Rheinmetall and Anduril join forces to develop C-sUAS system
anduril.com
anduril.com
Rheinmetall's stock's development during the last five years closely matches that of Saab, another big European weapons manufacturer. You don't have to be a political insider to guess that the stock will increase in value.
having non public information about a company that is also doing well publically is still an effective trading strategy. the value of a company like Rheinmetall is the sum of it's sources of profit.
One wonders if people on that committe would naturally be more inclined to trade in the defense industry; like how people on HN seem to have a lot of SV tech investments.
And Rheinmetall is in Europe, not America, where all of these things are 100x more true.
It also mentions end-effector systems, Andruil's Anvil system[0], and Rheinmetall's "high-power guns", which I guess refers to Skynex[1].
The public demo videos[2] for Skynex aren't particularly impressive, they shoot down some high flying stationary drones.
Skynex is a huge 35mm cannon, that seems expensive and overkill for the C-sUAS role.
I'm surprised we aren't seeing smaller automated anti drone turrets, that can be deployed close to fighting positions, shooting either a small airburst grenade, like the 20mm round from the OICW program[3], or some kind of flak/shotgun round.
[0]: https://www.anduril.com/hardware/anvil/ [1]: https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/products/air-defence/air-defe... [2]: https://youtu.be/2uL3dLFHZ_o?t=67 [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective_Individual_Combat_We...
The Skynex 35 mm cannon is massive, requires a truck to transport, and presumably needs a generator to power.
If you could develop a small man-portable battery/solar powered turret, that fires small-arm caliber rounds, you could put them right next to a foxhole, to shoot down incoming drones.
I don't think the electronics should be expensive(by military standards), they have already been developed, it's basically just a timed fuze, that is programed by the gun as it fires.
FPV drones can fly low, at tree level, it's not going to have line of sight to be able to shoot them down.
If you had a smaller man-portable cheap short-range system, you could deploy it along side your entrenched troops.
I think it will be critical for delivery applications. People think more rapid delivery via drone is cool, for about five seconds, when they think of the noise, and then it's "Hell no! I don't want those damn things buzzing around my neighborhood all day!"
I've seen Russian soldiers successfully shoot down drones using shotguns, the problem is that the smaller ones can be too fast and nimble for humans to reliably target. Even if you can shoot down 2 of 3, the third one will get you.
Combine the YOLO algorithm with a high-frame-rate camera, a two-axis servo, a heavy tripod, and a shotgun... and you're defended!
This could be mounted on the back of a tank or humvee also.
Purely theory crafting, I think the final piece would be small, standalone AESA radar units perhaps the size of a man-carryable generator that can be distributed across a given area and networked to likewise distributed shooters, spreading out the targets, adding redundancy to the system, and reducing the odds of your dugout-with-air-defense-asset getting hit by an anti-radiation munition that homed in on a known emitter.
Radar probably won't have high enough resolution and won't be able to differentiate between drones and birds. Not to mention that most drones are carbon fibre or plastic and won't have much of a radar return to begin with.
Conversely, vision systems could be trained to ID drones reliably, and could use data such as the high-frequency "beat" of the propellers to detect drones from just a few pixels of sensor data.
The shotgun needs to be reloaded. The system needs to be reasonably reliable and durable. Feels like the range of the shotgun is also a problem. The system needs to have some sort of friend vs. foe identification, possibly not shoot at birds or other random objects. The camera needs to be able to deal with looking at the sun and low light, day and night, likely needs to be able to scan. Pretty soon you get to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
Eventually, certainly, but you can put it off for a while without much trouble.
You can get 20 round drum magazines for 12 gauge shotguns, and keep hot-swapping 'em until your barrel overheats.
> Phalanx_CIWS
But that's 1980 technology. I bet a current GPU could outcompute it by orders of magnitude.
Range is definitely an issue with shotguns. On the other hand, you're dealing with low-speed drones, not enemy missiles.
The principles are fine (well, not sure camera is the right only sensor but aside). The actual engineering of a working system you can use in real life is complicated and that's what many are working on.
Random similar discussion: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/anti-drone-weapon-sh...
I just came back from a walk and someone was flying a drone. Those things are fast, small, highly maneuverable.
Likewise, the Abrams tanks are cold war era tanks, but they are continuously upgraded that a modern Abrams tank isn't really a 1980 tank. Modernization is likely to remove some weight and make Abrams more survivable against drones, in response to the Russo-Ukrainian war;
Hezbollah has been attacking Israel from Lebanon for many months now with small drones and the air defence systems like Iron Dome haven't been able to effectively deal with that. One recent example: https://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-swarms-north-with-at...
There is a major effort right now in Israel to address that gap.
You are confusing short-range and long-range campaigns. Both sides are using fpvs, mavics-style, short-range fixed wing and long-range winged (like shahed-136) drones
Most if not all the random videos I've seen of cheaper FPV drones were Ukraninian but that could totally be my social media bubble.
Killing and destruction is just about the easiest thing to do in the world. Animals can do it. Creation is what makes us human. And no, creating a sharper stick doesn't count.