Although the Russian Ministry of Defense has not yet acknowledged that the drones launched into Polish skies belong to its forces, they are Gerbera drones, a multipurpose unmanned aerial vehicle that began to be used in July 2024 during the invasion of Ukraine, that is, used for several different things : as a kamikaze against ground targets, as a reconnaissance device and as a decoy when it is without explosives. Its appearance in the conflict zone was recorded in July 2024, initially as a decoy to saturate and confuse Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems.
Its mass production is possible because its design is simple and inexpensive, with an internal structure made of plywood covered in polystyrene foam, which facilitates production and use as a decoy against more sophisticated drones such as its older brother, the Iranian Shahed-136 (Geranium-2 according to the Russian designation). Generally, the Russians fly them in swarms together, the Shahed to attack targets, the Gerbera as a decoy to attract anti-aircraft fire. Like the Shahed, it is also a psychological weapon: the metallic backfiring of its engine can be heard for kilometers away in the middle of the night.
It measures approximately two meters long with a wingspan of about 2.5 meters, and weighs about 10 kilos without explosives. In this lightweight configuration, they can fly hundreds of kilometers, which explains why some have infiltrated as far as 300 kilometers into Poland.
Why is a slow-moving drone, with such a loud roar that betrays its low flight, easily shot down by heavy machine guns, and not equipped with a particularly large explosive warhead (about 40 kilos of explosive depending on the version), so worrying for Ukraine and its allies? It is, by its military name, a loitering munition, that is, a disposable aerial weapon that combines features of both a drone and a missile: it is launched, loiters (stays in the air) searching for or waiting for a target, and, when it detects one or is ordered to, it dives and detonates on it. If it does this in a swarm of hundreds of units, no anti-aircraft defense can shoot them all down. Therefore, what Russia is seeking is saturation.
Unprepared
In Ukraine, these drones are shot down with anti-aircraft guns or machine guns, not with missiles from fighter jets, as NATO pilots did last night. In a long-running conflict, shooting down swarms of cheap drones (around €10,000 per drone) with projectiles as expensive as the AIM-120 AMRAAMs used by NATO fighter jets, like the F-35s that shot down these Russian drones last night, is absolutely unaffordable, because each drone costs more than a million euros.
From the ground, for example, an IRIS-T anti-aircraft battery can easily shoot down this drone, but its missiles cost around $400,000 each, while those of the Nasams batteries cost $1 million, and those of the Patriots cost around $4 million per missile. In other words, if Ukraine were to use these interceptors to shoot down the €20,000 Shaheds or the €10,000 Gerberas, it would already be a victory for Russia. Moscow produces around 1,000 Shaheds and hundreds more Gerberas every day, which gives an idea of the magnitude of the problem and the time wasted by Europe in supporting Ukraine.
However, kyiv has learned to use even lower-cost aircraft to shoot them down: in October 2024, they began intercepting Gerbera drones with FPV drones costing around €1,500 each, an effective strategy against this type of low-cost UAV. No NATO country has anything similar, nor do they have crews trained to combat them.
