- Russia continues to arm its one-way attack drones with air-to-air missiles for self-defense
- The missiles pose a threat to Ukrainian aircraft defending against the drone barrages
- Faster Ukrainian aircraft are probably safe, but slower ones may be vulnerable
Russia's air-to-air Shaheds haven't shot down a Ukrainian jet or helicopter yet. As far as we know.
But Russia keeps building them. Three documented cases in five months suggests the experiment isn't ending—which leaves Ukrainian aircrews with a question about which of their aircraft are actually at risk.
Ukraine's fastest drone interceptors probably aren't in much danger. But its slower ones may be vulnerable.
In December, the Russians armed at least one Shahed with an R-60 infrared-guided dogfighting missile. Continuing the experiment in January, they armed another Shahed with the missile from a Verba infrared-guided man-portable air-defense system. A surface-to-air missile adapted for air-to-air use.
Four months later on or just before Tuesday, an interceptor drone operated by the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spotted another R-60-armed Shahed—and apparently knocked it out of the sky.
There's no evidence either the R-60 Shahed or Verba Shahed has shot at a Ukrainian aircraft—to say nothing of shooting down a Ukrainian aircraft. The missiles probably aren’t the main problem, however. The main problem, most likely, is the command-and-control network that supports the Shahed barrages.
Consider the Verba, a 25-pound, shoulder-fired missile that reaches around 5 km out and 5 km up. It needs to be aimed fairly tightly at its target in order to stand any chance of locking on. The missile’s field of view is just 25 degrees.
Most Shaheds navigate via satellite, but a close inspection of the wreckage from at least one armed model the Ukrainians shot down revealed it had a mesh radio that connected it, via other interconnected radios, to its remote operator hundreds of kilometers away—an operator who saw what the drone saw via the drone’s forward-looking camera.
An operator would have to command a Shahed to unmask its missile’s infrared seeker. After that, the operator would need to aim the drone—and thus its missile, too—at an aerial target. A Ukrainian fighter, helicopter or fixed-wing gunship.
That would be difficult even with a zero-lag radio link for video transmission. When the US Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency armed General Atomics MQ-1 drones with Stinger infrared-guided air-to-air missiles back in 2002, officials assumed the missile wouldn’t actually work—but might “spook” enemy pilots, according to historian Richard Whittle.
The one time an MQ-1 engaged an enemy fighter—an Iraqi air force Mikoyan MiG-25 in 2002—the MQ-1 lost.
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Fatal lag
Lag is the issue. A Lockheed Martin F-16 or Mikoyan MiG-29 cruises twice as fast as a Shahed does, and fires its own AIM-9 or R-73 missiles twice as far as a Shahed can fire its Verba. With real-time comms, a Shahed would still be at a disadvantage while trying to lock onto an F-16 or MiG-29.
But Shaheds are not capable of real-time comms. Ukrainian sources found that Shaheds with direct links to human operators—so far the only Shaheds that can realistically be armed for self-defense—suffer noticeable delay in their video transmission.
With the inevitable seconds-long lag from a Russian mesh radio network, a Verba lock-on isn’t impossible—but it is probably very hard to get, even for a highly skilled operator.
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The lag may protect the Ukrainian air force's fastest drone-hunters—its F-16s, MiG-29s and Dassault Mirage 2000s—from Shaheds armed with R-60s and Verbas. But it may not protect the slowest drone-hunters, including helicopters as well as the Antonov An-28 transport plane gunship that has become an icon of Ukrainian air defense.
The propeller-driven An-28, which is armed with a side-firing minigun and an underwing rack for interceptor drones, has shot down scores of Shaheds. But where an F-16 cruises faster than 900 km/hr, an An-28 cruises slower than 200 km/hr. And the Antonov lacks maneuverability.
Controller lag matters less when the target is slow. There are still air-to-air Shaheds out there among the thousands of one-way attack drones that pummel Ukrainian cities every month. Ukrainian aircrews should watch out.
Especially the ones in slower aircraft.
