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AUGUST 2024 Highlights

• Hamas and Hezbollah are expanding their arsenal of fixed-wing drones,
  underscoring an adaptive cycle meant to defeat Israel’s air defenses.
• Facing an escalated drone threat, Israel is fielding a variety of countermeasures. As in
  Ukraine, there is an iterative, sword versus shield race between offensive and
  defensive technologies.
• Tensions increased this week between Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Spurred by an
  escalation of rocket attacks from Hamas, Israel targeted dozens of sites across Gaza
  on Aug. 23.
• Under pressure from Russia’s missile and drone strikes, Ukraine’s energy grid is in
  peril.
• Despite Ukrainian advances in the Kursk direction, Russian forces have not reduced
  their attacks against Pokrovsk, a key waypoint on Ukraine’s eastern front lines.
  Ukrainian forces are under pressure and may be forced to withdraw from Pokrovsk.

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EDITOR's NOTE

The long-range strike campaigns currently waged by Ukraine and Russia offer a comparative case study in the old versus the new — a contrast that underscores the emerging utility of low cost, attritable systems, such as drones.

With the ground war mired in an attritional slugfest, both sides have turned to long range strikes to seek a strategic advantage. Russia, for its part, has targeted Ukraine’s national power grid and civilian areas using a mix of ballistic missiles, re-purposed surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles, and Iranian-designed loitering munitions. This week’s Vector Report will describe how those strikes have chipped away at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, posing dilemmas for civilian officials as they look ahead to
winter.

On Aug. 20, Ukrainian news agencies quoted remarks by Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, stating that Russian missiles and drones have hit nearly 11,900 targets in Ukraine since the full-scale war began on Feb. 24, 2022. Of those strikes, Syrskyi said, more than 6,200, or roughly 53%, were against civilian targets.

Over the full-scale war’s timeline, Ukrainian air defenses have successfully downed 43% of Russia’s long-range missile and drone strikes. Of that share, however, Ukrainian air defenses have only scored a 25% success rate against Russian missiles, highlighting the ongoing challenge of defending against these advanced threats. Of Russia’s missiles, the Kh-22 and Kh-32 air-launched, supersonic cruise missiles have been the most problematic — out of 362 launches, Ukraine’s air defenses have only
recorded two successful intercepts (as of Aug. 20).

The Russian air strike campaign, as punishing as it has been, has not changed the war’s trajectory. Ukrainian workers are, by and large, able to repair the damage done to energy infrastructure at a pace sufficient to avert a nationwide power grid collapse. Most importantly, civilian morale never buckled.
From an anecdotal perspective, every Russian missile that hits a hospital or a school or a shopping mall reinforces Ukraine’s national will to resist. These collective, traumatic experiences also tend to unify civil society.

Down in Kyiv’s bomb shelters during an air raid, you might expect to encounter expressions of fear or despair. What you’re more likely to hear, however, are casual conversations — even laughter. You’ll see children engrossed in games on their smartphones and tablets. When explosions thunder up above, people inevitably exchange worried glances. But those fleeting moments of fear are almost always
followed up by a dismissive shaking of the head or a joke or a burst of ironic laughter — as if to say, “Can you believe this is actually happening?”

Just this week, Ukraine launched an aerial drone against a Russian air base in the Murmansk region — more than 1,000 miles from the Ukrainian border. On Thursday, a Ukrainian drone raid struck a Russian Air Force base in the Volgograd region. While the full extent of the damage is unclear, videos circulating on social media show massive fires and walls of billowing smoke. And on Saturday, Aug. 17, Ukrainian long-range drone strikes against Russia’s Proletarsk state reserve fuel facility, about 150 miles from Ukraine’s border, ignited an inferno that burned for days. According to some estimates, the Proletarsk facility holds about $200 million worth of stored fuel.

Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign stands apart from Russia’s in several key ways. First and foremost, Ukraine is not deliberately targeting civilian areas, as Russia has repeatedly done in Ukraine. Ukraine’s long-range strikes are limited to military and industrial objectives. Secondly, Ukraine’s strike campaign largely relies on relatively cheap unmanned systems — often improvised solutions crafted during the full-scale war.

Thus, while Russia lobs waves of multi-million-dollar missiles at Ukraine, Ukraine sends inexpensive, attritable drones toward Russia. This asymmetry reduces the value of Russia’s inherent economic and industrial advantages over Ukraine. Along those lines, Ukraine’s approach underscores a global phenomenon: The democratization of precision-strike, abetted by unmanned technology. Israel is no stranger to this. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have used low-cost drones against Israeli targets. Drone strikes have also targeted US forces in Syria, Iraq, and the Red Sea.

Amid this evolving backdrop, the US homeland should be on high alert for drone attacks against critical infrastructure and military sites. Adversarial units operating from within US territory can assemble and arm small drones for such a sneak attack — a threat that demands a nationwide drone defense network.

Our enemies no longer need ICBMs and hypersonic missiles to bring the next war to the US homeland. They can use low-cost, small drones, armed with simple munitions, to create chaos and inflict damage.

Thus, the urgency to hone America’s drone combat and defense capabilities transcends the expeditionary battlefield. We must anticipate all the creative ways in which our adversaries can leverage unmanned systems against us — both at home and abroad.

With that in mind, the Vector Report’s mission is to arm your imagination and keep you up to date with the latest trends and transformations in drone warfare around the globe.