Ukraina - Ny type amerikansk drone er effektiv - Defense One

 

US-made jam-resistant drones helped Ukrainians cut through Russia EW

Shield AI’s V-BATs are giving Kyiv new range, capabilities.

Patrick Tucker 

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October 31, 2024 09:02 PM ET

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When Russian jamming neutered the recon drones flown by a group of Ukrainian special operators near Dnipro in August, they turned to a new solution: V-BAT drones built to withstand the massive electronic interference used by both sides in the war in Ukraine. 

“They launched from about 40 kilometers from the front, flew 100 kilometers past the front line of troops and then found these SA-11 surface-to-air missiles [on] 11 Buks, targeted them, called in HIMARS airburst rounds,” said Brandon Tseng, president and co-founder of Shield AI, the San Diego-based maker of the V-BATs. 

That destroyed the SAMs—and, Tseng said, marked a big operational test for the V-BATs: flying, collecting targeting data, and relaying it to artillery units, all in the face of the most sophisticated electronic warfare tactics on earth. 

Ukraine has some drones that can perform well against EW, but they work through autonomy and on-platform computing, good for one-way attack missions with whatever munitions can be squeezed onboard. But the ability to pass data quickly back to a fires solution with real power, like a howitzer or Lockheed Martin HIMARS, is essential to taking out Russian positions. This is what the V-BAT supplied to the Ukrainians, according to Tseng, who witnessed the operation first-hand. 

The 300-mile range of the V-BAT, even in the face of anti-aircraft defenses, gave the Ukrainians a new view of the battlefield. 

“They were able to collect intelligence that they had never collected before was because they had a long-endurance aircraft that was able to watch things for long periods of time,” Tseng said in a Thursday interview. “That absolutely blew their minds, because, while they had some aircraft, some weapon systems that could go 60 kilometers, maybe 100 kilometers, the on-station time was like, for those aircraft for like, 10,15, minutes. So when you're comparing it against us who's loitering around for eight, 9,10, 11 hours, you know, after we get on-station…you just actually have the time space to actually find lots and lots of targets.”