The drone war has become a war of volume, and that forces Ukraine to find solutions that work not just once, but, if necessary, a hundred times a night: if Russia launches waves of Shaheds and decoy devices to saturate, the response cannot always depend on expensive missiles, heavy radars or scarce systems. The latest inventions are the best example.
Creativity without luxury. What is emerging is a “field” air defense, mobile and pragmatic, where the decisive factor is not so much the perfect design but the ability to react quickly, move even faster and shoot down enough so that the sky remains usable.
In this framework, two apparently absurd ideas (a light car armed with guided missiles and an interceptor drone with what looks like a fishing rod) are showing an implacable logic: if the enemy turns the air into a highway of cheap threats, you turn the shootdown into a simple, repeatable and adaptable gesture.
A buggy with missiles. The first surprise is a platform that seems more typical of an improvised patrol than an anti-aircraft battery: a light four-wheeled vehicle, type of off-road buggy, capable of moving through mud, open fields or roads and launching guided missiles from a double launcher mounted on the rear. Their value is not only in shooting, but in arriving on time: the Shaheds fly above 160 km/h and the margin between detecting, positioning and shooting is minimal, so mobility becomes a condition of operational survival.
Instead of waiting for the drone, this air defense goes out to look for it, positions itself where it suits, launches and moves again. That a single crew has accumulated more than twenty kills suggests that, at least in certain sectors and windows, the system is functioning as a “rapid sky closure” tool, a type of anti-aircraft fighter that does not need large infrastructures to produce results.
Hellfire on the ground. The most striking technical detail is the type of ammunition: due to its shape, the launcher is reminiscent of the American Hellfire, missiles originally designed for aerial platforms such as helicopters or armed drones, and which in advanced variants can act in “fire and forget” mode thanks to radar guidance. On paper, it is a huge leap compared to emergency solutions such as truck-mounted machine guns, which suffer when the enemy increases altitude, increases numbers and complicates engagement.
But here appears the central tension of this war: shooting down a relatively cheap drone with a comparatively expensive missile is, in economic terms, an uncomfortable decision. Still, war is not decided by unit cost alone, but by the ability to prevent the enemy from hitting infrastructure, exhausting defenses, and normalizing damage. In some circumstances, paying more for each kill may be rational if it avoids strategic hits or preserves other critical munitions.
The “fishing rod”
The “fishing rod” in the sky. The second idea seems straight out of a trench invention: an interceptor drone equipped with a protruding rod and a dangling thin rope, tensioned by a small weight, used to entangle the propellers of enemy quadcopter-type drones.
In practice, the interceptor does not need to explode or land a perfect hit: it just needs to go over it, “comb” the target and let the thread do the dirty work, turning physics into a weapon. If you will, it’s an elegantly brutal response to a modern problem: as electronic warfare evolves, drones become more resistant to jamming and jammingso the mechanics that cannot be “patched” with software gain value again. Tangling a propeller is the most direct way of telling a drone that no matter how smart it is: without rotation, it will fall.
Antijamming y lo tangible. These tactics reflect a deeper adaptation: the battlefield is pushing both sides to combine electronic interference with physical solutions, because the duel between countermeasures and counter-countermeasures no longer guarantees stable results.
Nets, ropes, cheap interceptors, controlled crashes, in-flight “captures”: everything points to a trend where shooting down small drones looks less like classic air defense and more like a craft accelerated by urgency. Even outside Ukraine, network launchers integrated into drones or portable devices are being tested, but here innovation does not come from laboratories, but from units that need something to work as soon as possible.
Two threats, two solutions. Furthermore, the interesting thing is that they do not compete with each other: each system seems optimized for a type of taken different. The missile vehicle addresses the large and repetitive problem of Shahed/Geran-style fixed-wing drones, fast, persistent, used in mass attacks and sometimes accompanied by decoys to saturate.
The “fishing rod”, on the other hand, is a more surgical tool against quadcopters, which usually operate close to the front, spy, correct fire or attack with light ammunition. One is road hunting against targets that come from afar, and the other is hand-to-hand combat in the air, almost a contact combat. Together they draw a clear map: Ukraine is not looking for a single miracle solution, but rather a toolbox where each trick covers a part of the enemy’s arsenal.
The cost war. We have told it before. Ultimately, it all comes back to the same dilemma: how to tear down a lot without going bankrupt. Ukraine is already using fast FPV interceptors that can cost very little compared to traditional systems, but require operator, expertise and chase time, limiting their scalability.
This buggy with missiles offers “cleaner” takedowns and with less human burden in the final guidance, but it forces you to select carefully when it is worth spending that shot. The “cane” is the opposite: an attempt to make the demolition as cheap as a simple gesture, extreme economy. Put another way: air defense is no longer just advanced technology: it is tactical accounting applied to the minute.
Imagen | Ukraine Air Command Central
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