“ACCESSIBLE AND CHEAP”
Drones have played key roles from the earliest days of the conflict, with Ukrainian forces using Turkish-made Bayraktars to carry out strikes on Moscow’s troops as they unsuccessfully sought to seize Kyiv.
Both sides are using drones to locate and track enemy forces as well as to direct artillery fire, and both are also employing “loitering munitions” – uncrewed aircraft equipped with explosive charges that detonate on impact.
Lauren Kahn, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Ukraine war came at a time when “a lot of these technologies are maturing and coming of age” and are “accessible and cheap”.
This allows for more experimentation, she said.
“Because they’re so affordable, they’re being used in a way that they’re treated (as) much less precious,” said Kahn, who focuses on the impact of emerging technologies on international security.
And it poses a challenge for defenders when drones are less expensive than the means used to bring them down, she said, citing Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure with waves of drones provided by Iran.
“Better and more effective ways of countering drones, I think, is going to be … the next phase and next focus of development,” Khan said, adding that there “needs to be a more economically feasible solution” to match the “cheapness of the offensive technology”.
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