Senior military officials from Portugal, Ukraine, and the UK gathered at a Tekever-hosted roundtable at DSEI UK to discuss how tactical drones are enabling strategic targeting of high-value assets in Ukraine.

 

Tactical drones are enabling Ukraine to locate, track, and strike Russia’s most protected air defence systems, including the S-400.

At a closed-door roundtable hosted by Tekever at DSEI UK 2025 in September, senior military officials from Portugal, Ukraine, and the UK explored this, focusing on how tightly integrated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) networks and rapidly adaptable tactical UAS are delivering strategic effects.

From decoy operations to deep-penetration missions under active jamming, the discussion made one thing clear: Ukraine is rewriting the playbook for the suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) and is staying one step ahead of Russia’s evolving concepts of operations (CONOPS) – and NATO is absorbing these lessons into its own modus operandi.

 

Countering the S-400

Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, air defence has played a critical and enduring role in the war for both sides of the conflict.

Russia’s prestigious S-400 Triumf air defence system has been deployed across the region to protect strategic assets on the battlefield as well as critical national infrastructure from threats such as aircraft, drones, and cruise and ballistic missiles.

Despite this, Ukraine has been able to successfully evade the S-400, carrying out deep strikes into Russian territory and delivering a significant, psychological blow to Russia’s broader integrated air and missile defence network.

Drones have become central to this – both as a threat to air defence systems and as tools to evade and overwhelm them.

But there is a new threat on the horizon, which is putting Ukrainian SEAD capabilities at risk: Russian techniques for dealing with the challenges posed by tactical drones are evolving and becoming more sophisticated. Those new difficulties were admitted by the officials present at the roundtable, who prefer not to be named due to security concerns.

“[S-400s] were always so easy to detect but now they are operating [their radars] intermittently”, Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) officials acknowledged, adding that the Russians are now employing alternative radar solutions to detect incoming air threats before cueing S-400s. 

Options include using more tactical air defence systems like the S-1‘Pantsir’, SA-11, S-15, and S-18 – which are being employed not only to “wake up” S-400s but also to protect them from the full spectrum of air threats including from UAS. 

“Add to these [platforms] electronic warfare systems, to block navigation and control systems, and you can understand how difficult it is to detect and destroy an S-400 system [now]”, the AFU officials said.

A year ago, Ukrainian forces had a total understanding of the pattern of life for each and every one of the systems and corridors of movement established by the Russian forces. It was possible – easy, even – to know how S-300s and S-400s were moving, the officials noted. The Ukrainian strategy was to calculate where they should be in the area of interest and then send HIMARS (the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) to that area of interest.

But now “the war has totally changed”, the officials explained: “These systems are not staying in the same positions for weeks or days. During this year, Russian lines have totally changed. They are [only] turning on their radars [now] if they know our aviation is in the air”, reserving their long-range systems for deeper, harder-to-detect threats and only remain static for up to one hour before changing positions. “So, it is much more difficult to plan missions.”

Russia’s long-range detection of air threats is supported by the ‘SKVP’ network of fixed radars – which the AFU officials said are “easy to destroy but can be rebuilt within a week”. Also, Russians seem to be more aware of the ways the Ukrainian forces are trying to find their high value assets across the battlefield, so they avoid emitting radar signatures and employ good camouflage and concealment techniques.

 

A system-of-systems approach to SEAD

However, Ukraine and its allies have a card up their sleeve to face these new challenges: a “system-of-systems” approach to detecting and neutralising adversary air defences, with UAS acting as a core element.

An approach which senior military at the roundtable declared as “critical to Ukrainian operational success” over the course of the war, even in the most complex electronic warfare (EW) and air defence environments.

This system-of-systems approach leans heavily on integrated ISR networks, which fuse intelligence from various platforms to deliver actionable targeting data in real time. “Dealing with ISR in a stovepipe doesn’t work, it has to be fused,” the AFU officials added before warning: “No matter how good a drone is, it can’t cover all operations.”

Tekever’s AR3 tactical long endurance UAS is a key element of this ISR strategy, which works as part of a wider network of intelligence-gathering assets in Ukraine, enabling the AFU to accurately confirm the position of adversary radar operating exclusively at night.

“The AR3 confirmed the [presence of the] radar and coordinated with a one-way attack drone to destroy it,” a company official noted before disclosing that Tekever’s UAS had also flown under radar coverage into Russian-occupied Crimea on “deep missions”. To date, the AFU has deployed the AR3 on thousands of operational flight hours at the Ukrainian frontline, which, together with close collaboration with the Ukraine community, has culminated in the new AR3 Evo modular drone.

“We [are] very proud of the work we do in Ukraine and the relationship we have with the AFU. We appreciate all the work you are doing. It’s very impressive and truly humbling”, the Head of Tekever’s Defence Capability, Simon Briggs, said at the roundtable. 

Successful deployment of this system-of-systems ISR approach, however, is becoming increasingly more complex, due to the prevalence of signals intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) capabilities on the battlefield.

 

SEAD in contested environments

ELINT and SIGINT are considered critical for any SEAD and ISR-based drone strategy. Explaining this, AFU officials said: “When flying in enemy territory, you really need information whether you’re detected or not and if detected, what kind of countermeasures they’re employing.”

To avoid detection, Ukrainian drones now fly rapidly in and out of contested areas – altering altitude, direction, and speed – often operating at higher altitudes to avoid low-level radar and missile threats. Many are being upgraded with ELINT and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payloads to enhance detection through cloud cover and other battlefield obscurants. 

“The enemy uses [cloud cover] to move troops and equipment”, the AFU officials explained: “We understand this [SAR and ELINT capability] is very important to continue our reconnaissance missions to find and fix enemy radars and we are preparing for this.”

 

SEAD and decoys

Conducting successful SEAD operations, especially given Russia’s CONOPS is evolving, also involves overwhelming or confusing their air defences.

Explaining this, the AFU officials discussed how they use decoy drones to “draw out” high value targets before striking with larger, one-way attack drones. This is necessary because the S-400 “is protected by SA-15s now so there is no point sending a drone if you can’t distract the SA-15”.

 “On the battlefield, there are so many drones so sending decoys makes sense. But these are additional resources, and they have to include good enough technology to fly over enemy territory without being jammed.”

 

Innovation: an operational necessity 

In modern warfare, innovation in SEAD isn’t an option – it’s the rule. That principle echoed throughout the roundtable, as officials made clear that platforms that can’t adapt will quickly become obsolete. That’s a critical requirement for the AFU as it employs a system-of-systems approach to finding, fixing and disabling high value targets across battlespace. But also, to NATO armed forces.

An unnamed official speaking at the roundtable stressed that the UK and its NATO partners must consider these types of emerging CONOPS and tactics, techniques, and procedures in the future, urgently aligning its force structures and procurement models with the pace of operational reality.

“We must have platforms that can adapt very quickly and with money allocated to answer questions which have yet to be posed,” he suggested.  But that, he warned, requires "financial programming” to enable constant upgrades and continuous evolution.

Portuguese Army representatives agreed. “Innovation is not an option”, but an important necessity to ensure survivability across the modern battlespace. Since 2022, they’ve worked with Tekever to advance UAS communications and respond to all the changes happening in the last three years. The next step is “to protect GPS through visual navigation,” the army officials said.

Wrapping up the roundtable, Briggs at Tekever captured the core message of the roundtable: “The concept of never achieving full operating capability and consistently changing and adapting the system is now the norm. If you don't innovate, if you don't iterate, if you don't evolve, you will become irrelevant.” In a conflict defined by rapid change, it’s more than just a mindset, it’s a matter of operational survival.

 

---

Author: Andrew White - a veteran defense journalist of nearly 20 years, who writes for multiple specialist publications around the world