The Peculiar Case Of Aerial Anti-Drone Spar Torpedoes In The Russia-Ukraine War
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The first “torpedoes” used in the 1800s were not self-propelled but explosive charges mounted on a pole that was rammed toward an enemy ship in the manner of a fire lance, one of the earliest gunpowder weapons, and similar. Over the summer of 2024, a Russian drone operator(s) or technician(s) decided to install a trident-type device on an unarmed multirotor drone in order to thrust the trident into the propeller of a Ukrainian drone and, in so doing, disable it and cause its crashing into the Earth’s surface.
In time, an enterprising Russian drone operator(s) and/or technician decided to go one step further by installing a small explosive charge on the trident and, in so doing, developed what amounts to an aerial anti-drone spar torpedo. Upon impact, the aerial spar torpedo detonates. The blast takes out part of the targeted Ukrainian drone and, in so doing, not only causes its crash into the Earth’s surface but also plausibly allows the Russian remote human pilot/operator to recover the multirotor drone used in the interception, rearm it, and use it in future interception attempts.
Measure-countermeasure competitions take on many forms. The low altitude and slow speed uncrewed aerial war that is transpiring over the battlefields of the Russia-Ukraine War is, like the low altitude and slow speed crewed aerial war that transpired over the battlefields of the First World War, likely to have far-reaching and long-lasting effects. Russia and Ukraine are, in real time, rapidly experimenting with many approaches to low altitude air defence against small, slow, inexpensive, and, as such, plentiful aerial targets that regularly fly at depths of up to 50-100 kilometers from the frontlines. While some approaches are not worth pursuing, others may not be viable in the specific context of the Russia-Ukraine War due to sui generis local circumstances and or the state of extant (low cost commercial of the shelf) technology, but may otherwise be promising for future applications elsewhere. Scenes like those in the above videos may become commonplace elsewhere in the world in the near future, and militaries and internal security organizations worldwide will do well to not only keep tabs on which approaches are and are not working for Russia and Ukraine but also diagnose why an approach is and is not working in the specific and, all things considered, not always extrapolatable context of the Russia-Ukraine War.