U.S. Profs: Cheap But Deadly U.S. Drones Can Destroy Russian Weapons

As the Russian military stalls in Ukraine, the Kremlin is turning to plan B-- terror bombardment of civilians, an attempt to carve off parts of eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea coast, and destruction of Ukraine’s civil and industrial infrastructure – US professors Christopher Bronk and Gabriel Collins wrote for Foreign Policy recently.

Photo Insert: Rather than being a launch platform for missiles and bombs that return to base after missions, the kamikaze drone flies into the target itself—sometimes at near-cruise missile ranges—and explodes.

Accordingly, Kyiv needs a plan B as well. It needs long-range offensive strike options that can be deployed en masse and regenerate after attrition by Russian air defenses—something that the Ukrainian Air Force, despite its heroic efforts to date, cannot do.

Long-range, low-cost, self-manufactured kamikaze drones—produced and launched from a variety of locations throughout Ukraine’s nearly Texas-sized territory—would be a game-changer.

Kyiv could begin to break Russian sieges through high-volume strikes against command-and-control nodes, artillery units, rotary and fixed-wing airfields, and logistics chains—including in Belarus and Russia itself.

Decentralized production and launch capabilities would present Russian forces with fiendish interdiction challenges.

Taken together, Ukraine’s ability to strike back at scale for a long period of time would constitute critical first steps toward saving Ukrainian civilian lives now and, hopefully, eventual battlefield victory later.

Kamikaze drones (also sometimes called “loitering munitions”) differ from drones like the US MQ-9 Reaper or Bayraktar TB2 that Ukraine uses now. Rather than being a launch platform for missiles and bombs that return to base after missions, a loitering munition flies into the target itself—sometimes at near-cruise missile ranges—and explodes.

Israel’s nearly 40 years of drone experience in conflicts with Syria and the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh attest to kamikaze drones’ combat effectiveness even against modern air defense systems.

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