The Iranian-designed Shahed series of long-range one-way attack drones has brought destruction across Ukraine since Russia first put it to use there in September 2022. The threat posed by drones of this kind has now begun to be taken much more seriously, while Europe’s biggest missile manufacturer, MBDA, is now working on a weapon very much influenced by the Shahed and the lessons of the war in Ukraine.
During the Paris Air Show, which began yesterday, MBDA unveiled its proposal for what it calls, for now at least, the One-Way Effector. A scale model of the drone was presented at the exhibition; the full-size version will be around 10 feet long.
The key attributes of the expendable attack drone will include its low cost, allowing large numbers of them to be sent against an enemy’s air defense network and saturate it. Hugo Coqueret, business development manager battlefield at MBDA, said that the cost of a One-Way Effector would be equivalent to a “fraction of a cruise missile.”
While the One-Way Effector is able to attack targets in its own right, MBDA envisages the weapon being used in conjunction with much smaller numbers of far more expensive (and more deadly) cruise missiles and other weapons.
“The mission is really one of saturation,” Coqueret told Defense News. “It has been designed to meet this need for the return of mass in the armed forces, to cause saturation of enemy forces.”
This is very much in line with how Russia has been using the Shahed and locally made developments of it, in Ukraine, where barrages of Shahed and Geran drones accompany strikes by cruise and ballistic missiles and other standoff weapons. As well as swamping air defenses so that other weapons can get through to their targets, this kind of warfare also works to exhaust stocks of precious and expensive air defense missiles.
Unlike the Shahed, which is typically powered by a piston engine (although jet-powered versions do exist), the MBDA product uses a jet engine in its basic form. This will give it a maximum speed of almost 250 miles per hour, compared to around 115 miles per hour for a propeller-driven Shahed, making it tougher to intercept. The One-Way Effector will have a range of 310 miles when carrying an 80-pound warhead, significantly less than the more than 1,000 miles that the Shahed-136 is understood to achieve. The Iranian-designed drone carries a warhead weighing around 110 pounds.
“It’s relatively fast and carries a significant payload,” Coqueret said of the One-Way Effector. “All of that means that the enemy’s ground-based air defense is forced to destroy it with high-value-added systems. Everything is designed to generate saturation.”
After launch from a ramp on the ground or from the back of a vehicle, the drone uses GPS guidance to find its target.
MBDA’s Coqueret has said that “there is no dialogue between munitions,” which suggests they will not have artificial intelligence-driven swarming capabilities. However, he did say that they will be “fired in salvos with a grouping capability, they will be able to form a pack, and it’s this pack that will move towards the target and thus generate this attrition effect.”
The aim of building the One-Way Effector rapidly and cheaply is reflected in MBDA’s plans to team up with an undisclosed French automotive company so that as many as 1,000 of the drones can be churned out each month. Plans for MBDA to call upon automotive manufacturers to help accelerate its production output had been announced by CEO Éric Béranger earlier this year.
An output of 1,000 drones per month is is stark contrast to MBDA’s production rate for the Mistral surface-to-air missile, of which only 40 are manufactured monthly.
The missile manufacturer is also working on the project alongside an unnamed French drone manufacturer.
To keep costs down, the One-Way Effector, which has a composite body, will make extensive use of off-the-shelf components, including the warhead, taken from a 155mm artillery round. The total parts number is kept small, which should also make it easier to manufacture and assemble.
There are no efforts to make the drone stealthy, although, as on the Shahed, certain less-sophisticated low-observable features could presumably be added at a later date.
Other modifications could see the warhead replaced by other payloads. Drones and smaller cruise missiles are increasingly being developed with options for non-kinetic payloads, blurring the distinctions between these kinds of systems.
The One-Way Effector also appears to have conceptual similarities with MBDA’s Orchestrike system, which was unveiled at Paris Air Show in 2023. Using SPEAR precision-guided munitions, Orchestrike is designed to “enhance the performance of SPEAR missiles via AI-driven coordination, collaboration and cooperation between the missiles and the pilot controlling them from the launch aircraft.” Like the ground-launched One-Way Effector, Orchestrike is also primarily intended to overwhelm hostile air defence systems, but uses air-launched munitions.
MBDA says that the One-Way Effector is being developed to meet an operational need expressed by the French Armed Forces and that it expects to begin negotiations with the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), the French defense procurement agency.
Design work on the new drone was only launched last December, and a first test flight is now planned for September or October. Provided a contract is placed, a first production batch would be ready in 2027.
The unveiling of the One-Way Effector underscores the growing realization about the need for ‘mass’ in munitions stockpiles. The United States, notably, is looking at harnessing the potential of lower-cost weapons that can be readily produced at scale to meet the likely demands of future high-intensity conflicts.
According to MBDA’s CEO Éric Béranger, the need for a munition in this class has been driven, above all, by the recognition of the growing Russian threat, coupled with concerns about future U.S. willingness to back NATO in Europe, something that he referred to earlier this year as a “moment of truth” for the continent.
Now, Europe, too is working on cheaper long-range muntions that can be produced at scale. While the One-Way Effector is absolutely not a replacement for traditional and more expensive standoff munitions, it should ensure they are more effective, even in the face of advanced, layered air defenses.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com