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- [00:01]
Lawfare Podcast Host
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- [00:32]
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- [01:02]
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- [01:04]
Marcel Plichta
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- [01:05]
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- [01:07]
Lawfare Podcast Host
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- [01:09]
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- [01:45]
Mary Ford
I'm Mary Ford, intern at Lawfare, with an episode for the Lawfare archive for August 24, 2025. This week, President Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. While the exchange seemed much friendlier than Zelensky's Oval Office visit in February, the two leaders didn't make concrete progress on peace negotiations in the Russia Ukraine war. The meeting followed on the heels of Trump's summit in Anchorage, Alaska, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For today's Archive episode, I selected an episode from August 1, 2024, in which Anastasia Lapetinha sat down with a former analyst from the US Department of Defense, Marcel Pl, to discuss Ukraine's drone campaign against Russia, Ukraine's choice of targets inside Russia, the future of drone warfare, and more.
- [02:48]
Anastasia Lopatyna
It's the Lawfare podcast. I am Anastasia Lopatyna, Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare, with Marcel Plichta, a fellow at the center for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews and a former analyst at the U.S. department of Defense who currently works as an instructor at the Gray Dynamics Intelligence School.
- [03:07]
Marcel Plichta
I think it's something that benefits Ukraine is to keep pushing what the maximum potential range is because that increases the number of things that Russia has to worry about defending every Extra kilometer of range means that there's a, another factory, another substation, another oil refinery, another military target or airfield to worry about.
- [03:27]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Today we're talking about the Ukrainian drone campaign against Russia and how the war in Ukraine is changing, how drones are used in conflicts all around the world. Marcel, it's no secret that drones have become an essential component of the Russo Ukrainian war on both sides of the frontline. Ukraine has even established a separate branch of its armed forces, the Unmanned Systems Forces. But I know that you've been a big advocate for the Ukrainian use of drones since the very beginning of Russia's full skin invasion two and a half years ago. You've even co authored a study in 2022 which was presented to several governments and institutions within Ukraine where you and your colleagues were making the case for a strategic one way drone campaign against Russia. So could you just tell me what was the logic behind this proposal? Why did you choose to focus on drones specifically as opposed to any other weapon?
- [04:17]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, I think the idea, the idea for, for a one way attack drone campaign came to me in 2020 and I remember very clearly what sort of prompted it was. There was reporting that Ukrainian helicopter pilots had flown into Russia and they had done some sort of, some sort of attack, I forget. But it was on Russian territory. And that got me thinking because by that point this was maybe March, April. The, the conflict had changed very much from what it was like in February, right, where you had this massive Russian push towards Ukrainian cities. It had, it had become a little bit, I don't think stabilized is the right word, but it become more static. It occurred to me that now that the conflict was static, you know, Ukraine was going to need some kind of way to strike the enemy at long range. Right. They had very few options to do so and they had very few options to develop in the sense that, you know, Ukraine had some Tochka missiles, right, that they had pre war, they had a very limited number of those. And it was becoming clear that Ukraine's international partners were sort of cagey about the idea of delivering very long range weapons. I mean, this was before, you know, tanks, this is before himars, this was before all of that. So drones seemed like a natural fit. Ukraine had, you know, a drone industry, they had competent engineers. There is a defense industry in place that could very quickly create a drone that sort of served as a minimum viable product, as these are compared to say, a missile. Quite easy to assemble, quite easy to develop en masse. So what I saw was a need for long range strike And a need for an indigenous long range strike capability and an opportunity to leverage sort of the advancements where we are with commercial drone technology and Ukraine's drone industry to meet that need then in terms of getting international partners on board, not that this necessarily worked, but I thought it was more likely that international partners would be willing to send drone components to Ukraine than something like a missile if they were worried about escalation.
- [06:19]
Anastasia Lopatyna
So in the study you did, what was the crux of your recommendations to Ukraine and its allies?
- [06:25]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, I mean, the main, the main recommendation was, you know, simply making as many one way attack drones as possible. If western partners wanted to be involved, if external partners wanted to be involved, subsidizing those parts and subsidizing those components to make it easier. You know, we thought of two kinds. It didn't necessarily pan out, you know, this way when, when the Ukrainians got a hold of it, but we initially conceptualized one sort of very long range version and a shorter range version. With the idea being that the shorter range version would be even less expensive and more, because it was smaller, more survivable to attack things in a shorter, shorter range, closer to the front.
- [07:05]
Anastasia Lopatyna
So you and your colleagues propose a one way drone campaign against Russia. And what are the goals of such a campaign? What effects did you predict that it would have?
- [07:14]
Marcel Plichta
So we thought that it would present a very serious challenge to Russia, not necessarily, you know, a game changer or a war winner, but that it would very seriously complicate the Russian war effort. You know, this was because they had very limited air defense and they were operating on this assumption that Ukraine couldn't reach them, that once they were out of range of a conventional artillery system, you know, they could operate sort of with impunity. We figured it would be able to hit like this, this kind of drone would be able to hit so called soft targets. So things like fuel reserves or ammo dumps that aren't very, that aren't heavily armored, they don't have a lot of air defense around them. And you know, we figured such a campaign could also have a psychological impact. Right. Striking something like the Black Sea Fleet right in Sevastopol has a bit of a psychological effect because it feels to the Russian military like they're not safe in places that they thought were safe. And then lastly, and I think that this has been one of the more enduring things we've seen. You know, we predicted that it would force Russia to move its air defenses away from the front where it was very sorely needed. Right. And where it was a direct threat to Ukrainian pilots and Ukrainian drones and force them to move it very, very far from the front to protect sites hundreds of kilometers away from the actual fighting. So those were sort of the main things we predicted and some of them turned out to be very much the case and other ones turned out a little different.
- [08:44]
Anastasia Lopatyna
So how did people initially react to this proposal?
- [08:48]
Marcel Plichta
You know, the final sort of version, if you can call it a final version, went through a lot of different iterations because, you know, we went around to, to a bunch of different people to get, you know, their thoughts and their reactions. From some corners, a lot of people who read it thought that it was just too escalatory outright. And this is, this is a story familiar to, familiar to Ukrainians, I suspect. Yeah, the idea that, that A, such a system should be developed and used and then B, any, any sort of idea that the west or that Western partners would assist with it, you know, they felt that that was escalatory. I think that a lot of people, other people were interested enough in it to take it on board. We weren't the only sort of people recognizing that Ukraine both had a need for long range strike and you know, that drones were a good way to do so while we were sort of doing this was the very first one way attack drone strike, the long range one, and that was against an oil facility in Rostov in June 2022. So clearly there was, there is some parallel thinking going within Ukraine and you know, basically at the point where we got to Buchare over on Prom, at the point where, you know, it was getting to, to officials in, in Western governments, not that they necessarily read it or took it on board, but you know, at least it was getting to them at that point. I think there was a little bit more buy in, but I think, I think really the turning point was when Russia started using shaheds. So when Russia started using their own version of it, I think it was, it was clear that this was a workable idea because it was being demonstrated on a large scale. So yeah, and then, and then from there there's a, there was a tenuous very, very long and interesting story that I wasn't involved in, you know, of Ukrainian manufacturers and Ukrainian intelligence trying to get this concept off the ground, moving from some little paper that we had written into an actual workable concept.
- [10:53]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Right. So two years later we can kind of see this proposal of yours play out in real time. And since roughly the beginning of this year, Ukraine has been very actively using its drones to hit Targets deep inside Russia and Ukraine has been focusing especially on the oil refineries. Dozens of them have been hit already. Why is Ukraine hitting oil infrastructure as opposed to focusing on military barracks or weapons caches or something specifically military related?
- [11:22]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, and to be fair, some targets are military, but yeah, the majority. Right.
- [11:27]
Anastasia Lopatyna
The majority, I think are oil.
- [11:28]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, yeah. Are oil refineries and metallurgical plants and these sorts of things that are more indirectly, that more indirectly help the regime. I think it's a couple of things. I think that Ukraine now, as opposed to in early 2022, has a lot more long range weapons than it did at the start. You know, you, you've seen the arrival of Himars, you've seen the arrival of atacms, you've seen the arrival of Short Storm Shadow. These give Ukraine a much better. Although it could, it could always be better. You know, they could always donate more to Ukraine, but it gives, it gives the Ukrainian military more of an ability to strike targets that are closer in with a lot more force. So a hardened target or a defended target, you're more likely to get a hit and a kill with one of those conventional systems than, than you are with a drone like this. And so for those, for those, it makes more sense to use the conventional systems. The, the facilities that are farther out, that are deeper in Russia. You know, a lot of, a lot of what Ukraine has that's not drones doesn't necessarily have the range to reach it. And it's not necessarily the highest priority for a limited number of missiles. If the highest priority is, you know, the ammo dump, they're going to use their, their best system against it or the Black Sea fleet for that matter. When it comes to oil refineries, specifically, oil refineries are, I think I tweeted once that it was a Goldilocks target and that it was, it was just the right size. It's, it's really, really big. It doesn't, it doesn't move. It's very expensive to repair damage to it, but it's also, well, I don't want to say fragile, but it's, it's not sturdy enough for a relatively moderate sized explosive.
- [13:07]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And also things are very inflammable on them, right?
- [13:10]
Marcel Plichta
Yes, yes, very flammable. It's, it's, it's not so much that the explosion itself causes the damage, but you're sort of just lighting a match. Right. And, and it also, I mean, it does have, you know, a psychological effect because there doesn't tend, at least I haven't seen very many reports of civilian injuries or deaths as a result of these attacks. So you have a situation where there's very little physical harm being done to the population. But you see these big columns of smoke, you know, going up, these enormous fires.
- [13:42]
Anastasia Lopatyna
The photos are very dramatic when you see them.
- [13:44]
Marcel Plichta
Yes, yes, the photos and the videos. Yeah. And of course, you also have the financial side of it. Right. Oil is obviously a big part of. Of the Russian, you know, the Russian regime's revenue. It's a big part of the economy. So obviously, you know, you're doing a very, very large amount of damage with a relatively inexpensive drone. You know, if you want to reduce it to numbers, a, you know, a drone that costs 50,000 or 100,000 or $200,000 can very quickly make up that value and damage to a refinery. You know, you've seen that now in Russia, where you have the oil industry sort of complaining that they're, you know, inadequately defended, putting up nets, you know, to try and catch the drones, you know, doing. Doing all of these sort of ad hoc things.
- [14:31]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And how does that work?
- [14:32]
Marcel Plichta
How does that work? I mean, if.
- [14:35]
Anastasia Lopatyna
If it does, even.
- [14:36]
Marcel Plichta
It would depend on the scenario. I mean, if. If you knew, if you knew the trajectory that the drone was likely to fly in and you put a big metal net in the way, it would probably catch it. But that is assuming that, you know, the exact trajectory and the angle that it's coming down. If it's sort of a slow, gradual descent, you know, maybe. I think you'd have to see, but it's not, it's not unheard of. You know, they. This happens a lot with smaller drones on the front, where you have netting or other kinds of barriers. But, you know, oil refineries and industrial targets keep getting hit by drones. So, you know, it's. It's not foolproof.
- [15:11]
Anastasia Lopatyna
There has been some pushback from Ukrainian allies in the west in regards to Ukrainian attacks, specifically against oil infrastructure, because the west has been worried that the price of oil is going to go up, it's going to destabilize world markets. And in general, regardless of which targets are being hit, we generally don't want a stabilization of that kind of market. Right. Because everything depends on it. Would you say those fears are fair? Did we see any kind of impact like that? It's been months now since Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil. Has it really destabilized anything?
- [15:47]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, yeah, well, we. We definitely haven't seen a spike in global oil prices. So sort of the fears that that this was going to bring, you know, gas prices for consumers worldwide back up turned out to be unfounded internally to Russia, obviously, it's, it's had a big impact on their industry. You know, internally, I saw that they, that they were changing the additives they were putting in gasoline to make it less environmentally friendly but produce more gas. So that's troublesome, I would say, from it, from, from an environmental standpoint. But it does, it does show that, you know, internally, Russia is feeling the effects, even if externally they very much aren't. You know, there's also this question of if Ukraine keeps going with these attacks, you know, how many spare parts, how many replacement parts can Russia get a hold of? A lot of, you know, depending on what gets damaged, they may not be able to source a replacement quickly or source a replacement at all. So the longer this goes on, the worse it gets, in essence.
- [16:49]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And the idea is kind of to damage these oil refineries and oil infrastructure faster than they can repair it. Right.
- [16:57]
Marcel Plichta
Well, presumably, I don't know the. I don't know. I don't know exactly what Ukrainian intelligence or the guards are thinking, but yeah, it would, it would follow that, you know, the more, the more damage that you do to infrastructure and the more often that you do it, that's how you get a sort of lasting impact on Russia's ability to gain revenue from producing oil. And you see impacts on, you know, their ability to export, export oil and export gas.
- [17:23]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Have we seen any real impact of this Ukrainian drone campaign on the front line on, I don't know, Russia's ability to send reinforcements or something like that?
- [17:32]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, I think, I think that's the toughest. That's the toughest question to answer in all of this, because the way that, you know, modern conflict is fought, there's a lot of little tiny factors that add up to a greater whole. And so, you know, when I talk about, when I talk about stuff like Russia having to divert, you know, divert air defense to protect one of Vladimir Putin's 18 mansions, right. Instead of being at the front line. Not to be too social science, but it's hard to empirically determine, you know, the impact that that has. And we know that less. We know that less air defenses is generally good for the person, you know, for the, for Ukraine. Right. If Russia has less air defense, you know, there are instances, particularly where, for instance, when drone, when Ukraine struck the, the production facility where Russia was making shaheds when they, when they struck that, I think several months ago now, where you would, you you would presume that there would be an impact to their ability to produce more shaheds in the short term. But you know, barring another, another catastrophic leak by the Russians, you wouldn't necessarily be able to determine that. So, so yeah, I think that's the major question. I think that's going to be a question that people are going to be asking after the war is, is getting a sense of how effective something at the strategic level was at sort of the tactical level at that front line level. I think that's, that's going to be one of the major questions that researchers.
- [19:03]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Are going to be looking at back in May. So several months ago it was reported that Ukrainian drones hit an early warning radar system near the city of Orsk, which is at a record distance of 1800 kilometers away from Ukraine. At that time, at least it was the farthest that Ukrainian drones have ever traveled. I actually texted you when this happened asking how something like this was possible because to me 1800 kilometers seemed extremely far away. And you said that the range actually isn't as big of an issue as people think. So could you just explain that?
- [19:34]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, I mean, fun. Fundamentally it's an engineering problem, right, because, because we know, I mean, and, and for these especially long range attacks, what we appear to see is, you know, a previously, a previously manned aircraft, or at least a fuselage of a manned aircraft, like a, you know, like the equivalent of a Cessna or propeller plane modified to be a drone and packed with explosives. So, you know, we know that, we know that manned aircraft of that size and with those kinds of engines can go those kinds of distances. So at that point it's a question of how hard do you want to tax the engine? And you can, you know, you can tax the engine quite hard if it's, if it's one way because, you know, you don't need to use it again. Then it's a question of fuel, you know, fuel economy and the size of the fuel tank. Unlike high performance sort of aircraft, you know, these are relatively small engines. They're running on, you know, traditional fuel sources and you know, they're flying so they don't, you know, they don't have to worry about friction with the ground. So, you know, reaching those kinds of ranges is more of a question of trade offs because you're building a bigger drone than a question of, you know, the possible, you know, a, you know, if, if a, you know, Toyota or a Honda Civic can go 400 miles right on the ground on a full tank of gas, then, you know, it's not inconceivable that that a drone of you know, that a drone could do the same with the same kind of engine and the same kind of fuel.
- [20:58]
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- [23:14]
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- [23:16]
Marcel Plichta
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- [23:19]
Lawfare Podcast Host
Can we sleep cooler?
- [23:21]
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- [23:44]
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- [24:14]
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- [24:45]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Has Ukraine broken that record? Since then, have we hit anything further than 1800 kilometers?
- [24:52]
Marcel Plichta
Not that I know of. I'm sure that, I'm sure that someone will email me immediately after and tell me that someone that one attack went, went, you know, 1801 kilometers. But, but, but that's sort of, you know, they're put, they're constantly pushing the boundaries of that range. There's a limit in the sense that, you know, to make these kinds of, of drones where you're converting a fuselage of a manned aircraft, I mean, it's, it's more difficult to produce those. Right. You're sort of limited by the amount of airframes that you have. So, you know, I, I don't think that we will consistently be seeing, you know, attacks with large numbers of drones at that range. I think we're more likely to see sort of like the refinery attacks. That's where you'd see, you know, five, six, ten drones at once. But I think it's something that benefits Ukraine is to keep pushing what the maximum potential range is because that increases, you know, the number of things that Russia has to worry about defending. Right. Every, every extra kilometer of range means that there is a, another factory, another substation, another oil refinery, another military target or airfield to worry about. So it just compounds the issue. And one of the, the most enjoyable things for me on Twitter has been seeing the sort of the range, the range rings increasing right over Russia where, where going 100 km more, going 50 km more, suddenly opens up way more territory. And that creates a huge headache for defenders.
- [26:21]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Right? So how do you even defend that big of a swath of territory? Because if Ukrainian drones hit as far as 1800 kilometers away, that means that they've traveled that far pretty much completely unopposed. And this is another very notable thing about it. It's not so much how far Ukraine has gone, but it's also how far Russia allowed these drones to go.
- [26:44]
Marcel Plichta
Yes, yeah. And for sure. And I think one of, one of the things that's been interesting to me has been seeing people who are really big, you know, experts in the field of conventional standoff weapons, of missiles, of air defense going, you know, how, how did, how did a drone get this far into Russian territory? You know, if, if, if it's this large, then it should show up on radar, you know, and trying to, to turn it into a math equation. And what, what it really is is there, there just simply isn't enough air defense there to cover the entire area that's being covered. There's, there's a question of competence as well. You know, you can see on the Ukrainian side, right, Ukraine is also defending a very large relative, you know, relative to other European countries, a very large section of territory against drones and in general are having more success, you know, but there's only so much you can do because, you know, you can't always, you can't predict, you know, where they're going to go usually. And if you can predict it and you put, you know, and you respond, you put air defense there, you know, who's to say that planners themselves wouldn't notice that, right? Wouldn't see on, you know, on satellite imagery or something else that, that air defense has been moved there and then just target something else. And this is why, you know, the breadth of what Ukraine has attacked with drones is important because, you know, they, they've attacked, you know, air bases, they've attacked, they attacked the Black Sea headquarters building in Sevastopol, right. But then they attack these industrial targets and these oil refinery targets. And so that makes it very, very difficult to predict, you know, the next time that a drone is launched, where exactly it's heading. And, you know, that's not to say that every Ukrainian drone that's launched is going to make it. We, you know, we don't have the numbers and we can't really trust Russia's numbers about shootdowns. But, you know, even if, say, you know, 70, 80% of these drones are shot down, that still means the defenders have to worry about where that 20 or 30% is going and if it'll be 20 or 30% getting through the next time. So it's a real headache. It's a real conundrum.
- [28:44]
Anastasia Lopatyna
So I recently wrote a piece for Lawfare about the way that American aid to Ukraine works, the mechanisms involved in getting that aid to Ukraine and the effect it has on the front line. And while reporting on this piece, I spoke to Ukraine's Department of Defense and they told me that Ukraine has a very critical shortage of long range capabilities. And they actually, in a big statement that they've given me, they highlighted this and spent a lot of words and paper on just nailing this down, that Ukraine needs more long range capabilities, more missiles, et cetera. So it's obvious that this is a real issue for Ukraine. Ukraine has been trying to lift these Western restrictions about how far we can use Western missiles to, into the Russian territory. So can drones in a way compensate for this vulnerability that Ukraine has?
- [29:35]
Marcel Plichta
Yes, yes, to a certain extent. It can't entirely replace what a missile will do. The primary benefits of, of most conventional missiles is that the warhead is much bigger than you get in a lot of these drones and it's generally more survivable. So with, with, you know, we were talking about how drones have gotten in so far. Generally if a drone is in range of, of an air defense system, you know, it can be shot down quite easily with, with missiles. I think as we've seen in, in Sevastopol and, and Crimea, it seems like Russian air defenses can't defeat conventional missile systems. So you know, for that particular target set, I don't think that drones currently can compensate. However, in the near future, I think we're, we're starting to see a little bit of a convergence between a, a cruise missile and, and these kinds of drones where you're seeing more drones with jet engines and you're seeing smaller and cheaper cruise missiles. So it is possible that in the near future, you know, I mean Ukraine's drone industry has already done so much more than we could have predicted in 2022. So it's entirely possible that in a year you'll see some kind of very advanced drone or very cheap missile indigenously fulfilling that need for long range strike. That said, you know, more is always better. So, so as many, as many of both systems as possible would be beneficial. And in fact, you know, sometimes they help each other. Missiles and drones. This, this is what happens with the larger, in, you know, October, November 2022, the largest attacks on, or the larger attacks on, on Kyiv where you had drones and missiles at once creating sort of a worst case scenario for air defenders because they have to worry about the low and slow stuff and then, and then obviously more advanced missile systems. So you know, we could see a point later on where Ukraine is able to take advantage of both systems in a similar way and you know, serve as a force multiplier for each other.
- [31:37]
Anastasia Lopatyna
You've touched on the Ukrainian drone production and I want to dive into that a little bit. It is true that Ukraine is really outperforming and beating all expectations in this particular field. I think no one expected in the very beginning of the full scale invasion that drones were going to be so important and that Ukraine and Russia both are going to be producing so many of them. So what do we know about Ukraine's production capacity when it comes to drones and how does it compare to that of Russia? Is Ukraine winning in terms of numbers or is Russia.
- [32:09]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, and I'll, and I'll speak mainly on sort of the, the one way attack drone side of things because there's, there's a lot to say, a lot to say generally about, about drones currently as it stands from, from Russia's drone production facility. Right. For shaheds, you know, depending on leaked documents and, and sort of statements from the Russians, they're looking to produce between, you know, between 4 and 10,000 shaheds a year indigenously. So without, without importing more from Iran. And in sort of more practical terms, right, that's attacks by, you know, a dozen drones every single day in theory or larger attacks several times a week. So it's, so it's pretty substantial and pretty significant.
- [32:49]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And how many are they importing from Iran? I'm not sure if we have those numbers.
- [32:53]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, that, that I'm not sure about. But I mean they've sustained a pretty consistent tempo of drone usage.
- [33:00]
Anastasia Lopatyna
I think they send them at Ukraine every single day.
- [33:02]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's in large numbers, but I mean it's several hundred. I mean several hundred every month basically. So, so they're being, you know, they're being sent there and there was also, I think it was there was Washington Post reporting on this that it seems like the, some of these Russian facilities early on were involved in assembly and not production. So they would get, they would get the parts from Iran and they would assemble it. So you have sort of a hybrid solution there that makes it sort of hard to tell. The main way that we sort of can see how many shaheads Russia has at least, you know, on, on, you know, outside of, outside of whatever governments know is, is by how many they use unfortunately. So that, so that makes it tricky on the Ukrainian side. I don't get the impression that they have as Many drones, you know, it's, it's hard to tell because, you know, when there is a shahed attack on Ukraine, the Ukrainian government releases very public reports and, and graphics and stuff with little charts of how many shaheds have, have been shot down, which is very helpful when you're a researcher. Russia doesn't do the same. You'll see a lot of reports or contradicting reports. You know, you'll see regional governors say that, you know, 20 or 30 Ukrainian drones were shot down in a single attack. And it's hard to tell if, if they don't know or if they're exaggerating or if there were actually that many drones. And so, you know, you sort of have to take it with a big grain of salt. But generally it seems like Ukraine is able to produce fewer, but that given how long that this current campaign has gone on, you know, their rate of production is going up and that they're using them more judiciously. I wrote in like mid 2023 for the Telegraph about how, you know, the way that Russia uses these drones is very, is very brutish in a sense that they're sort of aiming them directly at cities and sort of letting them go. And this contrasts very much to how Ukraine is using them where it's sort of very, very specifically targeted at things that affect Russia's either finances or their ability to carry on the war. Like when they hit a Russian jet a few weeks ago directly. So, so yeah, so the trend, the trend is currently in Ukraine's favor because they're using them better. And it seems like they're able to make enough that they're able to launch constant attacks in the same way that Russia is. Even if it's not, if, you know, even if they're not yet at the same overall numbers. You know, outside of the context of one way attack drones, it's, it's, it's way more complicated, right? Both sides are putting out tons of smaller drones, right? From quadcopters to more interesting and advanced fixed wing drones. So, so that comes down more to, you know, Ukraine's ability to decentralize its drone production across different smaller firms instead of keeping it all centralized.
- [35:47]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And I think that's a big difference as well between Ukrainian and Russian joint productions. Because in Russia, naturally it's a dictatorship and everything is centralized, especially when it comes to this war. And it's a big problem for them, I think. Whereas in Ukraine it can also be problematic because many of our important decisions or important production is extremely decentralized. So. But it has its advantages and disadvantages. Would you agree?
- [36:17]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah. When I talked to some Ukrainian officials, they were, they were telling me about how basically it's been a big learning process, right, because, because you sort of have to unlearn, you know, when you, when you look at an institution, right, like Grover on prom, right. It's like a big state owned concern, you know, one of those like massive titanic military, industrial complex types firms. And you know, what I was being told was that basically they had to change things up entirely where they would put out a tender or they would put out sort of the minimum requirements or what they wanted and then individual firms at a much smaller level could go do their own thing and then sell it to the government. So it's a complete, you know, rethinking of how, of how drone production can be done or any kind of production for that matter. But you know, with the Russians, yeah, it's a little bit more centralized. It sort of seems like a lot of Russian drone efforts, you know, they show up on Twitter and they show up on social media and then you never really see them again. Now this isn't the case for, for some of the, you know, like the Lancet and other things, that's where you have a bit of an advantage because you have economies of scale and a learning economy. So you can just keep that, you know, the factory producing the one drone going forever. And, and that's actually something that Ukraine should be doing with one way attack drones, but with these, you know, these tiny quadcopters, you know, there, there are advantages to, to working in that decentralized manner.
- [37:36]
Anastasia Lopatyna
What about the frontline? We've been talking about Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil and deep into the Russian territory. But what about the actual frontline is Ukraine? Of course Ukraine is using a lot of reconnaissance drones, the little drones that you've mentioned. But what about one way drones as well? How are they being used?
- [37:54]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, so the bigger, the sort of bigger long range models we've been talking about for most of the podcasts don't tend to be used against targets that are, that are sort of right at the front line. You know, they're bigger and they're made for that specific long range role. So you don't see them as much. What you do see is lots of, you know, one way tactiles of a different sort, right. That have 25 or 40 kilometers of range. And so they're a lot smaller, they're a lot harder to see, they're a lot cheaper to make and they face different challenges at the front lines. Russia has, you know, a large number of jammers, a large amount of electronic warfare. So it's very difficult to get a drone through sometimes. And so consequently a lot of, you know, research and a lot of development has been focused on countering countermeasures. And I, I wrote, I just, I just published, along with Zach Callenborn as a co author, an article in Joint Forces Quarterly that talked about this, this cycle of, you know, countermeasures, in this case jammers and then counter countermeasures, which is, you know, how do you change a drone so that it can be, so that it can't be jammed or so that it's harder to shoot down. And, and so, you know, towards the front line you see a really interesting cycle of adaptation on both sides. And yeah, you do see a lot of, you do see a lot of one way attack drones. You see a lot of loitering munitions which sort of, you know, you have the ability to hang around the battlefield until, until it, you know, either sees a target or is given a target. And then, you know, you have some advancements in two areas that I think are worth watching. The first is terrain mapping, which is where, you know, the drone is able to detect where it is based on looking at the terrain and knows where it is geographically. And so it doesn't need GPS and it doesn't need a person controlling it. And this makes it very difficult to jam because there's no link to sever or if there is a link to sever, you know, it doesn't force the drone down. The drone just continues with, with this alternate method of navigation. I think that's interesting to watch. And then the other thing to watch is AI. I, I don't think that AI has been, you know, widely adopted yet. Like the, like the vast majority of drones in this conflict are not, you know, using AI. But there's a lot of experiments going on from the Ukrainians and from the Russians in different ways to, to use AI. And some, you know, Russian Lancet drones have had, you know, AI related components in them, you know, specifically made for AI. That doesn't necessarily mean that those drones were controlled by AI. That just means that the component was in there. So, you know, short of cracking it open, it would be hard to tell.
- [40:28]
Anastasia Lopatyna
And what does that mean in practice? Does that mean they're locating the target by themselves or something else?
- [40:35]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, so, yeah, so, so either, you know, you can use, you can use sort of machine learning for, for the trade mapping thing I was talking about before. But you can also, you know, as you approach more and more advanced versions of AI and autonomy, you know, it can, hypothetically you can have drones that are selecting their own targets. They're able to determine from whatever sensor suite they have, oh, this is a tank, and then head towards it autonomously. But, you know, there's obviously a lot of kinks to work out there. So, so we'll see of course, you know, over, over the next year or so whether that's something that's feasible sort of on a large scale or if it's something that sort of specialist units are more interested in or in some circumstances they're used.
- [41:18]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Looking at the world more broadly, is drone use in Ukraine changing the way other conflicts are fought around the world? I've seen some reports, for example, that there is drone usage in the Gaza war and also in other areas of the world. So do you think it's having an impact what we're seeing in Ukraine?
- [41:36]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, I think so. I think, I think it's not necessarily that developments in Ukraine, at least by Ukrainians are proliferating. I think it's that, you know, this conflict demonstrates just how useful drones can be to militaries and so, and armed groups for that matter. And so, you know, actors who have access to drones, whether those be sort of the small quadcopter style drones or larger. Right. One way attack drones are going to adopt them if they feel it's useful. And you know, obviously Iran is, is a big part of that. Right. Since they, you know, they developed the Shahed 136 and, and you know, they're, they're allegedly sort of proliferating those drones to groups that favor them throughout the region. But you know, also independently, I think, you know, you're going to see them pop up in more and more conflicts where, where maybe lines are static, where there's not a lot of movement along the front lines or where, you know, it's a, it's, it's a, it's a conflict where one actor has a lot of very static targets and positions. I think, you know, Sudan is a case to watch the rsf. The, one of the sides in the, in the civil war, you know, have been using drones increasingly and you know, probably, you know, at least to my knowledge, you know, not with any sort of external help from Russia or Ukraine. Belarus recently, you know, in a parade, they showed off, you know, what they said was indigenously made but looks a lot like a shahed. You know, it's a similar sort of delta wing style drone. So I think the proliferation of of drones into conflict is, is inevitable. And I think that, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that any kind of actor at any kind of level of technological sophistication can use drones without, you know, having to spend a lot of money or develop a massive defense industry.
- [43:23]
Anastasia Lopatyna
Marcel, thank you so much for being here. It was really interesting.
- [43:27]
Marcel Plichta
Yeah, thank you.
- [43:31]
Anastasia Lopatyna
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- [44:23]
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