Shortly before Christmas I bought a new Brompton G Line electric motorcycle – a new style, highly finished device designed by one of the wonderful pioneers of folding motorcycle technology. I ordered it at the end of summer and it was delivered almost two months later than expected. It wasn’t Brompton’s fault, far from it.
The bike is driven by an electric motor of original design and controls – created by the firm itself. The production of this was outsourced – and supplies were interrupted this autumn because of an urgent requirement from the Defence Ministry for components for new drones for the military – as the CEO Will Butler-Adams told the BBC this weekend.
This is a curious insight into the “grey zone” development with drones, which are now targeting important infrastructure and security assets of the UK and its allies. The best example of one of the new “hybrid wars” that Russia and its supporters are now waging against a variety of NATO allies, specifically those that actively support Ukraine.
The first warnings of potential hostile drone surveillance came from the Norwegian Navy and Intelligence services some three years ago. They warned of a flurry of drone activity over North Sea oilfields and terminals, and underwater communication cables. The Norwegians believed the drones had been launched from merchant ships working for the Kremlin security services.
Since then, drones have been spotted operating over sensitive North Sea sites, over airfields across northern Europe, including the UK. Towards the end of last year, swarms of drones were sighted off the eastern seaboard of the United States, again surveilling seaports and terminals.
Days after the United States and the United Kingdom forced Ukraine last November to use its deep-strike weapons, such as ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, to attack targets in Russia, the drones were active over British and U. S. bases in Britain and Germany.
The drones appeared at dusk in late November over the Lakenheath and Mildenhall bases in Suffolk and Feltwell in Norfolk. They were small, but military-grade, according to one analyst. The use of the cloak of darkness evoked military plans and intentions. A month later, they were spotted in Ramsteain, the U. S. Army center in Germany.
The drones will most likely be used as a component of the “hybrid” offensive, which includes surveillance and sabotage of underwater cables and electrical pipelines, which would be orchestrated through the Main Directorate of Underwater Research. armed, known as GUGI, a secret unit of the Russian army. Navy. GUGI deploys frogman commando groups, manned and unmanned submarines, and a flotilla of tugboats, disguised trawlers, and reconnaissance vessels.
Three oil tankers and cargo ships are suspected of rupturing pipelines and communications cables in the past 18 months, the Newnew Polar Bear in 2023 and the Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 and the Cook Islands registered Eagle S last year. The Eagle S was arrested by the Finnish Coast Guard, accused of cutting the main Estlink 2 cable under the Gulf of Finland connecting Estonia.
The use of drones, for fair and unjust purposes, has grown enormously. They play a decisive role in the open war in the Middle East, in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and since 2022 in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin recently boasted that Russia would have produced 140,000 drones in total in 2023. In the first nine months of last year, 5,600 Iranian-designed Shahed 136s were built in a traditional factory in Alabuga, Tatarstan, east of Moscow. The factory is believed to depend on the hard work of African teenagers and young women.
Ukraine is expected to produce more drones this year than the entire NATO alliance combined. It is engaged in a desperate arms race to stay one step ahead of the enemy in terms of generation and tactics. The key elements are the use of small private drones (or FPV) and cheap, unarmed decoy drones. Last year, Russia produced 10,000 discounted Gerbera drones, which do not carry nuclear warheads but are designed to “spoof” or trick air defenses into wasting ammunition and effort.
Drones have turned traditional frontline battle tactics on their head. It means that almost every move out of position, in defence or attack, may be spotted and counterattacked within a few minutes. The drone makes the battlefield transparent. And this demands a revolutionary approach to how to fight, defend and win on the ground.
Drones also require a very different technique for the country’s security and resilience, protecting our civilian communities and their important systems. This is not to say that drones are all bad, or that the long-term Frankenstein-killer robots are upon us. They can make people laugh (the military just incorporated drone racing into its sports systems) and save lives. Heavy-lift drones are increasingly being used for mountain and sea rescues, as well as transporting blood and important medical materials in difficult terrain.
The hostile use of drones, frequently, surreptitiously and in gigantic numbers – as demonstrated by the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea – is a prime example of the “gray rhino” risk, a vast and apparent risk too ignored by those who deserve to be informed. Gray rhinos are accomplices of black swans in the menagerie of metaphorical risk animals.
The risk of drones is a number one detail of the hybrid warfare tactics that have been practiced lately in dozens of conflicts. These are the gray rhinos of our time. None of us can allow this phenomenon to become an even more harmful animal in the collection of risks: the black jellyfish, the insidious and crawling menace that most try to ignore entirely.
Robert Fox is the defense editor.
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