Loitering munition

 ( Aerial Warfare ) 

Early projects did not use the "loitering munition" nomenclature, which emerged much later; they used terminology existing at the time. For instance the AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow was described in a 1988 article:

In the 1980s, programs such as the IAI Harpy and AGM-136 Tacit Rainbow integrated anti-radiation sensors into a drone or missile coupled with command and control and loitering capabilities. This allowed the attacking force to put relatively cheap munitions over suspected SAM sites, then attack when the SAM battery was spotted. Meet Israel's 'Suicide Squad' of Self-Sacrificing Drones, August 2016, The Drive ADAPTIVE DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION FOR ANALYSIS OF HARPY SWARM ATTACK, Brandon J. Cobb, Naval Postgraduate School, Thesis, September 2011 Loitering, Smart Cruise Missile Marketed to U.S. Navy , National Defense, June 2001

During conflicts in the 2010s and 2020s, conventional armies and non-state militants began modifying common commercial Drone racing into "FPV loitering munitions" by the attachment of a small explosive, so-named because of the first-person view (FPV) they provide the operator. Explosive ordnance such as an IED, grenade, mortar round or an RPG warhead are fitted to an FPV drone then deployed to aerial bomb tactical targets. FPV drones also allow direct reconnaissance during the drone's strike mission.

Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2022, both Russian and Ukrainian forces were producing thousands of FPV drones every month by October 2023, many of which were donated by volunteer groups. Escadrone Pegasus and the Vyriy Drone Molfar are two examples of the low-cost drones that rapidly evolved in 2022–23 during the war. In 2022, the UK Government announced it was providing "hundreds of loitering munitions" to Ukraine. On 9 November 2023, Ukrainian soldiers claimed to have used a civilian-donated FPV drone to destroy a Russian Tor missile system on the Kupiansk front, showcasing the potential cost-effectiveness of fielding such munitions. A Tor missile system costs some $24 million to build, which could buy 14,000 FPV drones.

Purpose-built munitions are more elaborate in flight and control capabilities, warhead size and design, and onboard sensors for locating targets. iClean – Loitering Attack UCAV, Artzi Dror, Technion Institute of Technology, 2012 Some loitering munitions use a human operator to locate targets whereas others, such as IAI Harop, can function autonomously searching and launching attacks without human intervention. Israel Unveils Loitering Anti-Missile Drone , Defense Update, 2009 Harpy Air Defense Suppression System , Defense Update, 2006 Another example is UVision Air HERO solutions – the loitering systems are operated remotely, controlled in real time by a communications system and equipped with an electro-optical camera whose images are received by the command and control station.

Some loitering munitions may return and be recovered by the operator if they are unused in an attack and have enough fuel; in particular this is characteristic of UAVs with a secondary explosive capability. IAI's ROTEM – Tactical Multirotor Killer Drone, Defense Update, 2016 Other systems, such as the Delilah The Secrets of Delilah (Hebrew), IAF bulletin, issue 184, December 2008 Delilah – The IAF Loitering Missile, Defense Update, June 2009 do not have a recovery option and are self-destructed in mission aborts.

Ukrainian soldiers report shooting down Russian drones with . Russian soldiers use electronic warfare to disable or misdirect Ukrainian drones and have reportedly used the Stupor anti-drone rifle, which uses an electromagnetic pulse that disrupts a drone's GPS navigation. A Royal United Services Institute study in 2022 found that Russian Electronic Warfare units, in March and April 2022, knocked out or shot down 90% of Ukrainian drones that they had at the start of the war in February 2022. The main success was in jamming GPS and radio links to the drones.

Both Ukraine and Russia rely on electronic warfare to defeat FPV drones. Such jammers are now used on Ukrainian trenches and vehicles. Russian forces have built jammers that can fit into a backpack. Pocket-size jammers for soldiers were also developed. As of June 2023 Ukraine was losing 5-10,000 drones a month, or 160 per day, according to Ukrainian soldiers.

This has led to Russia creating wire guided FPV drones, similar to a wire-guided missile or even wire-guided torpedoes. Those drones typically have fibre optic cables 5–20 km in length. Such guidance makes the link between operators and FPV drone immune to jamming. It also allows for much faster and better quality updates from the drone, even from locations where radio contact would be poor, and doesn't reveal operator's or drone's location by radio signals. They also need less power to communicate, and so can be used to idle on the ground for ambushes. They have reduced range, payload and manoeuvrability compared to wireless drones, although in practice, range and agility of the wired drones can be even higher than those of the radio-controlled ones, given their reduced control latency and increased survivability. Ukraine has also responded by using autonomous drones tasking to ensure that a jammed drone can hit a target. In March 2024 footage put on social media showed a Ukrainian FPV drone being jammed just before it struck a target. Despite the loss of operator control it still managed to strike the target.

Russian tanks have been fitted with rooftop slat armor at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine which could provide protection against loitering munitions in some circumstances. Some Ukrainian tanks taking part in the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive were also spotted using roof screens.

On 21 March 2024, recent footage of the submarine Tula showed that it has been fitted with a slat armor to prevent drone strikes, the first ocean-going asset to carry such a modification.