As fascinating as drone warfare can be — particularly the seemingly sci-fi drone-vs-drone variety — keeping up with all the developments is a fool’s errand. Yesterday’s hot new thing is practically outdated today, and today’s hot new thing may look obsolete tomorrow.
That’s an exaggeration, of course, but some days it doesn’t seem like much of one.
That’s why today’s news about Ukraine’s Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.
I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they’re both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia’s Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran’s Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.
Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.
So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.
And a local startup firm called Wild Hornets delivered on all three counts.
A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so. Vertical takeoff allows operators to deploy and launch in less than 15 minutes.
The Ukes designed themselves a mini Osprey. That goes boom. Nifty.
And Another Thing: My mind almost immediately pictured 40 or 50 of the little guys in a box on the helicopter pad of most any USN warship. Or almost anywhere on the deck of a container ship.
There’s a camera on board, which the operator then uses to fly into incoming Geran-2s. With a top speed of about 190 MPH, they’re fast enough to enjoy a reported 80-90% successful intercept rate — and better than 90% in more recent operations. There’s a faster — and presumably more difficult to intercept — jet-powered Geran-3, but they’re much more expensive to build, require more fuel, and have shorter range. Russia uses far fewer of those.
The best part of Sting? The basic model costs about $2,500 to manufacture, compared to an estimated $70k–$80k for each Russian-built Geran-2. The economics of mass drone warfare are brutal.
The worst part? The operator.
As a First Person View (FPV) drone, each Sting requires its own operator — but that’s where American/Israeli know-how comes into play.
Ukraine might not be able to mass-produce the necessary electronics to turn the Sting from an FPV interceptor to a fire-and-forget device, but we certainly do.
Sting is low-cost to produce but labor-intensive to operate. Once we solve that problem, which ought to be easy enough to do, we have an anti-drone drone that can be put in large numbers on any flat surface, just waiting for the GO! command to do its thing.
Whether or not Ukraine survives in its war against Russia, that country’s innovations might very well save us untold blood and treasure in our next war.
Recommended: Honda Just Lost Billions on EVs It Can’t Sell
Drones are cheap. Alternative conservative news and analysis is cheaper.
Get exclusive content and support independent journalism with 60% off a PJ Media VIP membership. Use promo code FIGHT and join today.
