A Wall Street Journal op-ed published November 12 tells NATO to study the electronic warfare “dome” Ukraine has built over Kyiv, and offers lightweight metal-coated materials as one way to shield military electronics from the jamming that comes with it. Its author, Robert Brüll, runs FibreCoat, a German company whose flagship product is that kind of material.
The Journal’s one-line bio calls FibreCoat a German advanced-materials company and stops there. The dome was announced on November 2 by Serhii Beskrestnov, the Ukrainian presidential adviser known as Flash, as a citywide jamming network aimed at remotely controlled Shahed drones.
DroneXL covered a similar case in September, when Eric Schmidt’s Washington Post op-ed on Ukraine’s drone shortage left out the drone company he runs. Brüll’s op-ed also concedes, in its own text, that the material it recommends cannot fully stop the kind of jamming the Kyiv dome does.
Kyiv’s Dome Jams the Mesh Radio That Steers Jet Shaheds
Beskrestnov wrote on Telegram that Russian operators steer jet-powered Shaheds from Russian territory through a mesh radio modem on each drone. Ukraine built the dome in a few weeks to break that link, putting antennas and equipment at many hundreds of locations across Kyiv.
All of Ukraine’s main electronic warfare manufacturers built and installed the equipment around the clock, he wrote, and the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, the Interior Ministry, the National Security and Defense Council and the Office of the President all worked on it. He said the operation “forced the adversary to pause, modernize the Shaheds, look for other solutions” (DroneXL’s translation from the Ukrainian).
That result rests on Beskrestnov alone. His post gives no count of jammers and no figure for drones stopped, and United24 Media’s report cites no source but him.
The mesh network is one DroneXL readers have met before. In February, Ukraine destroyed Shahed relay stations in Belarus that fed the same network.
Brüll’s Remedy Is the Kind of Material FibreCoat Sells
Brüll writes in the Journal that jamming cuts both ways, because Ukrainian and NATO forces depend on the same radio signals they disrupt. One answer he offers is lightweight shielding made by coating fibers with metals. FibreCoat’s flagship product, AluCoat, is a metal-coated fiber.
FibreCoat’s product page describes AluCoat as a basalt or glass core sheathed in aluminum, sold as yarn, chopped fiber and fabric, with a stated shielding range of 40 to 95 decibels for the woven version. Its defence page pitches fiber products for protecting military equipment from electromagnetic interference, and under electromagnetic pulse and high-power microwave protection with AluCoat it lists “Application for drones and other valuable assets.” Brüll co-founded the Aachen company in 2020 and is its CEO.
The op-ed never names FibreCoat or AluCoat in its argument. The Kyiv Independent’s bio on his September op-ed tells readers more than the Journal’s does, and says FibreCoat’s fibers are used on drones, aircraft, military vehicles and spacecraft.
He has made the shielding case before. In Defense Daily in June 2025 he wrote that the drone sector had treated protection against electromagnetic interference as optional and that the shielding technology already existed. In Euromaidan Press that October he urged Europe to build its drone wall from drones shielded with EMI-resistant advanced materials.
Brüll Concedes Shielding Can’t Fully Stop Jamming
The Kyiv dome drowns out a radio signal the drone has to receive. Brüll writes that shielding can’t fully stop an enemy from jamming the signals an operator needs, but can protect the electronics inside vehicles and equipment. On that description, a shielded Shahed would still lose its operator.
The use he describes for shielding is protecting a force’s own electronics, since jammers can also interfere with nearby equipment. His last recommendation bears more directly on the dome. He writes that “drones should be tested alongside jammers” and that resilience to jamming has to be considered from the outset. He also writes that Russian engineers are already fitting Shaheds with better antennas. DroneXL reported on one of those in August 2025, when an anti-jamming Shahed navigation antenna turned up for sale on AliExpress.
DroneXL’s Take
The Journal did name Brüll’s company, which is more than the Post did for Schmidt, so I won’t call this a hidden interest. But “advanced-materials company” tells a reader little about the author’s commercial stake in this remedy, and one more clause in the bio would have fixed that.
I also think the op-ed draws the wrong lesson. If Beskrestnov’s account holds, Kyiv showed that a city can attack a drone’s control link at scale and do it in weeks. The answer to that is a link that resists jamming or a drone that doesn’t need one, and Beskrestnov says Russia went off to modernize its Shaheds and look for other solutions. Lightweight shielding has its uses, and FibreCoat markets its own against electromagnetic pulse and high-power microwave weapons, but by Brüll’s own account it can’t fully stop the jamming that leaves a drone unable to hear its pilot. My read is that this op-ed is a product pitch attached to someone else’s news. NATO planners who want the lesson from Kyiv should read Beskrestnov’s post before they read Brüll’s op-ed.
Sources: The Wall Street Journal, Serhii Beskrestnov on Telegram, FibreCoat, United24 Media, The Kyiv Independent, Defense Daily, Euromaidan Press
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
