Air superiority is not the solution to a cost-exchange situation in which there are expendable targets in the sky. The new challenge of drone-swarm is not whether NATO will be able to intercept the drones but rather whether it will be able to continue doing so without depleting all its most finite resources: high-tech interceptors, flight hours, and sensor bandwidth.
The arithmetic has been difficult to neglect by recent combat data. Through analysis based on the reporting of the Ukrainian air force, it was found that in less than two years and half, over 14,700 one-way strike drones were launched, many estimated to be Shahed derivatives with approximately 40 kilograms of payload and with a range of up to 2,000 km. Even with high interception rates, the logic of the attacker is valid when sufficient numbers of cheap airframes can be launched into the air frequently enough that it can reduce defenders to expensive decisions. That strain is increased when salvos carry decoys which jam the radar display, rob operator eyes, and missiles which have been purchased to beat more competent attacks are diverted.
The decoy layer is not a side note, but it is the focus of why stealth jets and the highest quality missiles fail to “outfly” the problem.
Deception has been regarded as a force multiplier both by Ukraine and Russia. An analogue in history exists in the ADM-20 Quail of the U.S. Air Force, which was designed to appear as a bomber to radar. The modern version can be manufactured much quicker and be deployed in much greater quantities and they do not have to be advanced to prove disruptive in their operation. One of the descriptions tells how Russia used look-alikes which were unarmed like Gerbera or other simpler designs with reflector, but also cautions that an “armed decoy” cannot be assumed harmless. A Russian military blog also noted that same reporting that The enemy is not slowing down in developing its own unmanned technologies and is learning from our Gerbera decoys These devices are appearing more and more frequently.
The most advanced platforms of a defender are a heavy hammer as soon as decoys are laid in the mix. Pilots can engage drones, however, at the cost of using limited sorties, diverting planes to other missions, and the costly sensors are matched with the expendable targets. The same mismatch is confronted with the stocks of missiles. The Csis analysis reports that a Patriot PAC-3 interceptor costs more than 3 millions of dollars and that a NASAMS interceptor costs is slightly higher than that which is a little more than 1 million dollars and is a sustainable cost when it is used to shoot down high-end cruise missiles but a punishing cost when faced with large numbers of low end drones and decoy missiles.
To NATO, the perennial engineering problem lies in the middle layer: detection, identification and scale track control. Small drones are abundant, they are low-flying and can be difficult to distinguish between birds, litter and intentional deceit. An example in the maritime arena of NATO Bold Machina exercise defines the direction of the fight passive sensing and fast fusion. An experimental prototype that was fast-tracked to test on a Dutch FRISC was based on AI to combine multiple sensors on a single operator display, causing bearings, ranges and identities to be integrated and to be designed to run passively to ensure that a small craft did not present itself. It was an integrated system that was an acoustic, RF direction finding, broad-spectrum RF, EO/IR and low-probability-of-intercept radar and pushed a coherent picture to the crew.
The focus of that is in line with a broader argument that is increasingly taking hold within the U.S. doctrine community: network architecture is what it takes to achieve counter-drone success, rather than individual pieces of equipment. An analysis by “deliberately architected networks and sensor fusion” generate one track, one threat, one decision, and cautions that isolated sensors and custom tools provide point defense only. Transport bandwidth, common clocks and universal track IDs are the bottleneck not the hypothetical range of any single sensor.
Mechanisms of defeat must also be equivalent to mass economics. Directed energy has also been placed as one means of altering the exchange ratio since it substitutes magazine depth with power production and heat control. Laser sources with high energies are capable of precision, and are more likely to engage single targets at a time; microwave sources with a lot of power are more open to the field, and are more structurally compatible with swarms. One proponent of directed-energy technology has cited an experiment where a microwave system interacted with a swarm of 49 small drones, and then became inoperable simultaneously in a two-second burst.
The strategic point to NATO is mechanical, not rhetoric, the ability of the alliance to survive cheap swarms is in its low-cost sensing, fusing, and scale engagement and so on linking it all via resilient networks. Stealth jets are still priceless, however, they cannot be called a cost-control tool. The architecture, automation and low cost depth solve the swarm problem.
