This is a pre-release, capability-focused review aimed at engineers and EW operators. Public, verifiable information about the Sheshnaag-150 platform was not available as of February 6, 2025. Because of that limitation I frame this piece as a technical appraisal of likely design choices, operational employment, and electronic warfare implications for a long-range, attritable swarming strike UAV that has been discussed in open reporting since early February. Where I refer to specific claimed figures reported elsewhere I mark them as unverified and base my core analysis on established principles and recent operational lessons from loitering munitions and swarm campaigns.

What a 150 kg “swarm” loitering munition family would likely be

A 150 kilogram class airframe sitting in a family of attritable strike systems usually balances three engineering drivers: range/endurance, useful payload, and low unit cost. To get endurance in the multiple-hour class while carrying 25 to 40 kg of explosive mass you need either highly efficient aerodynamics with a small combustion or turbofan engine or a very large fuel fraction on a propeller-driven airframe. Designers will trade top speed for loiter time and reduced RCS complexity when the platform is intended for mass employment against area targets. Those tradeoffs push a system toward a long, slender delta or straight wing and a modest cruise speed optimized for fuel economy rather than survivability against fighters. The design choices are predictable from prior loitering munitions programs and from observed Iranian and Russian variants used in Ukraine.

Autonomy, swarm architecture, and communications

A credible swarm capability requires distributed autonomy with local decision rules, a resilient mesh for intra-swarm coordination, and the option for preplanned waypoint execution to reduce RF signature. Practical designs use layered autonomy: primary mission planning and target assignment occur before launch, a mid-level mesh handles formation and retasking in flight, and terminal seekers or human-in-the-loop control provide final target discrimination. To maintain mission robustness in contested electromagnetic environments platforms will combine inertial navigation, anti-spoofing GNSS receivers, and vision/SLAM-based terminal guidance. That mix reduces dependence on continuous datalinks but increases per-unit software complexity and cost. Lessons from recent conflict zones show that combining GNSS/INS with optical terminal correction greatly raises the chance of strike success under jamming.

Electronic warfare surface: threats and likely mitigations

From an EW standpoint a massed, 150 kg-class kamikaze swarm changes the defender’s calculus in two ways. First, volume defeats value; saturating with many attritable platforms forces defenders to expend scarce interceptors and high-energy interceptors at scale. Second, the swarm’s use of mixed navigation channels and autonomous routing reduces the utility of naive single-point jamming tactics.

Expected EW attack vectors against such a system include GPS jamming and spoofing, datalink denial or deception, and attempts to inject false sensor data into the swarm mesh. Expected mitigations on the platform include GNSS anti-spoof filters, low-drift INS, vision-based navigation, frequency-hopping links with crypto, and the ability to switch to preprogrammed waypoint-only flight when links are denied. Those mitigations are not perfect. Visual navigation and SLAM fail in heavy smoke, at night without IR, or over featureless terrain. INS-only navigation drifts over long range, producing CEP growth unless updated in flight. Designers will therefore accept a probabilistic strike model where mission success scales with swarm size rather than single-shot accuracy.

Countermeasures and defenders’ playbook

Defenders must stop thinking in single-interceptor terms and instead adopt a layered approach that mixes detection, spectrum denial, and hard-kill effects tailored to affordability. Recommended layers are:

  • Wide-area detection and cueing using passive RF and multi-sensor fusion to pick up launch clusters and inbound small UAS signatures. Passive RF monitors detect control emissions early but fail against RF-silent or preprogrammed systems.
  • Targeted electronic attack that focuses energy on critical guidance bands and uplink chokepoints while minimizing collateral effects. Blanket jamming is often illegal or impractical in many theaters, and crude jamming forces the attacker to counter with optical or INS-only modes.
  • Low-cost kinetic interceptors and directed energy systems used for saturation defense. When correctly integrated with layered sensors these can reduce cost per kill. Directed energy systems scale well against many low-cross-section targets but require stable power and precise fire control.
  • Hardening of critical nodes and redundancy in electricity, comms, and control systems so a single munition does not create cascading failures. Historical attacks on infrastructure show the psychological and operational effect of intermittent outages even when hit rates are low.

Operational vulnerabilities of swarms

Swarms are resilient but not invulnerable. Common failure modes the defender can exploit include:

  • Mesh poisoning. A single compromised or misrouted unit that broadcasts erroneous state can confuse decentralized consensus algorithms. Proper validation and Byzantine-resilient consensus protocols greatly reduce this risk, but many fielded systems do not implement them fully.
  • Environmental edge cases. Visual and LIDAR cues break down in dust storms, smoke, heavy rain, or uniform terrain. Depriving the swarm of one sensor domain often forces it into less accurate navigation modes.
  • Logistics and mass production. Swarms require supply chains for low-cost airframes and propulsion. Interrupting supply, or capturing production nodes, reduces sustained sortie rates. This is often slower than kinetic attrition but can be decisive over months.

Legal and escalation considerations for EW responses

High-power jamming, wideband denial, or lethal cyber effects have politico-legal consequences. In many nations, including the United States, RF jamming by non-government actors is restricted. Military planners must weigh the operational benefit of aggressive EW against the risk of unintended effects on civilian aviation, navigation, and critical infrastructure. Rules of engagement should be clear about spectrum effects and safe corridors. The Ukraine experience has repeatedly shown that EW and kinetic counters bleed into civilian domains when systems are jammed or misidentified.

Practical recommendations for analysts and EW engineers

1) Assume redundancy. Train systems for mixed-denial scenarios: GNSS+INS+vision. If you design countermeasures that only target a single vector you will be bypassed. 2) Prioritise detection and attribution. Passive RF with geo-fencing and multi-static radar fusion matters more than a single high-power jammer. Early cueing scales the effectiveness of directed-energy and kinetic interceptors. 3) Harden command nodes and make them multi-path. If the swarm can force an early decision by hitting a single datalink tower you lose disproportionally. Use distributed C2 and hardened comms. 4) Exercise non-kinetic escalation control. Establish spectrum deconfliction and legal clearances ahead of any crisis so EW options can be used without immediate political blowback.

A note on sources and limits

Multiple open reports in mid-February 2025 began circulating specific numbers and images related to the Sheshnaag family. This review deliberately stops at publicly verifiable material available up to February 6, 2025. I found no authoritative technical datasheet, government release, or independently verified flight-trial report for a Sheshnaag-150 system that could be relied on for a standard hardware review prior to that cutoff. Because of that, the sections above use documented lessons from recent loitering munition campaigns and peer-reviewed work on detection and counter-UAS as the basis for tactical recommendations. If you want a follow-up hands-on review I will update this piece after validated technical disclosures or flight-trial data become available.

Bottom line

If the Sheshnaag-150 exists in the claimed long-range, attritable, swarm-capable envelope, defenders should treat it as an operational multiplier rather than a single new weapon. The appropriate response is layered detection, constrained and legal EW, and affordable hard-kill options integrated into a networked sensor-to-shooter loop. Simple band-limited jamming or isolated kinetic solutions will not scale against a resilient swarm. Plan for redundancy, train for mixed-denial navigation, and prepare spectrum governance before the crisis.