• Given the sheer volume of enemy drones, helicopters joined the counter-drone fight.
• In Ukraine and Israel, helicopters of all kinds hunt drones.

It’s not just fighter planes and ground air defense who are in the drone battles. The sheer volume of drones — seen in Ukraine and Israel’s fight against Iran and its militant allies — draws helicopters to destroy them before it’s too late.

Attack helicopters armed with rotary cannons were designed to attack ground targets such as armored vehicles. Instead, they and even utility helicopters are ENTRAINED on incoming drones, a practice that many warfare experts say is temporary at best. “The use of attack helicopters for countering drones it’s a Band-Aid solution for lingering munitions (ie ‘kamikaze drones’), but it will be obsolete once drones are used in swarms and autonomously, which are capabilities that both the Iranians and the Russians are working on,” Nicholas said Heras, a security expert with the New Lines Institute think tank in Washington, DC.

Both wars see drone helicopters. Over the northern skies of Israel recently an Israeli AH-64 Apache attack helicopter knocked down a Hezbollah drone with its cannon, as the country’s air defenses find it difficult to intercept all drones. On October 13, another Hezbollah drone struck an army base in central Israel, killing four soldiers.

Similarly, the Ukrainian Mi-24V Hind gunships are hunting Iranian-designed Shahed drones from Russia the 12.7mm rotary cannons and their crew on the Mi-8 Hip utility helicopters even shoot down drones with machine guns.

“In general, any means of drone interception is ultimately at stake in one form or another – that’s why Ukraine is also using a simple training plane,” Samuel Bendett, an expert on unmanned and robotic systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Business Insider.

The aircraft he was referring to includes propeller planeswhich Ukrainian airmen use to try to shoot down drones with handguns and even rifles.

“Given their versatility, helicopters can be used to carry out air defense tasks in case of need, although this is not their main role,” Federico Borsari, a defense expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told BI. “Israeli Apaches have been used several times in the past to intercept hostile drones coming from Lebanon and Syria, so this is not surprising.”

Some helicopters can carry air-to-air missiles that extend their engagement range far beyond cannons or machine guns, requiring such close encounters that they put the aircraft and its crew at risk.

In Ukraine, a huge country compared to Israel, helicopters are a means of protecting its airspace against large drone salvos.

“Considering the Russian Shahed’s Slow and low flying pattern, rotary aircraft can track and destroy them easily,” Borsari said. “In general, however, the use of helicopters in this role remains suboptimal, also because of the risks to aircraft and crew in similar operations.”

Cannons and machine guns are much less expensive than air-to-air missiles, but they do not replace the accuracy and range of missiles.

“In general, helicopters are much cheaper to fly and operate compared to fighter jets, and of course heavy machine guns on board cost much less than air-to-air missiles,” Borsari said. “However, it very much depends on the type of threat (high-speed drone vs slow-flying drone) and the operational context, as fighter jets can reach the target area much faster, for example.”

Overall, the CEPA analyst says helicopters are a “last resort” involving both cost and risk, while the brunt of these missions should fall on jamming systems, air defense and military lasers under development.

Helicopters will likely continue to play a role in drone defense, albeit as a backup, and may be armed with weapons to make them more effective.

In early November, a Royal Navy Wildcat multi-role helicopter successfully shot down a Banshee test drone using an air-to-air missile. Modifications like this could make helicopters more effective drone hunters in the future, supplementing other ground and air systems.

“Certainly, the integration of specific distance (unmanned aerial system) systems such as interceptor drones, cheap precision-guided munitions and potential high energy laserscould pave the way for a more prominent role of rotary aircraft for C-UAS purposes,” Borsari said.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist and columnist who writes on Middle East developments, military affairs, politics and history. His articles have appeared in a variety of regionally focused publications.