The drone swarm is coming, and NATO air defenses are too expensive to cope

NATO is unprepared to deal with attacks by cheap, mass-produced drones and urgently needs layered, affordable air defense systems to counter the threat, taking a cue from the experience gained by Ukrainian forces over the past four years. Experts at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) recently held a debate on the …

[A Non e-mouse]

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

[elsergiovolador]

Dither

The enemies of the West tend to strike working class areas, that's why there is no rush with this.

[Dinanziame]

The war in Ukraine has been very informative, because it's the first honest-to-goodness land war that has happened between industrial countries of relatively equal strength in decades. I think that many militaries are completely redrawing from scratch their assumptions about future combat. Progress, yay.

[herman]

Russia is ten times bigger than Ukraine, but fortunately also ten times more stupid.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Another lesson

However you detect hostile drones and the countermeasures employed they must cover your whole air space. The is no point having an impenetrable frontier air space if behind that Maginot Line, your adversary ships containers full of the little buggers through your ports.

The sheer number of these cheap (both senses) single use weapons means that widespread assaults on civilian infrastructure against more developed nations advantages the less developed and/or authoritarian adversary. You cannot destroy a country's electricity grid if it doesn't have one.

If I lived in a nation that believed that bombing a place flat was viable diplomatic tool for lasting peace I would seriously ponder how a party on the receiving end might in future slowly extract retribution in view of the above observation.

[DS999]

Yes this is an important one

It is quite conceivable that Iran could manage to ship containers loaded with drones (like what Ukraine did to Russia) via third party countries into the US, and attack in places with little or no interceptor capability. US military bases are likely all protected, but what about National Guard bases? What about events where US military members may congregate? Or factories manufacturing missiles, interceptors, and other stuff necessary for a sustained war?

If Iran actually had been planning an "imminent attack" like Trump lied, they would have put all this in place over the past year and would pull the trigger as part of their imagined first strike (or immediately in response to Trump's attack) But evne now there could be containers like this slowly transiting, and show up here a couple months from now ready to be used if the war is still on or in preparation in case Trump decides he needs another distraction from the Epstein files, or the economy that's get worse by the day thanks to his idiotic war. There's no way we can check every container entering the US, and certainly wouldn't check one that appeared to come from somewhere other than Iran.

[imanidiot]

Re: Yes this is an important one

basically all air bases worldwide outside of Ukraine, including those in the US are poorly defended against the sort of attack that Ukraine pulled against Russia. Because it would entail the same sort of in depth drone defense that NATO is now finding out they're sorely lacking and the rest of the world still needs to invest heavily in. Only those bases that can keep their aircraft under hardened cover are defended, but US aircraft like the B-52 are currently required by treaty with Russia to stay out in the open so that they can be checked on by spy-sat. Many other aircraft and helicopters spend most of their time outside simply because hardened shelters are expensive and until not very long ago largely unneeded.

[imanidiot]

Re: Yes this is an important one

Iran lacks the one force multiplier that Ukraine has access to and the US has built. Starlink. Ukraine shipped the containers into Russia and apparently none of the drone operators were actually in Russia when the attacks actually happened. They were all remotely operated over the internet via starlink from what I understand. If Iran wanted to run a similar attack against the US it would need to get local operators into the US and either use the cellphone network (Which I suspect would get jammed the instance a US base finds itself under drone attack) or be local enough to use it's own local wireless network.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Yes this is an important one

If you don't think Iran can use starlink for attacks on US soil, I have a bridge across the Hudson to sell you.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Yes this is an important one

"US military bases are likely all protected, but what about National Guard bases? "

What about critical power distribution nexus points?

The same transformers marked as being vulnerable to solar flares with a decade or more to replace if multiples go down are equally as susceptible to a shaped charge or three and the results would be the same - blackouts across multistate areas and unstable power distribution for years.

Sending W.DC dark would be the kind of thing someone might do to make a point.

[EvilDrSmith]

'Be scared' sells newspapers

While most certainly not trying to be-little the threat, it does seem that a lot more effort is put into the 'we're all going to die!!!' stories, with less coverage of the 'actually, we have a solution'.

Partly, I suspect, because the solution involves things the military aren't overly keen to divulge, so don't necessarily talk about.

There are numerous technologies being developed to provide defence against drone attack, including a variety of direct-energy weapons (laser and radio frequency), some of which have been discussed in these very pixels (e.g. the UK's RF DEW trials that zapped multiple drones a shot for what was it? £1 a shot?; UK's Dragonfire laser system, etc).

A capability that only seems to have become public last week was the UK's Rapid Sentry system - ground launcher Starstreak/Martlet missiles, integrated into a detection system and a EW/Jamming system, so providing the hard-kill back-up if the soft-kill jamming fails, which apparently has performed very well defending Erbil in Iraq from Iranian drone attack (just a pity that the UK government doesn't seem to have deployed the system to Cyprus). This system appears to have been procured in 2022 - so after the 3 day SMO started - and that procurement date suggests that integrating the soft-kill technology must have been an add on, once drone usage became widespread.

So the statement that NATO countries "urgently needs layered, affordable air defense systems" seems true, but we're not starting from nothing.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

EvilDrSmith,

I'd not seen about RapidSentry. So yay! It sounds similar to some of the stuff we've deployed to Ukraine. Plus we had repurposed Phalanx borrowed from the Navy's spares and sent them to Afghanistan, to defend the bases. It'll shoot down mortars, drones, missiles, whatever.

Just Googled it, and noticed that RapidDestroyer is the new official name for the microwave anti-drone weapon they've been testing. So I wonder if they were designed to go together, and they've chosen to add the already existing Martlet/Starstreak systems from Stormer (and that have been deployed for Shahed-hunting in Ukraine)?

They've got a lot of experience in Ukraine with Martlet and Starstreak. And we seem to be one of the few Western countries with military advisors in Ukraine, so I think we've been testing quite a lot of stuff that may (or may not) have made it to production.

It's an absolute fucking disgrace that a Land Ceptor battery wasn't sent to Cyprus in advance. It's what they're dammed well for! And should have been done for diplomacy's sake, if for nothing else. Rather than looking fucking stupid, by sending a destroyer 2 weeks late!

[Casca]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

In advance of what exactly? The orange muppet didnt inform anyone in advance.

[Korev]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

But it was very obvious that something might happen. The RAF even deployed fighters to Akrotiri, but didn't appear to bother to put any anti-drone defences in...

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

Korev,

I think they had some anti-drone defences. Because I think they shot down at least one drone. But the thing about airbases is that they're huge. The main runway at Akrotiri is 9,000ft - so an anti drone system with a one mile range can't even cover the whole runway, let alone the taxiways, the fuel farm, the fuel tanks, the base housing, aircraft hangars or all the other areas.

On the other hand, airbases are huge, which means that without careful targeting, they're actually very hard to do serious damage to.

To be honest, Cypus is such a strategic base, and Iran has been so reckless with chucking around ballistic missiles in the last two years, that it should have better air defences all the time. But once Trump started a massive Middle East build-up, then this should have been done as a basic precaution.

[Blazde]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

Both RAF & HAF shot down at least 4 other drones with jets, so that was the wide-area drone defence. It's not as if it was a totally open-goal.

Then the one that hit went into the literal side of a huge barn that's designed to protect it's contents from small explodey things, and by all accounts did it's job. For all we know they let it hit rather than waste an expensive interceptor (I don't think that's likely but possible especially since it was supposedly an American hangar) or it was in an area of the base with no particularly fragile things so wasn't covered by better close-range air defences.

In the grand scheme of the Gulf drama right now I think it's been played up a bit too much.

[Alan Brown]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

There are only a few critical points in any airbase

Control tower. Radar systems. communications centre, fuel farm, hangars, parking aprons

Runways & taxiways only need to have enough holes in them to prevent them being used but you don't even need that with self-targetting kit that can fly itself into parked aircraft and redirect dynamically if the original target is already ablaze

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

"The orange muppet didnt inform anyone in advance."

Of course he did. He may not have made any courtesy calls. He certainly didn't try to build an alliance. But the build-up was itself informative.

[Alan Brown]

Re: 'Be scared' sells newspapers

Phalanx has enough ammo to deal with a couple of drones, not an entire swarm

A defence system that runs out of ammo is just as useless as one which can't hit its targets

[Ian Johnston]

American has been beaten in every war it fought since 1945 by hordes of angry men - mainly angry men in sandals. Drones are cheaper than angry men, so it should be no surprise that they are even better at defeating technology focused opponents.

[Like a badger]

Drones are cheaper than angry men

Are you sure? In any well populated but undeveloped or undemocratic country, angry men are usually free, available in ample numbers, require little training, and regarded by their "leaders" as entirely disposable. Think Russia's meat grinder tactics, the Iraq-Iran war, the regional bloodbaths that seem to be endlessly popular in Africa, or even the South American drug cartels' foot soldiers. For these purposes military logistics simply don't exist (steal what you need), the cost of AK pattern rifles is in the $100-200 range, there's no body armour or other kit, and maybe a few grenades or basic explosives.

Whereas an Iranian domestic model of Shahed drone costs about $20-30k. Admittedly the drone has a range of say 1,500 miles, and offers disruptive fire and forget capabilities, but it doesn't seem to have helped Iran much, nor has it caused Ukraine to surrender to Russia. In many ways like the V1 of WW2, more a sort of random terror weapon than an effective military tool?

[SundogUK]

The US didn't get beaten in any of them. They either chose to place restrictions on themselves (not nuking the Chinese forces in Korea) or were betrayed by a domestic press who supported the opposition (The Tet offensive in Vietnam being portrayed as a defeat when it was, in fact, an absolute victory.)

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao, keep on huffing the copium

[EnviableOne]

Well, they certainly didn't win them, or we would have pictures of the victory parades

[Alan Brown]

It didn't do wonderfully in wars begore then either. The Phillippines turned into a 41 year insurgency only interrupted by Japan invading

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the cut of their jib

These Ukranians seems to know what to do about this newfangled drone war thingy. Perhaps we should find out if they would be interested in joining NATO?

[Fried]

Cost

Looks like they cost less than $20,000.

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/cost-of-a-shahed/

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Cost

That's $20k at US defence contractor rates

[I ain't Spartacus]

This report is bizarre

I'm starting to wonder if this report is rubbish, or the person sent out to do the quotes about it hasn't read it?

I'm perfectly fine with the quote that NATO politicians don't seem to have got onboard with the urgency - in that it's clear that things could be going faster - and given the multiple risks piling up in the last years, we should have been moving faster.

But the idea that militaries haven't noticed the threat and taken huge numbers of actions to do things about it is just laughable!

Half of NATO are involved in some sort of air or drone defence consortium with Ukraine. Britain alone are involved in about 10. And while some of them are Ukraine-specific, like bodging air-to-air missiles onto ex-Soviet SAM launchers, others aren't. Such as the Octopus drone factory, that's just opened in the UK, to send anti-drone drones to Ukraine, to shoot down Russian drones. Not to mention all the other anti-drone stuff like Skyranger (German gun turrets), Coyote and Roadrunner (US anti-drone drones), laser weapons, microwave weapons, the EU "drone wall" program, APKWS (air-launched laser-guided rockets), and that's just off the top of my head without hitting Google.

Meanwhile half of NATO have ordered new AWACs/AEW planes, or are about to. And both the US and EU are looking at satellite constellations for tracking cruise and ballistic missiles - I can't imagine they're going to be much use for anything but the largest drones (the ones that are effectively cruise missiles anyway).

So there's a hell of a lot going on.

Final point. You can already see one big difference between Ukraine and the Iran operation - i.e. how NATO would plan to operate. Iran are down to a few long range launches a day now, as opposed to the hundreds a day in Ukraine. Because if you have offensive air power, and the capability to penetrate enemy air defences at scale, you can attack the enemy drone and missile launch (and production) assets - and cut the numbers you have to deal with.

Ukraine have a hell of a lot to teach though, and at least some countries are seriously listening to them.

[LogicGate]

Re: This report is bizarre

It must also be kept in mind that if you today have a stock of 100 000 cheap and efficient combat drones, in five months you will have a stock of 100 000 obsolete combat drones. The rate of development is insane. I suspect that what a military needs is a continuously updated combat drone design, and an industrial base / production line that is also continuously updated and ready to churn out vast numbers of the latest design should events call for it. Keep this line running at low pace to have materials for training and quick reaction. Send the excess to Ukraine for consumption and testing.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: This report is bizarre

LogicGate,

Very much so. This is even more an area where getting your defence-industrial base right is your defence policy. You can't use it, if you don't got it. And it's probably too late to buy it, when you need it.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: This report is bizarre

The way things are going if you today have a stock of 100 000 cheap and efficient combat drones, in five months you will have used them all.

[JimmyPage]

Re: This report is bizarre

Why ?

Esteemed though El Reg is, if it is reporting even 10% of the reality, that's 9% too much.

How come media outlets - which are approaching pisspoor from the wrong side - suddenly become siren voices of truth when writing about the purported woeful inadequacies in UK or NATO defences.

Did no one stop to think maybe this in itself is part of our defences ?

[herman]

Re: This report is bizarre

Yes, there is a lot going on, but anything defense related is 'need to know' and nobody on this forum needs to know.

[hoola]

Cost

The biggest issue is having to use million pound anti aircraft missiles to shoot down a single-use drone that costs around a thousand.

The ships cannot carry enough, ground based can in theory but there simply are not enough available. Anti aircraft defence was never about swarms. Back in WW2 Flak was used to throw up a curtain of shrapnel. The drones are smaller so it becomes more challenging.

Dragonfly is better suited but is not available.

It is just like Afghanistan - take out a million pound helicopter with an RPG that costs next to nothing. No funky infrastructure, just hide behind a rock and KABOOOOM.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Cost

hoola,

The biggest issue is having to use million pound anti aircraft missiles to shoot down a single-use drone that costs around a thousand.

I very much doubt that is happening at all. it's pretty hard to shoot down the cheap quadcopters from a plane, as they're so much slower than you, and not so easy to detect on radar.

However, you might shoot down Shahed drones that way. If you're using your infra red missiles, they're probably a bit cheaper than a million each - but still 5-10 times the cost of a Shahed. But then the US economy is more than 60 times bigger than Iran's.

However many / most of the aerial shoot-downs are now being done with APKWS - which cost about $30k - so i suspect a bit less than Shahed. That's a laser-guidance kit for the dumb rockets that many aircraft use against ground targets - and the US have fitted them to all of their fighters and a some of their helicopters. There are rumours the RAF are trialling it - we haven't used the unguided rocket pods in ages, as they're too dangerous for modern tastes in close air support - but it would turn Apache into a drone hunter and be useful for Typhoon. it fulfils a similar role to Martlet, which the army have and the Navy operate from Wildcat - the helicopter can carry 20 at a time - and we've already deployed them to defend various allies in the Gulf.

There is a trade-off in cost, but it's not as obvious as you might think. The cheapest way to shoot down a drone is with a gun turret at the target. But as you don't know the target in advance (the enemy rudely don't warn you in advance) that would mean deploying a lot of guns. So next best is to pay more and have a longer range system like an area air defence system - which costs more but you don't need as many of. You can prioritise as well, you don't have to use the expensive stuff if the enemy missile is hitting a bit of empty desert. The next idea is mobile defence. To shoot down the cheap stuff, have some planes flying around with cheap APKWS. Combine all the above and you can use the cheapest available ammunition type, while still being able to protect the maximum number of targets. Add in a lot of offensive firepower too, and you can reduce the load of incoming fire by attacking the bases.

[EvilDrSmith]

Re: Cost

The UAE have been claiming success against Iranian drones using the AH-64 Apache, obtaining gun kills.

[LogicGate]

Re: Cost

If I am not mistaken, they also lost an Apache, which will skew the cost-benefit equation.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Cost

Blowing up drones with large warheads with your guns is not a good long-term career for a pilot. Apache can fire rockets and has a laser designator, so not using APKWS is completely bonkers.

Ukraine have lost at least one F-16 trying to gun down Shaheds as well. Plus several of their Mig-29s were lost trying to take out cruise missiles and/or drones.

[lotus123]

>"It is manufacturing tens of thousands of interceptor drones annually, and delivering them to frontline units at rates exceeding 1,500 per day"

1500 per day is more than half a mil per year. how does that correspond to tens of thousands. Unless they get majority of their drones from somewhere else.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ukraine has been using German Gepard since 2023

And apparently they did great, a lot cheaper than missiles.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Ukraine has been using German Gepard since 2023

Gepards rounds are cheaper than missiles. But you would need tens of thousands of them to protect all of Ukraine. Which is suddenly 50,000-100,000 troops. At which point it can actually be cheaper to have more expensive missiles with longer ranges. In an ideal world, you have both - and integrate them into an air defence network.

Which is why everybody is shooting Shaheds down with APKWS on aircraft, directed by that integrated air defence system. Including Ukraine. You then use the expensive missiles if the target is important and can't be covered in other ways - and you try and move your short-ranged air defence gear onto the flightpath of incoming drones to get some of them for free as well. Which is why Russia sends them in large salvos on many different headings to converge on their targets - to maximise saturation on local defences and force the expenditure of missiles.

[herman]

Re: Ukraine has been using German Gepard since 2023

Ground based AA guns have their useful niche, but only have around 10 km range. Put a gun with fragmenting rounds in a helicopter or a slow fixed wing trainer and then you can fly to where it is needed, so that is another way to it.

[Luiz Abdala]

Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

Internet says the HELIOS system in the USS Preble cost $3.50 per shot against Iranian $20.000 drones. Considering it cost 150M to develop the thing, that's chump change and a solid ROI from a war budget point-of-view.

Maybe NATO is not ready, but the US of A is, on their ships.

On the other hand, a vehicle mounted 60kW system, however, is a whole other ball game.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

I think the US have only deployed one naval laser so far, to USS Preble. They also bought some microwave anti-drone weapons for other Burkes. But all their ships have guns already. The main gun has AA rounds, they have Phalanx and/or CRAM - which is Phalanx with additional short range missiles.

The Italian Navy seem to be the most prepared here. In that their ships have all the guns. They like to use the OTO Melara 76mm guns - and they fit them in 2s and 3s - as well as also having 25mm phalanx equivalent. I think their doctrine is that the Mediterranean means always being in confined waters and so lets have lots of ability to chuck lead at incoming small boats or drones. In the same way the WWII Royal Navy had armoured flight decks on its aircraft carriers, and the US and Japan didn't. Because they both valued the larger air-groups and bigger strikes they could launch, whereas the RN always knew they were going to have to fight against land-based air power in the Med, and so would always be outnumbered, and were bound to get bombed.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

Apologies, CRAM, should be SeaRAM. Doh!

Which replaces one of the cool Phalanx guns that look like laser beams with the RIM 116 missiles - which have a much better range.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

Have you ever seen "Pentagon Wars"?

Every single laser demonstration I've seen so far is reminiscent of the events depicted therein.

Drones doen't come in under ideal conditions, they generally don't come alone and they don't hold a steady course when they're in range of defence systems

Having to spend several seconds painting each drone might SEEM effective but these low speed things aren't being torn apart by aerodynamic forces if you simply put a hole in the wing and the sensitive parts are mostly behind several layers of other stuff (the entire drone in the case of the engine)

Sure, you might be able to zap a dozen - but the rest will slip past whils you're doing so.

There's another effect to consider: Gatwick airport was closed down for several days by A drone - singular - that might not have even existed. Nothing was ever found and the only people arrested picked up a substantial settlement from police sometime afterwards

[herman]

Re: Didn't the US deploy lasers aboard against drones in their ships?

Lasers have limited range. The beam is absorbed and scattered in the air.

[Doctor Syntax]

"The takeaway from Iran's tactics is that adversaries are likely to combine precision weapons with cheap, mass-produced drones to overwhelm air defense (sic) systems so that the precision weapons can get through"

Aren't there people whose job it is to work out stuff like this in advance instead of waiting to discover it from experience?

[I ain't Spartacus]

Aren't there people whose job it is to work out stuff like this in advance instead of waiting to discover it from experience?

Yes. And they already did. Years ago. In fact decades, if you look at the gun layout on any modern NATO ship - even more so if you look at the Italians or the Royal Navy's Type 31.

This report is basically Captain Obvious pretends not to have noticed what NATO have been talking about for fucking years.

Implementation isn't as good as the rhetoric. But there's an awful lot of air defence, or all types, been ordered since 2022.

[LogicGate]

Do not forget that the people and workgroups who were tasked with figuring out effects and consequences have all been fired by the current administration, starting as early as during DOGE and latest 2 days before the first strikes.

[SundogUK]

This is, quite simply, a lie.

[LogicGate]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/doge-cuts-purged-entire-team-154745400.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/03/politics/patel-fbi-national-security-division-firings-iran

I can inderstand that this may not come up in GBnews

[Casca]

SundogUK is a right wing muppet so he doesnt read left wing media its that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It's astonishing, and disturbing, that it has taken them four years to get the hint.

[IGotOut]

I'm not sure about this report...

You only gave to watch Wes O'Donnels, along with the likes of Cappy Army and Task and Purpose to realise this is already a well established fact and it is already being acted upon. Poland, Finland, France, Germany and the UK are already working with the Ukrainian's on counter drone measures and some US start ups are already live testing AI anti-drone drones in the battlefield, co developed by the Ukrainian forces.

We also have to get partly away from the "No point firing a million dollar missile at a $20,000 drone" If that Patriot missile is protecting a bunch of fighters, its money well spent.

[EnviableOne]

just wondering

Would it be possible to fit a large barge or barges with like 4-5 Phalanx systems and float them down the Hormuz as a cheap drone defence?

Or something of that ilk, they make mincemeat of Shaheds, and while the system cost,s the ammo is cheap and the movement on them is rapid, giving an ability to take down multiple drones in rapid succession

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: just wondering

Would it be possible to fit a large barge or barges with like 4-5 Phalanx systems and float them down the Hormuz as a cheap drone defence?

Yes. The only problem with Phalanx is that it needs regular reloading - it gets through a lot of ammo - and relatively regular maintenance. It's also going to need power, so you're going to need an engine/generator / at which point you may as well take an old ship with a relatively flat deck and stick your Phalanx systems on top. You can also get containerised surface to air missile systems (and guns) which have been deployed in Ukraine. They don't have their own radars, but you could run them from your anti-air warfare ships; radars - this is basically the robot arsenal ship concept that various navies are playing with at the moment.

If you had more time, you could fit a few deck-penetrating turrets for say 57mm guns. These can be set up with their own radars, like Phalanx. But the advantage is that being deck-penetrating you have a magazine in the internals of the ship, a little armour for this would be nice, and that has automated shell-handling gear, so the gun can run until the ship is out of ammo. As opposed to the easy-to-install Phalanx where it has to be reloaded by the crew, because it's not deck-penetrating - or connected to the ships' magazines.

I believe the UK have sent containerised guns to Ukraine, where the ammo is all stored in the container - so you could just get a few flat barges and tow them through with your convoys, then bring them into port and do maintenance and reloading.

But no navy currently operates a drone arsenal ship. And I suspect they'll require crewing if they want to fire weapons regularly - as that sort of stuff needs maintenance and reloading. So I suspect the true answer is "yes but..." Type 31 was literally designed for this job (drone swarms) - with 5 anti-air guns plus missiles - but it ain't finished yet.

Trump should beg Italy for help. They've been building escorts for years for this threat, because of the confined waters of the Mediterranean.

[herman]

Re: just wondering

Landing craft - flat bed ships - are sometimes used as unmanned aircraft carriers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon Drone delivery

For Mr Putin…