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| U.S. Soldiers training with M-LIDS (Mobile Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense System) |
With the proliferation of drones as weapons, it's not surprising that the military has come up with a method to combat them, and since it's the US Military, it's not surprising that we've got a system that looks like massive overkill for the gnats that are commonly used. While a shotgun can be effective against hobby shop drones, they only hold a few rounds and have limited range so can easily be overwhelmed by a small number of drones flying at high speed. Also, people are building bigger and faster drones that fly at higher altitudes, so basically you need an anti-aircraft gun for a range of small stuff, attackers that don't warrant sending a missile.
Could we have drone shooting competitions? Not necessarily real drones, but skeet flying at 100 MPH, 20 feet off the deck and headed right for you. Here's an opportunity for shotgun enthusiasts to come up with a shotgun with longer range. A punt gun might be just the ticket, if it didn't weigh 100 pounds.
You might ask why we need a zillion dollar anti-drone system when drones can be had for petty cash. Well, a little drone equipped with an explosive payload can do a heck of a lot of damage if it finds the right target. So the question is, how much are you and yours worth? That's how we figure out how much to spend on defense.
Via Defense Blog
2 comments:
I apologize for the long comment, I don't mean to drone on...HA.
Drone tech is evolving so quickly that dropping a bunch of $$ on a system designed for any one or at best, a limited type of drone threat (i.e., low and slow) seems unwise. But then again, the US Military has very rarely had a problem with that nonsense in the past, so this sort of boondoggle is unsurprising.
What is a system like this worth in the field against a "swarm" of small semi-autonomous drones? I'm thinking not much. Also, once this system starts slinging lead all over the place trying to take out the inevitable multiple threat scenario, what sort of collateral damage can be expected? Not many theaters of operation of this type of system are out in the middle of nowhere. In theory they are going to be deployed to protect something!
So wouldn't an electronic warfare type defense be cheaper, safer, easier to deploy and able to deal with multiple types of drone threats? Well, yes. The problem with powerful jamming technology though, is that your own comms, including your own aircraft, will also very likely be screwed while you're operating your jammer.
How about this:
A pair of RF receivers, separated by a hundred yards or so, scanning for drone signals. Even scrambled or encrypted signals can be identified since there will be a control signal coming from the drone operators and a video signal from the drone back to the operators. Recognition of the patterns, aided by computers, is all that is required. The defense system will not need to decode either signal, just recognize their presence. Since the receivers are separated the defense system can also detect and map their locations.
Once the signals are detected the defense system creates an "echo" by rebroadcasting identical signals on their respective discrete frequencies in the direction of the threat. This leaves all other frequencies open and usable. The echo signal though, is broadcast a few seconds out of phase. This will instantly overwhelm both the incoming drone control signals and the outgoing video signals. The effect will be that the encrypted signals are "rescrambled" into signals of the same pattern that nobody understands, not the drone, its operator or the defense system.
The attacking drone operators have an unusable video signal, and they can no longer control the drone since both systems are now operating on a frequency that is saturated with the defense system echo. The drone(s) then crash and the operators know that the jig is up or at least panic and give themselves away.
Of course, the defense system would have to have the capability to scan and broadcast on multiple frequencies and switch frequencies on the fly since the drones and their operators will very likely have the ability to either manually or automatically switch to an alternate.
Many drones will switch to an autonomous mode and "go home" in the absence of the operator's signal but that would not kick in since the signal doesn't go away, it just gets corrupted by the defense system. If the operator attempts to manually switch the drone to an autonomous mode, the chances of success are low.
Once the drone(s) are on the ground and the threat neutralized, the defense system returns to a surveillance mode. Then a field combat force can be deployed to the operator's location to engage/eliminate them or to the drone(s) location to either collect the pieces or just stick around to see who, if anyone, comes looking for them.
Also, whatever the defense force consists of are now aware that they are under attack and hopefully take appropriate action.
Cleaner, faster, cheaper, more adaptable, safer and, though quieter, perhaps not as much fun as the lead slinging method. And who knows, Raytheon may be able to profit just as much building this one.
Good comment. It does sound like a good idea and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some black box crew was working on that very thing. But the military is conservative, all those electronic gee-gaws are nice, if they work. The fallback is the gun. They know how those work and they work whether the electronic stuff is working or not.
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