Drones and how to kill them?

I hope this is the correct thread for such a discussion but in the short term what is the best thing an army could do to counter the proliferation of small drones? Particularly those nasty FPV ones which makes me pity the poor bloody infantry these days more than ever. It's essentially having cheap low-performance missiles just flying around everywhere.

Active protection systems are going to be almost-mandatory on future tanks and many other AFV types but they can't afford to burn through all of their countermeasures on cheap drones when their are real ATGMs (and close range AT weapons) they have to worry about too. Can soft-kill systems designed to fool/spoof ATGMs be made to work against these drones as well?

Lasers and other directed energy weapons are obviously the ideal solution and I hear directed microwaves are a promising direction but these always seem like they are another 10 years off. Medium caliber guns with airbursting or AHEAD-type ammunition are effective, so are C-RAM systems, but the big problem is having enough of these around. You obviously can't have one with every infantry squad and is it really viable to have something carrying such a gun and all of the necessary sensors with every supply convoy?

How valuable have jammers and other EW proven so far? I have some doubts about the handhand ones but surely the bigger ones you can fit to a vehicle are worth something. By the end of major US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan practically every MRAP had a jammer in it of some kind to stop signals to IEDs, how applicable is that sort of thing to countering drones?

Obviously a mix of systems will be the best approach but it's startling how much all of this is going to have to cost when you consider that virtually every runway in the world is going to need something even just to stopping bad actors from crashing something into a jet. As always the sinews of war (and countering modern terrorism) are infinite money.

Outlandish solutions... battalions of birds of prey trained to swat them out of the sky? Has generating electromagnetic pulse through miniature and non-nuclear means ever become practical? Small drones that crash into other small drones? A really big net?
 
Another point is that there are now so many different categories of drones that have yet to crystalise out as distinct types and get names. Countermeasures for a small HEAT-equipped fpv racer are very different from those needed against say, a shaheed, or a grenade-dropping quadcopter.. I keep thinking a small, cheap SAM/AAM, with the electronics of a cheap smartphone, an off-the-shelf solid rocket motor and some kind of fragmenting warhead should be able to fit the envelope of cost/effectiveness/range/weight for most of the smaller things. Drone-fighters firing these or simple tube-launchers for infantry. Now someone just has to invent and mass-produce the things. In the neantime, I find myself musing on what the minimal machine-gun (a recoilless based on .22LR ?) or shotgun type device (scrap projector?) might be mountable on small drones for effective air-to-air kills..

We live in interesting times, and they are bound to get more so.
 
Colonial-Marine said:
I hope this is the correct thread for such a discussion but in the short term what is the best thing an army could do to counter the proliferation of small drones? Particularly those nasty FPV ones which makes me pity the poor bloody infantry these days more than ever. It's essentially having cheap low-performance missiles just flying around everywhere.

Active protection systems are going to be almost-mandatory on future tanks and many other AFV types but they can't afford to burn through all of their countermeasures on cheap drones when their are real ATGMs (and close range AT weapons) they have to worry about too. Can soft-kill systems designed to fool/spoof ATGMs be made to work against these drones as well?

Lasers and other directed energy weapons are obviously the ideal solution and I hear directed microwaves are a promising direction but these always seem like they are another 10 years off. Medium caliber guns with airbursting or AHEAD-type ammunition are effective, so are C-RAM systems, but the big problem is having enough of these around. You obviously can't have one with every infantry squad and is it really viable to have something carrying such a gun and all of the necessary sensors with every supply convoy?

How valuable have jammers and other EW proven so far? I have some doubts about the handhand ones but surely the bigger ones you can fit to a vehicle are worth something. By the end of major US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan practically every MRAP had a jammer in it of some kind to stop signals to IEDs, how applicable is that sort of thing to countering drones?

Obviously a mix of systems will be the best approach but it's startling how much all of this is going to have to cost when you consider that virtually every runway in the world is going to need something even just to stopping bad actors from crashing something into a jet. As always the sinews of war (and countering modern terrorism) are infinite money.

Outlandish solutions... battalions of birds of prey trained to swat them out of the sky? Has generating electromagnetic pulse through miniature and non-nuclear means ever become practical? Small drones that crash into other small drones? A really big net?
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They don't have to be, we have been making 1kw+ 2.4GHz emitters for decades now. They're called microwave ovens.

You can buy a 1.6kw microwave oven for under $100, sometimes under $50.

And no electronic system likes taking in 10,000x the signal strength, tends to burn things out entirely. Most drones operate on half a watt or less of transmitter signal.

The overall package I have in mind is an ESM system listening for drone sensor streams, direction finding on that, and then pulsing a blast of microwaves centered on the contact. Then watching all the magic white smoke come out of the drone and watching it fall out of the sky.


hagaricus said:
Another point is that there are now so many different categories of drones that have yet to crystalise out as distinct types and get names. Countermeasures for a small HEAT-equipped fpv racer are very different from those needed against say, a shaheed, or a grenade-dropping quadcopter.. I keep thinking a small, cheap SAM/AAM, with the electronics of a cheap smartphone, an off-the-shelf solid rocket motor and some kind of fragmenting warhead should be able to fit the envelope of cost/effectiveness/range/weight for most of the smaller things. Drone-fighters firing these or simple tube-launchers for infantry. Now someone just has to invent and mass-produce the things. In the neantime, I find myself musing on what the minimal machine-gun (a recoilless based on .22LR ?) or shotgun type device (scrap projector?) might be mountable on small drones for effective air-to-air kills..

We live in interesting times, and they are bound to get more so.
Click to expand...
I honestly expect to see small drone-fighters coming along pretty soon.

The trick is what weapon to give them. One quick and dirty option is the guts of an FN P90, simple blowback operation and low recoil. Problem with that is low ammunition capacity with only 50rounds per gun in the standard magazine.

Using a microwave pulse requires careful shielding to protect the carrying drone from the zap.
 
Scott Kenny said:
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!"
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Given the omnipresence of small drones, I wonder if radio-loud defenses are better than hoping against hope you go undetected.
 
DrRansom said:
Given the omnipresence of small drones, I wonder if radio-loud defenses are better than hoping against hope you go undetected.
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Given how quickly radio-loud emitters can be triangulated and then deleted via artillery, being sneaky wins wars.

You want something that will passively detect the drones and then pop a single blast of noise to knock the drones down.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Given how quickly radio-loud emitters can be triangulated and then deleted via artillery, being sneaky wins wars.

You want something that will passively detect the drones and then pop a single blast of noise to knock the drones down.
Click to expand...
But if everybody has more than enough drones to stop your movement, that artillery round is coming in anyway.

In principle, quite is preferable to being loud, but I'm not sure those conditions hold right now.
 
If you are big and slow, hiding is impossible so you might as well go loud.

If you are small, fast, travelling through clutter and have low signature, you go quite.
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Basically, if you are conducting an armored thrust you'd also bring all the SHORAD, EW, DEW, AA, Air cover, artillery you have to just overpower the other side. Hiding doesn't work.

If you are not conducting an armored thrust you hide and sneak with drones, mines, infantry that is mostly underground.
 
jsport said:
minus deep APS themselves these RSVs will be RPG meat.
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Two well equipped drone forces with similar strength will annihilate each other in short order at close range. At 5km without EW or hard cover, the offensive fire is far too much for defense and it is no man's land there. This is not new as old tube artillery can easily establish a 5km no man's land as well.

At longer ranges, offense fall off as offensive vehicle and projectile costs increases, required sensing for effective strike also increases.

At 200km separation, the defense have an advantage as aerial vehicles that can reach such ranges is compromised in speed, sortie rate, cost, survivability and so on and have difficulty getting sufficient intel over the battlespace.

The superior force have greater effective range. If a force can destroy the enemy at 25km while the reverse is true at 15km, that is decisive advantage.
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Cheap air defenses won't survive at 5km against swarms and won't work against high value munitions like stealth cruise missiles. However it works against cheap threats with long range, so you place them 200km from the front to shoot up shaheds, protecting low value supply dumps and trucks that is not worth a storm shadow or big swarm.

Not war winning, but still useful.
 
Not sure if this has been posted before...

Seen similar proposals before. Does seem to address the cost of interception...at least UAV without warheads...suspect it won't work as well against a UAV with warhead...

MARSS | INTERCEPTOR-MR

MARSS has designed an AI enabled autonomous Interceptor that offers an intelligent, cost-effective and low collateral solution to neutralise hostile drones.
marss.com marss.com

MARSS | INTERCEPTOR-SR

marss.com marss.com

Long discussion around the concept.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOIULPAsmNU
 
Scott Kenny said:
Got any more details about what exactly the Skyranger 30 gun is? Doesn't look like an M230LW.
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Might be based on the old Oerlikon KCAs from the SAAB Viggen, also used in SeaSnake 30 and RCWS30.

en.wikipedia.org

Oerlikon KCA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Rheinmetall

Rheinmetall develops and manufactures automatic cannons featuring exceptional firepower, precision and reliability.
www.rheinmetall.com www.rheinmetall.com

 
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Forest Green said:
Might be based on the old Oerlikon KCAs from the SAAB Viggen, also used in SeaSnake 30 and RCWS30.

en.wikipedia.org

Oerlikon KCA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Rheinmetall

Rheinmetall develops and manufactures automatic cannons featuring exceptional firepower, precision and reliability.
www.rheinmetall.com www.rheinmetall.com

Click to expand...

It's the 30mm KCE, which is indeed an updated version of the KCA, firing 30x173 ammo.

www.edrmagazine.eu

Rheinmetall Air Defence unveils its Skyranger 30 (upgraded) - EDR Magazine

By Paolo Valpolini “The Nagorno Karabakh conflict has shown a series of gaps in air defence assets,” Fabian Ochsner, Rheinmetall
www.edrmagazine.eu www.edrmagazine.eu
 
Targeting and destroying the enemy’s UAS ground control stations is the division’s number-one priority for the next twenty-four hours.—Maj. Gen. Jamie Jarrard, 25th Infantry Division“Kill what is killing us.” This maxim oriented the 25th Infantry Division’s (25 ID) priorities in deliberate and dynamic targeting....
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To better grasp the scale and form of the counter-drone market, we have assembled a database of publicly marketed counter-drone systems. The database consists of 537 products sold by 277 firms and partnerships from 38 different countries.
Click to expand...
 
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shin_getter said:
[ MEDIA deleted for space ]
View: https://twitter.com/sambendett/status/1712867530035831106
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I suspect that set of jammers is going to become part of at least one soldier's kit in every squad. (under the USMC model, one of the dudes in the squad command team) And probably with a decently powerful microwave pulse emitter to either pop the control links or toast the control receiver entirely to go with it. I can make a simple one for ~$100.


shin_getter said:



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Thank you!
 
A very wide drone
techxplore.com

Researchers design and fly world's largest quadcopter drone

Engineers at The University of Manchester have built and flown the world's largest quadcopter drone. The drone, made from a cardboard-like material called foamboard, measures 6.4m (21 ft) corner to corner and weighs 24.5kg—0.5kg less than the weight limit set by the Civil Aviation Authority.
techxplore.com techxplore.com
 
hagaricus said:
hagaricus said:
If you take some off-the shelf hobby electronics components, solid rocket motor etc.. with what is publicly known about early sams & aams, I can't see it being terribly hard to produce a cheap ir-homing missile capable of downing drones for less than they cost.
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvcDwSmmxWs

Like this, but even simpler...
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I think the main problem is that....

Any missile or drone that is capable of intercepting another aerial vehicle, is also capable of killing people and defeating moderate armor facings with the right warhead mounted.

Basically humans is a very easy target compared to aerial vehicles and even tanks are relative easy targets:

Vehicle performance:
1. Sensors
2. Speed, Agility, Range
3. Warhead payload

Compared to intercepting a micro aerial vehicle:
Humans are practically immobile, and have much larger sensor signature and can be defeated with small warheads. Infantry also have very short effective range thus anti-infantry drone don't need much range either.

Tanks are very slow, have no agility whatsoever, have absurdly big sensor signature, have relatively short weapons range and can be defeated by moderately sized warheads.

With costs being sensing > mobility > warhead at the historical ground combat scale, anti-drone drone will certainly be more expensive than anti-infantry and anti-tank drones. This will remain true unless some part of the equation changes, for example:

Anti-ship missiles need much larger warheads and much longer range while defender missiles can focus on sensors and agility, thus the costs balance out at some point and defense is possible.

If we look at how naval warfare naturally evolve, we should expect a great increase in combat ranges of relevant combat forces, so that attack drones will have to be much bigger and expensive for range purposes. When there is large attack drones, there is cheap defense which gives up range and payload of ability to intercept small and agile threats.
 
shin_getter said:
I think the main problem is that....

Any missile or drone that is capable of intercepting another aerial vehicle, is also capable of killing people and defeating moderate armor facings with the right warhead mounted.

Basically humans is a very easy target compared to aerial vehicles and even tanks are relative easy targets:

Vehicle performance:
1. Sensors
2. Speed, Agility, Range
3. Warhead payload

Compared to intercepting a micro aerial vehicle:
Humans are practically immobile, and have much larger sensor signature and can be defeated with small warheads. Infantry also have very short effective range thus anti-infantry drone don't need much range either.

Tanks are very slow, have no agility whatsoever, have absurdly big sensor signature, have relatively short weapons range and can be defeated by moderately sized warheads.

With costs being sensing > mobility > warhead at the historical ground combat scale, anti-drone drone will certainly be more expensive than anti-infantry and anti-tank drones. This will remain true unless some part of the equation changes, for example:
Click to expand...
I'm kinda expecting FPV racing drones with a microwave pulse generator installed as the "anti drone" drone.

Yes, it will likely also need a 360 radar, but I can get those for cheap from car makers (smart cruise control systems!). Add a cuing system like what most combat flight sim games have and there's your control interface in the FPV goggles.

Range will suck, but that's fine for a defensive drone. Compare fighter range to bomber range, particularly WW2 era.
 
An airburst 25-40mm grenade is cheaper and actually effective. FPV drones have to hit you to kill you.
 
Kat Tsun said:
An airburst 25-40mm grenade is cheaper and actually effective. FPV drones have to hit you to kill you.
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As anti drone "AA"? sure. Or airbursting 30x113mm.

A microwave pulser mounted on an FPV drone seems more useful for fighter drones, though.
 
With any munitions airburst wise, the obvious problem is your own infatnry and dismounted crews being exposed. Blue on blue will need to be carefully managed.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm kinda expecting FPV racing drones with a microwave pulse generator installed as the "anti drone" drone.

Yes, it will likely also need a 360 radar, but I can get those for cheap from car makers (smart cruise control systems!). Add a cuing system like what most combat flight sim games have and there's your control interface in the FPV goggles.

Range will suck, but that's fine for a defensive drone. Compare fighter range to bomber range, particularly WW2 era.
Click to expand...
Well, an FPV drone fast enough to catch another drone, with sensors good enough to track another drone, and have a complex DEW system on top of it is going to be more expensive:

Than a FPV drone than with speed fast enough to catch a human, have sensors good enough to track a human, and have a simple warhead that kills people.

What this means is that the optimal strategy is to get human killing drones first. Only after you've covered the killing you worry about defense. This is due to insufficient defense can work if you can attack first with some tactical luck (say 50% of the time), but a force with insufficient offensive power is worthless.

So basically, missile boats and air defense cruisers. Get the former before the latter.

Colonial-Marine said:
I hope this is the correct thread for such a discussion but in the short term what is the best thing an army could do to counter the proliferation of small drones? Particularly those nasty FPV ones which makes me pity the poor bloody infantry these days more than ever. It's essentially having cheap low-performance missiles just flying around everywhere.
Click to expand...
I think the logical thing is to NOT counter it. Just get your own drones and build doctrine as it is a fact of life.

The right solution to the development of aircraft carriers is not debating the merits of 4.5" or 6" DP or bofors with 2D or 3D FCS while planning for Jutland 2 after neutralizing airplanes. The right solution is to build your own aircraft carrier and figure out how wars can be fought.

Personally, I think infantry as a means of projecting firepower is history. Lets look at maneuver combat platforms:

1. Payload
2. Mobility: Terrain adaptability, speed, range
3. Survivability, Sensor signature
3. Sensing, Command and Control, etc

Simply put, for micro aerial vehicles:

Tactical mobility dominates infantry. It flies, it navigates complex terrain, it is fast and it have enough range for tactical purposes
For survivability, it is pretty good. The sensor signature can be very small if you give up payload, mobility enables great survivability.
For sensing, modern electronics and aerial viewing angle dominates sensors on the ground.
Finally cost, cost of MAV can approach nothing, and drones probably have payload-cost advantage over a dozen km range.

There isn't many problems that needs infantry if fast autonomous indoor-navigating drones is developed. Historically infantry exists because it is the only platform that can navigate many terrain types, but micro aerial vehicles do it too.


Active protection systems are going to be almost-mandatory on future tanks and many other AFV types but they can't afford to burn through all of their countermeasures on cheap drones when their are real ATGMs.... Medium caliber guns with airbursting or AHEAD-type ammunition are effective, so are C-RAM systems, but the big problem is having enough of these around. You obviously can't have one with every infantry squad and is it really viable to have something carrying such a gun and all of the necessary sensors with every supply convoy?
Click to expand...
Think the reverse. If nothing survives outside of AA cover, there is no formation without AA and entire concept of warfare changes.

Why have independent infantry? Why have independent tanks? Just have a battle force packed full of AA and long range fires. Any formation that is not structured like the same battle force would be destroyed by such a force.

If a force have no AA, it is trivially destroyed. If a force have no long range fires, it can be attritioned from outside its range, and if the attrition rate is high enough such a force is pointless.

Obviously a mix of systems will be the best approach but it's startling how much all of this is going to have to cost when you consider that virtually every runway in the world....infinite money.
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You simply cut everything that you can not afford to have AA cover over. The final force structure size might be small, but it'd crush forces without AA cover all day.
 
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Kat Tsun said:
An airburst 25-40mm grenade is cheaper and actually effective. FPV drones have to hit you to kill you.
Click to expand...
Drone developers just put 40mm GL on their drone, and now thanks to newton it out ranges your launcher.
1698771743558440.jpg

If one wants to think about the mid-term arms race of drone/counter drone warfare, the thing to think about isn't specific weapons but relative advantages of different chassis.

For example, I predict traditional vehicle chassis will survive as it transports far more payload for more range than drones. The AA vehicle will always have far more payload for cost compared to drones with regardless of other tech factors. Still, the relationship falls within traditional airpower theory: mobility, initiative and mass remains with the air mobile force.

My previous post don't rate infantry high, as infantry have worst payload for cost for infantry scale combat.
 
Protection against a 40mm HEAT grenade is trivial on AFVs lol. SPz Puma is immune at pretty much every angle except maybe the bottom. Mole drones the next phase of warfare? Aerial drones are not a significant issue to demand anything more than a PABM grenade launcher and a typical APS radar with a 100-500 meter range against RPG/ATGW/FPV drone class targets.

The only problem is just that most vehicles lack this and will for the foreseeable future.
 
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