Occupiers shifting to cheap Molniya UAVs, complicating EW operations – defense minister's adviser

Ukrainian Defense Minister's adviser Serhiy "Flash" Beskrestnov said Russian occupiers are reducing the use of expensive strike UAVs on all fronts in the close combat zone and switching to cheap Molniya-type drones, which is overloading Ukrainian electronic warfare systems.

"We have a lot of EW systems to suppress Molniya control channels, but we need to add means of detecting the controller frequencies. Right now, brute-force jamming is a dead end. There are too many frequency options. The enemy knows our EW systems' specs very well... They know that each EW system has a limit in suppression bandwidth, and in difficult situations they try to use frequency hopping with a width of 300-600 MHz or more. With such a bandwidth, control range drops, but suppression becomes more difficult," Beskrestnov said on Telegram on Friday.

He said this should be taken into account when developing new EW systems.

"The video channel range of the Molniya is achieved through powerful 5-10 watt VTX transmitters and directional antennas. I would very much like our manufacturers to flood the front faster with video EW systems of the Shtora type. We are working on it," the minister's adviser said.

Beskrestnov said "with an even larger flow of Molniya UAVs, the enemy is trying to overload our anti-aircraft drone crews."

For his part, a serviceman and head of air defense of the Third Army Corps, call sign "Bochka," said during the 18th annual Kyiv Security Forum, titled "Darkness or Dawn: Is There Light Ahead?" on Friday, that occupiers launch around 3,000 Molniya UAVs per week at the positions of Ukraine's Defense Forces in the operational zone of the Third Army Corps.

"I would like to talk about the Molniya UAV, which some call simply 'garbage,' but at the front it creates many problems. It constantly loads our air defense, overloads the detection system, and is actively evolving. To give you an idea, air defense units now destroy around 1,500 Molniya UAVs per month, and this is only the beginning – the enemy is continuing to develop. These are destroyed kinetically, but EW also works against them," the serviceman said.

At the same time, he said that due to the lack of the latest detection systems, Ukraine cannot create a continuous air defense belt along the front.

"This concerns traditional systems. As for interceptors, we have grown significantly, there are echelons... After the change in the nature of combat operations and the appearance of new enemy strike means, we reached the point where, at battalion level, we have already introduced the first echelon of interceptors specifically to destroy tactical-level aerial targets. The main problem on the front right now is enemy activity from the air," he said.