By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Seeing over a ridge to detect approaching enemy armored vehicles, detecting enemy troop formations moving within condensed urban areas or simply alerting advancing infantry and armor units with real-time video and data of upcoming terrain … are all critical functions small drones continue to perform in Ukraine. Of greatest significance, small loitering, armed drones such as the Switchblade can linger, search for enemy targets and attack, becoming explosive themselves to incinerate enemy tanks or troop concentrations.
Small drones have proven extremely critical for Ukraine’s war effort against a numerically larger Russian conventional force, one reason why the Pentagon’s latest support package to Ukraine includes as many as 10 different kinds of small drones. Phoenix Ghost drones along with Altius-600, Jump-20, Hornet, Puma, Scan Eagle and Penguin UAS are just some of the small drones being delivered in large numbers to Ukrainian forces by the Pentagon. Hand and close-in launched ground drones continue to track and decimate tanks and help maneuvering urban combat units locate enemies inside of or behind buildings. Ukrainian Switchblade drones, which themselves become explosives, have been destroying large numbers of Russian tanks without having to place Ukrainian soldiers within a direct line of fire.
With air superiority mysteriously hanging in a balance of uncertainty, the use of hand-and-ground-launched smaller drones organically tied to advancing land units has fast become a defining element of the Ukraine war.
Certainly NATO and other ISR assets such as satellites or ultra long-range aerial surveillance assets have proven useful to Ukraine, most medium altitude drones and fixed wing surveillance planes are likely far too vulnerable to operate in UKraine.
The effective and ubiquitous use of air defenses by both Russia and Ukraine have simply made the airspace inhospitable to most kinds of air surveillance platforms. The most recent Pentagon support package includes 12 new US provided National Advanced Surface-to-Air- Missile Systems NASAMS, systems which have proven quite effective in limiting Russian air attacks. Russia is similarly operating effective air defenses as it is well known for its advanced S-400 and S-500 air defenses. Given the range of these air defenses, which often extend more than several hundred kilometers of radar tracking area, a large portion of the airspace can be covered by a small number of mobile air defenses.
This amounts to a circumstance wherein medium and higher altitude ISR platforms such as the Reaper, Gray Eagle or EMARSS (Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System) spy plane are not likely to yield fast or safe image returns given that they are simply far too vulnerable to being destroyed by ground defenses. Medium altitude drones such as the Reaper or Grey Eagle are operated through data links operated by ground-based command and control stations often hundreds of miles away. Smaller, more organic drones attached to specific mobile ground units, however, are quite different as they can be tasked and operated by close-in, hands-on forces in close proximity to the attacking ground units. This enables rapid tasking and immediate, close-in combat ISR and attack value in a way larger fixed wing surveillance or drones cannot. They are also much more expendable and simply too low-altitude and near ground units to be targeted effectively by larger air defense systems.
Small, hand-launched drones such as the Raven and Puma emerged with the US Army years ago when maneuvering ground units recognized they could immeasurably benefit from small, close-in drones tied directly to and controlled by the ground forces themselves.
The Switchblade tank attacking kamikaze drone, for instance, fits in a backpack and launches from a tube. Its maker AeroVironment says there is a second Switchblade 600 anti-armor variant that can travel 80 km in 40 minutes to destroy enemy tanks and combat vehicles. Both the anti-tank Switchblade 600 and the initial Switchblade 300 are “programmable for auto-hitting targets and have the ability after takeoff the operator to change their trajectory and direct them to another target.”
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
