Although the Russian Ministry of Defense has not yet acknowledged that the drones launched into the Polish sky belong to its forces, they are Gerbera drones, a multipurpose unmanned aerial vehicle that began to be used from July 2024 during the invasion of Ukraine, meaning it is used for various different purposes: as a kamikaze against ground targets, as a reconnaissance device, and as a decoy when flying without explosives. Its appearance in the conflict zone was recorded in July 2024, initially as a decoy to saturate and confuse Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems.
Its mass production is possible because its design is simple and economical, with an internal structure of plywood covered with polystyrene foam, which facilitates production and use as a decoy against more sophisticated drones like its older brother, the Iranian Shahed-136 (Geranium-2 according to the Russian denomination). Generally, the Russians make them fly in swarms together, the Shahed to attack targets, the Gerbera as a decoy to attract anti-aircraft fire. Like the Shahed, it is also a psychological weapon: the metallic noise of its engine can be heard kilometers away in the middle of the night.
It has approximate dimensions of two meters in length with a wingspan of about 2.5 meters, and weighs around 10 kilograms without explosive load. With this lightweight configuration, they can cover hundreds of kilometers in flight, which explains why some infiltrated up to 300 kilometers into Poland.
Why is a slow drone, with such a loud noise that betrays its low flight, easily shot down with heavy machine guns, and not having a very large explosive warhead (about 40 kilograms of explosives depending on the version) so concerning for Ukraine and its allies? It is, by its military name, loitering ammunition, meaning it is a disposable aerial weapon that combines features of a drone and a missile: it is launched, loiters (remains in the air) searching or waiting for a target, and when it detects it or is ordered, it dives and detonates on it. If done in a swarm of hundreds of units, there is no anti-aircraft defense that can shoot them all down. Therefore, what Russia seeks is saturation.
In Ukraine, these drones are shot down with anti-aircraft cannons or machine guns, not with missiles from fighter jets, as NATO pilots did last night. In a prolonged conflict, shooting down swarms of cheap drones (around 10,000 euros per unit) with expensive projectiles like the AIM-120 AMRAAM used by NATO fighters, such as the F-35 that shot down these Russian drones last night, is absolutely unaffordable, as each unit costs over a million euros.
From the ground, for example, an IRIS-T anti-aircraft battery can easily shoot down this drone, but its missiles cost around 400,000 dollars per unit, while those of Nasams batteries cost a million and those of Patriot, around four million per projectile. That is, if Ukraine were to use these interceptors to shoot down the 20,000 euro Shahed or the 10,000 euro Gerbera, it would already be a victory for Russia. Moscow produces about 1,000 Shahed and hundreds of Gerbera drones every day, which gives an idea of the magnitude of the problem and the time wasted by Europe in supporting Ukraine.
However, in Kyiv, they have learned to use even lower-cost devices to shoot them down: in October 2024, they began intercepting Gerbera with FPV drones priced at around 1,500 euros per unit, an effective strategy against this type of low-cost UAVs. No NATO country has anything similar, nor trained crews to combat them. The Gerbera catch the Alliance without a sustainable plan to shoot them down.