The United States has said it does not support attacks inside Russia after alleged drone launches in Moscow. In the war unleashed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, drones are cheaper than missiles.
“In general, we do not support attacks inside Russia. We have focused on providing Ukraine with the equipment and training it needs to reclaim its own sovereign territory,” a State Department spokesman said as Secretary Antony Blinken visited Sweden. Moscow accused the Ukrainian authorities of having launched a drone strike in Moscow. kyiv denies it.
Drones have shaped the war in Ukraine like never before, evolving from small quadcopters with cameras and grenades to integrating bombs and warheads with targets in kyiv and Moscow.
In recent months, Russian troops have launched Iranian-made Shahed explosive drones at several Ukrainian cities. kyiv has also used them to attack key points in the Crimean peninsula and the Russian border region of Belgorod.
Russian invasion of Ukraine: the first drone war
The use and characteristics in this 21st century warfare have evolved over time. The Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone was one of the “symbols of the first moments of the conflict” for the Ukrainian resistance, summarizes the French researcher Léo Péria-Peigné, from the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
The devices played a key role in stopping the arrival of Russian tanks from Belarus or in the sinking of the ‘Moskva’, the flagship of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.
But the models –known as MALE [altitud media y largo alcance] they have lost relevance as the conflict has dragged on. “The front stabilized and became impenetrable as the Russians deployed their” anti-aircraft systems, a European defense industry source explained on condition of anonymity.
This drone model became vulnerable, so it “doesn’t fly as much anymore,” he added.
Drones, cheaper than missiles
Drone warfare, much cheaper than missiles, is now a matter of numbers. Most of the explosive drones are shot down by air defense systems and force “defenders to fire their missiles to exhaust them,” a French military source noted.
“It also generates terror and uncertainty all the time. In the long run, it has some value,” he added. Ukrainian forces use “long-range explosive drones, sometimes Chinese models with Chinese propellers or old Soviet-era reconnaissance drones: Tu-141s. These have explosive charges and can hit targets deep inside Russian territory,” the industrial source explained.
Russian industry, for its part, can only provide “about 40 long-range missiles a month.” For this reason, Moscow launches a large number of drones “to increase the number of threat axes, using Shahed-136 drones as scouts to identify gaps in the Ukrainian defense,” analyzed Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, from the British think tank RUSI .
Most of the drones – small in size – are used close to the front to carry out reconnaissance, target identification or attack tasks. Ukrainian troops have posted numerous videos on social media showing modified commercial drones dropping bombs on Russian positions.
“It is common to have between 25 and 50 drones from both sides operating in the disputed area between the two front lines for stretches of 10 kilometers,” according to RUSI experts. The Ukrainian Furia and Russian Eleron-3 tactical drones have a range of about 50 km. On the other hand, small quadcopters have a radius of less than 10 kilometers.