The real protagonists of the Russian-Ukrainian war are drones, used in all environments: air, land surface, maritime and even underwater.
Iran has delivered hundreds of Shahed-class drones to the Russian military, most notably the Shared-129, a Predator-style drone that can fly more than 1.000 miles, armed with missiles, and the Shahed-191, a drone capable to carry missiles approximately 300 miles. Drones that allowed Moscow to continue persistent attacks and balance the tactical advantage gained by the Ukrainians, at the beginning of the war, following the use of Turkish Bayraktar drones.
The clamor of Ukrainian successes, thanks to the Turkish drone, against the Russian tanks were even celebrated with a popular song. The Turkish company that produces Bayraktar, according to national media, is building a drone factory in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has implemented programs for the construction of drones in order to become a hub world-class in the sector, thanks to the tactical experience gained directly in the field. For this reason, the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov sent 1.700 new drones to the front, trained 10.000 operators in 26 centers and prepared another 10.000 for future training.
In light of this operational novelty, NATO, writes C4ISRNET, has started work to draft a document on its first doctrine against drones to be provided to member states to implement new approaches to defend themselves from unmanned aerial systems and common training of the operators.
The ambition to establish an anti-UAS doctrine within the military alliance by the end of 2023 has been in the works for some time, according to Claudio Palestini, senior advisor at NATO's Emerging Security Challenges Division.
"The formal mandate to create this document was given earlier this year”, he said in an interview with Defense News. “It will build on a manual already produced in 2019 which was more focused on outlining guiding principles on how to effectively counter drones.”
While some content between the doctrine and the manual, which has never been made public, will be similar, Palestini said the main difference will be in the level of formality and attention.
"The 2019 manual was approximately 600 pages long and served as a preliminary document", He said. "The scope of this c-UAS doctrine will be NATO-wide and will be much more coherent, condensed into 70-80 pages.”
Although the principles it will contain remain vague, one of its overarching objectives will be to advise Member States on the most effective ways to organize and conduct counter-drone operations in different operational environments.
The document will outline recommendations on how to operationalize c-UAS, the importance of multi-domain and layered solutions and the definition of common training standards for operators.
According to Palestini, the document will be sent in the coming weeks for ratification by a NATO committee tasked with developing military operational standards with the assistance of NATO's Office for Standardization. Once all requested changes have been received, it is expected that the document will be approved.
The hope is that the committee will ratify it by the end of the year.
"The war between Ukraine and Russia has led to changes in the evolution of the threat posed by drones and the operational environment in which c-UAS can play a role in modern conflicts”, explained Palestini.
While NATO has long recognized the benefits of using unmanned aerial vehicles, it has only been recently that most member states have begun to seriously build their arsenal and defensive capabilities against these systems.
Previous initiatives include the establishment of a NATO c-UAS working group in 2019 and a series of studies conducted by the NATO Industrial Advisory Group on the shortcomings of some counter-UAS systems, as well as trials to test different technologies.
It is not yet clear whether the document will allow the development of a NATO-owned and operated c-UAS asset, similar to Northrop Grumman's RQ-4D drone, whose capabilities are available to all member states. The overall cost of acquiring and maintaining the remotely piloted aircraft was covered entirely by NATO.
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