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There must be many ways to come at the problem of spotting drones including sound, visual, radio. Presumably it's just a matter of time once the boffins apply
by andrewstuart 3y ago
There must be many ways to come at the problem of spotting drones including sound, visual, radio.
Presumably it's just a matter of time once the boffins apply themselves to the task before drones are effectively defended against?
Maybe this is a naive outlook. I can image drones sitting 300 feet above a tank dropping a bomb on it - hard to see or stop that. Or maybe drones that switch off all communication and glide in without radio communication once they spot their target.
Regardless, you can be sure there's absolutely massive money being spent on drone defence right now by governments around the world.
- ceejayoz 3y agoI suspect we're going to see a big resurgence in anti-aircraft guns, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard.
- jazzyjackson 3y agowhy fire ammo when you have laser beams? https://bluehalo.com/c-uas-autonomous-systems/c-uas-directed-energy/ https://bluehalo.com/c-uas-autonomous-systems/c-uas-directed...
- dotnet00 3y agoDirected energy weapons are still in their early days, they're not powerful enough to just shrug off all sorts of potential countermeasures the way a solid chunk of metal hitting the target does.
- mopsi 3y agoCost, reliability and simplicity! A WWII-era 20-40mm cannon upgraded with automated targeting system doesn't even have to accurately hit the target if its shell explodes into a cloud of metal fragments that hits propellers and control surfaces or gets ingested into a jet engine.
- andrewstuart 3y agoOf all shapes and sizes. I can imagine a robot M16 attached to a drone spotter might be effective against the sort of small drones that are hitting tanks in Ukraine.
- cm2187 3y agoPlus people will get a lot less worked up about AI picking and aiming at targets in the air vs on the ground.
- ceejayoz 3y agoUntil one pulls a USS Vincennes.
- maxerickson 3y agoWhy not a 20 mm cannon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
- ttepasse 3y agoBecause the land version of Phalanx, the Centurion, is big, needs a large transport and a lot of energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_C-RAM Although an auto cannon seems to be the right thing. The current thing seems to be the mobile, smaller Skyranger systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyranger_30 That’s still rather big and is a dedicated vehicle. I wonder if there are initiatives of coupling the remote-controlled weapon turrents on normal vehicles with radar and such enabling anti-air capability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_controlled_weapon_stati...
- maxerickson 3y agoThat's a 30 mm cannon.
- mschuster91 3y agoOr on a smaller scale, something homebrew like a bunch of AK-74s attached to something resembling a minigun [1]. Or the other way around, take old AA guns, place them on the back of a pickup and shred Russian infantry without mercy [2]. Certainly the Ukrainians are showing the future when it comes to land-based wars; the question is how many of these we're actually going to see. [1] https://armourersbench.com/2023/07/09/ukraines-improvised-anti-drone-minigun/ https://armourersbench.com/2023/07/09/ukraines-improvised-an... [2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/ingenious-ukrainians-invent-homemade-war-machine-out-of-old-soviet-weapons-to-gun-down-russians https://www.thedailybeast.com/ingenious-ukrainians-invent-ho...
- sand500 3y agoCould train birds of prey to actively hunt down and rip apart drones. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/the-military-is-using-falcons-to-build-a-drone-killer https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-05/the-milit...