The New Dogfight:
Why Aerial Defense Is Moving Towards Drone-on-Drone Combat
By Jacob Wirtzer
ParaZero Technologies Ltd.
Air Superiority Without Pilots
For decades, aerial superiority was defined by highly trained aviators maneuvering sophisticated aircraft above contested battlefields. Close-range dogfights became synonymous with air dominance and were immortalized in popular culture. But beneath the Hollywood scripts was a far more serious truth: control of the air has long dictated the outcome of wars on the ground.
That understanding is not new. As early as 1949, Winston Churchill captured it succinctly: “For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power, and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.”
That doctrine still holds, but the way aerial superiority is achieved is changing. Rapidly. And this time, without pilots in the cockpit.
In modern conflicts where airspace is congested, urban, and low-altitude, aerial engagements are increasingly conducted by autonomous systems meeting other unmanned aerial platforms mid-air. As drones continue to proliferate, aerial defenses are shifting from ground-based reactive systems to proactive drone-on-drone responses.
Urban Airspace: Always Contested
The drone era has reshaped conventional thinking around airspace and its limits. Urban airspace has always been contested. From World War II bombing campaigns to modern conflict zones, cities have long been recognized as strategic targets from the air.
What has changed is not the importance of urban airspace, but the character of the threat.
Air defenses are no longer tasked with detecting and destroying a few enemy aircraft thousands of feet in the air and hundreds of kilometers away; now, they must contend with dozens of small, evasive UAVs just hundreds of feet in the air within urban fabrics. Drones can deliver deadly results with precision and speed, a polar opposite of the strategic bombing raids characteristic of yesterday’s wars. Though the collateral damage may be localized, drones can deliver discreet and surgical impacts on critical infrastructure and strategic assets. In other words, contested airspace has moved downward, and inward.
Hostile Drone flying above US Embassy Compound in Bagdhad
Shortcomings of Ground-Based Systems
As defenses have begun optimizing for this rapid change, the importance of layered countermeasures has taken center stage. Many militaries base their urban defenses on ground-based anti-drone systems. From RF jamming to cyber takedowns, these soft-kill platforms seemed like the logical –and only– choice for defenses operating around civilian infrastructure, as not to interfere with everyday life.
The main problem with ground-based systems is that they’re inherently reactive. As a drone breaches airspace and draws closer to a border, perimeter, and close-range contact, the decision window quickly collapses.
And as threats adapt to modern defensive arrays, they are rapidly adapting their own safeguards: GNSS-denied navigation systems, fiber-optic-guided platforms, and low production costs designed to overwhelm conventional defenses.
Fortunately, the same drone threats defenses are looking to mitigate just might hold the key to the future of urban airspace security.
First Point of Contact: The Air
Instead of deploying reactive anti-drone systems, advancements in drone technology have led to the incorporation of drone-based aerial interceptions. This has led to a fundamental shift in C-UAS capabilities, preserving the proactive engagement characteristics traditionally associated with airborne interception. For the urban battleground, this gives defenses the ability to lengthen the engagement range, and extends the airspace protection window both vertically and horizontally.
Drone-on-drone combat has now become the latest chapter in the dogfight revolution, without the big screen theatrics. Much of the interception success still rides on the same principles that defined dogfighting as far back as WWI, such as timing, speed, and interception geometry. Today’s dogfights, however, are increasingly performed without a pilot in the cockpit. This is not necessarily a bad thing. No longer are we risking the lives of skilled pilots and their multi-million dollar aircraft, nor sacrificing high-value interceptors against disposable aerial threats.
Control vs Explosive Interceptions
How the interceptor drone ends the fight is also important. One-way kinetic interceptions via drone have gained popularity, exchanging pricey missiles for much cheaper interceptor drones. However, kinetic interceptions over urban centers leave room for deadly consequences. Falling debris, low-altitude explosions, and an inability to recover forensics from the downed drone are just some of the shortcomings of hard-kill interceptions.
In parallel with these broader shifts, ParaZero has announced a partnership with XTEND to integrate capture-based interception systems into interceptor drone platforms. Deployed as part of a layered architecture, airborne interception adds a first-contact engagement option that extends protection beyond the reach of ground-based systems, all while incorporating non-explosive technology.
The recent partnership between ParaZero and XTEND proves that drone-on-drone combat is a new frontier in aerial combat. Defenses that don’t begin to proactively shift their understanding of urban airspace protection will only realize the threat too late, at a higher cost, and at a greater risk to their cities. In today’s contested airspace, the dogfight isn’t about dominance, it’s about control.
