A service member of the 429th Achilles Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment prepares an FPV-drone for a fly at a position near the front line town of Kupiansk, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine June 23, 2025.Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Milan-based correspondent for Defense News.
For the first time, the Canadian Department of National Defence will use a major urban centre to test counterdrone systems as part of an upcoming exercise.
The 2025 edition of the Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security counterdrone “Sandbox” contest will leverage a “major urban city environment” as an assessment location against small-sized drones. It will be hosted in Ottawa from Nov. 24 to 28 by DND and the Canadian Armed Forces.
Previous variants of the contest were organized in vast, uninhabited spaces such as outdoor research facilities with 500 square kilometres of terrain – wildly different from a busy and compact city centre.
This time around, participating companies will be asked to focus on detecting miniature adversarial drones at four test elevations: ground level, mid-level balcony on a high-rise building, high-level balcony on a high-rise building, and rooftop.
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These changes are imperative and reflect the changing landscape of war theatres and the threats they now face. A distinct category of weaponry has become a dominant force over the skies of Ukraine in recent years: mini unmanned aerial systems, and more precisely, first-person-view drones.
Unlike traditional drones, these systems are fitted with a camera and flown by operators using goggles, which relay the live video feed to the pilot. While they are available in various configurations, FPV drones often have four rotors, and the prices to acquire one can be as low as a few hundred dollars. They are most widely used in kamikaze-style attacks – as they can easily be fitted to carry explosive charges or a warhead – where they are flown directly into adversaries’ personnel and vehicles.
In the operational outcomes of interest listed by the Canadian government, detecting and monitoring these small but high-speed drones is mentioned several times, including “swarms” of them. A drone swarm is a type of flying formation increasingly used by armies, where a group of drones operate together in a co-ordinated and, at times, autonomous manner to attack.
Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have ramped up their use of swarms of these cost-effective and widely available drones. Urban centres across Ukraine have proven especially vulnerable to being targeted by Russian FPVs.
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In the past month, Ukrainian civilians living in small towns near the front lines have reported the much more common high-pitched, buzzing sounds they now regularly hear emanating from these drones flying over their heads, which has become a synonym for danger. On social media, some residents have shared that their routine now includes rushing to shops or nearby shelters until the noise of the weapon is out of earshot, signalling that the possible danger of an imminent strike has passed.
Another key capability the DND is exploring, in the context of the event, is tethered unmanned aerial systems, notably “fibre-optic tethers up to 30 kilometres in length.” These systems earned their name from using a physical tether that supplies data and power from a ground tether station to the drone itself.
FPV drones operating via fibre-optic cables have also posed a new challenge for militaries, as they are resistant to most jamming and interception attempts. This relative immunity is generated by the weapons relaying signals through thin cables, which allows them to be more shielded against electromagnetic interference.
Defending against attacks by small drones such as FPVs in urban settings can be more challenging than in open fields due to several factors. Cities are much more congested, filled with civilians, infrastructure, trees and other elements that can obstruct or altogether block the line of sight of military personnel.
These risks are further accounted for in the Sandbox challenge, where, to prevent possible damage to urban facilities, testing will be limited to “detect-only.”
Traditional countermeasures such as jamming can disrupt civilian-connected communication systems, making them a risk in highly populated areas. Other hard-kill options, such as missiles or projectiles, pose significant risks of causing more collateral damage and hurting bystanders.
In Ukraine, troops have begun installing large nets on poles spanning kilometres of road in cities closest to the more intense fighting as a cheaper alternative. The rationale behind this is that when a drone hits the net, it is more likely to short-circuit and, as such, cannot target vehicles.
Earlier in the war, both sides fitted their tanks with cages made out of metal, known as cope cages, to protect vehicles against top-attack missiles. Over time, these makeshift armours expanded to be much more encompassing, to cover more of them, incorporating nets and rubber shielding against widespread drone use – a practice now also seen on ambulances.
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Defending an urban centre such as a large capital is an enormous challenge, and violent state or non-state actors could very well choose to target cities as a way to overwhelm defences. The small nature and signature of FPVs are some of the characteristics that make them attractive to adversaries: they’re speedy, easily weaponized and cheap.
Drones, rather than heavy artillery, have been responsible for inflicting nearly 70 per cent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties since the war erupted in 2022.
The appeal of this technology has spread well beyond Ukraine, as they are also widely sought after by drug cartels in other parts of the world, such as Mexico.
The dangers associated with emerging drone technologies are so significant that the Canadian Armed Forces are currently setting up a strategic-level Joint Counter-Unmanned Aerial System Office that will be responsible for co-ordinating between all the different military branches.
While counterdrone systems were listed as one of the priorities in Canada’s 2017 defence policy, the country has previously lagged, to say the least, behind other countries in adopting developments in this crucial domain of warfare.
Despite this, the November exercise is a highly significant event to be held in a city, let alone a capital – and it’s a step in the right direction.