The rush to develop cheaper air defense against drones carries a risk that few in the industry want to talk about: the technologies that look like winners today may not work in the next war.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing the Financial Times, Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned that companies placing bets on current drone defense technologies need to look beyond Ukraine and the Iran wars.
"If you are trying to address this market from an industrial point of view you have to address what happens after Ukraine," Barrie said. Not all future conflicts would involve one-way attack drones along a long, relatively "static" front line. The "difficulty is . . . the technologies that look like winners today might not look like winners in the future."
The warning is particularly relevant for the wave of start-ups that have emerged to fill the gap. Companies like Wild Hornets in Ukraine, Tytan Technologies in Munich, Cambridge Aerospace in Britain, and Origin Robotics in Latvia have attracted attention and capital. Estonia's Frankenburg Technologies claims its AI-guided interceptor missiles will be "10 times more affordable" than traditional weapons.
Established contractors are hedging by investing across the full spectrum - from RTX's lower-cost Coyote counter-drone system to laser weapons like Britain's DragonFire and Israel's Iron Beam. The question is whether the start-ups that thrive on today's battlefield will have the adaptability and resources to pivot when the nature of conflict changes.
Previously: Petraeus Reveals Why the US Drone Defense Falls Short - and Who Could Fix It.