Since 2022 the war in Ukraine has been the largest living laboratory for drone EW. Open-source publications paint a consistent picture: a dynamic arms race in which every countermeasure is answered within weeks.
GNSS jamming and spoofing on an industrial scale
On the Russian side, systems such as the Pole-21 have been deployed, which can jam GNSS over 25+ km, alongside rapidly developed tactical jammers such as the Volnorez. On the Ukrainian side, sources mention the networked Pokrova system, which spoofs satellite navigation over large areas to make Shahed drones and cruise missiles stray off course, and the mobile Bukovel-AD, which detects UAVs out to ~100 km and jams GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BeiDou at 15–20 km. A telling side effect: Ukrainian anti-drone spoofing also disrupted the GPS in civilians' mobile phones — an illustration of how unselective EW is.
The fibre-optic FPV drone: the end of jamming?
The most important recent breakthrough is the fibre-optic FPV drone: a drone controlled through a thin optical fibre that unspools during flight. Because there is no radio link, it is immune to RF and GNSS jamming — the cornerstone of drone EW simply does not work against it. Both sides now use them on a massive scale. It forces the defence back to detection by radar and acoustics (Detection first: C-UAS = detect + defeat) and to kinetic means — a sharp lesson about the limits of EW.
Drone EW ties together almost the whole course: RF jamming (Electronic Counter Measures), GNSS jamming and spoofing (GNSS and navigation warfare), radar and micro-Doppler (Radar), EO/IR (Infrared) and passive RF detection (EW: Electronic Support Measures). The Ukraine case also teaches two things missing from a static textbook: EW is a permanent race of adaptation (hence cognitive/adaptive EW, New concepts in EW), and EW has a limit — against a drone without a radio link, disrupting the spectrum does not help.
Open sources include: RUSI — “Competitive Electronic Warfare in Land Operations” and “Meatgrinder” (Watling & Reynolds); Defense Express & Kyiv Post on Pokrova; RFE/RL and commentary by Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov on fibre-optic drones. (Estimates and system data are open-source and indicative.)