The appearance of Iranian loitering munitions "Shahed-136" has made Ukrainian air defense to already look for effective countermeasures, as these drones started massive attacks against military and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, especially its southern regions.
However, the Ukrainians managed to seize some samples of these systems for analysis and are already actively developing an effective answer, says the representative of southern military command’s press-center Nataliia Humeniuk, quoted by Ukrinform:
Read more: How to Counter Iranian Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 Kamikaze Drones, Used by russia to Strike Ukrainian Cities
"This is quite a new weapon we encountered, that’s why all the samples we managed to get are being studied by specialists, we also work on the most effective way to counter them. Besides, we have examples when we quite successfully shot these drones down. We realize that at some altitude, they can be taken down even with small arms, and this practice is used widely," the military official said.
But there is also a problem connected: as she noticed, when such a drone attacks, it destroys itself with the explosive charge it carries.
Another detail to the general picture was contributed by the spokesperson of the Odesa region military administration Serhii Bratchuk. Asked about these Iranian drones on national TV, he said they have both advantages and disadvantages. In particular, he noted that Shahed drones are very noisy so get easily detected on approach, but at the same time difficult to detect for the radars due to the low altitude trajectory of flight.
Read more: Iranian Shahed-136 Have a Feature that Makes Usage of Radar-Reliant Air Defense Against Them Problematic
