The only reliable counter to a drone is likely another drone.
I suspect Peter F Hamilton got it close, in the Confederation series, with WASPs. They are space based weapon platforms. They carry a mix of offensive and defensive subsystems, and operate with swarm logic.
I could easily see a larger drone carrying a swarm of 1 shot micro drones. When close, some would be sacrificed to get better sensor data, others would go on the attack. Conversely, a defensive target would launch their own swarm. It’s goal would be to stop the attackers getting a good shot on a high value target. It might also counterattack, either against the mother ship drone, or backtracking to find the launch site.
Jamming would also be part of this. A jammer could easily cut off the swarm from external data sources. Live satellite or remote surveillance systems would be cut. Point to point lasers are far harder, as are burst transmissions. Local sensor drones could easily punch short range data back, or paint targets, until they are destroyed by defensive systems.
There are in fact a huge number of reliable counters to drones, including but not limited to anti-aircraft gun systems, anti-aircraft lasers, RF jamming devices (especially effective against cheap/makeshift drones), and several more. Drones are currently an emergent threat without a robust countermeasure scheme, but given their massive role in the Ukraine war that is not going to go unaddressed for long. From a purely mechanical standpoint, small drone munitions are also physically very vulnerable, making them readily destroyed by anti-air autocannon fire or even laser weapons if you assume RF jamming will not solve the problem.
Between GPS (jammable but likely gets you into the target area), dead reckoning, optical flow sensors and increasingly impressive onboard camera processing, RF jamming will soon be irrelevant.
Almost a decade ago I was flying agricultural mapping missions that were 99% autonomous, and the parts that weren’t were problems a military drone doesn’t have (soft launch and landing)
The clear counter is autocannons, likely fully automated themselves to manage large swarms. The other would be cheap anti-drone missiles that either are basically a drone themselves or a glorified model rocket. Possibly tiny, cheap and fast interceptors launched from fixed-wing drones. The weak point of drones is literally their physical weakness.
It’s worth noting we are at the start of an arms race. It will iterate all over the place.
For example, smoke and chaff deploying drones would make defensive fire harder. Anti air can be either baited (and so depleted) or rushed. Lasers can be shielded against, at least for a time. Jamming can be countered with line of site communications.
In turn, each of these can be countered.
A key thing of note is that your solutions are heavy. Fine for defending a static target, but problematic when dealing with defending a mobile unit etc infantry of transports. In those situations an extremely rapid, focused highly dynamic response would be required. The obvious way to deploy those fast enough is to have them automated and airborne, aka a drone swarm.
I might be completely wrong, current drone warfare is akin to the invention of the smoothbore musket. How it will develop remains to be seen (for better or for worse).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr7ym1zkda8
Anti-air guns are the countermeasure. RADAR good enough to detect drones + an aimbot and programmable air-burst round to “shotgun” your pellets to damage those soft plastic bits.
We’re going back to WW2 tech. AA guns were considered obsolete because Helicopters + Missiles had more range. But now we need to build cheaper AA Guns for the anti-drone role.
AA Guns are also useful vs infantry, so in an infantry vs infantry fight, having an AA Gun platform will be useful even without any drones around. Airburst and rapid fire is always useful, and I expect the computers that make RADAR possible will be far cheaper today than decades past.
They may both have a role.
If you know that a given point is at risk of attack, using a static defense like AA guns is practical. Say you have some sort of specific, high-value target that you can put AA guns around. That may be a very sensible thing to do.
But the problem, if you intend to rely only on those, is that there is then a concentration of force issue. The attacker can choose which point to attack; they get the initiative.
Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.
But, okay, say you try to go big with static defenses. Let’s say that you can obtain and pony up the resources to hypothetically stick an AA gun at every single point along the front line and border, and that your AA gun has the altitude to hit a drone. You have an unbroken line of engagement envelope all around a country. That’d be an extraordinary expenditure, but it could hypothetically be done. So a drone has to fly through defended airspace. The problem is that if the other guy expends an equivalent amount of resources, he can buy a shit-ton of drones and fly them all through a single gun’s engagement envelope. Even if he doesn’t even bother to try to attack the antiaircraft gun, your gun defenses are just going to get overwhelmed, because all of the attacker’s resources are engaged, whereas the vast bulk of the defender’s resources are not in the fight. Maybe you hit a tiny percentage of drones, but the rest are going to be able to simply fly through.
The problem is that the cost of static defenses in that scenario grows at something like the square of the scale of the air conflict – you have to have enough static defenses to counter all of the attacker’s aircraft, and pre-place those defenses at all points that might be attacked, whereas the cost of the attack grows only linearly. It’s cost-effective to use static defenses only if the attacker is compelled to attack a limited number of points.
If that’s not the case, then using some form of mobile defense is more important – say, I don’t know, you have a fleet of gun-armed, jet-powered counter-UAS UASes. Dollar-for-dollar, they might not be as effective as a static gun. But…you can route most or all of them in to meet any given attack.
The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.
For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.
Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.
Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.
But if neither time nor place be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right, the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van. How much more so if the furthest portions of the army are anything under a hundred LI apart, and even the nearest are separated by several LI!
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ~400 BC
Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.
As far as I know, the routine in the current war is - the AA gun is on a truck that moves 80 km/h, the drone comes in slower than 300 km/h, one or multiple truck crews position themselves on likely vantage points for intercepting, and the rest is luck.
If you know that a given point is at risk of attack, using a static defense like AA guns is practical. Say you have some sort of specific, high-value target that you can put AA guns around. That may be a very sensible thing to do.
Did you see the Youtube link?
This is a lightweight AA Gun that can be mounted on a cheap pickup truck. This isn’t a “Static” defense, this system is more mobile than infantry. It will move with the infantry, it will protect the infantry, and the infantry will protect it.
Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.
But you can have an AA Gun on a Pickup truck follow your infantry around, protecting that company. If you have 100 men out on the field, it makes sense to give them at least one AA Gun to protect themselves against a wide variety of drone threats. Or if one AA gun per 100-men is too expensive, then maybe per battalion (~500 men). Etc. etc.
If the enemy drone is moving less than 200mph, the cheaper AA Gun will reliably protect the troops, as long as the person watching the RADAR doesn’t fall asleep. And at 115mph, even a Shahed is slow enough that AA Guns reliably work. Most drones are far slower than that.
If that’s not the case, then using some form of mobile defense is more important – say, I don’t know, you have a fleet of gun-armed, jet-powered counter-UAS UASes. Dollar-for-dollar, they might not be as effective as a static gun. But…you can route most or all of them in to meet any given attack.
That’s called an F22 Air Superiority Fighter.
Yeah, that’d be nice, but I’m assuming those are off the table for obvious reasons.
The problem is that if the other guy expends an equivalent amount of resources, he can buy a shit-ton of drones and fly them all through a single gun’s engagement envelope. Even if he doesn’t even bother to try to attack the antiaircraft gun, your gun defenses are just going to get overwhelmed, because all of the attacker’s resources are engaged, whereas the vast bulk of the defender’s resources are not in the fight. Maybe you hit a tiny percentage of drones, but the rest are going to be able to simply fly through.
Lets start with basic problems first. How can a battalion survive a typical onslaught of Russian drones?
Well, anti-air guns. Bam. We work our way up as the more important, lower-level problems get solved. I know people are talking F16s now, so maybe we’re at the point where fighter jets are the next step forward.
No one is going to shoot at a cheap AA Gun (like the “MACE” system) with hundreds of drones: the hundreds of drones will mostly get shot down and ultimately the price wouldn’t be worth it. Bullets are far cheaper than drones after-all. Now whether a particular MACE will try to shoot down high-flying drones like Shahed is another question, but its also just another problem all together.
MACE’s job is to protect the infantry inside of its shield. And its highly effective at that.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=rr7ym1zkda8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s going up be interesting and scary when we see the first mega swarm of drones, a river of them just pouring through the sky and hammering from every direction at the defenses.
Constant evolution of drone and antidrone, a production race with frontlines being slowly shifting walls of drone combat, them pouring out of factories as fast as they can be made with the front moving based on who can make more per hour
I suspect it will be more subtle even if it’s only battery life limited. Huge swarms will also struggle against fixed defences. More likely it will be used in ambush. E.g. air deployed near an enemy convoy, or swarming from rooftops and windows onto an infantry unit. Counter deployment will have to be seconds to stop the lead elements. Potentially with heavier reinforcements flying in.
I’ve personally got visions of a Boston dynamics dogbot with a harness full of drones. 1 button press and a few dozen micro drones swarm out, with larger ones launching as needed.
I could also see facial recognition drones being deployed from a predator drone, like cluster bombs. A little akin to the bots used in the film minority report. They swarm a building or block, and try and identify all the faces they can find.
The key thing however will be battery life. Multicopters are power hogs. You need around 40% battery to get maybe 5-20 minutes flight times (depending on how the manoeuvre). Longer times can be achieved , but requires larger systems with higher costs. Is 1 system with a 2 hour flight time worth 20 smaller systems only good for 10 minutes?
You use the word easily so many times here where it becomes more and more apparent that you probably don’t think it means what it means
I’ve worked with drones of various sizes. Bigger and more expensive ones are more capable, but hard to make bullet proof. If you can remote off their sensors and weapons into cheap, more disposable systems, it makes sense.
A big drone, like a predator, drops a package into an area. Mid sized multicopters provide local computing power and coordination. Small planes provide fast loiter surveillance. Small multicopters with cameras give more accurate coverage. For attack, you have what amounts to a hand grenade with props. Protection takes the form of similar disposables. A flying strobe light to mess up optical tracking. Chaff bombs to mess up radar tracking. Smoke to obscure the high value units.
A lot of these I could throw together myself, given a few weeks, and a few grand. What part wouldn’t be easy, for a large and well funded military r&d team?
What part wouldn’t be easy? The hand grenade with props. The strobe light. The chaff. The software. The batteries and power supply. The reliability. The compute requirements. There is so many things that are easy sounding to you because you romanticise the idea but it’s not easily done at all
