It'll be a while before robots can do the job of occupying enemy territory that soldiers can.
You could deploy them in hives, so they act like mines as the enemy approaches, but with a swarm of high explosive insects. You could even deploy them via parachute off glide bombs.
Okay, yes, those will be weird to deal with.
I'd question how effective such a system would be. And if the defensive system is setting off a series of non-stop explosions, how many people will that system kill all by its lonesome?
How resistant will those 10,000 cheap swarm drones be to EW like HPM or lasers? And all you really need to stop drones like those are a net - have 4-10 defense drones raise a net between them and you'll catch most of those little FPV drones. Other defenses could be sonic generator guns, EMP generators, defensive ramming drones. The biggest issue I see with combating this type of swarm would be if its released inside a city - those before mentioned defenses will be difficult to use inside a city at a moments notice.
Probably not very. But you'll need to have such systems available *everywhere* in vast abundance.
One net does not have to cover the whole area. You could potentially even have an electric charge going across the net so it acts like an electric fence and the defensive drones drag it catching and disabling a large number of small attack drones. And nothing is stopping the defender from using 100 to 10,000 drones in their net defense, just like the attacker is using 10,000 drones in their attack. Heck each defense drone could shoot out a capture net instead of it being a drag net.
Yeah, that's a problem. I don't doubt that such a system could be employed (or at least legally mandated), but a government that is "we will prosecute with prejudice anything we haven't approved" is a government you do NOT want to live under. They could never keep up with the tech anyway. Right now a "nano" drone fits in your palm, weighs about an ounce. We're not far from bumblebee sized. Then fly. Then skeeter. A bot the size and even form of a mosquito that can live for maybe an hour and can inject, say, AIDS or Ebola into three or four people is not that far away. Such things could be stamped out by the millions, enough to infect an entire nation in a day.
It all depends on when and where they put up a No drone flying zone. Willy nilly in peace time you have a point, wartime though?
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These pointy EW guns don't look too succesful.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HTYbJSJb3I
Shotgun Pellet-Like Rifle Ammo, Gun-Mounted Jammers On Marine Anti-Drone Wishlist
A push to make every Marine can be a counter-drone defender is pulling from very low-tech and very high-tech concepts.
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I can see ways the avoid the dazzlers, though. IIRC blue and green are the two favored colors for dazzlers, both of which have very specific wavelengths. Set up your camera to ignore all light at those laser freqs and you're not blind until the heat buildup overloads the camera. You can do that with lens coatings or on the chip itself. Or both.Laser Dazzlers For Defending Tanks Against Marauding Drones Are An Untapped Countermeasure
Advanced laser dazzlers mounted on armored vehicles could automatically blind incoming drones during their vulnerable terminal attack runs.
Wouldn't that also work with DIRCM though, assuming it was possible? The counter could also be easily countered by shifting frequency with the dazzler.
Possibly, though DIRCM may be using an IR-freq laser, which would be harder to design a seeker around ignoring.
Many people have figured out how to set the power for laser dazzlers based on detecting the reflection from eyes and then setting the laser output to just below the blinding threshold at that range. If they don't detect any eyes, it fires at full power.
I don't see a modern military doing that unless they are losing really, really badly. Existentially badly.
A freaking side-by-side hunting shotgun?!? Good lord they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of equipment!
It is pretty easy to fit blinding lasers on a drone, and the hardware can be more accessible than explosives. Some really insane stuff is feasible even if it just dealing with say, gang disputes.