Anti-drone technologies and tactics

timmymagic said:
That gun based anti-drone has limitations and is every bit as costly as interceptors....
Click to expand...
‘Every bit as costly’? Are you serious?
MANPADs are pretty regularly decoyed by flares, so you still have to expect multiple shots.
It takes about 16 $300 gun rounds to reach the cost of the $5k MANPAD, however a vehicle with a gun can do more than shoot down drones…
On top of that it is possible to possible to shoot down a drone with fewer than 16 rounds. So even if the expected number of 30mm AAW rounds needed to down a shahed level drone is 16, some engagements will result in kills below that number.
 
Last edited:
Combat-Master said:
Not such a bad idea TBH, just have to make sure not to blind ones self
Click to expand...
Hmmm... It's a strange one, based on the ability to hit the lens, which is probably harder than hitting the drone, why not just fire shot and kill the drone completely?? :confused:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
timmymagic said:
30mm x 173mm programmable rounds are north of $300 per round...thats not proximity fuzed either, they will be far more expensive. These are electrically timed fuzes using induction loops at the muzzle to set the fuze.

A Sting interceptor costs $2,000 according to Wild Hornets...

One of those can fly 40km and intercept at 5,000ft and upwards, and can even be re-used if no engagement occurs...the other....can't and will need multiple rounds to engage...
Click to expand...

Manualy piloted interceptor drones in practice do not hit anything most of the time , hit rates are in 10%-20% at very best , whole propaganda make folks that have no clue on how these things work think its some sort of magic bullet made in Wakanda .
What sounds like 2000$ interceptor ballons in tens of thousands+ $ when you count drones that never get to fly and ones that never hit anything. One of the downsides of zoopark of systems made on zoopark of chinese control systems .

The single most important component is not the interceptor but the radar that vectors them to the target. That is more often than not a 800k-1.2mio$ Israeli RADA ieHMR radar system.


Some points from an interview with Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, Deputy Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force and responsible for the development of small air defense and counter-drone systems, published by Ukrayinska Pravda.

▪️To improve effectiveness, the approach to defense against Geranium missiles has been changed. While it was previously beneficial for drones to fly through an area without hitting it, now allowing these drones to pass through without being hit is a negative factor.

▪️Interceptor drones are only one component of air defense, along with short-range missiles and mobile task forces. The effective use of anti-aircraft drones depends on radar coverage, drone quality, and pilot training.

▪️Before the air defense reform, out of more than 300 interceptor drone crews, only 66 crews shot down more than 10 Geranium missiles, 70 fewer than 10, and the remaining 170 shot down none at all.

▪️The main problem is the lack of effective people in leadership positions.

▪️Another problem is the inefficient logistics of delivering drones to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which depend on various control stations. Because of this, existing drones are often unusable due to the lack of the required control station.

▪️Ukraine has lost its drone advantage, achieved in 2022-2023.

▪️Starlink was first attached to a drone on May 6, 2022, which was a turning point.

▪️Currently, Ukrainian interceptor drones are capable of reaching speeds of up to 700 km/h. Not quite certain which one is capable of 700kmh


He states that out of the 300 new mobile air defense teams Ukraine has established, 170 of them failed to shoot down a single Russian Geran drone over a 1 year period.
HHKythabkAAGWmp.jpg
 
Last edited:
NMaude said:
Yes but how many of those missiles use older non-imaging IR-seekers?
Click to expand...
We've also seen just a couple months ago, how flares fool not just imaging seekers, but far more capable imaging IR sights.

Also, image is not some sort of breakthrough solution, which closed IRCM. To my knowledge, Piorun(non-imaging) performed substantially better than Stinger(imaging).
 
Sineva said:
The israelis in lebanon look to have returned to using cope cages in response to hezbollahs increasing use of fiber optic tethered fpv drones.
Click to expand...
I would think barbs would be atop them to deflect---maybe nets farther out in an umbrella.

New tech:
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-wingbeat-radar-signatures-ai-bees.html

I can see this used for defense against coming flapping drones.

Uh oh
https://www.dailymail.com/sciencetech/article-15762741/stolen-agricultural-drones-new-jersey.html
 
Last edited:
What kind of drones even have MAWS to operate IR flares on reaction?

---
In any case, gun systems never was the whole solution to the air war. Any higher performance drone can out range it, as medium attitude drones like TB-2 have outranged the likes of SHORAD like pantsir or even get tracks on TOR. Cheap systems can not contest the likes of loyal wingman class vehicles. Combined arms defense covering all performance bands is needed to neutralize air threats.

Even for the application of defeating low cost propeller driven 'missiles', gun systems as front line defenses are expensive and vulnerable to attack by a wide variety of ground attack methods and have poor area coverage for cost. It'd make sense as point defense for high value targets where fast engagement speeds enables defeat of swarms, or maybe as part of concentrated maneuver forces that seek all domain local overmatch, not as something you place in penny pockets to maintain thousand plus kilometer front.

For drone interceptors, electric interceptors with low speed advantage over the targets and limited range and practically no sensors demands favorable engagement geometry that take luck and skill to setup a kill. The main advantage is large coverage area and very low cost and low volume ground systems that can be safely placed near the front to extract attrition and disrupt opponent ops. Consider the use case of disrupting enemy's drone based aerial resupply over their "own territory", I don't think other systems can conduct this mission. Roles aside, skill and support systems that improve performance is at this moment very primitive, stuff like navigation/fire control tools to calculate intercept courses does not appear available when it can be implemented on ground stations with on cheap bit of integration.

I do think that microturbojets interceptors with non-self destructing effactors have the greatest unrealized potential. Just have a tail sitter and it'd do near missiles performance with operating costs measured in fuel. It is relatively wasteful to use jets for one way munition carrying a small warhead compared to this.
 
Last edited:
shin_getter said:
I do think that microturbojets interceptors with non-self destructing effactors have the greatest unrealized potential. Just have a tail sitter and it'd do near missiles performance with operating costs measured in fuel. It is relatively wasteful to use jets for one way munition carrying a small warhead compared to this.
Click to expand...

IIRC such interceptors are in development.
 
Sineva said:
The israelis in lebanon look to have returned to using cope cages in response to hezbollahs increasing use of fiber optic tethered fpv drones.
Tho the cage appeared to have failed in this recent attack [27-04] on a merkava.
https://twitter.com/x/status/2050264171762098186
Click to expand...
For the record:
That Merkava Mk.4 Baz probably either inoperable or abandoned, but definitely does not have working Trophy system on it.
The Trophy got the C-UAS capability in 2025 with a software update.
The Hezbollah got lucky (or got right skills - depending how you look) as seems to be the open hatch was the weak point and the PG-7 round hit right the live ammunition back in the tank interior.
 
Last edited:
One of the most full-on anti drone configurations I've seen to date; Aselsan Gurz with all options maxed out.

  • E/O Turret
  • SATCOM
  • AESA radars
  • Acoustic Sensors
  • Laser Warning Receiver
  • Jammers
  • 3kw Directed Energy Laser
  • 12.7mm Frangible Casing
  • 35mm Airburst
  • Sungur Missile (8km)
  • HISAR or Goksur Missile (+15km)
Video in Turkish, but a good walk around this configuration
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kacdt67PY
 

Attachments

  • 1778239901509.png
    1778239901509.png
    2.9 MB · Views: 17
Last edited:
Drone paper:

Near-Terrain Flight Operations and Performance of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles​

This study aims to test and develop safe aircraft operational methods for flights in high-altitude mountainous regions. In addition to the close proximity to complex terrain and subvertical topography, flight operations in such areas are affected by poor visibility, dynamic weather conditions, and unpredictable wind conditions. This poses a risk of controlled flight into terrain (CFIT), which is the main problem tackled in this study.

A series of experimental campaigns were conducted to investigate the flying environment in the mountainous regions of Nepal using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Flight path planning in the near-terrain environment was performed by cross-referencing the flight path with the digital elevation model (DEM) to ensure minimum proximity to the terrain. A numerical model of the UAV was developed with the help of the aerodynamic parameters of the aircraft deduced from the flight data of autonomous missions.

From:
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.C038411

Related articles
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.C038339
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.C038391

Az-El mount
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/07/this-az-el-mount-is-worth-following/

Tear down
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/04/teardown-of-a-shahed-136-gimbaled-camera/
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXfxhH8n00

More
https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-honeybees-drones.html
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-autonomous-underwater-robot-hidden-coral.html
 
Last edited:
 
Last edited:
Rubicon's manually flown FPV interceptors same tech as Ukrainian interceptors which are also mostly manually flown FPV

 
This could help against small FPV drones but they are useless against the long range ukrainian drones, which are airplane size and carry sizeable payloads.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom