Drone Defence in ASEAN - better present than absent

As anyone who has followed the Russo-Ukrainian war would know, aerial suicide or One Way Attack (OWA) drones, with ranges in the 10s or many 100s of kilometres have been used by both sides to deadly effect. Ukraine has successfully deployed many of its OWA drones to assail Russian military targets and economic assets essential to Moscow, while the latter has sent its own drones to not only attack the Ukrainian military but also perpetrate war crimes by victimising civilians, and destroying their housing and infrastructure.

Two of the more prominent aerial attack drones in Russia's arsenal are the Shaheed-136 and the Zala Lancet. The Shaheed is simple in construction, guided by commercially available GPS modules, travels at 185km/h and has a 50 or 90kg warhead which is devastating to civilian infrastructure. A key advantage of this drone is it's range which varies from 650-1500km. Examining the Lancet , it has a comparatively slower speed of 110km/h and shorter range of 40km, with a small 3kg warhead, but is more mechanically complex, having electro-optical and TV guidance. Each Lancet only costs about US$35,000 with the Shaheeds costing around US$30,000-80,000.

Drone proliferation amongst and in ASEAN countries

While the manufacturing of drones like the Shaheed and Lancet aren't quite rocket science, they need dedicated workshops, tooling, and a secure supply chain for engines and explosives-facilities that are difficult to hide in the jungle camps of regional insurgencies and terrorist groups. But even as the communist New People's Army of the Philippines or Jemaah Islamiya cells in Indonesia cannot build military grade drones, they could follow ISIS's middle eastern playbook: adapting Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) drones. Regional non-state antagonists could adapt civilian technology, transforming cheap purchasable drones into bomb-drop platforms or kamikaze munitions. Indeed, the Burmese rebel group, the People's Defense Forces (PDF) have successfully established jungle workshops to weaponize modified commercial drones.

As for whether violent non-state actors could illicitly buy Shaheed or Lancet analogues, their price makes them affordable but smuggling crated, military drones (and their launching equipment) across the heavily monitored maritime borders of the Philippines, Indonesia, or Malaysia is incredibly difficult compared to smuggling small arms. Consequently, violent actors are more likely to spend money on purchasing COTS drones and weaponizing them locally.

Regarding ASEAN states acquiring Shaheed or Lancet-like capabilities via manufacturing, at least five out of the ten ASEAN nations (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand) possess the defence-industrial base required to manufacture such drones, with Malaysia having active policy to produce kamikaze drones, Singapore and Vietnam already producing unarmed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and Indonesia being an active manufacturer of the "Bramara " kamikaze drone. As for the other five ASEAN nations-the Philippines, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Brunei, these states could easily buy OWA drones. For a nation-state, a $30,000 drone is effectively pocket change, when asingle modern multi-role fighter jet costs between $30 million and $80 million, thus enabling even the ASEAN nations with the smallest defence budgets (such as Laos or Cambodia), to easily afford such OWA drones by the hundreds. Hence, offensive drone deployment, ranging from jury-rigged COTS models, to military grade OWA units, is at the nascent stage of introduction across the region, but is poised to become ubiquitous.

What drones could do in regional conflicts

When attack drones become common in the ASEAN region, they could prove to be game changing. For insurgents, terrorists, or rebels, drones act as a substitute for heavy artillery, allowing them to project power they otherwise couldn't afford. Using short ranged COTS drones equipped with explosives and controlled in a First Person View (FPV) manner, where the drone pilot perceives what the drone "sees" via the drone's onboard camera, violent groups could carry out devastating strikes at distance. For example, a FPV drone could precisely strike military convoys navigating narrow mountain roads, or fly through the windows of fortified government buildings, completely bypassing perimeter walls and sandbags.

For longer ranged FPV drones that can fly up to 30km, these could give non-state actors the ability to disrupt international trade. Much like the Houthis in the Red Sea, a well-funded regional terror network could launch longer-ranged drones fromthe coasts of Malaysia or Indonesia, to target oil tankers and commercial shipping traversing the Strait of Malacca. Even a small explosive payload hitting a commercial tanker would cause insurance rates to skyrocket and disrupt global supply chains, giving these troublemakers massive geopolitical leverage.

On the other end of the scale, Drones could be used by extra-regional states against the national security interests of ASEAN nations, where the former is betting that drone use is an asymmetric means of pressuring the latter, which avoids the military mobilisation of the targeted nation. Consider the tensions at Ayungin Shaol (claimed by the Philippines, contested by China) in the Spratly Islands. The Philippines is manning a grounded warship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which was purposely beached there and serves as Manila's sovereign outpost. For the last several years, maritime forces of the PRC have harassed resupply vessels attempting to reach the Sierra Madre, to coerce abandonment of this outpost. Such harassment can be escalated using Lancet or FPV style drones launched from Chinese Coast Guard ships or even unmarked "fishing boats". These drones need only narrowly miss the outpost or supply vessels on a frequent basis, exploding in the water dozens of meters away with small warheads to pressure the derelict warship's personnel, and threaten the replenishment boats. Additionally, Shaheed type drones could be launched from Chinese warships in the area or from islands in the Spratly's chain controlled by China, targeting Spratly Islands outposts or facilities owned by Vietnam or Malaysia, but set to detonate nearby, as a kinetic warning that the holdings of other Spratly Islands claimants are vulnerable. Moreover, plausible deniability can be claimed if sterile drone components (devoid of any serial number or brand marks) are used, as Hanoi and Putrajaya will seek to trace the drone wreckages to Beijing.

These examples show how suicide drones heighten the regional aerial threat profile-giving cheap, deadly airpower to everyone from a terrorist or insurgent, to diversifying the kinetic options of an extra-regional hegemon.

Drone defence is essential

With OWA drones likely becoming an inescapable reality of the threat profile facing ASEAN security planners, it would behove these officials to equip their national militaries with suitable defences. Learning lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war, the emergence of man portable drone interceptors which can be launched without heavy equipment, provides a highly effective and economically sustainable model that ASEAN nations can adopt. Since using multi-million-dollar air defense missiles to shoot down a $35,000 Shaheed drone is an unsustainable strategy, nation-wide deployment of affordable drone interceptor models like the sting and octopus-100 would be prudent. These interceptors can be built at scale using 3D printing for some parts, are quite affordable (the stinger only costs US$2100 apiece ), and have proven efficacy for destroying OWA drones with Shaheed-like characteristics. Moreover, their portability enables counter drone protection to be provided to every geographic location under state jurisdiction, including rural sites, ships at sea or claimed islets in the South China Sea.

As for sustainability and scalability, the same 5 ASEAN states that can manufacture military grade OWA drones also possess the potential to domestically produce drone interceptors, while the rest of the ASEAN nations are minimally able to purchase sufficient stocks (in the low thousands) of such counter drone defences.

Turning to the more mundane but no less damaging threat from FPV drones, it is advisable that ASEAN states implement widespread installation or carrying of drone signal jammers on most essential facilities, military vehicles, ships or specialised soldiers respectively, so that approaching drones' command signals will be disrupted, reducing their accuracy. Also, kinetic defences should work concurrently with jamming by taking existing, cheap, heavy machine guns and mounting them on automated turrets equipped with basic optical/night vision sensors connected to AI-driven Fire Control Systems (FCS). Instead of buying new weapons, ASEAN militaries can upgrade their massive existing stockpiles of Cold War-era machine guns. By retrofitting them with sensors and relevant FCSs, such machine guns can resist multiple waves of FPV drones for the low cost of mere bullets. These foundational defences should be easily adopted on a pan-ASEAN basis, either via domestic manufacturing or external procurement as the costs are relatively modest.

Lastly, since OWA drones fly at low altitudes, making radar early warning much harder, it would behove all ASEAN defence ministries to get Kyiv to brief them about Ukraine's network of acoustic sensors, providing advance drone and missile warnings. The latter's "Sky Fortress" system comprises 14,000 acoustic sensors throughout Ukraine with each sensor costing between $400 and $1000 that can detect the sound signatures of enemy drones. These then permit defence forces to be placed on the path of the attacks. Assuming an average cost per sensor of $700, this system would only cost a paltry $9.8 million, affordable for all ASEAN budgets.

Better to have and not need, than to need and not have

Waiting for a drone strike to occur before building defences is a gamble ASEAN nations cannot afford to take.Though there is no guarantee that terrorist groups will acquire asymmetric drone capabilities or that hostile states will employ drone warfare, the potential for unacceptable harm to civilians and civil infrastructure, along with the possibility that OWA drones could debilitate ASEAN defences, makes the adoption of drone interceptors, jammers, improved machine gun defences and acoustic detection systems essential. Indeed, the technological feasibility and cost effectiveness of such precautionary measures, combined with the high likelihood of the drone threat manifesting due to their affordability, makes counter-drone preparations prudent.