Defenders’ Dilemma: Countering the One-Way Attack Drone Challenge_

The Air Defence Challenge

The principal defence problem presented by OWA drones like the Shaheds is how to face salvos of affordable mass. Large numbers of these drones can be quickly built and used in quantity to overwhelm most nations’ air defences. OWA drones undermine assumptions baked into legacy air defence complexes: that targets will be few and that attackers will prioritise survivability.

With access to large numbers of relatively precise OWA drones, attackers can perform cheap strikes against an opponent’s homeland with enough regularity and across a wide enough area to exploit gaps, friction, and mistakes by the defender. Most consequentially, OWA drones can threaten civilian and economic targets hundreds of kilometres from the frontline at relatively low cost. The Shahed-136, for example, has a claimed maximum range of 2,500 km. Its accuracy is mediocre and, since it has a warhead of only 20 kg, it is most effective when used in large numbers to attack an area. This favours long-range strikes against cities, transport networks and lightly built civilian and military infrastructure.

The effectiveness of air defences is reduced in the face of frequent attacks that ignore the risk of interception and can exploit instances where air defence fails, frustrating defenders even when failures are few. When deployed alongside cruise and ballistic missiles, conventional air defence systems can be overwhelmed by drones, allowing the more destructive munitions to reach their targets.

Crafting Countermeasures

The effectiveness of air defences is reduced in the face of frequent attacks that ignore the risk of interception and can exploit instances where air defence fails, frustrating defenders even when failures are few. When deployed alongside cruise and ballistic missiles, conventional air defence systems can be overwhelmed by drones, allowing the more destructive munitions to reach their targets.

It can be done. Ukraine has built a comprehensive air defence system that reportedly defeated 86 percent of the thousands of Shahed-type Russian drones fired in 2025. It has developed a complex system of sensors in the air and on the ground, including radars and acoustic devices able to cue drone interceptors, fighters, surface-to-air missile systems, and automated guns. Furthermore, Ukrainians have become skilled in electromagnetic countermeasures, decoys, deception, dispersion, and hardening potential targets.

Defence schemes designed to effectively deal with the emerging OWA drone challenge would ideally consider the following recommendations:

• Maintain a network of radar sensors configured to detect significant numbers of low- and slow-flying drones with reduced radar cross-sections.

• Procure a mix of soft-kill and hard-kill effectors—ranging from radio frequency jamming, gun systems with proximity fused rounds, drone interceptors and laser-guided rockets—to allow flexibility in response under different defensive postures. Counter-drone effectors should be inexpensive to ensure a reasonable cost exchange. These can even be packaged into vehicle-mounted counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS).

• Integrate and field low-cost interceptor drones. These devices—such as the Ukrainian-made Sting and Shvidun—are proving highly effective against Shahed-type drones making them a leading, cost-effective air defence tool.

• For projecting counter-drone capabilities farther forward, employ fighter aircraft equipped with Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) laser-guided rockets, and helicopter gunships with proximity fused rounds.

• Enhance the resilience of airbase infrastructure, including hardened aircraft shelters with all-round protection for the aircraft they house. Widespread dispersal of aircraft across numerous airfields could also help outpace an adversary’s targeting cycle.

• Sustain wider and deeper stockpiles of munitions to counter drones (as well as missiles). The Ukraine war and the conflict in the Middle East have shown that defenders will burn through their missile and interceptor stocks faster than anticipated.

New tools and techniques for defeating OWA drones are emerging. The interceptor drones are a major step forward, though they need skilled operators and favourable weather conditions. As electronic countermeasures continue to transform, their effectiveness will ebb and flow, and opponents will evolve their shielding against electromagnetic interference. Such non-kinetic electronic defeat options vary depending on how the drone is controlled. If the drone is actively piloted, the link between the ground control station and the aircraft can be targeted. If the drone is GPS-guided, the link between the GPS and the satellite needs to severed.  

TILTING THE BALANCE

Looking ahead, directed-energy weapons are steadily emerging on the battlefield to complement traditional kinetic defeat options. Their potentially limitless magazines make them ideal candidates for dealing with this OWA drone challenge. They are, however, still in the early stages of development and fielding and their dispersion across the battlefield will depend on advancements in mobile power generation.

OWA drones tilted the offence-defence balance in favour of the attacker. Emerging technology and revised techniques may see the pendulum swing the other way in the years ahead.

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