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I really hope the western allies have a plan for countering drones in the pipeline, otherwise the next time we fight an insurgency will be a bloodbath.
As someone who’s been following this fairly closely since the Syrians started toying with it, and the Ukrainians threw it into hyperdrive… There’s no good counter when drones are cheap to make and can be programmed to run on a flight course:
- Jamming has to fight inverse square so the radius is trash (and kills a lot of useful civil RF ranges like WiFi). Something like 200 meters is a strong system currently, and power needs ramp up fast.
- ‘Kinetic hard kill’ like traditional air defense is way too expensive per shot, plus there’s issues with UXO, debris, and limited launching platforms. Legacy air defenses like Tunguska or FlakPanzer with programmable airburst rounds work best, but at very short range and make a lot of secondary fragments by design. Taking the guns out, interceptor missiles start at five figures.
- Laser systems have a lot of promise with none of the explosive downsides whilst being cheaper per shot, but range isn’t great - you’re focusing energy to physically melt the target, and all light suffers from diffraction. It is better than jamming, but far too close for comfort.
That assumes you know the drone is coming, mind you. Piston-engine flying wings aren’t silent, but they are generally made of polymers/laminates that are hard to detect via radar. Thermal cameras and acoustic sensors so far are the best early warning systems, but radar is still a huge help.
And then there’s FPV and quadcopters. While a larger munition like Shaheed can be under $10k, even the more advanced FPV/quads with night vision (or even thermal) cameras frequently run under $1,000, up to a few thousand. Air dropped explosives have been fundamental in changing the course of the civil war in Myanmar for the rebels, it’s like having a budget Air Force and spy satellites on call.
The air burst rounds sound like the best option, pretty much guaranteed kill against a slow moving drone, cost less than what you're shooting at, and useful against a wide range of targets.
Yup, air burst and lasers are the leading ideas atm. But you’re still dealing with a zone of protection a kilometer or so - not a big deal to defend the main command post or vital supply depots, but spreading that out to industrial areas, grid power stations and substations, seaport complexes, or cities and your ‘blanket’ of protection starts looking too small for the job of covering the ‘want to have’ as well as the ‘need to have’ protected.
I was thinking about military actions on foreign soil, where the infrastructure is theirs anyway.
Hmm, what about Phalanx/CIWS for hard kill? Assuming you can track the target.
Of course the real solution is trained birds.
Have they looked at masers? Basically rf lasers.i think they're much cheaper than lasers and could be steered at drones but would only need enough power to interfere with guidance/ controls
A maser is a device that produces coherent microwaves, through amplification by stimulated emission. The term is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
TIL, thank you friend!
There has been development of smarter jammers that’ll ‘listen’ for the frequency used, and pump out jamming to defeat it, but I haven’t heard of a steerable unit like that - very interesting.
Yes, you can damage pretty much anything with enough energy. It's hard to fit high-power lasers on small flight-capable platforms, so ground-based units are more likely. You can blind UAV systems' sensors with IR lasers at relatively low power, too. However, this is easily countered by software. Reflective coatings and retroreflective foils are possible countermeasures to laser attacks, but even these have damage thresholds.
IR lasers and masers have the advantage of being eye-safe, meaning their light won't get bent by your eyes' lenses and can't damage your retinas, due to their wavelength. With enough power, however, you can still burn human flesh.
Why not just use a big shotgun for the smaller stuff, skeet shooting style? I dunno how to really deal with much larger drones, but a shotgun should be able to deal with most human sized drone targets pretty easily
What about a shotgun shell but each pellet is crimped around the midpoint of a bundle of carbon fibers