Lockheed Martin AGM-179 JAGM

[Jimmo952]

If you're shooting down drones with JAGM you've already lost the cost war.

A plus for JAGM is it is multi purpose. Useful in some anti-surface scenarios and now (supposedly) anti-air.

 

[Sferrin]

A plus for JAGM is it is multi purpose. Useful in some anti-surface scenarios and now (supposedly) anti-air.

Not much of a plus if you can't afford to keep it loaded.

 

[Kat Tsun]

If you're doing C-UAS defence, there's no guarantee the next drone you need to engage is going to be detected in front of you, particularly if someone's hunting you with an FPV drone and taking advantage of cover to close on you from an unexpected direction . Being able to engage in a 360 degree arc makes you a lot less vulnerable than having a forward-facing launcher and the target popping up behind you.

Hellfire is far too ponderous and expensive to engage FPVs. On the Sgt. Stout it was primarily going to engage helicopter gunships conducting BLOS fires with weapons like LMUR or fiber optic missiles like Spike. APS isn't quite capable enough either as FPVs are too slow and can just creep up unlike a grenade or missile. A remote weapon station with a high rate of fire machine gun and a VIS-LWIR electro-optical sensor might be good.

As a bonus, it can defend a warship from close in attack, and I believe the British use M134s on railings for that job, no less.

Coyote is fine and good enough. The USN wants to put a HPM inside Coyote apparently which is quite clever if it can be made to work.

 

[DWG]

Hellfire is far too ponderous and expensive to engage FPVs.

The vehicle being discussed actually mounted the JAGM vertical launcher, not Hellfire, but the whole question is applicable to any air-defence, C-RAM or C-UAS asset, a turreted launcher takes time to turn to engage a target in an unexpected sector that a VLS launcher doesn't.

On the Sgt. Stout it was primarily going to engage helicopter gunships conducting BLOS fires with weapons like LMUR or fiber optic missiles like Spike.

A gunship popping up behind you is just as much a threat as an FPV drone.

A remote weapon station with a high rate of fire machine gun and a VIS-LWIR electro-optical sensor might be good.

An RWS still has the facing issue.

As a bonus, it can defend a warship from close in attack, and I believe the British use M134s on railings for that job, no less.

I believe the M134s have either been retired or are being retired, with .50s replacing them. However they're only secondary weapons in that role, the primary mountings are the 30mm ASCG (aka the DSI Seahawk in non-RN use) and Phalanx.

 

[Kat Tsun]

The vehicle being discussed actually mounted the JAGM vertical launcher, not Hellfire, but the whole question is applicable to any air-defence, C-RAM or C-UAS asset, a turreted launcher takes time to turn to engage a target in an unexpected sector that a VLS launcher doesn't.

FPVs can be detected well within response time due to how slow they move. The easiest method is acoustic: they're extremely loud like most rotary wing aircraft. The most effective is a high resolution visual camera: they may be fast but they are not that fast. Typical detection ranges are within several tens of meters outside of urban combat, which is multiple meters, and even the latter case is enough to respond for an onboard weapon, whether it's a high speed discharger or a man with a rifle poking his head out a hatch.

They have to, uh, literally fly up to the tank at such a low speed that they don't trigger the APS velocity gate. This is usually fractional meters per second. Roughly walking or jogging speed, usually slower, going by Hamas kill footage. Killing an FPV is essentially the same as killing a suicide bomber as far as a tank is concerned. Similar speed, similar threat, similarly invisible to the APS radar.

Welcome back, Haftholladung.

It's different in Ukraine where FPVs enjoy the incredible luxury of engaging armor without organic self defense measures. There it's more akin to an off route mine and some sort of standoff projector like the Saab Mongoose or Iron Fist would be incredibly valuable. So would a high rate of fire machine gun. Drones would just adapt to engage at slower speeds from closer distances, then, as they have in the Levant.

A gunship popping up behind you is just as much a threat as an FPV drone.

It's worse actually, but Hellfire isn't well adapted to the air defense role, as trucks are too bumpy and dirty for them.

An RWS still has the facing issue.

It can spin quickly and you can mount several of them under robotic control. It's no worse than any number of swivel launchers for APS.