Perhaps the oldest, and longest-running, reminder of a contemporary air-defense issue is that a Dutch F-35A has added a drone silhouette kill marking to its airplane after shooting a drone target in the airspace of the NATO airspace.
When an air surveillance demonstrated at night, a wave of small planes flew into the airspace controlled by the alliance, and NATO launched its quick-reaction protocol. F-16s, Dutch F-35As were used to launch to investigate and intercept whilst other allied resources were used to support the air picture, and defense posture. The event that engineers and planners were not likely to forget was not that a scramble had occurred, but the competition itself an advanced stealth fighter designed to fight in the high end of the air fighting arena was tasked with pursuing low-cost expendable targets.
The F-35A Lightning II aircraft that lies in the middle of the narrative incorporates sensor fusion and a contemporary weapons package suitable to be employed in contested settings. It has the ability to use GAU-22/A 25 mm and air to air weapons like AIM-9X and AIM-120. The measure of “success,” in this instance, being the destruction of one drone, falls queasily on the side of the economics. The drones were commonly referred to as a type of decoy, such as Gerbera variants, which were supposed to be cheap, unarmed, and one-way. The associated cost of fighter sorties and high-end interceptors would place the defenders in the cost curve in the wrong direction, particularly because the unit costs at the lower end of the drone spectrum are roughly about $10,000 and air-to-air intercepts may cost much more per shot and per hour.
That disproportion was not coincidental. Part of the pressure is related to how Russia has professionalized unmanned actions, such as expert groups related to the Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems. Reporting has explained that Rubicon is a hybrid organization, which develops tactics, trains operators and combines electronic warfare and signal reconnaissance-capabilities that allow drones to act as something more than flying explosives. The main indicative feature is a systematic targeting and adjustment, which a trend is reflected in characterizations of Rubicon as “Russia’s best technological unit” by Ukrainian drone-support leader Maria Berlinska.
The drones regulate the costly decisions even when they are not armed with any warhead. Decoys entice defenders to light up sensors, expose strategies and burn limited interceptors. The tactical impact is additive: a cheap raid will be able to consume more disproportionate preparedness and maintenance, as well as collect operational information on detection encompasses, response times, and rules of engagement.
The reaction of NATO has been biased towards strengthening its posture and fast-tracking counter-drone experimentation. Allied Command Operations in the announcement of the exercise called Eastern Sentry focused on the speedy deployment of counter-drone equipment, such as “counter-drone sensors and weapons to detect, track and kill drones”. The significance of language is that it puts the requirement in the context of an architecture problem, in other words, detection, identification and defeat instead of just a “silver bullet” interceptor.
The design space is still dominated by economics. Counter-UAS analyses have identified the excessive mismatch that occurs when high-end surface-to-air interceptors are deployed against low-end drones- e.g. a Patriot intercept of a Shahed where the missile may cost 1-2 million dollars. The engineering implication is obvious: layered defenses must have low-cost-per-shot alternatives – guns with special ammunition, electronic attack where lawful and safe, and directed-energy weapons where the power and weather could be compensated.
The kill marking of the Dutch F-35 resembles victory count, but it is also an accounting line item. The long-term point is not that f Fifth generation fighters are unable to intercept drones; the reason to be able to do so sustainably is to have defenses that can win the math as reliably as they can win the intercept.
