Shahed Drone Countermeasures: What Ukraine’s EW Experts Say

October 16, 2025November 7, 2025

A well-known Ukrainian expert in electronic warfare, Serhiy Flash, shared his thoughts on countering the orcs’ strike drones — the Shahed-136. This piece is a high-level look at Shahed drone countermeasures, not a technical manual — only non-classified observations intended to help partners and the public understand the problem.

We understand perfectly well that our site is read by orcs and Chinese alike. Maybe bearded men with towels on their heads from Iran peek in, or Kim Piggy fans from North Korea. Therefore, the information below is only what is not a military secret — yet it can still help our European partners grasp practical directions for dealing with the orcs’ Shaheds. Here begins Serhiy’s direct speech.

How a Shahed is guided to its target

Long-range strike UAVs navigate using satellite positioning. There are coordinates for the target and coordinates for the UAV. The UAV plots a route to the target. If satellite data vanishes, the target will not be hit — the drone simply does not know where it is or where to fly. So both we and the enemy try to jam satellite navigation over the country.

But where there is jamming, there are countermeasures. To fight jamming, strike UAVs are fitted with special CRPA antennas. These antennas can tell a satellite signal apart from an EW signal and cut out the jamming. Roughly speaking, the more elements an antenna has, the more EW sources it can overcome. At the start of the war there were four elements on Shaheds, then eight, then twelve, and now sixteen. Moreover, to improve resistance to EW, antennas can operate across different satellite bands and process signals from different satellite groups.

All UAVs are “smart” and have inertial systems. When satellite signals disappear, a UAV keeps flying, holding the last satellite altitude and the last bearing. Altitude is kept by the barometer, direction by the compass. In short, a Shahed will fly on and wait for the satellite signal to reappear for a moment. When it does — the Shahed recalculates its course.

Shahed drone countermeasures — Suppression options

For years military services have debated the best way to suppress navigation on UAVs. How to do it most effectively and most correctly — that’s a constantly argued topic. Of course, our experience here is highly confidential, because the enemy faces the same problems with our deep-strike systems. There are basically two suppression options:

1. Create a large nationwide network of EW nodes. The UAV constantly stays in a suppression zone and cannot lock onto satellites. The downside is that this solution requires continuously adding EW nodes as CRPA antenna complexity grows. So sooner or later the density of the EW net will force you to place jammers almost in every building. Increasing antenna elements is easier than building a dense network of jammers.
2. “Strength beats brains.” No matter the CRPA specs, you can always overpower them with sheer signal power. For example, an EW source of 100 watts and a directional antenna pointed straight at the Shahed — or several such powerful sources. CRPA specs always list resistance to interference — e.g., several interferers by 50 dB or a single one by 80 dB. This method seems good, but it has a flaw. What do you do when Shaheds come from all directions at once and in numbers — how do you suppress them from every side?

Conclusion

The first option is more strategic and long-term — suitable for defending large national territories. The second is quicker and fits protection of critical infrastructure objects. I will not name EW systems that belong to either option — I refuse to advertise or lobby for any manufacturers.

And the most important thing I want to say — sooner or later the enemy will EW-seal his entire territory by options one and two (some areas are already closed tight). Satellite-navigation flights for deep strikes will become impossible.

Therefore, we must already be designing and testing alternative navigation systems that don’t rely on vulnerable GNSS signals, and we must do it now. International cooperation and rapid prototyping will be essential — this work is central to any effective Shahed drone countermeasures.