This is how the Ukrainian Air Defense works to shoot down Russian drones

At that moment, you think about where it is going to impact and if there will be children sleeping right there; It is part of the strategy Putin’s psychological warfarewhich plays with the fear of civilians. But when there are 188 suicide drones that roar simultaneously over several Ukrainian cities at the same time, you only think that it takes a guardian angel army to see another day dawn.

“At the moment there is not a single place in all of Ukraine that can be considered a safe area due to drones,” says the commander Maryna Panasenkowho is responsible for four positions in the Anti-aircraft defense in the kyiv region.

“Drones and missiles They can reach any home and at any time,” he insists. It is almost 8 in the morning on a cold November day, and we chat – with coffee warming our hands – after having shared guard duty at his guard post throughout the night.

The four teams that Maryna commands monitor a critical energy infrastructure in the region – which is a recurring goal of the Kremlin– armed with searchlights, rifles and machine guns. It is up to them, and thousands of surveillance teams like them, whether Ukrainian cities can remain “livable” today.

A robot war

In recent weeks, Russia has shattered one by one the “records” of Shahed drones dropped against Ukraine. In a single night, 120 of these explosive planes were recorded; a few days later they were 145. Last Tuesday, Putin bombed Ukraine with 188 drones.

“Today war is characterized by the use of modern technologies: it has become a drone war, in a robot war. It cannot be described any other way,” explains the commander. “A drone is also an enemy, an adversary that approaches from the sky. AND He is a very intelligent enemy because behind it there are a large number of people who operate it,” he adds.

Kremlin troops launch these flying “robots” from several directions, and simultaneously, so that it is more difficult to take them down. The most common thing is that the teams that operate the surveillance radars detect groups directed against different cities and that have taken off from Crimeafrom Belgorod and since Belarusat the same time. So they come from the south, from the east and also from the north.

“We are in permanent contact with these control centers, which They warn us of threats that are heading towards our quadrant. We belong to the Territorial Defense“We are a volunteer corps that was formed in the first days of the invasion, but in October 2023 we were incorporated into the Anti-Aircraft Defense with the objective of protecting key infrastructures and monitoring possible infiltrations by sabotage groups,” explains Panasenko.

“At first, surveillance consisted of locating subjects who approached critical infrastructure, to send your location to the Russian forces,” he reveals. “Some were very young, and perhaps they were not even aware of what they were doing,” he concludes.

But with the intensive use of drones as a weapon of war – which over the last year has multiplied to the point of tactically changing the conflict – the work of these surveillance units now includes the fact of having to shoot down drones.

Iran and China

“Every time we face more serious threats with the use of drones: now they are alerting us that the Russians can also arm these planes with thermobaric bombs,” he warns Anatoly Pokhodnaythe supervisor of the area that Maryna’s men guard.

“To this we must add that the Russian strategy consists of launch swarms of drones among which there are armed drones and decoy drones with false payloads, so you don’t know if you are aiming at the plane that can bomb or the one that can’t,” adds Anatoly. Another problem caused by decoy drones – which could be half of those that Russia is launching at the moment – ​​is that they make Ukrainians spend an ammunition that they don’t have enough.

“But we have also learned that no need to waste projectiles of large caliber to shoot them down,” Anatoly counters. “When they fly very low, we can reach them with kalasnikov; we use the 12.7 mm machine gun if they fly higher, and there are 16 mm cannons for those who fly higher,” he details.

For these weapons to be effective against drones, the key factor is aim. “We go to the shooting range to train as soon as we have free time,” Maryna intervenes. “But it is also important to know what the attacks are like: Russia usually launches a guide dronewhich does not usually carry an explosive charge, followed by two more attacks“he details.

However, when intelligence sources report that an iranian cargo plane has landed on Russian soil, the Ukrainians know for sure that “in a couple of days massive attacks will occur“against which it is more difficult to maneuver.

The Shahed are Iranian designed dronesand for a long time they were manufactured there and then shipped to Russia. They are currently being mass produced in the Russian Federation, but most of their components still need to be imported for assembly there.

Iran is probably Shahed’s largest component supplier for the Kremlin, but at the moment no one goes unnoticed China’s role as a supplier of components used to manufacture these new weapons of war. Not only in the case of the Shahed, but also – and above all – in the case of the lethal FPV that are devastating the combat fronts.

Absolute coordination

The work of these aerial surveillance units thatarmed with more modest weapons They are dedicated to shooting down drones, it has become a key piece of the Anti-Aircraft Defense of the entire country.

“We work in coordination with the positions that the Army operates, which are the ones that shoot down missiles. Coordination between all of us is the key so that the anti-aircraft defenses as a whole work,” says Maryna. The teams that work to neutralize these missiles – which are increasingly larger – operate systems such as the Patriots or the IRIS. And it is on this teamwork that the sky of Ukraine don’t turn into hell.

“We cannot reveal details about how to work in the middle of an attack combined missiles and drones, but our mission is very important for the units that shoot down missiles to be successful,” says the commander. “With us here, they only have to focus on the approaching missile. Nothing else”.

Although the 35 men who are under Maryna’s orders serve voluntarily, the Ukrainian Army has long absorbed the work of Territorial Defense and undertake joint missions.

volunteer army

“In reality, for those of us who volunteer in Territorial Defense, being civilian or military is something that is deeply intertwined: even if you are not on guard, you you can no longer behave like a civilian when you hear the drones; You cannot stop constantly following the information from military groups, nor can you stop thinking that your companions they are in the front“Maryna reflects.

“When they changed our jobs and told us ‘from today you will not shoot to protect the cities, from today you shoot to protect the sky‘We knew that stopping was not an option, because the war was not going to stop either,” he continues.

“But the truth is that being part of the Anti-Aircraft Defense It’s a different challengeespecially since drones are constantly changing and enemy tactics are also evolving. And that requires us to be constantly willing to learn,” says the commander.

However, in addition to taking on the challenge of learning about the permanent evolution of the suicide drones that they must shoot down, another of the problems that this volunteer army of guardian angels has taken on is that each time They have less staff to do it. “Before I had 60 menbut about half have been mobilized this year and have been taken to other Army brigades,” Panasenko acknowledges.

And Ukraine is facing the difficult balance to maintain the front line, without neglecting the protection of the cities – against which the Kremlin is increasingly attacking. “All Ukrainians understand that we are at war, even hundreds of kilometers away away from the combat front,” says the commander.