Drones and how to kill them?

The drone attack by "saboteurs" against the TU-22 strikes me as a portent of many future attacks. Think of all the US airbases, with fighters, bombers, tankers, and transport airplanes, all near built-up populated areas. How much effort would it be for Russia or China to pre-position some guy with attack UAVs?

Every major airbase will need anti-drone EW and passive defenses.
 
Forest Green said:
You'd start by hard-coding drones sold in that country not to be able to fly over certain locations.
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Not realistic, China makes all consumer drones sold anywhere and they could out hard-code any nation's hard-coding.

Furthermore, borders controls (legal or illegal) are so porous that directly smuggling in the attack drones seems very doable.
 
Same argument made with suitcase nukes in diplomatic pouches or SAM-7/Strela 2 being smuggled in during the Cold War, it was accepted that the Soviets likely would have managed to stockpile some weapons in the US/Britain for use by agents
 
Kat Tsun said:
I'll have to look it up or ask again, but I'm pretty sure a couple state NG's sent some PIVADS, though they may have just been RISE M113s I suppose. It was a conversation last year with an Army technician who was working the vics up to deployment.

Even if it is a mistaken vic, there are better things like the M230LF and whatever Britain sent, I think it was Bushmaster IIIs? C-UAS really really wants PABM and and MFRs, not sabot ammo or ranging radars, I guess was mostly my point.
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My guess on the US side is that if they sent M163s it was because the VADS were getting replaced by ISHORAD units. At least the upgraded VADS have a radar and Thermals.
 
pedrospe said:
It's amazing how a "tiny" and "cheap" quadcopter UAV, can do such damage.
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A single hand-held piece of ordnance would, placed correctly, trash a large aircraft. Perhaps a grenade, or a shaped charge, or even a lump of home-made thermite made from rust, aluminum powder and Play-Doh with a sparkler jammed in it. The drone is merely the means by which the device is placed onto the aircraft.

Jetliners - and bombers - are huge, flat, box-like fuel tanks made largely of aluminum. You put one such device on top of the wing of a fueled aircraft... you've burned the aircraft into a pile of ash on the tarmac. Airports had damned well better be ready for an onslaught of fire bombing drones run by terrorists, extortionists, lunatics and jerks.
 
Orionblamblam said:
A single hand-held piece of ordnance would, placed correctly, trash a large aircraft. Perhaps a grenade, or a shaped charge, or even a lump of home-made thermite made from rust, aluminum powder and Play-Doh with a sparkler jammed in it. The drone is merely the means by which the device is placed onto the aircraft.

Jetliners - and bombers - are huge, flat, box-like fuel tanks made largely of aluminum. You put one such device on top of the wing of a fueled aircraft... you've burned the aircraft into a pile of ash on the tarmac. Airports had damned well better be ready for an onslaught of fire bombing drones run by terrorists, extortionists, lunatics and jerks.
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Fortunately, any drones sold in the US need to have GPS lockouts for airports. Not sure about others.
 
Orionblamblam said:
I'm sure such things can be bypassed. FPV drones might not need GPS at all, and those are more likely what'd be used at an active airport/airbase.
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Any drone with the "in case of loss of signal, return to launch location" feature has GPS by definition.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Sure, but doubtless that can be disabled. The GPS chip yoinked or reprogrammed to think it's ten miles east of where it is.
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Depends on how they put the drone together, and without ripping one apart I don't know.

I'd be tempted to run all flight controls through the GPS chip, just to make the drone unusable without GPS so it's harder to use for nefarious means.
 
I suspect a lot of drones can be assembled from 3D printed parts and some electronic kits. Sure, it'd be nice to buuld up your fleet of attackbots from stock cheap toys from wish.com or alibaba... but maybe you just buy them for their structures and mechanisms, then rip out the electronics and replace it with stuff you wired together after watching some youtube videos. Getting around the limitations of and blocks on consumer electronics is something a lot of people take great pride in.
 
Now Iran has a one wing version

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Tail sitter
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Planning algorithm enables high-performance flight for tailsitter aircraft

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Fluff said:
So you have fitted a transmitter to each of your tanks? Hopefully always on?
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Hopefully with ESM listening for drone control chatter, and only turns on when it detects active drone control frequencies.

Because otherwise, a constantly blasting RF jammer might was well be a neon sign saying "Drop ATGMs and PG-Arty here to delete a tank battalion!"
 
Cargo drone
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Nice way to put curves in folded materials:
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Sub-drone
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Forest Green said:
breakingdefense.com

Poland unveils HAASTA prototype for drone-on-drone warfare - Breaking Defense

The HAASTA is design to hunt low velocity flying Shahed-type drones and destroying the enemy target with an underbelly mounted 5.45mm machine gun.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com

View attachment 707256
A HAASTA model, armed with an underbelly 5.45mm machine gun
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And here we go, it's 1914 all over again! Armed observer aircraft.

I'm kinda expecting FPV quads to get set up with a PDW of some flavor next.
 
Scott Kenny said:
And here we go, it's 1914 all over again! Armed observer aircraft.

I'm kinda expecting FPV quads to get set up with a PDW of some flavor next.
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The biggest thing needed is mine-proof tank tracks, or a mine-proof alternative to tracks.
 
I feel like part of why UAVs of all sizes seem so good right now is because neither UA nor RU have constant CAP flying and no ones SHORAD is prepared for it. Drones will continue to play a large part in warfare, but there are lots of ways to counter them and the size differences between them matter. Smaller drones can be increadibly cheap and very hard to detect but have limited capabilities. As you increase capabilities, SWAP-C necessarily goes up.
DrRansom said:
The drone attack by "saboteurs" against the TU-22 strikes me as a portent of many future attacks. Think of all the US airbases, with fighters, bombers, tankers, and transport airplanes, all near built-up populated areas. How much effort would it be for Russia or China to pre-position some guy with attack UAVs?

Every major airbase will need anti-drone EW and passive defenses.
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C-RAM and anti cruise missile systems, be it gun or missile based, can protect bases from drones of all sizes. ESAP Shelters should protect against any payload a small UAV can carry. CAP and AEWs can detect everything but the smallest drones. Both ESAP and C-RAM/anti-CM systems are not that expensive in the large scale of things and provide protection against other threats too.
 
Forest Green said:
The biggest thing needed is mine-proof tank tracks, or a mine-proof alternative to tracks.
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I'm not sure that's physically possible, 20+lbs of boom seems to break everything.

Way back in the 1960s, there were some experiments with rollagons, call it trackball wheels. When those set off an AT mine, the rollagon got deflated and was very difficult to drive on.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm not sure that's physically possible, 20+lbs of boom seems to break everything.

Way back in the 1960s, there were some experiments with rollagons, call it trackball wheels. When those set off an AT mine, the rollagon got deflated and was very difficult to drive on.
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Metal rollagons with heavy threading, or maybe steamroller type 'wheels' with suitable threading. Or maybe:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WawG2Ez0Olg&t=58s
 

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