To counter The growing number of Geran-2 drones[1] sent by Russia, Ukraine has implemented a series of protective measures. So far, this strategy has proven effective, but the Russians are also continuously adapting their tactics.
According to a statistical analysis, on average[2], only 13 to 14% of Geran-2s reached their target between February and May 2024, which the Russians considered insufficient despite the volume of devices deployed. As a result, they worked to technically improve their drones and adapt their employment doctrines.
Since September 2024, the success rate of drones does indeed seem to have increased. For their part, the Ukrainians face a growing challenge in this technological war, while certain structural limits are beginning to appear in their own defense capabilities.
Partner article proposed by CERBAIR, the French leader in the fight against drones
In this section:
The 3 levels of Ukrainian defense
Ukraine's defense strategy against Russian Geran-2 drones is based on three levels of protection, aimed at limiting their military impact as much as possible:
The jamming and the spoofing GNSS signals
The first level relies on a large deployment of jamming and/or spoofing GNSS signals as soon as the radars detect the approach of drones. The jamming zones cover the different possible trajectories, often complex, that these drones can take.
This technique proves effective in disorienting the Geran-2s and moving them away from their targets, but it has drawbacks.[1]. First, this jamming also disrupts GNSS signals for all civilian and military users.
While individuals may perceive this as a simple inconvenience (some GPS sometimes display erroneous and distant locations such as Turkey[2]), logistics convoys may have difficulty following safe and passable routes. Artillery and drone units are also impacted: they may find themselves unable to use certain equipment (guided shells and rockets, drones) or see their accuracy reduced.
Finally, although jamming prevents some drones from successfully carrying out their strikes, it does not exempt the defenders from having to shoot down the remaining devices, unless they are diverted far enough away, or even manage to leave Ukrainian territory as sometimes happens.
However, there is still uncertainty about the effectiveness of the jamming, as it is difficult to know the target actually aimed at by each drone; it should also be noted that, if a Geran-2 wanders for too long, it could regain the GNSS signal. This jamming strategy therefore remains mainly preventive, although effective.
Furthermore, while GNSS jamming is also useful against Russian glide bombs, it is often difficult to activate it in time for these weapons. Indeed, the delay between the detection of a glide bomb and its impact is generally too short to engage jammers in the area. Furthermore, since Ukrainian radars have been moved away from the front line to preserve them, the detection of these bombs is delayed accordingly.
Ground/air artillery units
The second level relies on ground-to-air artillery units deployed to shoot down drones approaching particularly sensitive areas. The most efficient systems are those equipped with radars, such as the ZSU-23-4 Shilka or the German Guepard.
However, their limited number forces the majority of ground-to-air artillery units to make do with 12,7 mm, 14,5 mm machine guns and, increasingly often, simple 7,62 mm machine guns which, in the latter case, lack the power to guarantee the destruction of drones.
The effectiveness of these machine guns remains limited, especially at night, where shots are often oriented according to the noise of drones and using projectors. In addition, their low operational range requires a significant number of these units to hope to protect an area effectively. Finally, these machine guns can only target drones flying at low altitude, which limits their effectiveness.
Ground-to-air missile systems
The third and final level of protection is based on ground-to-air missile systems, which destroy drones that pose the highest threats or fly too high to be intercepted by artillery.
The Russians frequently adjust the flight altitude of their drones depending on the desired effects, with heights ranging from 35-50 meters to 4000-5000 meters. This requires the Ukrainian forces to constantly adjust the systems used depending on the flight altitude of the devices.
More anecdotally, it can be noted that helicopters and planes are also used to destroy these drones; however, apart from fighters, these interventions are only possible during the day.
All of these measures have made it possible to significantly reduce the military impact of these drones. However, lost, damaged or shot down devices fall back, which causes collateral damage, particularly in urban areas where civilian infrastructure is often affected.
In addition, some drones end up crashing outside the Ukrainian borders, raising questions for the affected countries. It is then difficult to determine whether these incidents are intentional on the part of Russia, whether they are the result of an error or an accident linked to the jamming and spoofing GNSS signals.
Russian adaptations
It is clear that the adversary is not standing still: Russian forces are carefully monitoring the effectiveness of their strikes based on the means deployed and the countermeasures taken by the Ukrainian army. Given the low success rate recorded in early 2024, Russian forces have adjusted their strategy by applying various corrective measures.
Combating GNSS jamming
The Russians appear to have identified GNSS jamming as the main factor limiting the effectiveness of drones Geran-2Indeed, even if these vectors escape ground-to-air defense systems, they fail to reach their target if their location precision is insufficient.
Until recently, Geran-2 were equipped with the GNSS adaptive antenna network Comet P8, equipped with eight antenna elements capable of receiving GPS L1 and GLONASS L1 GNSS signals. This configuration made it possible to reduce the effects of jamming by narrowing the antenna beam upwards, thus making drones less susceptible to lateral interference.
However, this solution is not yet optimal, a new antenna model, the Kometa R8, has been installed. In addition to the L1 GNSS bands, this antenna also covers the L2 and L5 bands, thus improving resilience to jamming. This highly directive solution nevertheless has a drawback: during the diving attack phase, the beam, too narrow, limits the reception of GNSS signals with an incidence angle of 45°, leading to a loss of precision in the final phase of the attack.
To overcome this problem, Russian engineers are considering integrating the antenna system Stena E8, which has nine antennas positioned in a circle allowing more flexible beam steering, even during attack, while covering more GNSS bands.
Other options are also being studied, such as the CRPA antenna NUT16 AR16L 16-element system, which operates only on the L1 frequency, or the system SENA-E9 with 12 antennas, specially designed to counter the spoofing.
In this way, the Russians hope to significantly increase the resilience of the Geran-2 to jamming, ensuring continuity of reception until the targets are reached.
Increase in the number of vectors
According to the Ukrainian President[3], Russia reportedly launched ten times more drones Geran-2than in the previous autumn. In October 2024 alone, no fewer than 2 such devices were sent against Ukraine, bringing the total since the beginning of the year to 023. The production of Geran-2 has also increased from 500 units per month at the beginning of the year to 600 per month since August 2024, with the aim of producing up to 6 by the end of the year.
However, this increase in production is not enough to explain the spectacular increase in the number of attacks, which now regularly exceeds a hundred drones sent each night. In addition to the Geran-2, Russian forces also produce and launch drones Gerbera, considered as “mini-Geran”.
These devices share similar performance but carry a lighter military payload, costing less than $10 each.[4] the Gerbera come in three versions: a "kamikaze" version, a version dedicated to electronic warfare equipped with intelligence sensors and a decoy version without a military charge.
The Russians also use decoy drones of the type Parody, very cheap[5]which would cost between $1000 and $1300 each for a range of 600 km. Equipped with a Luneberg lens to increase their radar signature, these small drones are designed to attract the attention of anti-aircraft defenses and exhaust Ukrainian resources by deflecting fire towards them.
Even if they are destroyed by anti-aircraft artillery, which is cheaper than missiles, the very low cost of these decoys makes it very profitable to exhaust the enemy's air defense. As an indication, the cost of a drone Parody is equivalent to that of about ten 30 mm shells, about twenty 23 mm shells or about 160 12,7 mm cartridges.
[1] https://www.cerbair.com/articles/brouillage-gnss-une-arme-a-double-tranchant
[2] https://web.telegram.org/a/#-1001694108014_363151
[3] https://www.twz.com/news-features/russia-firing-record-number-of-shahed-136s-at-ukraine
[4] https://www.drone-actu.fr/drone-militaire/gerbera-le-drone-militaire-low-cost
[5] https://english.nv.ua/nation/parody-russians-use-a-new-type-of-uav-to-imitate-the-shahed-what-is-known-50465488.html
[1] https://www.cerbair.com/articles/geran-2-du-missile-low-cost-a-la-munition-rodeuse
[2] https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/update-alabugas-production-rate-of-shahed-136-drones
This article was brought to you by CERBAIR, the French specialist in anti-drone combat.
Thank you for this very comprehensive overview of current countermeasures against drones of these types. A question regularly comes to mind –> why don't GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) systems integrate robust authentication? This could definitively solve the problem of spoofing and limit its use by our competitors. However, setting up a system based on unique identifiers for each transmitter and receiver does not seem insurmountable from a technical point of view. There is also the possibility of using inertial units to counter jamming, but I suppose that their high cost probably makes this solution unsuitable for the drones mentioned here? Perhaps an expert in this field, who would come across this very good site, could shed light on these points.
Too bad the sponsorship of the article makes us miss another layer that works very well and so the youtuber Tytelman became the reporter. Patrols in pick ups with 50 mm or 7.62 and lighting spots.
The system is basic but ultimately quite effective according to the witnesses in this video.
Reread the article. It's dealt with. The goal here is not to serve as a mouthpiece for Ukrainian propaganda, or Russian propaganda for that matter. If it were effective, there would not be such an increase in drone impact rates. I admit to being quite hard on these voices that vigorously carry Ukrainian propaganda, as absurd as it may be, because I consider that they are largely responsible for the decline in support for Ukraine in public opinion in France, and more broadly, in the West.