Ukraine did not use the missiles that Western countries provided them in these attacks, they used a new type of weapon to bring the war back to Russian territory: Unmanned One-Way Attack Aircraft (OWA).
Ukraine’s use of strike forces to destroy Russian bases and aircraft is a crucial step in the conflict. And the UK could help them produce this terrifying weapon for a new mission.
With support from Western countries through the provision of high-quality components, Ukraine may soon be able to conduct a drone campaign that surpasses Russia in both scale and intensity.
Drone attacks have become part of Russia’s special operations campaign in Ukraine. Since the beginning of 2022, Russia has purchased and launched more than 1,200 Shahed drones from Iran against everything from power substations in Kyiv to grain warehouses in Odesa, Reni and Izmail. Russia has expanded the scope of this campaign, bringing production lines from Iran to its own factories.
Ukraine has already conducted some drone strikes, but has not yet been able to scale up production to the level that Russia has purchased. Ukraine will soon be able to increase the number as it produces its own.
OWA aircraft are a balance of lethality and sustained use. These aircraft, with wingspans of 2m or more, can carry 20 to 50kg of explosives over hundreds of miles. 50kg of explosives may be a smaller payload than conventional missiles, but they are still very effective against soft targets such as warehouses, radars and oil facilities.
Advanced technology has dramatically reduced the cost of precision weapons like the OWA. Commercial drone production in the West is becoming increasingly common, even in countries like Russia and Iran that are subject to sanctions. In addition, commercial satellite services provide precise coordinates of potential military and industrial targets.
While the OWAs are not perfect—they cannot change targets in flight and are often unprotected from air defense and electronic countermeasures—the 1,200 Shaheds that Russia operates cost a total of just $60 million, a far cry from the amount of money Russia has invested in advanced missiles. But the Russian aircraft have been a source of crisis for Ukraine for months, threatening the country’s electricity supply. And now they are posing a threat to Ukraine’s grain exports.
But these OWAs could soon become a much bigger headache for Russia. With their long range, large reserves, and intelligent targeting, Ukraine could force Russian defense forces to defend every airfield, storage facility, refinery, and other expensive infrastructure. Attacking refineries would be a significant risk for Ukraine, since Russia depends on oil revenues and Russian leaders would direct air defense assets to protect them if they were under constant threat.
But for these strikes to have any practical or symbolic significance, they would need to be carried out regularly and with enough intensity to challenge Russian air defenses and cause damage to the Russian campaign. To strike Russian industrial and military targets on a scale comparable to the Shaheds would require Ukraine to deploy hundreds rather than dozens of aircraft over the next year. The aircraft that Britain has promised to provide could help achieve this, but there is no sign of them arriving soon.
So Ukraine’s partners—including the UK—need to supply OWA components to Ukrainian manufacturers. Buying commercial components would be inefficient for the scale Ukraine needs to achieve with OWA production, and a fundraising campaign would compete with funding for other drones. Unlike Ukraine’s other tactical drones, scaling up OWA production requires standardized components, a stable supply chain, and centralized production to take advantage of economies of scale. The navigation components alone can cost more than a Shahed-136 if purchased individually, so the US, UK, and other countries need to work with their manufacturers to reduce costs and buy in bulk.
The decision to support Ukraine’s drone industry is fully consistent with the Ukrainian government’s policy of promoting domestic arms production. With Ukrainian industry already in the OWA production pipeline, Ukraine has the foundation to scale up and create an opportunity to make Ukraine’s war effort more self-sustaining. Supplying parts to the Kyiv government would also be a cheaper and less controversial option than providing long-range missile systems and would not compromise the military readiness of the donor country.
Western assistance to Ukraine in the production of drones would help Ukraine in its current standoff with Russia and help NATO in the future. Iran’s policy of spreading drones to Russia and other partner countries has shown that cheap drones can impose a huge cost on even the most rudimentary air defenses. NATO’s smallest members would quickly seize the opportunity to strike targets hundreds of miles away and reduce the risk that they will one day find themselves in the same situation as Ukraine.
Ukraine needs all the support it can get right now. The decision to support them in this new phase of the drone war is a low-cost decision for the UK to make, but one that could have huge benefits.
Nguyen Quang Minh (according to Telegraph)
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