Ukraine’s forces facing the ever-present danger from first-person view (FPV) attack drones on the battlefield are constantly working on countermeasures to protect themselves from attack. The work has sparked the development of electronic warfare systems, interceptor drones, and enhanced protection of its armored vehicles by means of “cope cages” and explosive reactive armor.
However, up to now, infantrymen and others working out in the open have remained vulnerable to drones. They have had to relying on camouflage, trenches or simply standing still to protect themselves, and have lacked an effective defensive weapon for close-in protection.
The US, other Western forces, and Ukraine have been concentrating on developing specialist weapons to do this, with some success. The shortcoming of such an approach is that these tend to be “squad weapons,” dependent on the “luck of the draw” for the weapon and attacking drone to be in the right place at the right time, because they are only distributed in small numbers.
Ukraine’s innovative approach is to come up with a solution that allows every soldier to have access to a drone-killing weapon, which is achieved by providing a special ammunition that can be fired from a standard weapon.
The solution that Brave1 has showcased is a new 5.56 x 45mm round – the caliber most commonly found in Ukrainian infantry units – with a projectile optimized to both increase the possibility of hitting a fast-moving drone and an enhanced on-target effect to bring the drone down. Trials of the new ammunition were shown in the video posted on the Brave1 Facebook channel:
While Brave1 has not released the technical specifications of the rounds that make it more effective in shooting flying objects, it said the manufacturer has already codified the ammunition in line with NATO standards.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation said on Telegram that the aim now was to scale up production so that every infantryman would carry a magazine containing these rounds and every machine gun would have a belt of the rounds ready to take on any aerial threat.
A potential added bonus is that the round is being made in a NATO standard caliber, which, since all alliance ground forces potentially face the drone threat, may be an attractive option for the close-in, last-resort protection of its troops. Once it has been proven on the Ukrainian battlefield, Ukraine might be able to export the technology or to enter in a partnership with a European manufacturer for its mass production.