Russia's jamming-resistant drones are causing problems the West may not be able to answer

Yahoo

12-02-2025

Suspected Russian drones have been spotted near NATO bases in Germany.
A report said that efforts to jam them did not work.
It could expose an area where Russia's experience in Ukraine has given it a technological edge.
Suspected Russian drones are showing up outside sensitive sites, and Western nations may not be equipped to counter them.
One recent incident suggests that Russia may have deployed jamming-resistant drones to overcome the defenses at a military base — which analysts say could prove a significant vulnerability.
Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that a series of drones were spotted near a military base in Schwesing, northern Germany, on six occasions between January 9 and 29.
Ukrainian troops were training there with Patriot air-defense systems at the time.
The report, citing German intelligence, said the drones entered the base despite efforts to stop them.
German troops, it said, deployed a jamming system that should have scrambled the drones' guidance systems but did not.
Russia has developed sophisticated new drones that evade electronic warfare, as Business Insider recently reported. Ukraine has developed the technology too, seeking to catch up to its enemy.
Some are controlled by fiber optic cables instead of radio signals — it isn't clear what technology might have been at play in the German incidents.
A German military spokesman told Business Insider there had been "several sightings" of unknown drones near military sites, but declined to give further information, citing security concerns.
"The Bundeswehr takes these incidents very seriously," the spokesman said, using the German term for the armed forces. He said prosecutors had opened a case.
NATO did not respond to a request for comment.
It's the latest in a series of mysterious drone sighting at military bases in Europe that analysts believe may be part of a Russian espionage operation.
In December, the US military told Reuters that drones were spotted near the Ramstein military base in southwestern Germany, while Der Spiegel reported that month that drones had been sighted near industrial sites, including a plant of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, which has been involved in making weapons for Ukraine in battling the Russian invasion.
Drones were also spotted near four US military bases in the UK in November.
The tech has played a pivotal role in the war in Ukraine, where both sides have deployed them for battlefield surveillance and as weapons.
A particularly intense area of that arms race has been jamming technology, with each side seeking to scramble the other's drones and stop the same happening to theirs.
While both Russia and Ukraine are fitting drones with fiber optic cables, other drones, such as the US-made V-BAT, have other ways to resist jamming.
The apparent success of the drones in Germany at resisting jamming raises questions about NATO's defenses, said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"New drone tactics and technologies are being tested on the battlefields in Ukraine. The United States and its allies, including NATO, are just beginning to wrap our heads around this new threat and just figuring out how to face it," he told Business Insider.
Devices like lasers or other directed energy weapons could work against even jamming-resistant drones, but there are legal and logistical obstacles, he said.
"The challenge will be deploying those systems at scale to protect sensitive domestic locations and preparing to confront the same threats on a future battlefield," he said.
Some approaches are decidedly more old-school, with Ukraine arming some soldiers with shotguns meant to take out drones.
For its part, Russia is increasingly seeking to use technical expertise learned in Ukraine outside that conflict.
"Reports that a NATO member state is struggling to combat likely Russian reconnaissance drones demonstrate the need for NATO states to further develop their defensive capabilities as Russia continues to use its experience on the battlefield in Ukraine to innovate new technologies," The Institue for the Study of War, the US think tank, said on Monday.
Read the original article on Business Insider