Ukraine losing 10,000 drones per month to Russian electronic warfare: report

Ukraine is suffering a tremendous loss of 10,000 drones each month, largely due to Russia’s electronic warfare — a “critical” component of Moscow’s military tactics, a recent report said.

Russia’s use of tech defense systems has contributed to the staggering loss of Ukrainian aerial drones — approximately 10,000 each month, according to the latest Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) report.

Russia deployed a high density of electronic warfare equipment in Donbas in 2022. They have since increased their supply.

Russia now has a system every six miles along the war’s 750-mile-long frontline.

The machines are set back about four miles from the front and take down drones by jamming their frequency and sending them in different directions.

The RUSI report, titled “Meatgrinder: Russian Tactics in the Second Year of its Invasion of Ukraine,” said the new tactics contributed to a Ukrainian “loss rate in UAVs of approximately 10,000 per month.”

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Russia has also proven to be “highly capable” of intercepting and decrypting Ukrainian military communications.

The report was produced following interviews with three anonymous Ukrainian military personnel.

“Ukrainian officers recalled one incident in which the Russian headquarters gave preemptive warning to its units of an artillery strike based on Ukrainian troops calling in a fire mission,” the report read.

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“The Ukrainian troops were communicating with Motorola radios with 256-bit encryption, but it appeared that the Russians were able to capture and decrypt these transmissions in near real time.”

High-tech Russian systems such as the Shipovnik-Aero jamming station can imitate other signals and has “a sophisticated range of effects for downing UAVs,” according to the report.

One of the report’s authors, Dr. Jack Watling, took to Twitter to share details of his findings and make note that 10,000 drones being downed per month was not an exact statistic.

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“So how confident am I in the number 10,000 per month? As an exact number, I’m not. The actual total varies month by month and day by day and is not closely tracked. But consumption is definitely very high,” Watling said.

“So if the figure isn’t exact – any neatly rounded figures are suspicious – why use it at all? Firstly because it is the number we got from the Ukrainian General Staff and from the part that has the best data. [Secondly] Putting a number to consumption is important in making the policy relevant point.”