Ukraine’s struggle against Shahed drone attacks: a failure in defense strategy

The mass attacks of “Shaheds” on Ukrainian cities are, of course, primarily a psychological warfare element against Ukraine, a way to intimidate the population and exert pressure on the Ukrainian military-political leadership, on our Western partners, and on the U.S. administration.

This is similar to what the Nazis did during World War II when they bombed Britain, and what the Allies did when they bombed Germany. That much is clear.

But there is another side to the story. Our side. The barbaric raids on Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Kyiv show the helplessness of our air defense, the inability to close the sky from those slow-moving and visible Iranian drones. Yes, some Shaheds are shot down by mobile groups, but not all of them, and the destruction, fires, and loss of life cannot be hidden.

The issue is not that our partners are providing us with insufficient air defense systems—our partners simply do not have enough anti-aircraft missiles to repel the attacks of hundreds of cheap drones every night. The problem is that in the two and a half years since Shaheds appeared in our sky, we have not found an effective way to fight them, we have not created our own cheap anti-aircraft missiles, and we have not developed our own intercepting drones.

Yes, there are constant announcements of “any day now” the appearance of the next Wunderwaffe with various “inventions” from Ukrainian “inventors” flying around in the latest media frenzy, but in the end—nothing. As a result, houses burn, people die, and our position in negotiations becomes worse and worse. Because nobody likes the weak.

And what’s the reason, you might ask? The reason is that the state has distanced itself from solving the key task of creating anti-drone defense. Instead of serious state programs, consolidation of efforts from all Ukrainian engineers (who are actually not many), we see loud PR, media visibility, and the distribution of “grants” of five thousand dollars to garage “inventors.” This is not how it works, my friends.

Yuriy Kasyanov

Ukraine Front Lines

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