Lessons of the Ukraine War 3
Flying lawnmowers
A Growing Vulnerability
The recent conflict in Ukraine has shown there to be a vulnerability present in most armed forces, but in Western NATO forces in particular. Namely that of long range loitering munitions, as exemplified by the Shahed-136 (Geran-2 in Russian service) drone.
To explain why such a cheap small drone is a significant threat I must first explain in brief how air defence is normally built up. And I will try to get not too technical so that it is easy to follow for everyone.
Modern air defences are built up of various systems integrated together to help combat the enemy aerial threat. This starts with sensors used to detect the threat, most often in the form of radar, the various weapon systems used to engage the identified threats, and finally a network to share and process all the sensor data to help coordinate the weapon system employment.
Currently the Air Defence (AD) weapon systems come in the form of Surface to Air Missiles (SAM) or gun-based systems. The SAM systems are further divided into ranges such as long, medium, or short-range SAM. Militaries tend to use more technical terms but none of those are important.
What is important is that as you can see is that the Air Defence is layered. With the purpose that any attack aimed at a vital system has to defeat every layer to succeed rather than just one defensive system. Since no one defensive system is 100% effective, having multiple layers thus helps create a system that together is much harder to defeat than any one individual system.
As you can imagine the long range systems are going to be the most heavily taxed system in an armed conflict, being that they are the first layer of defence. Plus having the longest range they will likely be covering multiple shorter range systems within their area. This means that the defence of not just one site, but rather multiple sites is dependent upon these longer range systems.
However being that the long range SAM systems need to be the most technically capable system, it should come as no surprise that they are also the most expensive, and the same goes for their missiles. So governments being keen to always save money, they tend to severely skimp on investment in these systems. “Because they are so capable after all, that you do not need that many of them” is their thinking. With that we can finally move onto the threat.
Cheap But Effective
The HESA Shahed-136 is a loitering munition. A type of weapon that isn’t exactly new but hasn’t been utilized to any truly great extent until now. Loitering munitions are a very broad category of weapon systems, but the type that the Shahed-136 is and why it is of concern is that they perform a similar role as cruise missiles. Namely striking vital enemy targets well beyond the frontline. And while these loitering munitions are less capable than cruise missiles due to using internal combustion engines driving propellors rather than turbofan engines. What they lack in speed and payload compared to cruise missiles they certainly make up for in costs.
The latest Block V variant of the US Tomahawk cruise missile costs a staggering $2 million US Dollars. And while we do not know the exact cost of the Shahed-136, with estimates ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 US Dollars, even the highest end estimate is significantly less than a cruise missile. This means that you can launch significantly more attacks for the same cost. This low cost comes from the fact it uses largely cheap and easily sourced commercial components, which should be part of the worry, as it means that making and employing such weapon systems may not be beyond paramilitary or non-state actors such as terrorists.
Part of the reason the Shahed-136 has been so effective in Ukraine is that it flies at low level towards its target. And since the earth is round, a radar is only capable of seeing out to the horizon, but not below it. See the image below highlighting this effect in regard to ballistics and hypersonic cruise missiles.
By flying low the Shahed-136 despite being a relatively slow moving target still shows up on radar systems relatively late, aiding in its success rate against the Ukrainian Air Defences.
However we have seen the Ukrainians successfully intercept and shoot down the Geran-2 (the Russian version of the Shahed-136) in Ukraine and our Western air defence systems are a lot more modern than Ukraine’s Soviet era systems, certainly we would be capable of dealing with the threat much better? While we may certainly have a much better successful intercept rate against such systems, it is the ability to deal with multiple waves of enemy attacks using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and loitering munitions like Russia has, that I am not too certain about.
A Lack of Depth
The leaks by Jack Teixeira are incredibly illuminating, for what little they do reveal about the Ukrainian military and its capabilities. But of all the pages that were leaked, the one I think should be ringing alarm bells is the page on Ukrainian Air Defence posted above. The really important part from that page however is the table on the air defence systems on hand.
The SA-10 (S-300) and SA-12 (S-300V) are the primary long range SAM systems in Ukrainian use, with the SA-11 (BUK) being the primary medium range SAM system in use. As we can see from the table, Ukraine is firing 200 long range SAM missiles per month. With the primary medium range SAM firing 69 monthly (with an additional 64 from other NATO delivered systems NASAMS and IRIS-T).
This is worrying because as the intel page rightfully points out, when the long range SAM systems run out of missiles to fire, this will actually increase pressure on the medium range SAM systems to intercept even more targets now as the long range system isn’t taking out targets before they reach them. And that will then make the medium range SAM systems go through their missile stocks quicker until they too may be depleted.
Now how this ties into the West and why I am writing this lesson in particular is because we have generally skimped on air defence systems in the West, because we haven’t faced an opponent who could threaten us in the sky. But these loitering munitions should change that calculus in more ways than one. Because now someone without an air force could still strike deep behind the frontlines at vital military and civilian targets. And the West cannot really rely on the usual standby of using its air force to shoot down these drones either. Since their slow speed and low altitude make that not just a hard but dangerous task that risks not just expensive aircraft, but also pilot lives. As South Korea found out recently.
Okay so we expand our air defence forces, I may hear some say. But that leads me to come back to the earlier point about these loitering munitions being cheap and effective. Even on the highest end estimate the Shahed-136 costs a mere $50,000 US Dollars. Meanwhile the US made PAC-3 MSE costs a staggering $5,273,000 US Dollars. That is over 105 times as expensive. And even if we take costs out of the equation, Lockheed-Martin the manufacturer of the PAC-3 MSE says they can make about 500 a year. That is only good for two and a half months of firings in Ukraine like scenario. Plus, I strongly suspect that Iran and Russia can make significantly more than 500 Shahed-136/Geran-2 a year. To say nothing of what the Chinese can produce in the realm of loitering munitions.
So, what am I really getting at here, is that while our air defence systems may be well and good, they are however incredibly expensive per engagement. That was fine when the weapons they were facing off against were of similar cost or even more expensive. But now that a threat that exists that is a hundredth of the cost of the system we are expending to defend ourselves against an attack, it makes attritional warfare very much in favour of the attacker.
One thing that will likely be done to mitigate this aspect of attritional warfare is to be more selective about which types of targets to engage with which types of weapons. That means intentionally letting attacks penetrate within the multiple layers of the air defence systems, to ultimately engage it with the system that has the lowest cost per engagement. Which will likely be at the short if not very short range layer. The short ranged AIM-9X made by Raytheon costs about $512,000 US Dollars per missile. Though Raytheon only produces slightly under 500 per year of those missiles. Which shows that while the cost difference is a lot better, the production difference is not. And so the there may again be a need for gun based air defence systems to be fielded in large numbers. Something that will tie up a large amount of manpower. Which is why I say this threat poised by loitering munitions needs to be taken seriously. Since any response is one that is going to take time, money, and manpower to implement.
Now to not end on a completely negative note, I will say that we at least thankfully already have an off the shelf system that is capable of filling this potential future role.
The Centurion C-RAM which has been used to protect US and allied bases in Iraq and Afghanistan from rocket, artillery, and mortar attacks successfully for many years. And it is based around the Phalanx CIWS that is in widespread service with navies around the world. It may not be a perfect solution, but it is a good start.