Don's Weekly, 4 August 2025: Part 6 (Equipment)
by Donald Hill
A Czech company is producing 100 drones a month that use AI to navigate without signals from an operator. The operator loads the target for the mission and the drone compares the terrain to an internal map. They have three models of drones that range from several dozen kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. The largest warhead is 12 kg. It has been tested in combat and they plan to increase production to 600 drones a month.
Because Russia’s storage facilities are being emptied, the repair stations for the vehicles and artillery are underutilized. In 2022, they were shipping 242,000 tons of equipment to the front after refurbishment. In 2025 it is expected they will only send 119,000 tons. Also, 52% of their explosive shipments are originating in North Korea.
US Bell Helicopters plans to build helicopters in Ukraine, prioritizing military production over civilian production.
Thoughts on the LandEuro Conference: Ukrainian Lessons in Rapid Adaptation
At a conference a couple of weeks ago, a panel of three warfighters, an industrialist and a bureaucrat were asked: How can we apply Ukraine’s streamlined feedback loops, responsive productions, ability to find innovative ways to encourage adaptation and break through bureaucracy to bring the best possible systems to the warfighter at the lowest possible cost and the least possible amount of time?
Project Management
The question itself invokes the project management triangle. Quality is the ability of a product or service to meet or exceed customer expectations. Customer requirements determine the quality scope. There is a saying: Low Cost, Short Time or High Quality. You can choose two out of the three. But this isn’t actually true.
Research shows that teams focused on quality gain speed, but if you focus on speed then the quality decreases. Low quality prototypes can speed the proof of concept testing. Repeated builds with refinement of each build and speed (see ‘focus on quality’) lowers the cost of project development.
You can see this process in Ukraine’s grassroots development of drones. They started in homes and garages trying to meet one or two objectives, such as longer flying times or being able to drop a munition. Then they tested in their backyards, made adjustments and kept on improving it until it was ready to be tested on the battlefield. When it was of high enough quality to be accepted by the army it was mass produced. Even then feedback from the front resulted in constant revisions to adapt to the changing battlefield or incorporate a new innovation discovered by an engineer or a warfighter that was using the drone. When the UK agreed to produce drones for Ukraine, the revisions based on feedback from the battlefield would come every week or two, and that interfered with the speed of production. So the compromise was that all revisions would be saved and every six weeks they would be incorporated into the next batch of production.
Few projects can actually be created in a garage. The objective in weapons development is to overmatch their opponents and some projects have a very large scope that takes a lot of time and money to incorporate the requirements into the final product. Some of the projects are canceled after long delays and cost overruns. Others appear to meet the requirements but use on the battlefield proves otherwise.
The GLSDB is one example when the booster rocket failed to separate and its navigation system was jammed. It’s development is continuing. The Patriot system proved effective against aircraft and cruise missiles but initially was totally ineffective against ballistic missiles in Iraq. Further development corrected that failure.
And then there are plenty of weapons, such as tanks and artillery over the decades, that meet all the requirements and are effective in battle and continue to be upgraded in capabilities. Ukrainian drones have already been mentioned, but it also applies to their 155 mm Bohdana gun, which was simply designed and was effective on the battlefield. Partial failures, such as the auto-loader, are being redesigned, the Soviet-era chassis is being replaced, and towed versions were created to reflect the changes on the battlefield.
Government Interface
The bureaucrat said that innovation has to be decentralized to allow room for creativity, and that the army, civilian ministries, private business and civil society have to be involved in the process.
There needs to be a method of transferring equipment from civilians to the military. By necessity, Ukraine has allowed civilians to directly interface with individual units to supply them with tourniquets, generators, vehicles and other off the shelf items that sustain a unit. It also allows civilians to donate money so the unit can buy drones and other weapons directly from the producer. The government also coordinates the needs of the army with governments providing aid, and it coordinates the needs of the army with businesses producing weapons.
As a middleman, the government needs to track status and accountability with a minimal amount of administrative burden, but ultimately, the producer and end user (the military) need to act as one entity. Allowing producers to test their equipment on the battlefield and providing them with feedback is an example of the government facilitating the teamwork of the producer and end user as part of the development process.
When Ukraine’s Soviet era air defense systems ran out of missiles, Ukrainian and Western engineers worked together on the ‘FrankenSAM’ project to adapt the systems to fire Western missiles, just as they adapted Soviet era aircraft to fire Western missiles. This was only possible by relaxing standard R&D processes to achieve an 80% engineering solution in a short amount of time.
Money is needed for development and scaling up production. Governments, Ukrainian or allied, set the priorities by allocating money.
Information needs to be both protected and shared, standards need to be established to increase inter-operability, and part of a common plan must include the division of labor to reach the common goals. Governments can facilitate this, and having done so, they should encourage initiative and creativity from both the producer and warfighter.
Command and Control
The forum focused on the procurement of equipment, but the principles of innovation, adaptation, feedback loops and breaking through the bureaucracy apply to the military leadership, as well.
Military leaders choose the objectives and provide resources to achieve those objectives, but an efficient military team encourages innovation at the lowest levels, conducts after action reviews to determine what did and didn’t work, and then adapts to the situation. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Ukrainian army micromanages at the very lowest levels and only the units that are able to insulate themselves from the general staff can break through the bureaucracy of centralized command. Suppressing low level leadership underutilizes the workforce and the quality of the army suffers in those conditions.
The suppression also creates an environment of distrust, and if you can’t trust your leaders when your lives are on the line then the rate of desertion will increase. Conversely, if you trust your leadership and believe your actions can have a positive impact on the operation then you are more likely to buy into the process and perform at a higher level. The quality of the organization, whether it is a brigade or an army, increases in an atmosphere of trust and empowerment.
Front Line Innovation
Drones dominate the battlefield. 2% of the Ukrainian army support drone operations and they are responsible for 33% of the Russian deaths. Innovation is constant, resulting in a changing battlefield that drives more innovation. Some innovations, such as dropping thermite on enemy positions, have been tried and discarded because the results aren’t worth the effort. EW devices proliferated because of the impact they had on radio-controlled drones, so the Russians experimented with fiber-optic drones to avoid the jamming with the additional benefit of avoiding signal interference from terrain. Now it is widely used even though the weight of the spool impacts the range and payload of the drone. Even so, Magyar’s Birds were working on their own 41 km spool back in January and the overcame the issues that created to publish the success of a 42 km strike in May. The Ukrainian army started testing 40 km spools in July on different models of drones and will fund the successful prototypes and place them in serial production.
Because of the drone, all vehicles are vulnerable. Armored vehicles provide more protection and western armor is more protective that Soviet-era armor. But that just represents a level of resistance, not invulnerability. An Abrams tank survived 9 drones before it was immobilized and destroyed. Still, because of its level of resistance, the crew survived. The windshield of a Ukrainian MaxxPro, that already survived a bullet, also survives a direct hit by a drone. Eventually, with enough hits or a large enough munition, that window would break. This MaxxPro survived multiple drone hits, at least this time, and drove away. This is why drones often try to immobilize a vehicle first because eventually they will destroy it. As resistant as some vehicles are, cope cages were added to provide another level of resistance, as seen here. Cope cages are a continuing presence on the battlefield because they are worth the effort.
Russians have been using thermal ponchos to reduce their heat signature in the hopes of avoiding drones with thermal optics. Even umbrellas will significantly reduce your thermal signature, but they are more effective in terrain where the outline of the ponchos might blend with other shapes. In an open field they do little to escape detection, especially if you were spotted before deploying the ponchos.
In order to sustain an army, movement is needed to bring back casualties and to bring up water, food and ammo. Drones are very good at detecting movement and driving an unmanned vehicle to evacuate a casualty at least eliminates the risk to the driver of the vehicle. As seen here, though, even ground drones can be targeted, and in this case the 93rd Brigade decides to send an MRAP with cope cages and a soldier with a shotgun to evacuate the casualties.
Drones have also been used to drop water, food and ammo to front line positions and even medicines were sent when the wounded couldn’t be evacuated. A year ago, Russians posted an elaborate effort to supply a forward position with water. If the effort to protect the water bottles was worth it they would have been continued.
Passive protection and using drones as transport to avoid drones are two ways to respond to drones. Another way is to try and destroy the attacking drones. They can be shot down with rifles, as both sides have done, and after being hit, this soldier shot down two drones. But it’s obviously not effective enough so other solutions are being pursued. Shotguns place more pellets in the air and a Ukrainian used his effectively earlier this month, but the pellets quickly lose velocity over range which reduces the chance to knock out the drone. Benelli is selling an anti-drone shotgun with a barrel that creates a larger, longer cone of pellets. The longer barrel increases the velocity of the pellets, which increases the range and knock down capability of the pellets. The wider, longer cone pattern increases the chances of hitting the drone. One problem with a shotgun is that it’s another weapon to carry, so Ukraine developed rifle rounds that send out five pellets with about 50 meters of effectiveness. The plan is for every rifleman to have one magazine of the anti-drone ammo.
Drones can also be used to destroy long-ranged and tactical and reconnaissance drones. Both rotary and fixed wing drones have been used to carry interceptor drones that are released when an enemy drone is spotted. Russian developers are testing drone interceptors with speeds of 200-350 kph.
110 Slingers air defense systems are in Ukraine mounted on M113s and another 50 on Practika MRAP vehicles. They have a 30 mm gun, weigh under 400 kg, and use a radar and proximity-fused fragmentation rounds that supposedly can shoot down drones over a kilometer away. They’ve been in the country since the end of 2023. Not much has been written about the 160 weapon systems outside of company articles, although the company says it’s proving its value.
Skynex is a 35 mm cannon with an effective range of 4 km. Ukraine bought two systems for €182 million in 2024 and each engagement with proximity-fused rounds cost €4,000 and is nearly 100% effective against Shahed-type drones. Two more are expected to be sent to Ukraine sometime in 2025. Skynex is already under contract with Austria, Romania, Qatar and, most notably, Ukraine. Romania is supposed to get two in 2025 and two more in 2026. Italy wants to buy them and might be able to sign a contract in 2027. The production rate is unknown and seems to be the only reason why more systems haven’t been sent to Ukraine.
The US military is using 3D printers to construct obsolete parts and build bunkers and is trying to determine if the tactical capability should be at the brigade, division or corps level. Smaller printers are at the battalion level in a non-tactical environment. Ukraine is using both plastic and metal 3D printers to produce drone and munition components, supporting front line innovations, and creating tools that might take weeks or months to order.
Possible Future Innovations
Drones are dominant but at some point in the future weapons will be produced that will reduce their effectiveness. Current technology limits the scope of innovation so new technologies are being developed, tested and improved or discarded.
It’s difficult to hear drones over 50 meters and at 50 meters you have about two seconds to react. The US is asking for engineering solutions to detect, track and identify drones from further away at the squad and platoon level. At the squad level, the sensor should track acoustic or radio frequencies using tablets, bracelets, an earpiece or glasses. At the platoon level the sensor can be mounted on a vehicle or tripod.
Last December, the UK successfully tested an anti-drone laser from a vehicle that is accurate enough to hit a coin from a kilometer away and it hit targets 3 km away, although the maximum effective range was not disclosed. It costs £10 a shot. Originally, it was planned to be operational in five years but an increase in funding means it is expected to be in service on Royal Navy ships in 2027. Early versions of the weapon could be used by Ukraine. This would be a point defense system. Israel used Iron Beam lasers to shoot down drones with a range of 10 km. Weather conditions can impact lasers.
A US company is testing sound waves to disrupt the propellers of a drone and compromise its ability to maintain stability.
The US has several working prototypes of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon that can fry circuitry even if the electronics have been hardened against EMP. It also is not aimed at a single drone but creates an area of effect and all drones inside that area are impacted. In naval testing it fried a small boat motor. It probably has a range of 1 km and the system is being reduced in size. There is one small enough to be carried by a drone, but the size of the drone or range of the weapon on a drone was not discussed.
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(…to be concluded in the Part 7…)
You wrote another drones using AI: «The largest warhead is 12 kg. It has been tested in combat and they plan to increase production to 600 drones a month.» if it works in combat the market is there.
Regarding anti drone measures and shotguns. I read that Gepards were used as anti drone weapons, spraying a lot of bullets in the air against drones? Like a shotgun on wheels.