Small UAS / Drones and related general thread - NOT Swarming ones.

rusi.org

Preliminary Lessons in Conventional Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: February–July 2022

This study of the early phases of the 2022 war sheds light on Ukraine's strengths and vulnerabilities, and the need for further Western support.
rusi.org rusi.org

Big document relevant to many topics, but to highlight some stuff on the newest domain of drone warfare
Summaries
  • Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS (CUAS) are essential across all branches and at all echelons. Although critical to competitiveness by providing situational awareness, 90% of UAS employed are lost. For the most part, UAS must be cheap and attritable. For land forces, they must be organic to units for the purposes of both situational awareness and target acquisition. The primary means of CUAS is EW. Another critical tactical requirement is to be alerted to the presence of UAS.... For the RAF, the provision of look-down sensing to locate UAS to contribute to air defence is critical. This allows defensive resources to be prioritised on the right axes.
  • The force must fight for the right to precision. Precision is not only vastly more efficient... Precision weapons, however, are scarce and can be defeated by EW. To enable kill chains to function at the speed of relevance, EW for attack, protection and direction finding is a critical element of modern combined arms operations...
  • For land forces, the pervasive ISTAR on the modern battlefield and the layering of multiple sensors at the tactical level make concealment exceedingly difficult to sustain. Survivability is often afforded by being sufficiently dispersed to become an uneconomical target, by moving quickly enough to disrupt the enemy’s kill chain and thereby evade engagement...
Events

...Russia set up EW complexes with up to 10 complexes per 20 km of frontage. Collectively, these complexes effectively disrupted navigation along the front, and conducted direction finding to direct artillery and electronic attack against Ukrainian aircraft and UAVs. The use of UAVs during this period deserves special consideration. As the war became dominated by artillery duelling, the importance of rapid target acquisition increased. The narrowing of the contested front and concentration of artillery also offered fewer opportunities for human reconnaissance. Both sides used UAVs extensively throughout the conflict. These ranged from commercial and adapted quadcopters at tactical echelons to fixed-wing reconnaissance UAVs such as the Ukrainian SKIF and Russian Orlan-10. The latter two were especially valuable because they could fly at medium altitude, were too cheap to be economical targets for air defences and provided extensive imagery to enable rapid and responsive fires...

Despite the importance of UAVs to remaining competitive, their attrition rates were extremely high. Of all UAVs used by the UAF in the first three phases of the war covered by this study, around 90% were destroyed. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter remained around three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed-wing UAV was around six flights. Skilled crews who properly pre-programmed the flight path of their UAVs to approach targets shielded by terrain and other features could extend the life of their platforms. However, even when UAVs survived, this did not mean that they were successful in carrying out their missions...In aggregate, only around a third of UAV missions can be said to have been successful. Here, the Orlan-10 should be singled out in terms of its utility because the cheap platform nevertheless had a high performance and proved difficult to counter, although its inertial navigation makes insufficient account of windage. Even the Russian military, however, found that it did not have enough of these platforms to sustain the loss rate during the battle in Donbas.

Recommandations

UAS should be split into three broad categories for land forces. The first are rotary-type UAS able to manoeuvre close to the ground and in complex terrain, fielded across all manoeuvre formations for the purposes of route proving, reconnaissance, situational awareness, target acquisition, fire correction, and a wide range of other tasks. The second are fixed-wing UAS able to fly at medium altitude into operational depth and perform a single task, whether that be target acquisition or direct effects. Where multiple effects are required, this can be achieved by flying complexes of multiple UAS of this type. These should be used by units able to affect what they find, either reconnaissance units or artillery. Both the first and second category of UAS must be cheap and available in quantity. The third category comprises platforms carrying higher echelon sensors...

The lack of loitering munitions able to target air-defence radars has been noted as a critical deficiency in the UAF that would have enabled much more aggressive air operations...

Countering UAS has proven no less important across all domains. For land forces, tactical sub-units must first have a means of detecting the presence of hostile UAS. Frontages must be covered by the means of defeating enemy UAS. Defeating UAS does not mean kinetically destroying them. It simply means denying the UAS the ability to achieve its mission. This could be done through the dazzling of sensors, or denial of navigation or control. The most efficient protection against UAS is EW and ensuring that electronic attack and electronic protection is available at all echelons.

There is, nevertheless, a need for kinetic defeat of some kinds of UAS, especially those penetrating operational depth to conduct target acquisition or loitering munitions. It is highly inefficient to have dedicated CUAS batteries in addition to air-defence batteries. Nevertheless, the munitions that air and missile defence batteries employ do not make CUAS missions economical. The answer must be the provision of intermediate munitions that can draw on the common air picture and guidance available to air-defence units but without the cost associated with munitions that must catch and defeat more complex targets. Point defence for critical sites is also an enduring requirement given the ability for long-range UAS to fly below the radar horizon on complex preprogrammed routes and thereby reach static targets in operational depth.

...The 2022 invasion therefore provides a better canvas to assess the impact of EW on militaries with appropriately resilient systems, and tactics, techniques and procedures. The effect is not EMS denial. Limitations of power, the tactical necessity to manage signatures and the consequences of EMS fratricide all mean that even forces with large EW capabilities cannot achieve blanket denial across large geographic areas for a sustained period. Denial can be achieved for a short period, or across a limited geographic area. Targeted denial can be delivered for a sustained period over a wide area. However, any kind of targeted denial of bands of the EMS can be evaded through altering frequencies or bearers. The result is that EMS interference and disruption is continual, but denial is limited....
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Thoughts: Current drone generation based on civilian models and components are excessively vulnerable to electronic attack. I'd expect next generation to have following features:

- Earth based beacon navigation: orders of magnitude more power than satellite systems.
- Imagery based navigation: DSMAC like system for all
- Effective Low bandwidth return signal: on board processing hyper-compress useful information down orders of magnitude. Instead of bandwidth hogging, easily detected and disrupted video stream, communications can be reduced to imagery and coordinate-object pairs (after AI preprocessing). The ability to squeeze out a few bits of communication in the worst EW environment would be quite useful with right software and processing capability. I do not think radio silence is the right response to EW challenges, instead drones should develop to increasingly transmit information on the same order of abstraction as human voice radio communications: the latter optimized for effectiveness in bandwidth limited environments.
 
The US Army is attempting to take targeting from remote sources to a far greater level than this war. They are are attempting to integrate multiple disparate ISR sources into a common AI clearing house and the have another AI inventory in theater assets to engage them to solve the traveling salesman problems of assets in range and available factored for target priority. This will involve UAVs but testing has already involved commercial satellites; the goal is an ISR source independent system - drones, satellites, HUMINT, whatever so long as the data is formatted correctly. Project Convergence has achieved fire times measured in minutes and seconds, surely under ideal test conditions of course. But the direction is pretty clearly ubiquitous ISR with near instant response by fire units. Maybe not for years, but it is coming.
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/zaflxh
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/zaflxh/russian_uav_drops_grenade_on_ukrainian_uavs/

bombed.png
Ramming -> bombing
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I was thinking about weapons for micro-drone warfare, and it appears to me that a metalstorm type system might be useful. Not for the rate of fire which the platform can not support, but for having a gun with at minimum weight with no mechanical loading mechanism. The alternative is scaling down bullets to make the entire mechanism to fit, but I don't think you can scale it down all that much. Software should enable aim with different muzzle velocities.


aonestudio said:
A Russian modern kamikaze drone strikes a Ukrainian howitzer. Ukrainian soldiers: Basically, change the wheel and it will work.
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The utility of armor and other passive defenses ought to get examined in high density drone warfare environments.
 

“Two main developments are going to impact future war,” said Samuel Bendett, a military analyst at the Virginia-based research group CNA. “The proliferation and availability of combat drones for longer-ranged, more-sophisticated operations, and the absolute necessity to have cheap tactical drones for close-support operations.”

[...]

The small Mavic quadcopter, which like the Matrice 300 is produced by Chinese manufacturer DJI, costs less than $4,000 online. Yuri Baluyevsky, a retired general who served as chief of Russia’s armed forces, called it “a true symbol of modern warfare,” in a book on advanced military strategies published this year.

[...]

Ukraine’s state crowdfunder, United24, has an “Army of Drones” initiative with contracts to buy nearly 1,000 UAVs, said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister. But that’s still not enough.

The goal, Fedorov said, is 10,000 drones flying along the vast front line, to broadcast the fighting without interruption.

[...]

Homegrown drones range from miniature planes that can fly nearly 30 miles and drop a five-pound missile — such as the Punisher drone preferred by Ukraine’s special forces — to reconnaissance gliders. The goal is to produce 2,000 small combat drones in Ukraine per month by year’s end, said Fedorov, the digital minister.

[...]

Shortly after the start of the invasion, Syrsky, the colonel general then leading the defense of Kyiv, turned to one of his deputies and suggested making something “artistic” about the Bayraktar to lift public morale. It was inspiring, he said, to watch new technology take out traditional military hardware such as tanks.

The task eventually filtered down to a soldier, Taras Borovok, who quickly wrote the catchy “Bayraktar” tune that became a hit on Ukrainian radio. Among the lyrics: “The Kremlin freak is conducting propaganda; the people swallow the words. Now their czar knows a new word: Bayraktar.”
 
FhIzD4qWQAIiVRS
FhIzDb8XwAcvRAO
FhIzC_FXEAE8T3j
 
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
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They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
 
Anti-drone tech becoming very popular (for obvious reasons).

1675833490427.png

I think the Russian's might have started fielding an area-denial version.

20230208_162531.jpg
 
www.economist.com

How drones dogfight above Ukraine

A growing number of drone-on-drone attacks shows how aerial warfare may develop
www.economist.com www.economist.com

In case it's paywalled (you should be able to get the first three articles of the month free).

Ukrainian forces have shared more videos of drone-on-drone attacks. Russian drones are also attacking Ukrainian ones (though information about those is scarcer). How do drones dogfight, and what impact might this have on aerial warfare?

Quadcopters have rotors on top, and their cameras point downwards. A rapid descent on a target from above makes use of this blind spot. Striking the rotor will usually cause at least one blade to break, sending the enemy spinning out of control but leaving the attacker undamaged.

Ukrainian forces will soon have access to a purpose-built system that can inflict far greater damage. MARSS, a defence startup based in Monaco, is sending its drone interceptors: their networked sensors detect incoming enemy drones and launch counter-attack drones from the ground that use articial intelligence to identify, track and attack targets without human assistance. They have a top speed of 170mph and are robust enough to survive dustups with small drones. They can also take on bigger targets, such as the Shahed-136 drone, though they would probably be lost in the process.

Fleets of interceptor drones may be a solution to mass drone attacks, like those on Ukraine’s power grid. Bomber drones might even gain fighter-drone escorts to protect them. In the aerial battles of the future humans could be relegated to the role of observers.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
Click to expand...
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
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Kinetic Interceptor guided from the ground with visual imaging sensor for terminal guidance:

3-dji-tracking-1.jpg


MARSS | INTERCEPTOR

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
 
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Interesting. But is it a "one shot", as a loitering munition ?

I don't see anywhere that it's reusable and there's also nothing that says it can land.
 
Their interceptor has a level of reusability in the sense that it can survive hitting a target, up to a certain size/mass of it. Then it can engage another one. It's momentum conservation during a collision: m1v1 Vs m2v2
A bigger, faster, sturdier and partially armored with a thicker shell drone will survive a collision with a fragile multi-axis rotors one.
 
Deltafan said:
Interesting. But is it a "one shot", as a loitering munition ?

I don't see anywhere that it's reusable and there's also nothing that says it can land.
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“Against Class 1 targets the Interceptor would usually survive and be capable to reiterate the mission against another UAV,” Stephen Scott, the company Head of the Research and Development (Defence), tells EDR On-Line, adding that in normal circumstances the hit on a Class 2 airframe would cause the loss of the Interceptor." https://www.edrmagazine.eu/killing-...etic-energy-uas-marss-unveils-its-interceptor
 
sferrin said:
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
Click to expand...
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

They made a movie based on Second Variety? Did they have a suicide bomber kid with a teddy bear in the film adaptation?
 
siegecrossbow said:
sferrin said:
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
Click to expand...
Orionblamblam said:
Forest Green said:
I don't know if they will be that useful because of the noise they make.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
They could well be *very* useful, exactly because they're so noisy. Right now, and for the near-ish future, these things will be nigh-on uninterceptable. So if you're some grunt in a trench and you hear one buzzing about, what do you do? You dive into a hole and pull the hole in after you. These things have been spotted *stalking* trenches looking for *one* guy. They are PTSD-machines, and they will make an unholy mess of battlefield morale and discipline.

And then the much quieter ones will come about, maybe using those MIT toroidal rotors, and things will get worse for the grunts.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

They made a movie based on Second Variety? Did they have a suicide bomber kid with a teddy bear in the film adaptation?
Click to expand...
Yep. Don't recall the different varieties from the movie. It's been years since I've seen it. But I'd read the short story prior and I remember the movie being close enough that it was enjoyable.
 

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