5 ms·

Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided ro

Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has been working on means of defending against those for decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do with detection than firing.

mlyle 5y ago
Deploying point defense technologies over a city/civilian targets has some obvious problems, though. Lasers, electronic countermeasures, tangly stuff, etc, are much more attractive than systems that fire thousands of cannon rounds per minute or that launch explosive missiles.
- sliken 5y ago
  From the phalanx wiki: Whereas naval Phalanx systems fire tungsten armor-piercing rounds, the C-RAM uses the 20–mm HEIT-SD (High-Explosive Incendiary Tracer, Self-Destruct) ammunition, originally developed for the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System.[26][34] These rounds explode on impact with the target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to hit their target. Not that the risk is zero, but at least it's "greatly reduced".
  - mlyle 5y ago
    You wouldn't generally let a C-RAM fire at a low angle over a city. And even if you did, the problem of how many of these you need for decent coverage becomes large, because there's no ideal placement that doesn't involve shooting straight at friendly things from some approach vectors. A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on civilian targets.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      And one of tue whole advantages of a drone army is that it can fly between zero and ten feet off the ground - thereby undercutting lots of defenses that are designed to point in the air.
sliken 5y ago
Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack from above)? Not sure a CIWS system that can hit a mach 2 missile that doesn't dodge would necessarily handle the same $$$ spent on a N cheaper drones. How many minutes of firing do modern CIWS systems typically have? Loitering at max engagement range and dodging might well end up using ammo at a rate that the CIWS can not sustain. Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I googled the phalanx, looks like it typically has a drum of ammo that lasts for about 3 seconds. Is that 3 drones worth? 10? 100?
- mlyle 5y ago
  > Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I guarantee you that just grazing a drone with a 20mm round will still kill it, even if you don't "hit" anything critical. :P
  - sliken 5y ago
    Really? Say you blow a 1" hole in a wing that's got some balsa struts and some thin fabric? Or a wing just made out of a sheet of foam? Both are common on cheap drones. Sure the 20mm round represents an amazing amount of kinetic energy, but the drone doesn't offer any resistance, and I wouldn't expect the round to even notice. Sure the disturbance in the air might throw the drone for a few loops, but any decent software will recover. Sure hitting more substantial targets the target itself becomes of the shrapnel that causes an ever increasing zone of damage. Not clear to me that a piece of paper or thin fabric would exhibit the same behavior.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Speaking as someone who's built and destroyed lots of homebuilt aircraft, and shot lots of things with guns of various sizes... 1. I think you're conflating "cheap agile drone" with "foam or balsa+durakote fixed wing aircraft". 2. Probable engagement aspect for a drone is not "straight up", as would be necessary for your scenario. 3. A little itty bitty hole in a wing does a whole lot more than you'd think. 4. Expecting a high velocity cannon round to just punch a clean hole in the wing is a little much. Foam's a bit more robust, but a small pebble at a few miles per hour has wrecked my whole durakote day before. And yes, there's degenerate cases, like you could have a whole sheet of dollar tree foam board maybe take a hit or two.
dougmwne 5y ago
Does it at all change the equation that you could trivially fly the drone 2 feet above the ground?
baybal2 5y ago
> Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and low. Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know to be poor. And that on dielectric, flat sea surface. Even military drones weighting few tons can fly autonomously under 100m. Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which will provide more air defence since they will force terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at oblique angles. Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow cruise missiles, except worse.
wearywanderer 5y ago
Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.
tw04 5y ago
Most of those systems are designed to target dozens of incoming targets. It’s entirely reasonable and plausible for drone swarms to number in the thousands of targets. That ciws will likely exhaust its magazine before it can take out all the drones unless I’m missing something.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Lasers. You just have to put "laser defense drones" into Google to get a whole slew of completed or in development solutions. Also EMPS, counter defensive swarms of drones. The list goes on...
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Here is the system I am aware of: https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 (watch this entire video for air defense against saturation attacks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc
- Animats 5y ago
  That's why Israel is begging the US for another billion dollars for reloads for their Iron Dome system. They're using expensive guided missiles to shoot down cheap unguided rockets.

mlyle 5y ago

Deploying point defense technologies over a city/civilian targets has some obvious problems, though. Lasers, electronic countermeasures, tangly stuff, etc, are much more attractive than systems that fire thousands of cannon rounds per minute or that launch explosive missiles.

sliken 5y ago
From the phalanx wiki: Whereas naval Phalanx systems fire tungsten armor-piercing rounds, the C-RAM uses the 20–mm HEIT-SD (High-Explosive Incendiary Tracer, Self-Destruct) ammunition, originally developed for the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System.[26][34] These rounds explode on impact with the target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to hit their target. Not that the risk is zero, but at least it's "greatly reduced".
- mlyle 5y ago
  You wouldn't generally let a C-RAM fire at a low angle over a city. And even if you did, the problem of how many of these you need for decent coverage becomes large, because there's no ideal placement that doesn't involve shooting straight at friendly things from some approach vectors. A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on civilian targets.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    And one of tue whole advantages of a drone army is that it can fly between zero and ten feet off the ground - thereby undercutting lots of defenses that are designed to point in the air.

sliken 5y ago

Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack from above)? Not sure a CIWS system that can hit a mach 2 missile that doesn't dodge would necessarily handle the same $$$ spent on a N cheaper drones. How many minutes of firing do modern CIWS systems typically have? Loitering at max engagement range and dodging might well end up using ammo at a rate that the CIWS can not sustain. Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I googled the phalanx, looks like it typically has a drum of ammo that lasts for about 3 seconds. Is that 3 drones worth? 10? 100?

mlyle 5y ago
> Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any part of a missile, where drones often have very small kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and control) that might well be just a few % of the size of the drone. I guarantee you that just grazing a drone with a 20mm round will still kill it, even if you don't "hit" anything critical. :P
- sliken 5y ago
  Really? Say you blow a 1" hole in a wing that's got some balsa struts and some thin fabric? Or a wing just made out of a sheet of foam? Both are common on cheap drones. Sure the 20mm round represents an amazing amount of kinetic energy, but the drone doesn't offer any resistance, and I wouldn't expect the round to even notice. Sure the disturbance in the air might throw the drone for a few loops, but any decent software will recover. Sure hitting more substantial targets the target itself becomes of the shrapnel that causes an ever increasing zone of damage. Not clear to me that a piece of paper or thin fabric would exhibit the same behavior.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Speaking as someone who's built and destroyed lots of homebuilt aircraft, and shot lots of things with guns of various sizes... 1. I think you're conflating "cheap agile drone" with "foam or balsa+durakote fixed wing aircraft". 2. Probable engagement aspect for a drone is not "straight up", as would be necessary for your scenario. 3. A little itty bitty hole in a wing does a whole lot more than you'd think. 4. Expecting a high velocity cannon round to just punch a clean hole in the wing is a little much. Foam's a bit more robust, but a small pebble at a few miles per hour has wrecked my whole durakote day before. And yes, there's degenerate cases, like you could have a whole sheet of dollar tree foam board maybe take a hit or two.

dougmwne 5y ago

Does it at all change the equation that you could trivially fly the drone 2 feet above the ground?

baybal2 5y ago

> Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and low. Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know to be poor. And that on dielectric, flat sea surface. Even military drones weighting few tons can fly autonomously under 100m. Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which will provide more air defence since they will force terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at oblique angles. Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow cruise missiles, except worse.

wearywanderer 5y ago

Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.

tw04 5y ago

Most of those systems are designed to target dozens of incoming targets. It’s entirely reasonable and plausible for drone swarms to number in the thousands of targets. That ciws will likely exhaust its magazine before it can take out all the drones unless I’m missing something.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
Lasers. You just have to put "laser defense drones" into Google to get a whole slew of completed or in development solutions. Also EMPS, counter defensive swarms of drones. The list goes on...
- imtringued 5y ago
  Here is the system I am aware of: https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 (watch this entire video for air defense against saturation attacks) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV3jfR-FUFc
Animats 5y ago
That's why Israel is begging the US for another billion dollars for reloads for their Iron Dome system. They're using expensive guided missiles to shoot down cheap unguided rockets.