Russia Remains Dominant In Drone Warfare, And Kiev Is Yet To Face The Worst (Videos)

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Russia maintained dominance in drone warfare over the night of September 18 and 19, launching over 80 drones at targets in Ukraine, which responded with a single failed attack. The worst is yet to come to Kiev, however, as recent reports indicate that Moscow is working to further expand its drone program.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the country’s air defenses shot down 71 out of 86 drones of various types launched by Russia overnight.

He, however, admitted that Kiev and other regions, including Donetsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, and Dnipropetrovsk, were targeted.

Among the targets struck was the Pavlograd chemical plant, which produces explosives for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and a warehouse used to store ammunition in Dnipropetrovsk. Meanwhile in Sumy, an infrastructure facility linked to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex was also hit. Other infrastructure facilities involved in military production were targeted in Kiev, in addition to command centers.

Despite the scale of the attack and Zelenskyy’s claims about intercepting most of the Russian drones, Ukrainian air defenses were not that active overnight.

The only footage that came out in the early morning shows an American-made F-16 fighter jet of the Ukrainian Air Force intercepting what was said to be a Geran-type fixed-wing suicide drone using an AIM-9 heat-seeking, short-range air-to-air missile somewhere deep in Ukraine.

Such tactics have very limited effectiveness, and arguably, they bring more risks to Ukraine than benefits. The country’s air force has already lost many fighter jets on drone interception missions. The jets were shot down in aerial ambushes. In fact, one of the main goals of Russia’s drone strategy is to provoke a Ukrainian response in order to locate air defenses and lure out fighter jets and hunt them down.

In addition to group strikes, Russia continue to employ suicide drones on the tactical level. Between September 18 and 19, videos showing two such attacks with Geran drones were released.

The first attack targeted a deployment point of Ukraine’s 156th Separate Mechanized Brigade near the settlement of Zelenaya Dubrava in Sumy. Secondary blasts can be clearly seen in the footage. The second attack, also in Sumy, targeted a drone warehouse and command center of Kiev forces close to the settlement of Konotop.

In its weekly briefing, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that strikes carried out between September 13 and 19 using “ high-precision weapons and attack drones” hit Ukraine’s power, fuel and transport infrastructure, which were used in the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as arsenals, a training center for operators of unmanned aerial vehicles, assembly, storage, and launch sites for long-range unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as temporary deployment areas of Ukrainian armed formations, nationalists, and foreign mercenaries.”

Ukraine’s only drone attack over the night of September 18 and 19 targeted the Crimean Peninsula and was a complete failure. The Russian MoD said that all three fixed-wing suicide drones employed in the attack were successful shot down by air defenses before they could reach their targets.

This shows that while Kiev is still capable of carrying out larger drone attacks, it can’t do that on a daily, or even weekly basis like Moscow.

Russia is even expected to further solidify its dominance in drone warfare in the few coming months, according to recent reports.

Christian Freuding, the head of the situation center for Ukraine at Germany’s Ministry of Defense, warned in July that Russia too could begin to launch attacks with as much as 2,000 drones by November. This assessment was backed by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

In a report published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on September 18, Drone warfare expert Oleksandra Molloy, a senior lecturer in aviation at UNSW Sydney, noted that Russia is not only increasing drone production, but also upgrading them.

“I’m sure that the Russian manufacturers are working day and night to make it happen,” Molloy told the ABC.

“Another challenging part is that these drones are continuously improving,” she added, noting that “some new warhead types have increased from 50 kilograms to 90 kilograms.”

Ukrainian attempts to keep up with Russia do not seem to be working out well. In a statement posted to X following overnight drone strikes on Ukraine, Zelenskyy proposed large-scale agreements on drones and arms procurement to the United States.

Such calls for help from Kiev have become a near-daily habit. Western initiatives to back drone production in the country are being announced every single month. Still, progress remains extremely limited with institutionalized corruption in Kiev as the likely cause of this failure. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s backers seem satisfied with just keeping the conflict going.

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