Putin’s Guards Reequip with Handheld Anti-Drone Weapons After Multiple Major Security Breaches

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal security team has been seen carrying a new class of anti-drone weapon while accompanying him. One officer reportedly attempted to obscure the unknown but highly conspicuous new system from public view during a visit to St Petersburg, although its size made concealment difficult. The weapon appears to be an infantry-operated interceptor with a four-motor cross configuration and a dual-sensor targeting system, and is thought to be manually directed in its initial targeting phase, before using a thermal imaging and television-guided seeker head to autonomously engage its target. The fielding of this new weapon follows multiple very serious security breaches of Russian defences by Ukrainain drone units, with one of the most significant being the historically unprecedented attacks on major strategic bomber facilities across Russia on June 1 under Operation Spider’s Web, which engaged targets as deep as 4000 kilometres away from Ukrainian borders using drones smuggled into and launched from Russian territory.

On May 20 President Putin was personally caught in a large scale Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Kursk region, with local commanders recalling that he was at the epicentre of repelling a large-scale attack by the enemy’s drones.” Two years prior, a failed drone attack was launched on the president’s residence in Moscow on May 2, 2023. After multiple successful drone strikes on Russian targets including the capital Moscow were launched in early-mid 2023, CEO of the state owned defence conglomerate Rostec, Sergey Chemezov, stated on August 7 that year that work was underway to develop superior means of detecting small low speed drones, which had proven capable of evading air defences. The procurement of new handheld anti-drone systems by President Putin’s personal security team may represent part of this response.

Footage released by Russian media outlets in late May has shown that the Chinese-made Silent Hunter 3000 laser system has been procured for frontline use to defend against drone attacks. There remains a significant possibility that they new anti-drone systems used by the president’s guards may also be of Chinese origin, with the East Asian country’s global leadership in drone and anti-drone technologies making it an invaluable supplier.