Ukraine joins NATO anti-drone drills as Russia ramps up drone production tenfold

Ukraine has participated in NATO’s concluded anti-drone exercise, marking Jyiv’s first participation in the event. The proliferation of drones in the war – to destroy targets and survey the battlefield – has prompted NATO to heighten its focus on the potential threats these devices pose to the alliance.

The development comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday his plans to ramp up drone production to nearly 1.4 million units this year.

The exercise held at a Dutch military base, brought together over 20 countries and 50 companies to test cutting-edge systems designed to detect and counter drones. A key aspect of the drills was assessing the interoperability of these systems.

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This exercise is part of NATO’s broader efforts to address the evolving challenges posed by unmanned aerial systems. As the alliance continues to adapt to emerging threats, its focus on counter-drone technologies is expected to remain a priority.

The 11-day exercise ended with a demonstration of jamming and hacking drones in a week when their critical role in the Ukraine war was demonstrated once again.

”NATO takes this threat very, very seriously,” said Matt Roper, chief of the Joint Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Centre at the alliance’s technology agency.

”This is not a domain we can afford to sit back and be passive on,” he said at the exercise site, Lieutenant General Best Barracks in the east of The Netherlands.

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Experts have warned NATO that it needs to catch up quickly on drone warfare.

”NATO has too few drones for a high-intensity fight against a peer adversary,” a report from the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank declared last September.

”It would be severely challenged to integrate those it has in a contested environment effectively.”

THREAT EVOLUTION

The drills that wrapped up on Thursday – complete with ice cream for onlookers provided by a radar company – were the fourth annual iteration of the exercise.

Claudio Palestini, the co-chair of a NATO working group on unmanned systems, said the exercise had adapted to trends such as the transformation of FPV (first-person view) drones – originally designed for civilian racers – into deadly weapons.

”Every year, we see an evolution of the threat with the introduction of new technology,” he said. ”But also we see a lot of capabilities (to counter drones) that are becoming more mature.”

In a demonstration on Thursday, two small FPV drones whizzed and whined at high speed through the blue sky to dart around a military all-terrain vehicle before their signal was jammed.

Such electronic warfare is widespread in Ukraine. But it is less effective against long-range reconnaissance drones, a technology developer at Ukraine’s defence ministry said.

The official, giving only his first name of Yaroslav for security reasons, said his team had developed kamikaze drones to destroy such craft – a much cheaper option than firing missiles, which Ukraine had previously done.

”You need to run fast,” he said of the race to counter the impact of drones. ”Technology which you develop is there for three or six months. After, it’s obsolete.”

With inputs from agencies.