Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
Nothing we have now (publicly) is going to do a damn against a shipping container full of 2-5 lb drones each carrying 1 lb of C4 in a swarm with cheap off the shelf sensors going 100 mph nap of the earth in a distributed pattern. And that is currently entirely doable with off the shelf drones using existing software and published techniques for peanuts. Add in some decent programming and logistics talent, and that is a huge problem.
http://tasvideos.org/5384S.html
Check it out, it's incredibly fun:
There's an entire category for movies containing arbitrary code execution:
And since China makes like 99% of the parts used in drones, they very well could already have a couple hundred of those lying around and we’d never know.
My nightmare scenario is someone flying hundreds of these in formation on a stadium full of people. They could be launched from a parking lot from a single van or pickup truck. If you sacrifice the ability to hover by giving them wings, you might get very high range and not have to risk yourself at all while launching a devastating attack.
Existing technology can take down conventional drones through Electronic Warfare and EW scales to an infinite number of drones assuming each drone is vulnerable.
I know of no existing (human proximity safe) EW that can handle optical based or internal (IMU) inertial autonomous flight, and both of those are more than good enough in this scenario (though optical may limit the upper speed bounds depending on the onboard processing capabilities). IMU based (pre programmed) could easily allow no active sensor mode, though would require pre-scouting the route.
The US Army is looking to field a demonstrator by 2022 & deploy by 2024.
They're exploring both laser and microwave / EM for the counter-UAS role. In complement to existing SAMs for higher-value/capability targets.
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.
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".
A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on civilian targets.
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?
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
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.
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.
Explosive (self-destructing) and incendiary
https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/medium-caliber-ammunition/2...
Modern antiship missiles have complex programs. Some are capable of flying in formation with each other, with one missile flying high for visibility and communicating with the other missiles in the formation that are flying very low. If/when the missile on top is destroyed, another missile in the formation can be automatically selected to take its place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag
Edit: Look they even made a smaller system! https://youtu.be/Drm3kdDYBI4
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.
That ciws will likely exhaust its magazine before it can take out all the drones unless I’m missing something.
https://youtu.be/1DXpPmpmcak?t=365 (watch this entire video for air defense against saturation attacks)
The research pivoted very early to "training humans to more successfully defend against small drone attacks". I'm not sure how much success they've had or what success is defined as for something like this.
That is what birdshot is for. Birdshot, e.g. "No. 9 or 10" shot, are tiny lead BBs about 2mm diameter. Because they are small, they have a large surface area to mass ratio, and consequently, they fall back down to earth at a low, safe speed. When they land on dry leaves, they bounce off and sound a bit like rain. When it is shot into the air and falls back down onto you, it won't even bruise you, let alone injure you. (However it can kill if fired directly at somebody.)
If you can hit it with a pistol it’s easy to hit.
A drone optimally randomly dodging at treetop height is a much more difficult target.
A target with a 300mm frontal diameter, capable of evading at 10g, is expected to require 6 rounds to achieve a P_hit of 0.5 at 200m range, based on the parameters of your typical Phalanx CIWS. Said Phalanx weapon system might fire a burst of 1s duration in such an engagement, which is 75 rounds.
For a missile engagement, that's a problematic number, but for a drone that's probably only moving a few dozen m/s and carrying a small payload, it's an entirely satisfactory engagement.
Phalanx is an early 1980s weapon system. The Army is going to be fielding directed-energy SHORAD systems next year, equipped with 50kW lasers.
A few dozen m/s is probably a good estimate for quadcopter style drones, but low hundreds m/s should be easy for fixed wing drones, so at 200 meter engagement range (that paper makes it pretty clear that maneuvering targets are hard beyond that) there is only time to hit a few drones before they arrive.
So maybe drone swarms will work even against current CIWS.
Sure, but current drone swarms wouldn't.
Very. The calculation made for each round could be irrelevant before they travel 500m. Drones also have no obligation to approach at the same convenient high angle mortars do. 2-3 drones weaving between buildings faster than a human can aim? Sounds terrifying.
Which are available to how many militaries?
But I guess taking down a drone is not like taking out a mortar shell. It is probably much easier with some sort of flak or even launching a net.
have you seen a harop? its huge,its built to fly slow and for a long while and carry big payload and has zero evasion capability