Ukrainian MoD highlights ‘drone-on-drone’ engagements over the battlefront

As the battlefront in Ukraine continues to catalyse the evolution of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has highlighted recent instances of its explosively armed first-person view (FPV) drones managing to bring down Russian reconnaissance UAVs.

Posting on its official X/Twitter page on 2 June 2024, the Ukrainian MoD uploaded video footage of an FPV drone closing with and destroying a Russian Orlan UAV.

A 1 June report on the website of the publically organised Ukrainian Military Center (Militarnyi/mil.in.ua) noted that the Orlan interception, which occurred in May 2024, was conducted by operators from the Special Group ‘Alpha’.

The Militarnyi reporting additionally noted two FPV engagements in May that brought down Russian ZALA 421-16E reconnaissance UAVs, while a previous Militarnyi report detailed the downing by FPV drone of a Russian ‘strike drone’ in February 2024. The latter engagement, Militarnyi reported, was conducted by “the soldiers of the ‘Ajax’ unmanned strike systems unit of the 126th Territorial Defense Brigade”.

UAVs in combat have therefore now matched the evolution of the first warplanes in the First World War, where they were initially used for reconnaissance, then for bombing and ultimately found themselves engaging each other in the skies over the battlefront.

The first ever ‘drone-on-drone’ air-to-air kill is believed to have taken place over eastern Ukraine in October 2022, when a small Russian-controlled quadcopter approached a Ukrainian quadcopter, may have deliberately collided with it and, in doing so, lost at least one rotor blade and crashed as a result. This incident also mimicked some of the early duels between manned aircraft over the trenches of the First World War before aircraft were properly armed.

Although Ukrainian FPV drones have now scored a few air-to-air kills, by their very nature as ‘aerial bombs’ they do not, of course, survive the engagement.

Moreover, FPV drones are relatively small and have a limited endurance, meaning they effectively have to be in the right place at the right time to intercept Russian UAVs like the Orlan-10, which can fly as high as 5,000 m. The Ukrainians will thus need to develop a more comprehensive air defence network if they are to increasingly conduct ‘drone-on-drone’ interceptions in an effective manner.

On 6 February 2024 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the creation of the Unmanned Systems Forces, independent of the traditional Ukrainian military structure, to further the capabilities of Ukraine’s unmanned air, sea and land systems against Russian forces.