Drone on drone dogfights in Ukraine

 Business Insider:

The sheer scale of drone use in Ukraine has given rise to an increasing battle for the skies, and the rise of drone-on-drone dogfights.

Thousands of uncrewed aerial vehicles take to the skies over Ukraine, serving a wide range of tasks such as directing artillery fire, surveillance, and acting as loitering munitions.

It's a set of tasks so integral to the fighting that earlier this month Ukraine's military launched the world's first stand-alone branch dedicated solely to drone warfare.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the world had only seen a handful of drone-on-drone incidents.

But now, Russia and Ukraine are "engaged in a 'drone arms race,' investing vast amounts of money, time, and expertise in developing and countering each other's systems," James Patton Rogers, a drone expert and director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, told BI.

Today, drones that once used their explosive payloads on multimillion-dollar armored vehicles are choosing to target other drones instead because of the threat they pose, Mike Monnik, CEO of drone intelligence platform DroneSec, told BI.
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This is another example of how drones have changed the face of battle in Ukraine and possibly in other conflicts.  They are less expensive than fighter jets and bombers and sometimes harder to catch on radar. Using expensive anti-aircraft missiles against them is an expensive tradeoff.  While having drone-on-drone dog fights is one way to deal with them, I suspect new innovations will have come up with a way to deal with the threat.