Estonia’s "Mini-Missile" Takes Aim at Russian Suicide Drones Over Ukraine

Frankenburg Technologies in Estonia and the UK

Between Medium, Substack, and YouTube, I’ve spoken a lot about the persistent drone threat over Ukraine and how individual soldiers at the ground level can combat these deadly new additions to the battlefield.

I, and many other analysts, have written at great length about Ukraine’s phenomenal adoption of consumer videography drones to deliver explosives with great precision over long distances — provided they can maintain connections with GPS satellites (so they know where they are) and their operators (so they know what to do).

Russia immediately saw the utility of Ukraine’s innovation and quickly copied the videography drone-turned-weapon craze near the end of 2022.

As consumer quadcopter drones and FPV drones have proliferated, drone defense has become a legitimate cost center for big budget defense manufacturers and startup weapons makers alike.

Passive electronic jamming, like the Saniya EW system Russia bolts onto its tanks, to active jamming, like the US Dronebuster gun, are two methods that have emerged in this war.

But these electronic-based solutions have no effect against fiber-optically guided drones, a newer problem that Ukrainian forces have been encountering in Kursk and in the East.

Personally, I’m drawn more to kinetic counter-UAS solutions like the Australian Slinger or the German Skynex, both of which use projectiles and complex tracking software to physically destroy small consumer drones.

But there’s another type of drone Russia employs to terrorize not Ukrainian soldiers in the field, but Ukrainian civilians in the rear.

The Iranian-designed, and now Russian-produced, Shahed suicide drones are one example.

These one-way suicide drones can cause disproportionate damage for their cost. After all, they live somewhere between a battlefield videography drone and a slow-moving cruise missile.

Considering the ridiculous cost of Western interceptors, like the $4 million-per-missile PAC-3 MSE Patriot, it just doesn’t make sense to fire these interceptors at Shahed drones.

We need a solution.

We need a “mini-missile.”