Russia's defense industry will produce a new line of anti-drone electronic warfare systems within two months, state-owned defense giant Rostec told Russian media on Wednesday morning, at a time that military positions within Russian territory are being harried by Ukrainian drones.
“Within one or two months, it is planned to complete the state's tests and switch to mass production of a fundamentally new generation of aviation and ground-based electronic warfare and anti-unmanned aerial vehicle systems,” Rostoc said according to state-owned outlet TASS.
While Russian-operated Iranian drones have received a great degree of coverage, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia have become a serious challenge to the Kremlin.
Previous Ukrainian and Russian attacks
Reuters reported on Monday that a power station in the Ukraine-bordering Bryansk was hit by a drone launched by Kyiv. Governor Alexander Bogomaz said that electricity in the Klimovsky had been knocked out by the strike.
Russian soldiers march in Almaty, Kazakhstan, January 13, 2022 (credit: REUTERS/PAVEL MIKHEYEV)On Wednesday Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev announced that local air defenses had downed two drones over the sea. On November 22, two other drones were shot down. Since August, Russian positions around Crimea have faced frequent attacks by Ukrainian drones.
In October a major attack by aerial and maritime drones on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol led the Russian Foreign Ministry to claim that the United Kingdom had aided Ukraine to commit what it described as a terrorist attack.
Following the attack, the Black Sea Fleet moved many of its submarines and other vessels to Novorossiysk, a Russian port city just east of the disputed peninsula. Conflicting Russian and Ukrainian media reports told of an attack against an oil terminal next to the base. The UK Defense Ministry assessed that the Russian fleet is likely concerned about the drone threats to the vital landing ships operating out of the port.
At the beginning of the war, Ukraine had been using Turkish Bayraktar TB2 to great effect against Russian ground forces. However many of the more recent attacks have involved smaller modified civilian quadcopters.
The simple drones have been adapted to warfare with the ability to drop grenades or mortar bombs. The disruptive innovation that was first pioneered by Islamic State forces has continued development, flooding the internet with videos of simple Ukrainian quadcopters dropping explosives into expensive and modern Russian tanks and armored vehicles.
