Operation False Target: How Russia Planned to Combine a Deadly New Weapon with Decoy Drones in Ukraine

Night after night, Ukrainian snipers spring into action to shoot down the drones with portable surface-to-air missiles.

One sniper, who like most Ukrainian soldiers asked to be identified by his call sign Rosmaryn, said he has shot down perhaps a dozen drones in almost two years and seen one filled with rags and foam. Rosmaryn sees his opponent in almost human terms, describing the plane’s quest to outwit his small unit.

“It was part of a flock and was one of the last to fly,” he said. “If it’s in the air, we can’t tell what kind it is because everything is in the drone. We won’t find out until after it’s shot.’

Many fly at 2,000 to 3,000 meters (6,500 feet to about 10,000 feet) before dropping to lower altitudes on their final approach, Rosmaryn said. Leaked videos suggest Ukraine is now using helicopters to shoot down drones at high altitudes.

Three decoys of Russian origin crashed in Moldova last week, authorities there said.

Thanks to optical trickery, the radar cannot distinguish a drone armed with a drone Shahed’s usual load of 50 kilograms of explosives or with a thermobaric weapon – also known as a vacuum bomb – of those without a warhead or equipped with live-feed surveillance cameras. There are other drones of even cruder quality, armed and unarmed, but in fewer quantities than the Shahed-style unmanned aerial vehicles.

That is why Ukraine, even knowing that decoys now make up the bulk of the incoming flock, cannot afford to let anything through.

“For us it’s just a point on the radar… It has speed, direction and altitude,” said Colonel Yurii Ihnat, air force spokesman. “We have no way to identify the exact target in flight, so we have to either block them with electronic warfare or use firepower to neutralize them. The enemy uses this to distract our attention.”

The engines and electronics for the armed Shaheds and decoys are a mix of Chinese and Western imports, according to excerpts seen by The Associated Press in a Ukrainian military laboratory. Without them, the drones cannot fly. Despite almost three years of sanctions, Moscow can still source the parts – largely from China and through third countries in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Midway through the series of air warnings on November 2, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the swarms of Shaheds, which he estimated at 2,000 for the month of October alone, were made possible by Western technology slipping through sanctions.

“Included in these many Shaheds are more than 170,000 components that should have been blocked from delivery to Russia. Microcircuits, microcontrollers, processors, many different parts, without which this terror would simply be impossible,” Zelenskyy said.

The joint production of the drones – some to carry bombs, others to distract attention – saves Russia’s military money. Production of the decoys began earlier this year and now the factory produces about 40 of the cheaper unarmed drones per day and about 10 armed drones, which are estimated to cost $50,000 and take longer to produce, according to the person with knowledge of the Russian drone production .

Russian news channel Izvestia said in late October that the decoy’s goal is to “weaken” the enemy by forcing him to waste ammunition before sending armed Shaheds.

Both Beskrestnov and the person familiar with Russian drone production said engineers at Alabuga are also constantly experimenting, putting Moscow at the forefront of drone production. To make electronic interference more difficult, they add Ukrainian SIM cards, roaming SIM cards, Starlinks and fiber optics – and can sometimes receive real-time feedback before the drones get stuck, shot down or run out of fuel. Sometimes they attach a silver-painted foam ball to make the drone appear larger on a radar.

But the latest thermobaric variant is causing new fears in Ukraine.

From a military point of view Thermobarics are ideal for pursuing targets located in fortified buildings or deep underground.

Alabuga’s thermobaric drones are particularly destructive when they hit buildings because they are also loaded with ball bearings to do maximum damage even outside of the superheated blast, Albright said.

Beskrestnov, better known as Flash and whose black military van is equipped with electronic jammers to disable drones, said the thermobarics were used for the first time this summer and estimates they now account for between 3% and 5% of all drones.

“This type of warhead has the ability to destroy a huge building, especially apartment buildings. And it is very effective when the Russian Federation tries to do that attacking our power plants” he said.

They have a terrifying reputation for their physical consequences, even for people captured outside the original explosion site, said Arthur van Coller, an expert in international humanitarian law at South Africa’s University of Fort Hare.

“In a thermobaric explosion, because of the cloud it would create, everything in its radius would be affected,” he said. “It creates enormous fear among the civilian population. Thermobaric weapons have created the idea that they are truly terrible weapons and that creates fear.”

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Burrows reports from Washington DC Stephen McGrath contributed from Sighisoara, Romania.