Loitering munitions

Counterintuitively, it is the antiquated 1980s-designed contraptions made of cheap commercial materials including basic wooden elements) that have earned a notorious reputation as Kamikaze Drones' owing to their inconsistent flight path, small size and slow speed that literally affords the undetectable flying under the radar' capability. With technology sourced from various dodgy front' companies with supposedly commercial antecedents, these reverse-engineered marvels have an extremely low radar signature that cocks a snook at modern air defense systems

- BHOPINDER SINGH

In September 2019, the rag-tag Houthi militia in Yemen had attacked Saudi Arabia’sstate-owned facility at Abqaiq, ‘the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world’ their weapon was the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or drone.

Presence of the multi-billion dollar and state-of-the-art Patriot missile defense system had failed against the ‘loitering munitions’ that could have cost less than $15,000 to assemble and deploy. It was the deadliest attack in the region since Saddam Hussein had provocatively torched Kuwaiti facilities in the 1990-91 Gulf crisis.

Earlier this year, the Houthi drones exposed yet another ostensibly well-guarded nation of United Arab Emirates (UAE) again it was the crude drones that had slipped through. Most recently, the Russians stepped up the bloody onslaught in Ukraine and the drones were extensively used. Across the deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Ukraine, there was one commonality, i.e. extensive use of Iranian drones, be it by the Houthi rebels or by the Russian Army.

Counterintuitively, it is the antiquated 1980s-designed contraptions made of cheap commercial materials (including basic wooden elements) that have earned a notorious reputation as ‘Kamikaze Drones’ owing to their inconsistent flight path, small size and slow speed that literally affords the undetectable ‘flying under the radar’ capability. With technology sourced from various dodgy ‘front’ companies with supposedly commercial antecedents, these reverse-engineered marvels have an extremely low radar signature that cocks a snook at modern air defense systems which are designed to intercept missiles following arc-high trajectories.