Lawfare Daily: Inside Ukraine’s Drone Campaign Against Russia

[Intro]

Marcel Plichta: So what I saw was a need for long range strike and a need for an indigenous long range strike capability and an opportunity to leverage sort of the advancements where, where we are with commercial drone technology and Ukraine's drone industry to meet that need.

Anastasiia Lapatina: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Anastasiia Lapatina, Ukraine fellow at Lawfare with Marcel Plichta, a fellow at the Center for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews, and a former analyst at the U.S. Department of Defense, who currently works as an instructor at the Grade Dynamics Intelligence School.

Marcel Plichta: I think it's something that benefits Ukraine is to keep pushing what the maximum potential range is because that increases, you know, the number of things that Russia has to worry about defending, right, every, every extra kilometer of range means that there's another factory, another substation, another oil refinery, another military target or airfield to worry about.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Today we're talking about the Ukrainian drone campaign against Russia and how the war in Ukraine is changing, how drones are used in conflict all around the world.

[Main Podcast]

Marcel, it's no secret that drones have become an essential component of the Russo-Ukrainian war on both sides of the frontline. Ukraine has even established a separate branch of its armed forces, the unmanned systems forces. But I know that you've been a big advocate for the Ukrainian use of drones since the very beginning of Russia's full skin invasion two and a half years ago.

You've even co-authored a study in 2022, which was presented to several governments and institutions within Ukraine, where you and your colleagues were making the case for a strategic one-way drone campaign against Russia. So could you just tell me what was the logic behind this proposal? Why did you choose to focus on drones specifically as opposed to any other weapon?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, I think the idea, the idea for, for a one-way attack drone campaign came to me in 2022, and I remember very clearly what sort of prompted it was there was reporting that Ukrainian helicopter pilots had flown into Russia and they had done some sort of, some sort of attack, I forget, but it was on Russian territory.

And that got me thinking, because by that point, this was maybe March, April, the, the conflict had changed very much from what it was like in February, right, where you had this massive Russian push towards Ukrainian cities. It had, it had become a little bit, I don't think stabilized is the right word, but it'd become more static.

It occurred to me that now that the conflict was static, you know, Ukraine was going to need some kind of way to strike the enemy at long range, right. They had very few options to do so, and they had very few options to develop in, in the sense that, you know, Ukraine had some Tochka missiles, right, that they had pre-war they had a very limited number of those.

And it was becoming clear that Ukraine's international partners were sort of cagey about the idea of delivering very long range weapons. I mean, this was before, you know, tanks, this was before HIMARS. This was before all of that.

So drones seemed like a natural fit. Ukraine had, you know, a drone industry. They had competent engineers. There is a a defense industry in place that could very quickly create a drone that sort of served as a minimum viable product as these are compared to say, a missile quite easy to assemble, quite easy to develop on mass.

So what I saw was a need for a long range strike and a need for an indigenous long range strike capability. And an opportunity to leverage sort of the advancements where, where we are with commercial drone technology and Ukraine's drone industry to meet that need. Then in terms of getting international partners on board, not that this necessarily worked, but I thought it was more likely that international partners would be willing to send drone components to Ukraine then something like a missile if they're worried about escalation.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So in the study you did, what was the crux of your recommendations to Ukraine and its allies?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, I mean the main, the main recommendation was, you know, simply making as many one-way attack drones as possible. If Western partners wanted to be involved, if, if external partners wanted to be involved, subsidizing those parts and subsidizing those components to make it easier.

You know, we thought of two kinds. It didn't necessarily pan out, you know, this way when, when the Ukrainians got hold of it. But we initially conceptualized one sort of very long range version and a shorter range version with the idea being that the shorter range version would be even less expensive. And, and more because it was smaller, more survivable to attack things in, in a, in a shorter, shorter range, closer to the front.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So you and your colleagues propose a one-way drone campaign against Russia, and what are the goals of such a campaign? What effect did you predict that it would have?

Marcel Plichta: So we thought that it would present a very serious challenge to Russia. Not necessarily, you know, a game changer or a war winner, but that it would very seriously complicate the Russian war. You know, this was because they had very limited air defense and they were operating on this assumption that Ukraine couldn't reach them. That once they were out of range of a, of a conventional artillery system, you know, they, they, they could operate sort of with impunity.

We figured it would be able to hit like this this kind of drone would be able to hit so-called soft targets. So things like fuel reserves or, or ammo, dumps that aren't very that aren't heavily armored, they don't have a lot of air defense around them. And, you know, we figured such a campaign could also have a psychological impact, right?

Striking something like the Black Sea Fleet right in Sevastopol has a bit of a psychological effect because it, it feels to the Russian military, like they're not safe in places that they thought were safe. And lastly, and I think that this has been one of the more enduring things we've seen, you know, we, we predicted that it would force Russia to move its air defenses away from the front where it was very sorely needed. Right.

And where it was a, a direct threat to Ukrainian pilots and Ukrainian drones and forced them to move it very, very far from the front to protect, you know, sites hundreds of kilometers away from the actual fighting. So those were the, those were sort of the main, the main things we predicted. And, and some of them turned out to be very much the case. And and other ones turned out a little different.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So how did people initially react to this proposal?

Marcel Plichta: You know, the, the final sort of version, if, if you can call it a final version, went through a lot of different iterations because, you know, we, we went around to, to a bunch of different people to get, you know, their thoughts and their reactions from some corners. A lot of people who read it thought that it was just too escalatory outright. And this is this is a story familiar to, familiar to Ukrainians, I suspect.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Yeah. Yeah.

Marcel Plichta: The, the idea that that A) such a system would, should be developed and used, and then B), any, any sort of idea that the west or that Western partners would assist with it you know, they felt that that was escalatory.

I think that a lot of people, other people were interested enough in it to take it on board. We, we weren't the only sort of people recognizing that Ukraine both had a need for long range strike and you know, that drones were a good way to do so while we were sort of doing, this was the very first one-way attack, drone strike the long range one.

And that was against a oil facility in Rostov in June, 2022. So clearly there is, there is some parallel thinking going within Ukraine. And, you know, basically at the point where we got to Dnipro at the point where you know, it, it was getting to to officials in, in western governments.

Not that they necessarily read it or took it on board, but you know, at least it was getting to them. At that point, I think there was a little bit more buy-in, but I think, I think really the turning point was when Russia started using she heads. So when Russia started using their own version of it, I think it was, it was clear that this was a workable idea because it was being demonstrated on a large scale. So, yeah.

And then, and then from there, there's a, there was a tenuous, very, very long and interesting story that I wasn't involved in, you know, of you have Ukrainian manufacturers and Ukrainian intelligence trying to get this concept off the ground, moving from, you know, some, some little paper that we had written into an actual workable concept.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Right. So two years later we can kind of see this proposal of yours play out in real time. And since roughly the beginning of this year, Ukraine has been very actively using its drones to hit targets deep inside Russia and Ukraine has been focusing, especially on the oil refineries. Dozens of them have been hit already. So why is Ukraine hitting oil infrastructure as opposed to focusing on military burs or weapons caches or something specifically military related?

Marcel Plichta: Hmm. Yeah. And, and to be fair, some targets are military, but yeah. The, the–

Anastasiia Lapatina: The majority right now, but the majority I think are oil. Yeah. Yeah.

Marcel Plichta: –are oil refineries and metallurgical plants and, and these sorts of things that are more indirectly, that more indirectly help the regime?

I think it's a couple of things. I think that Ukraine now, as opposed to in early 2022, has a lot more long range weapons than it did at the start. You know, you, you've seen the arrival of HIMARS. You've seen the arrival of ATACMS. You've seen the arrival of short Storm Shadow. These give Ukraine a, a much better although it could, it could always be better.

You know, they, they could always donate more to Ukraine, but it gives, it gives the Ukrainian military more of an ability to strike targets that are closer in with a lot more force. So a hardened target or a defended target, you're more likely to get a hit and a kill with one of those conventional systems than, than you are with a drone like this.

And so for those, for those, it makes more sense to use the conventional systems, the, the facilities that are farther out, that are deeper in Russia. You know, a lot of, a lot of what Ukraine has that's not, drones doesn't necessarily have the range to reach it, and it's not necessarily the highest priority for a limited number of missiles. If the highest priority is, you know, the ammo dump, they're gonna use their, their best system against it, or the Black Sea fleet for that matter.

When it comes to oil refinery specifically oil refineries are, I, I think I tweeted once that it was a Goldilocks target. And that it was. And that it was just the right size. It's, it's, it's really, really big. It doesn't, it doesn't move. It's very expensive to repair damage to it, but it's also well, I don't wanna say fragile, but it's, it's not sturdy enough for a, a relatively moderate sized explosive.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And also things are very inflammable on them, right?

Marcel Plichta: Yes, yes. Very flammable. It's, it's, it's not so much that the explosion itself causes the damage, but you are sort of just lighting a match, right. Right. And, and it also, I mean, it does have, you know, a psychological effect because there doesn't tend, at least I, I haven't seen very many reports of civilian injuries or deaths as a result of these attacks.

So you have a situation where there's very little physical harm being done to the population, but you see these big columns of smoke, you know, growing up these enormous fires.

Anastasiia Lapatina: The photos are very dramatic when you see them.

Marcel Plichta: Yes, yes, the photos and the videos. Yeah. And of course you also have the financial side of it, right?

Oil is obviously a big part of, of the Russian, you know, the Russian regime's revenue. It's a big part of the economy, so obviously, you know, you, you're doing a very, very large amount of damage with a relatively inexpensive drone. You know, if, if you wanna reduce it to numbers a, you know, a drone that costs 50,000 or a hundred thousand or $200,000 can very quickly make up that value and damage to a refinery.

You know, you've seen that now in Russia where you have the oil industry sort of complaining that they're, you know, inadequately, defended, putting up nets, you know, to try and catch the drones you know, doing, doing all of these sort of ad hoc things.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And how does that work? How does that work?

Marcel Plichta: I mean.

Anastasiia Lapatina: If, if it does even?

Marcel Plichta: It would depend on the scenario. I mean, if, if you knew, if you knew the trajectory that the drone was likely to fly in and you put a big metal net in the way, it would probably catch it. But that is assuming that, you know, the exact trajectory and the angle that it's coming down.

If it's sort of a slow, gradual descent, you know, maybe, I think you'd have to see, but it's not, it's not unheard of. You know, they, this happens a lot with smaller drones on the front where you have netting or other kinds of barriers. But, you know, oil refineries and industrial targets keep getting hit by drones. So, you know, it's, it's not foolproof.

Anastasiia Lapatina: There has been some pushback from Ukrainian allies in the West in regards to Ukrainian attacks, specifically against oil infrastructure because the West has been worried that, you know, the price of oil is gonna go up, it's gonna destabilize world markets, and in general, regardless of, you know, which targets are being hit, we generally don't want a stabilization of that kind of market, right?

Because everything depends on it. Would you say those fears are, are fair? Did we see any kind of impact like that? It's been months now since Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil. Is it, has it really destabilized anything?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah. Yeah. Well we, we, we definitely haven't seen a spike in global oil prices. So sort of the fear is that that this was gonna bring, you know, gas prices for consumers worldwide back up turned out to be unfounded.

Internally to Russia obviously it's, it's had a big impact on their industry, you know, internally. I saw that they, that they were changing the additives, they were putting in gasoline to make it less environmentally friendly, but produce more gas. So that's troublesome I would say from it, from a, from an environmental standpoint, but it does, it does show that, you know, internally Russia is feeling the effects, even if externally they very much aren't.

You know, there's also this question of if Ukraine keeps going with these attacks, you know, how many spare parts, how many replacement parts can Russia get ahold of? A lot of, you know, depending on what gets damaged they may not be able to source a replacement quickly or source a replacement at all. So the longer this goes on, the worse it gets in essence.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And the idea is kind of to damage these oil refineries and oil infrastructure faster than they can repair it, right?

Marcel Plichta: Well, presumably I don't, I don't know the I don't know, I don't know exactly what Ukrainian intelligence or the GUR are thinking, but yeah, it would, it would follow that, you know, the more, the more damage that you do to infrastructure and the more often that you do it, that's how you get a sort of lasting impact on Russia's ability to gain revenue from producing oil. And you see impacts on, you know, their ability to export export oil and export gas.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Have we seen any real impact of this Ukrainian drone campaign on the frontline, on, I don't know, Russia's ability to send reinforcements or something like that?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, I think, I think that's the toughest, that's the toughest question to answer in all of this, because the, the way that, you know modern conflict is, is fought.

There's a lot of little tiny factors that add up to a greater whole. And so, you know, when I talk about, when I talk about stuff like Russia having to divert. divert air defense to protect one of Vladimir Putin's 18 mansions.

Anstasiia Lapatina: Right.

Marcel Plichta: Instead of being at the front line, not to be too social sciencey, but it's hard to empirically determine, you know, the impact that that has.

And we know that less we know that less air defense is, is generally good for the person, you know, for the, for Ukraine, right. Russia has less air defense. You know, there are instances particularly where. For instance, when drone, when Ukraine struck the, the production facility where Russia was making she heads, when they, when they struck that, I think several months ago now.

Where you would, you, you would presume that there would be an impact to their ability to produce more in the short term. But, you know, barring another another catastrophic leak by the Russians, you wouldn't necessarily be able to determine that. So, so yeah, I think that's the major question. I think that's gonna be a question that people are gonna be asking after the war is, is getting a sense of how effective something at the strategic level was at sort of the tactical level at that frontline level. I think that's that's gonna be one of the major questions that researchers are gonna.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Back in May, so several months ago, it was reported that Ukrainian drones hit an early warning radar system near the city of Orsk, which is at a record distance of 1800 kilometers away from Ukraine. At that time, at least, it was the farthest that Ukrainian drones have ever trailed.

I actually texted you when this happened, asking how something like this was possible, because to me, 1800 kilometers seemed extremely far away. And you said that the range actually isn't as big of an issue as people think. So could you just explain that?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah. I mean, fun, fundamentally, it's an engineering problem, right? Because, because we know, I mean, and, and for these especially long range attacks what we appear to see is. You know, a previously, a previously manned aircraft, or at least a fuselage of a manned aircraft, like a, you know, like the equivalent of a Cessna or a propeller plane modified to be a drone and packed with explosives.

So, you know, we know that, we know that manned aircraft of that size and, and with those kinds of engines can go those kinds of distances. So at that point, it's a question of how hard do you want to tax the engine? And you can, you know, you can tax the engine quite hard if it's if it's one way because it's, you know, you don't need to use it again.

Then it's a question of fuel, you know, fuel economy and the size of the fuel tank, unlike high performance sort of aircraft, you know, these are relatively small engines. They're running on, you know, traditional fuel sources and you know, they're flying so they don't you know, they don't have to worry about friction with the ground.

So, you know, reaching those kinds of ranges is, is more of a, a question of trade offs because you're building a bigger drone than a question of, you know, the possible, you know. If a, if a, you know, Toyota or a Honda Civic can go 400 miles right on the ground on a full tank of gas, then, you know, it's not inconceivable that, that a drone of, you know, that a drone could do the same, the same kind of engine and the same kind of fuel.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Has Ukraine broken that record since then? Have we hit anything further than 1800 kilometers?

Marcel Plichta: Not that I know of. I'm sure that, I'm sure that someone will email me immediately after and tell me that someone, that one attack went, went, you know, 1,801 kilometers. But but, but that's sort of, you know, they're, they're, they're constantly pushing the boundaries of that range.

There's a limit in the sense that, you know, to make these kinds of of drones where you're converting a fuselage of a manned aircraft, I mean, it's, it's more difficult to produce those, right? You're sort of limited by the amount of airframes that you have. So, you know, I, I don't think that we will consistently be seeing, you know, attacks with large numbers of drones at that range.

I think we're more likely to see sort of like the refinery text. That's where you'd see, you know, 5, 6, 10 drones at once. But I think it's something that benefits Ukraine is to keep pushing what the maximum potential range is because that increases, you know, the number of things that Russia has to worry about defending, right?

Every, every extra kilometer of range means that there's a, another factory, another substation, another oil refinery, another military target or airfield to worry about. So compound the issue and one of the most enjoyable things for me on Twitter has been seeing the sort of the range the range rings increasing right over Russia, where, where, where, you know, going, you know, going a hundred kilometers more, going 50 kilometers more suddenly opens up way more, way more territory and that creates a huge headache for defenders.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Right. So how do you even defend that, that big of a swath of territory? Because if Ukrainian drones hit as far as 1800 kilometers away, that means that they've traveled that far, pretty much completely unopposed. And, and, and, and this is another like very notable thing about it, right? It's not so much like how far Ukraine has gone, but it's also how far Russia allowed these drones to go.

Marcel Plichta: Yes. Yeah. And for sure, and I think one of, one of the things that's been interesting to me has been seeing people who. Are are really big, you know, experts in, in the field of conventional standoff weapons, of, of missiles, of, of air defense going, you know, how, how did, how did a drone get this far into Russian territory?

You know, if, if if it's this large, then it should show up on radar, you know, and trying to, to turn into a map equation and, and what, what it really is, is. There, there just simply isn't enough air defense there to cover the entire area that's being covered. There's a, there's a question of competence as well.

You know, you can see on the Ukrainian side, right? Ukraine is also defending a very large relative, you know, relative to other European countries, a very large section of territory against drones and in general are having more success, you know, but there's only so much you can do because, you know, you can't always, you can't predict, you know where they're gonna go usually.

And if you can predict it and you put, you know, when you respond, you put air defense there, you know who's to say that? Planners themselves wouldn't notice that. Right? Wouldn't see on, you know, on satellite imagery or something else that that air defense has been moved there. And then just target something else.

And this is why. You know, the breadth of what Ukraine has attacked with drones is important because, you know, they, they've attacked, you know, air bases, they've attacked, they attacked the headquarters building in Sevastopol, right? But then they, they attack these industrial targets and these oil refinery targets, and so that makes it very, very difficult to predict, you know, the next time that a drone is launched, where exactly it's heading.

And, you know, that's not to say that every Ukrainian drone that's launched is gonna make it. We, you know, we don't have the numbers and we can't really trust Russia's numbers about shoot downs. But you know, even if say, you know, 70, 80% of these drones are shot down, that still means the defenders have to worry about where that 20 or 30% is going and if it'll be 20 or 30%, you know, getting through the next time. So, so it's a real it's a real headache. It's a real conundrum.

Anastasiia Lapatina: So I recently wrote a piece for Lawfare about the way that American aid to Ukraine works, the mechanisms involved in getting that aid to Ukraine and the effect it has on the frontline. And while reporting on this piece, I spoke to Ukraine's Department of Defense and they told me that Ukraine has a very critical shortage of long range capabilities.

And they actually, in a big statement that they've given me they. Highlighted this and spent a lot of, you know, words and paper on just nailing this down, that like, Ukraine needs more long range capabilities, more missiles, et cetera. So it's, it's obvious that this is a real issue for Ukraine. Ukraine has been trying to lift these western restrictions about, you know, how far we can use western missiles to, into the Russian territory. So can drones in a way, compensate for this vulnerability that Ukraine has?

Marcel Plichta: Yes, yes, to a certain extent. It can't entirely replace what a missile will do. The primary benefits of, of most conventional missiles is that the warhead is much bigger than you get in a lot of these drones. And it's generally more survivable.

So with with, you know, we were talking about how drones have gotten in so far generally, if a drone is in range of of an air defense system, you know, it can be shot down quite easily. With, with missiles, I think as we've seen in, in Sevastopol and, and and Crimea it seems like Russian air defenses can't defeat conventional missile systems.

So, you know, for that particular target set, I don't think that drones currently can compensate. However in the near future, I think we're, we're starting to see a little bit of a, a convergence between a, a cruise missile and and these kinds of drones. Where you're seeing more drones with jet engines and you're seeing smaller and cheaper cruise missiles.

So it is possible that in the near future, you know, I mean, Ukraine's drone industry have, has already done so much more than we could have predicted in 2022. So it's entirely possible that in a year you'll see some kind of very advanced drone or very cheap missile indigenously fulfilling that need for long range strike.

That said you know, more is always better. So, so as many as many of both systems as possible would be beneficial. And in fact, you know, sometimes they help each other missiles and drones. This, this is what happens with the larger in, you know, October, November, 2022, the largest attacks on, or the larger attacks on, on Keith, where you had drones and missiles at once.

Creating sort of a, a worst case scenario for air defenders because they have to worry about the, the low and slow stuff. And then, and then obviously more advanced missile systems. So, you know, we could see a point later on where Ukraine is able to take advantage of both systems in a similar way. And, you know, serve as a force multiplier for each other.

Anastasiia Lapatina: You've touched on the Ukrainian drone production, and I wanna dive into that a little bit. It is true that Ukraine is really outperforming and beating all expectations in, in this particular field. I think no one expected in the very beginning of the full scale invasion that drones were gonna be so important and that Ukraine and Russia both are gonna be producing so many of them.

So what do we know about Ukraine's production capacity when it comes to drones, and how does it compare to that of Russia? Is Ukraine winning in terms of numbers or is Russia

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, and, and I'll, and I'll speak mainly on sort of the, the one-way attack drone side of things. 'cause there's, there's a lot to say a lot to say generally about, about drones currently as it stands from, from Russia's drone production facility.

Right. For has, you know, and of statements from the Russians, they're. You know, between four and 10,000 Shah a year indigenously. So without, without importing more from Iran and in sort of more practical terms, right? That's attacks by, you know, a dozen drones every single day in theory or larger attacks several times a week. So it's, so it's pretty substantial and pretty significant.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And how many are they importing from Iran? I'm not sure if we have those numbers, but yeah.

Marcel Plichta: That, that I'm not sure about. But I mean, they've sustained a pretty consistent tempo of drone usage.

Anastasiia Lapatina: I think they sent them arain every single day.

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's in large numbers, but I mean, it's several hundred, I mean it's several hundred every month basically.

So, so they're being, you know, they're being sent there and there was also. I think it was, there was Washington Post reporting on this that it seems like the, some of these Russian facilities early on were involved in assembly and not production.

So they would get, they would get the parts from Iran and they would assemble it. So you just have sort of a, a hybrid solution there that makes it sort of hard to tell. But the main way that we sort of can see how many mania heads Russia has, at least, you know, on, on, on, you know, outside of, outside of whatever governments know is, is by how many they use.

Unfortunately, so that, so that makes it tricky On the Ukrainian side, I don't get the impression that they have as many drones. You know, it's, it's hard to tell because, you know, when there's a Shahed attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian government releases very public reports and, and, and graphics and stuff and with little charts of how many have, have been shot down, which is very helpful when you're a researcher.

Russia doesn't do the same. You'll see a lot of reports or contradicting reports. You'll see regional governors say that, you know, 20 or 30 Ukrainian drones were shot down in a single attack. And it's hard to tell if, if they don't know or if they're exaggerating or if there were actually that many drones.

And so, you know, you sort of have to take it with a big grain of salt. But generally it seems like Ukraine is able to produce fewer, but that, given how long that this current campaign has gone on. Their rate of production is going up and that they're using them more judiciously. I wrote in like mid 2023 for The Telegraph about how, you know, the way that Russia uses these drones is very is very brutish in a sense that they're sort of aiming them directly at cities and sort of letting them go.

And this contrasts very much to how Ukraine is using them, where it's sort of very, very specifically targeted at things that affect Russia's either finances or their ability to carry on the war. Like when they hit a, a Russian jet a few weeks ago directly. So, so yeah. So the trend, the trend is currently in Ukraine's favor because they're using them better and it seems like they're able to make enough that they're able to launch constant attacks in the same way that Russia is, even if it's not if, even if they're not yet at the same overall numbers, you know, outside of the context of one way attack drones.

It's, it's it's way more complicated, right? Both sides are putting out. Tons of smaller drones, right? From quadcopters to more interesting and advanced fixed wing drones. So, so that comes down more to you know, Ukraine's ability to decentralize its drone production across different, smaller firms instead of keeping it all centralized.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And I think that's a big difference as well between Ukrainian and Russian joint productions, because in Russia, naturally it's, it's a dictatorship and everything is centralized, especially when it comes to this war. And it's a big, it's a big problem of, for them, I think. Whereas in Ukraine, it can also be problematic because many of our, you know, important decisions or important production is extremely decentralized. So, but it has its advantages and, and disadvantages. Would you agree?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, when I talked to some Ukrainian officials, they were, they were telling me about how, basically it's been a big learning process, right? Because, because you sort of have to unlearn, you know, when you, when you look at an institution, right, like grow prom, right?

It's like a big state owned concern. You know, one of those like massive Titanic, military, industrial, complex types firms. And you know, what I was being told was that basically they had to change things up entirely, where they would put out a tender or they would put out sort of the minimum requirements or what they wanted, and then individual firms at a much smaller level could go do their own thing and then sell it to the government.

So it's a complete, you know, rethinking of how, of how drone production can be done or any kind of production for that matter. But you know, with the Russians, yeah, it's a little bit more centralized. It, it sort of seems like a lot of Russian drone efforts. You know, they show up on Twitter and they show up on social media, and then you never really see them again.

Now, this isn't the case for, for some of the, you know, like the Lancet. Other things that's where you have a bit of an advantage because you have economies of scale and a learning economy. So you can just keep that, you know, the factory producing the one drone going forever. And and that's actually something that Ukraine should be doing with one way attack drones. But with these, you know, these tiny quadcopters, you know, there, there are advantages to to working in that decentralized.

Anastasiia Lapatina: What about the frontline? We've been talking about Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil and deep into the Russian territory, but what about the actual frontline is Ukraine, of course, Ukraine's using a lot of reconnaissance, drones, the little drones that you've mentioned, but what about one way drones as well? How are they being used?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, so the bigger, the sort of bigger long range models we've been talking about for most of the podcasts don't tend to be used against targets that are, that are sort of right at the front line. You know, they're bigger and, and they're made for that specific long range role, so you don't see them as much.

What you do see is lots of, you know, one way tack drones of a different sort, right? That have 25 or 40 kilometers of range. And so they're a lot smaller. They're a lot harder to see, they're a lot cheaper to make, and they face different challenges. At the front lines, Russia has you know, a large number of jammers, a large amount of electronic warfare.

So it's very difficult to get a drone through sometimes. And so consequently a lot of, you know, research and a lot of development has been focused on countering counter measures. And I, I wrote, I just I just published along with Zach Lenor as a co-author of an article in Joint Forces Quarterly that talked about this, this cycle of, you know, countermeasures, in this case jammers, and then counter countermeasures, which is, you know, how do you change a drone so that it can be, so that it can't be jammed or so that it's harder to shoot down.

And, and so, you know, towards the frontline you see a really interesting cycle of adaptation on both sides. And yeah, you do see a lot of, you do see a lot of one-way tact drones. You see a lot of loitering, munitions which sort of, you know, you have the ability to hang around the battlefield until it's, until it, you know, either sees a target or is given a target.

And then, you know, you have some advancements in two areas that I think are worth watching. The first is terrain mapping. Which is where you know, the drone is able to detect where it is based on looking at the terrain and knows where it is geographically. And so it doesn't need GPS and it doesn't need a person controlling it.

And this makes it very difficult to jam because there's no link to sever, or if there is a link to sever, you know, it doesn't force the drone down. The drone just continues with with this alternate method of navigation. I think that's interesting to watch. And then the other thing to watch is ai. I, I don't think that AI has been, you know, widely adopted yet.

Like the, like the vast majority of drones in this conflict are not, you know, using ai. But there's a lot of experiments going on from the Ukrainians and from the Russians in different ways to, to use ai. And some, you know, Russian Lancet drones have had. You know, AI related components in them, you know, specifically made for AI that doesn't necessarily mean that those drones were controlled by ai. That just means that the component was in there. So, you know, short of cracking it open, it would be hard to tell.

Anastasiia Lapatina: And what does that mean in practice? Does that mean they're locating the target by themselves or something else?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, so yeah, so, so either, you know, you can use, you can use sort of machine learning. For, for the terrain mapping thing I was talking about before. But you can also you know, you as you approach more and more advanced versions of AI and autonomy, you know, it can, hypothetically, you can have drones that are selecting their own targets.

They're able to determine from whatever sensor suite they have, oh, this is a tank. And then head towards it autonomously. But, you know, there's obviously a lot of kinks to work out there, so, so we'll see. Of course, you know, over, over the next year or so, whether that's something that's feasible sort of on a large scale or if it's something that sort of specialist units are more interested in or, or in some circumstances they're used.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Looking at the world more broadly, is drone use in Ukraine changing the way other conflicts are fought around the world? I've seen some reports, for example, that there is drone usage in the Gaza War and also in other areas of the world. So do you think it's having an impact what we're seeing in Ukraine?

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, I think so. I think, I think it's not necessarily that developments in Ukraine. At least by Ukrainians are proliferating. I think it's that, you know, this conflict demonstrates just how useful drones can be to militaries and so, and, and armed groups for that matter. And so, you know, actors who have access to drones, whether those be sort of the small quadcopter style drones or larger, right?

One-way attack drones are going to adopt them if they feel it's useful. And, you know, obviously Iran is, is a big part of that, right? Since they, you know, they developed the Shahed 136 and, and you know, they're, they're allegedly sort of proliferating those drones to groups that favor them throughout the region.

But you know, also independently, I think, you know, you're gonna see them pop up in more and more conflicts where where maybe lines are static, where there's not a lot of movement along the front lines or where you know, it's a, it's, it's a, it's a conflict where one actor has a lot of very static targets and positions.

I think, you know, Sudan is a case to watch the RSF the one of the sides in the, in the Civil War, you know, have been using drones increasingly. And, you know, probably, you know, at least to my knowledge, you know, not with any sort of external help from Russia or Ukraine. Belarus recently, you know, in a parade they showed off you know, what they said was indigenously made, but looks a lot like a shehe.

You know, it's a similar sort of delta wing style drone. So I think the proliferation of, of drones into conflict is, is inevitable. And I think that you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that any kind of actor at any kind of level of technological sophistication. Can use drones, you know, having to spend a lot of money or develop a massive defense industry.

Anastasiia Lapatina: Marcel, thank you so much for being here. It was really interesting.

Marcel Plichta: Yeah, thank you.

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