What occurs when a plane designed to fight in the most advanced air warfare is dragged into pursuing trashy, low-significance drones, which are not meant to be recovered? An F-35A of the Dutch Air Force placed a small drone “shoot-down” insignia on its aircraft following an intercept during NATO air-policing in Poland, which reads as a morale patch but acts like a balance-sheet note. What the fifth-generation fighter has taught the engineering community is not that it is not performing, but rather that the mission reveals an old conflict between high-end defensive resources and low-end targets, which are meant to be cheap, expendable, and disruptive.
The benefit of the F-35A in the given task is simple. This is due to its fused sensors, contemporary electronic-warfare package and a weapons package that includes the GAU-22/A 25mm internally mounted gun as well as air to air missiles to identify, follow and fire upon small targets in congested airspace even at night. The result of that technical advantage is awkward when the song is one of a decoy. Fighter sorties hurt maintenance capacity, crew hours, tanker plans, runway schedules, and limited airframe life. When the target is deliberately low-cost, the other costs go into the attack design, even in the situation when the drone does not have the payload at all.
Examples of incursions into Poland have been identified as Gerbera-type decoy drones, a simplified, expendable type of the larger one-way-drone ecosystem. Decoys manipulate the defender decision-making process by compelling intercepts, compelling sensor activations and compelling command-and-control attention in addition to providing the attacker with a means of exploring detection ranges, response timelines and engagement rules. A net loss can also possibly be a tactical success, such as a shoot-down that pulls limited resources into low-value, low-repeat conflicts.
Such a dynamic is currently pushing NATO to architecture, as opposed to single-weapon solutions. The focus of the alliance under Eastern Sentry has been on the development of counter-drone sensors and defeat mechanisms which can “detect, track and kill drones,” language that refers to a full chain: early detection, reliable identification, shared air picture, and cost-sustainable engagement layer. The construct of operation is important since decoys do not concentrate on the final interceptor only but on the whole system.
The point of the penalty cost-curve can be most clearly seen at the low range of the threat. A drone that retails at “thousands” of dollars can still elicit responses of fighters, high-priced missiles, and layered alert posture. It is the reason why low-cost-per-shot solutions, such as guns using special ammunition, electronic attack when legal and harmless, and directed-energy solutions where power generation, beam control, and weather constraints can be controlled, have become the focus of counter-UAS engineering. It is not designed to substitute high-end interceptors, but they should be used to target something that warrants the expense.
European planners have also shifted to industrialized “cheap defense” programs as opposed to a single-time acquisition. A five-country project has been coordinated around Low-Cost Effectors and Autonomous Platforms (LEAP), a conceptualized around designing defenses that have unit economics consistent with the threats they are intended to prevent. The direction already mentioned by the program, namely low-cost effectors, autonomy, and common development is indicative of a larger lesson: sustainable air defense is as much about production capability and repeatability in integration as it is about exquisite performance.
A great reality is condensed in the small marking of the Dutch F-35. An alliance today can achieve win over intercepts and the defeat and lose the math unless detection, networking and defeat layers are designed so as to remain on the right side of the cost curve.
