Drones and how to kill them?

I'll have to look it up or ask again, but I'm pretty sure a couple state NG's sent some PIVADS, though they may have just been RISE M113s I suppose. It was a conversation last year with an Army technician who was working the vics up to deployment.

Even if it is a mistaken vic, there are better things like the M230LF and whatever Britain sent, I think it was Bushmaster IIIs? C-UAS really really wants PABM and and MFRs, not sabot ammo or ranging radars, I guess was mostly my point.
 
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www.defenseone.com

US Sending Experimental Anti-Drone Weapons to Ukraine

SAIC is among contenders for a crash Army effort to help the country down Iranian-made drones.
www.defenseone.com www.defenseone.com
www.defense.gov

Large Quantity of Defensive Munitions Earmarked for Ukraine

The United States and allies have been stepping up the production of munitions to keep Ukraine in the fight as the country tries to repel a Russian invasion and reclaim its territory from Russia, a
www.defense.gov
  • Nine counter-unmanned serial system 30 mm gun trucks.
  • Mobile counter-unmanned aircraft system, or C-UAS, laser-guided rocket systems: 10.
  • Anti-aircraft ammunition: 30 mm and 23 mm.
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Kat Tsun said:
whatever Britain sent, I think it was Bushmaster IIIs?
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We don't know what was sent. It was listed as 'Towed' so probably means we found some ZU-23's on the arms market and bought them.
 
timmymagic said:
Kat Tsun said:
whatever Britain sent, I think it was Bushmaster IIIs?
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We don't know what was sent. It was listed as 'Towed' so probably means we found some ZU-23's on the arms market and bought them.
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I once wondered if they had dusted off some of the ex-Argentine GDF-002s that went to the RAF Regiment after the Falklands. But I think I found evidence that they had been scrapped rather than stored a few years ago.

Edit: and then I looked and saw that it was supposedly 125 guns delivered. Which is a lot more than the stock of GDFs anyway.
 
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TomS said:
I once wondered if they had dusted off some of the ex-Argentine GDF-002s that went to the RAF Regiment after the Falklands. But I think I found evidence that they had been scrapped rather than stored a few years ago.
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The radars are still around, used for policing LFA's, but most of the guns ended up in museums after the RAuxAF got binned.
 
Sorry about the double post but maybe it's more pertinent here.

Snippets:

“This is something we haven’t seen before,” says Caitlin Lee, who leads the Center for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Autonomy Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Arlington, Va. “This is the first time we’re seeing drone-on-drone conflict.”

And the action in Ukraine suggests that even more novel kinds of aerial conflict—including combat drones armed to fight in tandem with piloted aircraft—are coming to the broader world of warfare.

“We can retrain air defenses to look for smaller radar cross sections, but then they’ll pick up every bird that flies by,” says Sarah Kreps, director of the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute. “So it’s a real sensor problem that countries like the U.S. have spent billions trying to solve—not unlike when the U.S. spent [heavily on] countering improvised explosive devices that were far less expensive or sophisticated than systems our militaries had been trained to destroy. These are essentially flying IEDs that have foiled militaries in similar ways, creating asymmetric advantages that have been difficult to counter.”

“There have been debates about using autonomous drones in combat, and thus far, countries seem to have shied away from using them in a lethal capacity,” Kreps says. “At the same time, though, we’ve seen an increasingly porous line between the semiautonomous drones—which is how the U.S. used drones for counterterrorism—and fully autonomous drones.”

In a situation such as the one in Ukraine, where the West broadly supports giving the country the tools it needs to defend itself, “there could be a real first-mover advantage in using counterdrone systems in this type of autonomous capacity,” Kreps says, “which takes us further down the slippery slope of autonomy.”

www.scientificamerican.com

Drone-on-Drone Combat in Ukraine Marks a New Era of Aerial Warfare

Antidrone technology is combatting “flying IEDs” in the air over Ukraine—with implications beyond the war with Russia
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
 
Given that drones range in size from small hand-launched units (similar to those you could by in a hobby shop) to large, high-flying, high-performance systems, it is going to take a wide range of detection systems and a similar wide range of weapons to accomplish the destruction of the wide range of drone types that might/will appear on the battlefield.
 
Orionblamblam said:
sferrin said:
Only DEWs will be able to deal with swarms IMO, be that lasers, microwave weapons, or electronic attack.
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Electronic attack can be shielded/firewalled against. Lasers can be defended against with smoke. Microwaves can probably be defended against by simply wrapping the vulnerable bits in conductive mesh. All of these add cost and complexity; I suspect we're entering a new cannon-vs-armor race.
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My hypothetical "drone smoker" uses a microwave oven magnetron, a waveguide, and a horn antenna, all encased inside some PVC tubes for weatherproofing and comfort. Whole package looks a lot like the British Blowpipe SAM launcher. No drone is going to like 1600W of 2.4GHz radiation, especially not one that is controlled on that very frequency. Admittedly, that's primarily a civilian market thing, I understand that even the small military drones don't use 2.4GHz if they can avoid it.

For pinpoint work, an actual MASER is probably ideal. Use an IR laser for aiming and then smite with a large quantity of coherent microwave energy.
 

Analysis: Skyranger 30 new mobile counter drone weapon system developed by Rheinmetall Germany | weapons defence industry military technology UK | analysis focus army defence military industry army

Analysis: Skyranger 30 new mobile counter drone weapon system developed by Rheinmetall Germany
www.armyrecognition.com www.armyrecognition.com

Analysis_Skyranger_30_new_mobile_counter_drone_weapon_system_developed_by_Rheinmetall_Germany_002.jpg

Analysis_Skyranger_30_new_mobile_counter_drone_weapon_system_developed_by_Rheinmetall_Germany_925_001.jpg
 
Mean looking Dalek.

I'd just time an incursion during a windstorm if do-able.
 
I halfway expect to see a handful of FPV racing drones getting used to deal with the grenade/mortar bomb carrying drones.
 
Forest Green said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1688916117455327232
View: https://twitter.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1688916117455327232?s=20
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Good, it's on a trailer so all you have to do to relocate is have a vehicle hook up. And if you're on a smooth enough surface, it can probably still protect you on the move.

Forest Green said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1688911467838627840
View: https://twitter.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1688911467838627840?s=20
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Being a palletized system is great for being self-contained. It's terrible for mobility, because now you MUST have a forklift to relocate those units, unless you never pulled them out of the back of the JLTV in the first place. (How the heck do you pronounce that acronym anyway? "jolt-vee"?)
 

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