Cost-effective defences: Tackling Russian drones in Ukraine skies
Russians are continuously attacking Ukraine at night with cruise missiles and swarms of Shahed drones. These drones, which have minimal effectiveness against military targets, serve the Russians not only as a weapon of terror but also as decoys to divert the attention of Ukrainian air defence. This is how Ukrainians hunt them.
Additionally, Russians use Shaheds to map Ukrainian defence activity, helping them conduct subsequent attacks by exploiting identified gaps.
Meanwhile, Ukraine must deploy equipment to combat these drones, which cost at most tens of thousands of dollars, and often use air defence systems, where a single missile costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. There have been instances of firing Patriots, where a missile costs a few million dollars.
Therefore, Gepard gun systems are ideally suited for hunting Shaheds. Depending on the number of shells fired, they cost from a few to tens of thousands of euros. Another economical option is the American VAMPIRE (Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment) systems based on simple APKWS guided rockets, which cost slightly over 13,000 dollars each.
Below, you can see a drone being shot down. The thermal camera image and markers visible at the beginning of the recording are identical to those used in previous instances of the "Vampire" system.
American Vampire — The world's cheapest rocket air defence system
The VAMPIRE system is a very lightweight solution designed for installation on vehicles like pickup trucks. It includes a mast with an electro-optical head featuring a thermal camera and laser designator and a LAND-LGR4 launcher container from Arnold Defense. It weighs only 27 kilograms and holds four 70mm calibre rockets.
The ordnance is APKWS rockets with a seeker head that follows a reflected laser beam. This is a very inexpensive means of attack because it is based on the widely used, unguided Hydra 70mm rockets within NATO countries. Constructing an APKWS involves unscrewing the front part of the old missile with a contact fuse and installing a new section that includes a seeker head and deployable control surfaces.
