By Andreas De Palmenaer, Head of Business Development

Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is ramping up. In July, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s largest oil refinery at Omsk, around 2,700 km from Ukrainian-held territory. In August, another long-range attack reached Yekaterinburg, more than 2,000 km from the Ukrainian border. Drones can fly extraordinarily long distances; we know that. The key development is that long-range drones are now serious strategic weapons, and that their value increasingly rests on whether they can survive the efforts of the radar and air-defence systems waiting for them to bring them down.

Why long-range drones need better radar countermeasures

The story of Ukrainian drone warfare began with first-person view (FPV) drones. Now, there are long-range strike systems capable of hitting targets hundreds of kilometres or even thousands of kilometres away. FPVs changed warfare by making infantry and armour more vulnerable; long-range drones let militaries strike logistics hubs, aircraft on the ground, ammunition depots, energy infrastructure and defence-industrial facilities far beyond the battlefield. Their relatively low cost means militaries can have an impact without relying only on costly crewed aircraft or cruise and ballistic missiles. But range alone is not the only thing that matters. A drone that can fly 2,000 km but can’t get through the final layers of an enemy air-defence network is only so useful.

Their protection is therefore essential. As long-range UAV technology improves, survivability is becoming as important as endurance. Defenders can move radar, electronic-warfare systems and surface-to-air weapons around valuable targets. They can also learn from previous attacks. So there is now a constant competition between better drones and better detection and interception. This is why lightweight, affordable radar countermeasures are vitally important for UAV designers.

How chaff protects drones from radar

Chaff is made of large numbers of precisely engineered conductive fibres which, when ejected, form radar-reflective clouds. Each individual fibre acts as a dipole antenna that reflects a radio frequency. By selecting fibre lengths for particular radar frequencies, manufacturers can create a strong radar return away from the aircraft or drone itself. Used correctly, chaff can make tracking harder, create false or competing radar returns and reduce the effectiveness of radar-guided threats. It is passive, lightweight and comparatively inexpensive – valuable qualities on a UAV where every gram, watt and cubic centimetre matters.

The possibilities go beyond protecting a single drone. One UAV can dispense chaff in support of others. Several drones can produce competing radar returns across an attack. Chaff can also form part of a wider network of decoys and other countermeasures designed to make it much harder for an air-defence operator to spot the real threat. As drone attacks become larger and more complex, the goal, rather than merely protecting a single drone or group of drones, is to make the whole drone picture harder for the defender to understand.

FibreCoat’s new FC-RR-170 chaff cartridge

FibreCoat has been working to solve this. We don’t just buy conventional chaff material and package it. Our technology allows metals to be coated directly onto fibres during the fibre-spinning process. We use our materials expertise to move progressively further up the system: from engineering the fibres themselves to producing finished chaff payloads and, now, developing the equipment needed to dispense them from UAVs.

Our latest chaff product, the FC-RR-170, is our third chaff innovation and our most complete chaff cartridge yet. Weighing just 125 grams, it’s designed to provide radar countermeasure coverage across frequencies from 2–40 GHz and to operate from -54°C to +71°C. We engineer our materials for consistent electromagnetic reflectivity and controlled dispersal; these are the two basic requirements if chaff is to perform predictably outside the laboratory and under real operating conditions.

A useful drone countermeasure must be effective without taking so much weight or space that it damages the aircraft’s range or payload. It must also be reliable: a defence customer needs the thousandth cartridge to behave just like the first. Our control of the process, from fibre development through to the creation of the finished cartridge, gives us direct control over material properties, quality and production.

From chaff fibres to a complete UAV countermeasure

We’re now taking the next step by developing a dedicated chaff dispenser for UAVs. We’re turning the material itself into a practical, integrated drone countermeasure: fibre, cartridge and dispenser engineered as parts of the same system.

That end-to-end approach brings another highly desirable advantage: supply. Chaff is expendable. Once a war breaks out, the armed forces don’t need a handful of beautiful prototypes: they need large numbers of reliable countermeasures that can be manufactured again and again and again. (This is one of the key lessons of the Ukrainian conflict.) By controlling more of the production chain itself, we can improve quality control, shorten development cycles and reduce dependence on fragmented suppliers. Our modular fibre-production technology is designed specifically to this end.

Can unmanned aircraft survive increasingly effective radar-guided air defences – and can the countermeasures that protect them can be produced at the same scale as the drones themselves? We say yes. FibreCoat’s FC-RR-170 and our work on UAV chaff dispensers address both aspects of the problem. We take a proven principle of radar countermeasures and redesign it around the demands of modern warfare and, specifically, modern unmanned systems: low weight, consistent performance, controlled dispersal, scalable production and secure supply.

Long-range drones have already changed what militaries can do. Now, they need to do it reliably. Better drone chaff and better UAV radar countermeasures will be – indeed, already are – an important part of that. We intend to be at the centre of that market, and to support our friends across NATO.

by the Wall Street Journal