech to Congress, saying, "Iranian deadly drones, sent to Russia in hundreds, became a threat to our critical infrastructure."
Russia began deploying Iran's Shahed-136 en masse in September. At first, Russia aimed the drones at military positions, before it began to target power plants and civilian infrastructure.
Ukrainian troops have shot down the majority of the drones fired by Russia using a mix of surface-to-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, antiaircraft guns and man-portable air-defense systems known as manpads, said Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.
This month, Ukrainian officials said they shot down drones using NASAMS, a U.S.-provided surface-to-air missile-defense system. However, air defense remains a patchwork.
The Shahed, which is made from mostly commercial parts, including from the West, is so noisy it earned the nickname "the flying moped," said Mr. Bendett, the drone expert. It can be preprogrammed with GPS coordinates to hit a target without communicating with an operator.
"Shahed lowered the threshold to developing and constructing a fairly effective, very cheap and expendable loitering munition," Mr. Bendett said. "If the cost of attack is going to be less than the cost of defense, then the strain is going to be on the defender."
At a counterdrone conference in December, Richard Ast, director of unmanned systems technology in the Pentagon's research-and-engineering directorate, said his office was looking at industry to help come up with solutions.
In particular, he pointed to the threat of autonomous drones fired in large numbers. "The key word is degrade," Mr. Ast said. "I know I'm not going to be able to defeat them wholeheartedly."
U.S. and NATO officials declined to provide details on what other types of counterdrone systems it is seeking to provide to Ukraine.
As the Russian military operation nears its first anniversary, private companies say they are factoring the Iranian drones into their planning." [1]
Where is the Lithuania's Turkish drone? One drone... The drone shows only that we in Lithuania are like small children with no grasp of reality, enjoying random shiny objects. The key words are: We are degrading, my precious.
1. World News: West Struggles to Deploy Defense Against Drones for Kyiv
Cheslow, Daniella. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Jan 2023: A.7.
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