This is how the Ukrainian interceptors that dazzled in the NATO maneuvers can help shoot down Iranian drones

The truth is that we are all late to the drone war. Something incomprehensible if you take into account that the Ukraine contest has been broadcast in real time for the last 1,474 days. A time in which it has been told how drones have become the most used attack weapon, both on combat fronts and for punish civilian targets within the cities.

A few days after Donald Trump bombed Tehran – the same one who accused Volodymyr Zelensky of wanting to provoke World War III when he did not give in to Russia’s territorial demands – the Ukrainian president took a step forward. He offered his army’s experience in drone warfare, in addition to technological developments, such as the aforementioned interceptors.

The proposal came hours after the Iranian Shahed attacked Dubai and a US base in Bahrain. Zelensky proposed exchanging the help of his military experts in exchange for the Gulf countries – which have economic influence over Russia – They will put diplomatic pressure on Putin for him to accept a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine.

“Send a signal to Moscow and we will help civilians,” declared the Ukrainian head of government. “If they send a signal to the Russian Federation about a ceasefire for some time, a month, two months, then we can send our specialists,” he stressed.

This exchange of human and technological capital would be added to the cooperation agreements that are already being signed with different European countries, and with the United States, in the field of the Defense industry. “We have our own production capabilities, but we have a shortagejust like the countries of the Middle East. Therefore we can help each other,” Zelensky said.

And perhaps the war in Iran has escalated without warning, but the lack of capabilities of NATO armies to deal with unmanned vehicles was already noted almost a year ago. It was when the Atlantic Alliance brought together 16,000 troops in Estonia to perform the so-called exercise Hedgehogjoint maneuvers with the focus on the use of drones.

At that time, the possibility of Shahed drones raining down on a dozen countries around the world at the same time was not seen as something feasible. A detail that did surprise – and a lot – the team of Ukrainian veterans. They participated as guests in that exercise as unmanned vehicle experts.

During maneuvers, Ukrainian pilots literally ‘swept away’ the NATO armies against which they were measured. “When the Ukrainians ran out of things to destroy, they began to bring snacks and sleeping bags with their drones,” can be read in a report that has emerged in recent days about those maneuvers.

The report also highlights the fact that the soldiers of the other armies did not know how to act most of the time, and were overwhelmed by the unmanned vehicle saturation that was on the maneuvering field. What for Ukrainians is “just another day at the front”, for Europeans became an unprecedented hell.

La guerra ‘low cost’

Hedgehog It was just a simulation, but the attacks against Cyprus, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan, among others, are as real as those that destroy the cities of Ukraine every day. And they all have a common denominator: the Shahed.

These suicide drones were designed by Iran and exported to Russia in huge quantities. They can be armed with up to 90 kilos of explosive, including thermobaric ammunition. Are cheap weaponswhose cost does not exceed $50,000, but they are capable of wear out the very expensive anti-aircraft defenses valued in millions of any Western country. You just have to launch them in swarms, and continuously for several weeks.

Just what Russia has been doing for almost two years in Ukraine. The figures are overwhelming. Moscow forces have launched more than 100,000 Shaheds against Ukraine, of which the Ukrainians have managed to take down more than 57,000.

An achievement to which another equally important milestone must be added. While gaining valuable experience in specialized air defense against unmanned vehicles of all types, Ukraine has developed a specific weapon and low cost to confront the Shahed: the interceptors.

Until these countermeasures began to be used a few months ago, Ukrainian air defense units they killed flies with cannon shots. They used very expensive “OSA” systems or did colossal skill exercises with simple Browning M2s, which they placed in layers and in quadrants. If the first team failed, those behind had another chance to shoot down the drone.

None of the systems was the most suitable, and yet the percentage of Russian drones neutralized was around 60 percent. Until the interceptors came into service, manufactured entirely within the country, which have the percentage of correct answers skyrocketed against the Shahed.

During the month of February alone, the Ukrainians would have shot down 1,500 Russian drones using these interceptors, as recognized by the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, General Syrsky. An “ingenuity” that has been the result of two years of experience, and suffering, and that has now become the object of desire of the countries of the Persian Gulf and Europe.

Human capital

But is it really possible for Ukraine to send its drone experts to other countries while the war is at home? “There is many trained and experienced teams that are not on the front right now, the positions would not remain empty,” says the officer responsible for drone logistics of one of the brigades working in Donbas.

“We are military, if they tell us that we have to go to another country, we go,” he adds, making clear the Ukrainians’ willingness to collaborate with possible allies.

Unfortunately, the information that emerged after Zelensky’s announcement revealed that the Kremlin was sharing intelligence with Iran. It would be helping to identify targets in the region. So the possibility of Putin accepting a ceasefire and collaborating to pacify the Middle East seems very distant.

What is already a reality is bilateral cooperation between Ukraine and the United Kingdom, where there is a ukrainian drone factory. The former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and current Ukrainian ambassador in London, Valery Zaluzhnyi, made the announcement a few days before the war broke out in Iran.

And it is not the only country in the European orbit with which Ukraine cooperates in the manufacture of weapons. They have also signed agreements with the Baltic republics, Denmark, Finland and Slovakia within the framework of the joint production program “Build with Ukraine“.

The purpose is to ensure the production of seven million drones in 2026. They will ensure that there is a sufficient flow of supplies for the Ukrainian troops, soldiers who are still fighting in the mud right now, regardless of what is happening in the Middle East.

Ukrainians have been forced to do an intensive master’s degree in war over the last four years. And with that experience they have managed to become a benchmark in this new battlefield dominated by unmanned vehicles, low-cost weapons and cognitive warfare.

During NATO maneuvers Hedgehogthe Ukrainian team – made up of only ten people– removed the equivalent of two battalions in a single afternoon. Four years ago no one was betting on the Ukrainian Army, and analysts from around the world assured that they would not endure a prolonged war campaign against Russia.

However, during the first days of the full-scale invasion, a Territorial Defense volunteer soldier explained to me that in Ukraine there was a saying: “with shit and matches“. It meant that they were going to fight with the little they had and with the much they lacked, until the end if necessary.

Today the possibility of that same Army going from defending itself “with shit and matches” to train NATO armies in drone warfare It has become something unexpectedly real.