Given the time it takes a First-Person View (FPV) suicide drone operator to get good, extending the counter-drone kill chain to the drone operators should be priority. Protecting individual vehicles from suicide drones should be last-ditch defense.
Strategypage notes how FPV drone operators work in a sanctuary:
Very few drone operators have been lost in the Ukraine War. That’s because the operators have a safe space to operate uninterrupted. There is usually an operations team consisting of one or more operators as well as support staff to keep track of the local combat situation and find targets. ...
On quiet parts of the front drone teams spend most of their time doing surveillance, with the occasional call for an attack drone. When new operators gain enough experience in their quiet zones, they are sent to more active areas to do their thing.
Attacking enemy aircraft on the ground and counter-battery fire against
enemy artillery are priorities. Units advancing may use firepower to
suppress potential enemy direct or indirect fire positions. Heck, attacking enemy factories
push breaking the kill chain all the way to production.
Battlefield kill chains extend from the target all the way back to the launch and/or control point. I'd like to see more effort to disrupt the start of the kill chain. Especially given that right now the FPV drones require skilled operators to fly them, put the target in the crosshairs, and attack. No matter how cheap the drones are, without active control they are a nuisance-level threat. Both precision and area fires seem like options to target the source.
Even when suicide drones become fire and forget, the entire team that keeps the drones flying is still a weak point to attack.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
