Why this family of drones matters
Loitering munitions, often called “kamikaze drones” or one-way attack UAVs, sit at the intersection of affordability, precision, and persistence. They blur lines between missiles and unmanned aircraft by circling an area, locating a target with onboard sensors or external cuing, and striking once. For militaries that can’t afford dense precision-guided inventories (or want to conserve them), these systems provide a scalable way to hold artillery, radars, logistics hubs, and even air defenses at risk. Analysts increasingly treat them as part of the “fires” ecosystem rather than a niche UAV toolset.
What counts and what doesn’t
Not every expendable drone qualifies as a loitering munition. In practice, two families dominate today’s battlefield: purpose-built loitering munitions such as Harpy/Harop, Switchblade, and Lancet, and low-cost one-way attack drones (OWA-UAVs) like Shahed-type systems that fly pre-planned routes to overwhelm defenses. Both deliver effects at low cost, but loitering munitions emphasize on-station search and human-in-the-loop terminal control, while many OWA-UAVs behave more like slow, programmable cruise missiles. Understanding that distinction matters for procurement, training, and counter-UAS planning.
Cost, mass, and the new arithmetic of fires
The most important lesson from recent wars is that cheap mass beats exquisite scarcity more often than expected. Russia’s routine use of loitering munitions and OWA-UAVs has created a drumbeat of attrition against Ukrainian guns, radars, and logistics. Periodic salvos then surge volume to saturate air defenses, forcing expensive interceptors to chase low-cost threats and depleting magazines. The operational result is psychological pressure and incremental damage that adds up over weeks, not just during headline-grabbing barrages.
Battlefield evidence: from the Caucasus to Ukraine
The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war previewed this paradigm. Video-documented strikes showed how loitering munitions can expose static air defenses and artillery, compress decision cycles, and punish movements once thought relatively safe. While the local context and force quality mattered, the conflict demonstrated that smaller militaries could buy real advantages by pairing ISR drones with expendable precision strike. Those patterns have since been amplified at continental scale in Ukraine, where Lancet-type loitering munitions and first-person-view (FPV) expendables now actively hunt artillery, air defenses, and logistics nodes across the depth of the battlefield.
The kill chain is the product
These systems don’t operate in isolation. The value comes from a kill chain: detection through small ISR UAVs, EW geolocation, or ground observers, identification and correlation, then engagement via loitering munition tasking. Russian units have increasingly structured air “orbits” of small ISR UAVs to maintain continuous observation along axes of advance, feeding target data to FPVs and Lancets that close the loop within minutes. Where defenses thin, OWA-UAV salvos exploit gaps to strike energy and logistics targets deeper in the rear. The faster this find-fix-finish loop runs, the more a defender’s “safe zones” shrink.
Counter-UAS: jammers help, layers matter
Electronic warfare complicates loitering munitions by severing datalinks or disrupting navigation. But EW alone rarely solves the problem. Kinetic point defenses, layered guns, intercept drones, and better camouflage or dispersion are all required, especially when attackers mass dozens of low-cost vehicles. Recent months have seen defenders field new interceptor drones and tighten the sensor-to-shooter chain for mobile gun systems, yet attackers adapt by flying higher, faster, and in larger mixes with decoys. It is a live, iterative contest rather than a static puzzle with a single answer.
Small forces, big leverage
For smaller militaries or constabulary forces, loitering munitions offer credible deterrence without the full cost of legacy strike aviation. A modest fleet paired with commercial-grade ISR and disciplined targeting can impose real risk on an adversary’s artillery and air defenses. The operational caveat is that training and command discipline matter more than headline specifications. Units must learn when to hold a munition on station for a higher-value target and when to spend it to keep pressure on enemy engineers or logistics. Without that doctrine, expendable systems get spent with little cumulative effect.
Industrial base and supply: speed over perfection
The barriers to entry are lower than for manned aviation, and production can scale quickly once electronics supply and warhead integration are standardized. Rapid design cycles allow iterative improvements in airframe endurance, seeker quality, and electronic hardening. The flip side is attrition: operators must plan for loss rates that would be unacceptable for traditional aircraft, and industry must secure resilient component chains to avoid disruptions. Ukraine and Russia have both demonstrated that local manufacturing, down to small workshops for FPV-style systems, can change battlefield availability in months, not years.
Compliance landscape: export controls still shape access
Export regimes are adapting. The Missile Technology Control Regime uses payload and range thresholds to classify systems, and many loitering munitions fall into Category I or II depending on configuration. The Wassenaar Arrangement’s Munitions List and related controls cover UAVs and subsystems relevant to guidance, communications, and warheads. For cross-border programs, due diligence remains non-optional: seemingly commercial components can trip controls depending on integration and end-use. Clear definitions in contracts, careful end-user vetting, and internal compliance reviews are now part of any serious loitering-munition roadmap.
Target sets: what these systems actually change
Artillery survivability is the first casualty. Loitering munitions compress the “shoot-and-scoot” window; guns that linger become vulnerable to rapid counter-strikes. Air defenses also feel the pressure: search and fire-control radars that radiate for too long can be detected and attacked, a role pioneered by anti-radiation loiterers like Harpy. Logistics nodes remain attractive because even a small explosive can disable key assets, such as fuelers, bridging gear, or C2 vehicles, at a cost that favors the attacker in the long run.
Energy and critical infrastructure: a different risk calculus
Beyond the front lines, OWA-UAVs and loitering munitions have been used to probe and strike energy infrastructure, ports, and storage. For operators in the energy sector, this shifts security planning away from purely ground-based perimeter thinking toward a layered air defense posture, at least during high-threat periods. Even if most inbound drones are intercepted, the economic effect of a few leakers against transformers, loading arms, or control buildings can be disproportionate. The key for civilian operators is coordination, airspace awareness, cueing from national authorities, and hardening of the most fragile assets.
Procurement notes for decision-makers
First, buy the system, but also buy the kill chain: ISR feeds, targeting software, fire control, and EW coordination. Second, plan sustainment for high expenditure rates and continuous training; operators must be comfortable with both autonomous search patterns and strict rules of engagement. Third, assume a contested electromagnetic spectrum. If your concept of operations depends on constant high-bandwidth links, losses will be severe; specify levels of autonomy and fallback navigation modes accordingly. Finally, invest early in counter-UAS and deception: smoke, decoys, and rapid movement save more assets than last-second intercepts.
What to watch next
Three trends deserve attention. Autonomy is improving, but the decisive factor will remain human-in-the-loop authorization for lethal effects in most responsible forces. Seeker diversity—EO/IR, RF homing, and low-cost mmWave will expand the target set and complicate defenses. And logistics will become the real center of gravity: those who can manufacture, field, and replace expendable systems faster than an adversary can adapt will set the tempo. For states and companies alike, the lesson is simple: treat loitering munitions not as a gadget, but as a doctrine-driven capability woven into ISR, EW, and air defense from day one.
References
- CSIS, “The Enduring Role of Fires on the Modern Battlefield,” 2025.
- CSIS, “The Evolution of Airpower,” 2025.
- CSIS, “The Russia-Ukraine Drone War: Innovation on the Frontlines and Beyond,” 2025.
- SIPRI, “Arms transfers to conflict zones: The case of Nagorno-Karabakh,” 2021; and “Escalating violence in Nagorno-Karabakh,” 2020.
