How Ukraine uses high-tech anti-drone guns to down Russian drones

businessinsider:  Ukraine is using anti-drone guns to remotely disable and down Russian drones, allowing them to collect a wealth of information about opposing forces.

The Ukrainian company Kvertus Technology developed the KVS G-6, a long-range anti-drone gun that uses radio signals to jam Russian drones.

The weapon, manufactured in the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, has a range of up to three kilometers, or around 1.8 miles, and can operate for up to 30 minutes at a time, according to the company.

While both Russia and Ukraine have used older anti-aircraft guns to shoot down drones, anti-drone guns disrupt drones without physically damaging them.

With the downed drones remaining intact, Ukrainian forces can recover intelligence from them.

"We are not damaging the drone. With communication lost, it just loses coordination and doesn't know where to go. The drone lands where it is jammed, or can be carried away by the wind because it's uncontrollable," Yaroslav Filimonov, the director of technology at Kvertus, said, according to The Register.

In a video for Radio Free Europe demonstrating the gun, Filimonov shows the tool disconnecting a reconnaissance drone from its satellites and control station, which stops it from responding to commands.

Once disconnected, the drone loses coordination and either lands where it is jammed or is blown away by the wind.

Ukrainian forces can then take the drone and read its data to gain valuable information about it, such as where it came from and any images it might have taken, he said.

The Ukrainian border guards successfully employed an anti-drone gun to neutralize an enemy UAV earlier this week, according to Ukrinform.

The company has made more than 80 of the guns since the invasion began, and over 100 were on order, according to the video from June of last year. It is not clear how many more have since been made.

The devices cost $12,000 each, but many of the orders for the anti-drone guns have come from volunteer organizations and donors, Filimonov told Radio Free Europe.

The weapons are relatively new. The KVS G-6 was offered at least in January of last year, weeks before Russia's invasion began, according to The Register.

Another similar weapon reported to have been used by Ukraine in the conflict is the EDM4S, which the Lithuanian-based NT Service makes. It uses electromagnetic pulses to jam and down Russian drones.

More than 100 of them have been distributed among the Ukrainian military, according to Forces News.

A more rudimentary Russian version was also pictured last year, with a video showing Russian-backed separatists claiming to have used the homemade gun to jam and capture Ukrainian drones.

Drone warfare has played a key role in the conflict, with both sides using the devices for reconnaissance or to drop bombs, among other things.

Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Insider that weapons like anti-drone guns are in high demand.

"As to their effectiveness, it's hard to judge that based on limited open-source evidence we get. Both sides want it and decry the lack of this technology in large numbers," he said.