Drones and how to kill them?

Forest Green said:
View: https://twitter.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1759229326837342252?s=20
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It's acceptable as a "solution we have in stock and in production right now." I'd want the replacement C-UAS missile to be faster. And if we use the aircraft or vehicle ATGM as that solution, that's fine as well. In fact, I'd really like for the vehicle ATGM to be capable of C-UAS in addition to any purpose-designed missiles for the job.



sferrin said:
Spendy though.
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Not that spendy. Not like it's a Patriot or SM-6, or even an AIM-9X.
 
Makes you wonder whether the Zumwalt was right to give up its 57mm guns.

Italian Destroyer Guns Down Houthi Drone With 76mm 'Super Rapid' Cannon

As part of the European Operation Aspides, Italy has become the fifth country to engage Houthi threats over the Red Sea.
www.twz.com

View: https://x.com/alessionaval/status/1764213187929424294?s=20
 
Forest Green said:
Makes you wonder whether the Zumwalt was right to give up its 57mm guns.

Italian Destroyer Guns Down Houthi Drone With 76mm 'Super Rapid' Cannon

As part of the European Operation Aspides, Italy has become the fifth country to engage Houthi threats over the Red Sea.
www.twz.com
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There's different arguments on both sides...

Obvious one is top weight, even in a fully powered unmanned turret the 30mm is something like 1/5 the weight of the Mk110 57mm.

Magazine capacity is an interesting discussion, since it usually takes a couple of 57mm rounds but 20ish 30mm rounds. If you have a guided 57mm round, that puts things down to a single round to down the target, but guided cannon rounds are expensive.

Effective engagement range is another interesting debate.
 
Scott Kenny said:
If you have a guided 57mm round, that puts things down to a single round to down the target, but guided cannon rounds are expensive.

Effective engagement range is another interesting debate.
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I noticed the reports don't specify whether the Italians used Davide/Strales guided rounds, the 7 or 8 round burst suggests not. One good thing with most of the drones out there is you get more cycles of your shoot-look-shoot cycle than you would with a sea-skimming or high-diving anti-ship missile, and in an easier target environment.
 
Forest Green said:
DARTs are radio command guided, which is probably the cheapest form of guidance.
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True, but it's still an order of magnitude more $$ than a dumb shell (or unguided with proximity fuze).

I guess the real question is how much those 50x330mm EAPS/CRAM rounds the US Army was looking at were planned to cost, if we got full production runs. Because I'd like to scale that shell up to 57x438mm for naval use.

Edit: had a following idea.

If you can keep the cost of a guided shell to right about 10x that of a proximity fuzed shell, that does interesting things to your magazine depth. For example, say it takes 7.5 proximity fuzed shells to kill a drone or missile, and only one guided shell. A guided shell kill is 33% more expensive than a prox shell kill, but you also go from 16 ready kills to 120 ready kills(!). "Swarm this *raises middle finger*!!!"​
 
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They will get quieter

Advanced noise suppression technology for improved search and rescue drones

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have received significant attention in recent years across many sectors, such as military, agriculture, construction, and disaster management. These versatile machines offer remote access to hard-to-get or hazardous areas and excellent surveillance capabilities.
techxplore.com

And faster

Got To Go Fast: The Rise Of Super-Fast FPV Drones

Generally when one considers quadcopter drones, the term ‘fast’ doesn’t come to mind, but with the rise of FPV (First Person View) drones, they have increasingly been designed to…
hackaday.com

Look out Elon

Training drones to detect greenhouse gas sources

How do you map something that is both invisible and odorless? Researchers at the University of Oslo have trained drones to find the best places to measure greenhouse gases on their own.
phys.org

Good news

Using drone swarms to fight forest fires

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires. Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change.
techxplore.com

A method to enhance the planning of missions completed by multiple UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have already proved to be valuable tools for tackling a wide range of real-world problems, ranging from the monitoring of natural environments and agricultural plots to search and rescue missions and the filming of movie scenes from above...
techxplore.com
 
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publiusr said:
They will get quieter

Advanced noise suppression technology for improved search and rescue drones

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have received significant attention in recent years across many sectors, such as military, agriculture, construction, and disaster management. These versatile machines offer remote access to hard-to-get or hazardous areas and excellent surveillance capabilities.
techxplore.com
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In what direction does that work in though. My reading of it was that it only works in terms of the sound the operator hears, not the external noise on location.
 
uk 75 said:
Current drones are small and cheap. killing them needs expensive weapons designed to shoot down planes and missiles.
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The Answer is simple, since most are subsonic a 20 or 30mm cannon should do.
If you’d want to be a bit more overkill, a Phalanx CIWS should work
 
How about a drone that splits into two drones extending a huge net as it does so?
 
Forest Green said:
How about a drone that splits into two drones extending a huge net as it does so?
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Net guns were one of the first counter-drone technologies, no need for two drones.

And they already went airborne:

DroneCatcher, Controlled drone Interception

DroneCatcher is a multicopter that counters unwanted drones in a controlled and safe manner. Targets can be towed to safety and/or dropped with a parachute.
dronecatcher.nl
 
DWG said:

British Army Paratroopers Get Computerized Rifle Sights To Shoot Down Drones

The British Army fielding SMASH X4 computerized gun sights highlights the need for layers of drone defenses among armed forces worldwide.
www.twz.com

Seems to be a modern version of the WWII gyro sights, sight tracks the drone and generates an offset firing cue, taking the art out of guessing the lead.
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View: https://x.com/astraiaintel/status/1766794520430010757?s=20
 
DWG said:
Net guns were one of the first counter-drone technologies, no need for two drones.

And they already went airborne:

DroneCatcher, Controlled drone Interception

DroneCatcher is a multicopter that counters unwanted drones in a controlled and safe manner. Targets can be towed to safety and/or dropped with a parachute.
dronecatcher.nl
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My idea was to extend a very large net though.
 
Forest Green said:
How about a drone that splits into two drones extending a huge net as it does so?
Click to expand...
Seems to me a high-speed, high-maneuverability "racing drone" that's able to shoot out strings would do the job. Get in front of or above the target, spew out some Spiderman webbing, watch it tangle the targets props and fall from the sky, repeat. Should be *cheap.*
 
Forest Green said:
Makes you wonder whether the Zumwalt was right to give up its 57mm guns.

Italian Destroyer Guns Down Houthi Drone With 76mm 'Super Rapid' Cannon

As part of the European Operation Aspides, Italy has become the fifth country to engage Houthi threats over the Red Sea.
www.twz.com

View: https://x.com/alessionaval/status/1764213187929424294?s=20
Click to expand...
I've always thought it was a dumb idea. The guns they replaced them with. . .well, they speak for themselves:

 
Forest Green said:
I see a lot of soldiers trying to shoot these things down and maybe we're missing a trick here. There's been a type of gun designed for shooting small flying objects around for a long time.
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Shotguns are very limited in range, only 30-50 yards max.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Shotguns are very limited in range, only 30-50 yards max.
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That may be enough to defend against a direct attack. Certainly a better probability of success than firing an AR and then throwing it at the drone.

Maybe also with proxity-fused air-bursting frag-12 rounds.
 
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Meh. If shotgun is the shot term solution then teach every soldier this neat trick
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfMeEvT5YxU


With a pump shotgun, cuz semi-auto mag fed cost a hella lot more.

If it's anything more than a DJI flying directly at your troops with dynamite sticks taped atop, like a DJI with AI-based human recognition and an arm for dropping grenades for instance, just use dazzlers. Or IFV autocannons.
 
View: https://x.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1773286912096178485?s=20


C-UAS Directed Energy | BlueHalo

bluehalo.com

View: https://x.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1773289338983379268?s=20
 
Forest Green said:
Maybe also with proxity-fused air-bursting frag-12 rounds.
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There is nowhere near enough space in a 12-guage shell for a proximity fuze and a useful bursting charge. It took a fairly heroic bit of engineering to create the LW30 Prox, cramming a prox fuze into a 30x113 projectile.
 
Forest Green said:
I see a lot of soldiers trying to shoot these things down and maybe we're missing a trick here. There's been a type of gun designed for shooting small flying objects around for a long time.


View attachment 722796
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Appears someone was listening, just the wrong one.

View: https://x.com/UKikaski/status/1774030122011496640?s=20
 
The Olympic/Paralympic scenario does raise the question about which counter-drone technologies can safely be used in a civilian environment. No kinetic solutions, no jammers, no high-energy / microwave weapons ....
 
DWG said:
The Olympic/Paralympic scenario does raise the question about which counter-drone technologies can safely be used in a civilian environment. No kinetic solutions, no jammers, no high-energy / microwave weapons ....
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A crashing drone is a hazard too TBH. I actually saw a Russian drone that uses a net to catch the other drone and fly away with it. For Olympic purposes, that would probably be safest.

View: https://x.com/UKikaski/status/1774044071423627467?s=20
 

US Army refreshes competition for short-range laser

The Army will begin a directed-energy test campaign to find the sweet spot for laser weapons when it comes to lethality, reliability and cost.
www.defensenews.com

1711815725703.png

Right now, his office is evaluating 10-, 20-, 50- and 300-kilowatt options for a wide variety of threats and missions. The 300-kilowatt laser is designed for the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, which is a system that will use kinetic, laser and high-powered microwave weapons to destroy threats including rockets, artillery, mortars, drones and cruise missiles. The Army is to receive that laser weapon next year.
Click to expand...
 
DWG said:
The Olympic/Paralympic scenario does raise the question about which counter-drone technologies can safely be used in a civilian environment. No kinetic solutions, no jammers, no high-energy / microwave weapons ....
Click to expand...
Jammers will annoy everyone trying to connect via wifi (blocking a lot of wifi signals).

Lasers and microwaves will be pointed at the sky, the only danger would be falling drones/parts.

Kinetic solutions are also likely out, both for "scaring the muggles" reasons when they go bang and for falling fragments.

Big FPV drones with a net to capture unauthorized drones is probably the safest option there.
 


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