19298

No, I was explicitly asking whether very cheap defensive drones are a thing, and why not. Not about whether a $100M plane with $1M missiles is a thing, because that’s obviously not a relevant weapon system when defending against $20k drones.

19299

As others have noted, the solution for these sorts of drone attacks is probably something like the Gepard, the ZSU-23-4, or even the old Vulcan thing mounted on a M113 we used to have as short-range air defense. Or the ZSU-23-2 or equivalent, in decent numbers, preferably with radar but even with Mk 1 eyeballs and binocs or whatever it should be a decent counter one might think.

Lots of ammo usage, though. Lots.

19300

And in a city, those rounds are going to land somewhere, and likely on someone.

19301

Gotcha. The right answer as I understand it is PDWs, point defense weapons, like the CIWS. You want a nice gun and a great radar/infrared/computer suite that can pick them out of the sky. These drones are wounded ducks compared to what the CIWS systems are picking out of the air. You could honestly put the brains into a much cheaper and smaller unit and let it go, CIWS shoots 20mm rounds which cost tens of dollars each, but for the Shahed 136 or whatever, a simple 5.56 or 7.62 will drop it just as well. Shooting an intelligent missile at these drones is how you lose the drone war. There’s no drone extant that could put a cheap bullet on target in the situation we’re talking about. Bullets are hard, missiles are easy, because missiles are stupidly advanced and expensive. You want to shoot something dumb out of the sky, you have something on the ground that can flood where it’s going to be when the bullets get there cheaply.

19302

My brother-in-law was a conscript in the soviet military in the mid, maybe late, 70s. All the stories he has of it involve drinking or hazing, mostly both. There was one about being forced (well, maybe not forced) to drink a large amount of alcohol and then being stuffed in a missile tube for the night. Or something like that, he was also drunk when he told the stories.

19303

Take-away number 9871 from the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

  1. The US needs to heavily invest and look into cost effective anti-drone systems.
19304

He who controls the drones controls the universe.

19305

The problem often cited is that they’re usually too small for radar to really detect or lock on to them easily.

But they’re also really slow for a flying target, so a dude with a heavy machine gun or WW2-style AA gun would have a field day once the got in range. They are GPS guided so they’re not going to evade. You just need to be able to spot them before they’re over a population center/target and have something to hit them.

The general above even cited massed small arms as being effective, but of course once they’re in range of an AK-47, they’re over the target unless someone magic BB’s one on it’s way to town. Whereas I’m betting a single 20mm probably has a really good chance of dropping one as well as having more range.

Well the idea would be to engage them out of the city limits, because otherwise it doesn’t matter if you shoot it down, it’s a bomb that just dropped someplace else in the city.

Ringing Kyiv in old AA guns would likely be pretty effective, especially combined with what they’re already doing. But then they’ll probably pick some other city and getting enough old guns and personnel for every city and town probably isn’t realistic. Though you could possibly train civilian volunteers since they’re probably more than willing to do it given the alternative.

Obligatory:

19306

Comedy mobilisation story #56924

19307

No, because the whole drone thing is so new. But every offensive weapon leads to a defensive reaction, so I have no doubt that there will be defensive developments.

19308

Obvious answer:

image

19309

I feel like even that is overkill! I’m envisioning some cheap shrapnel-oriented ground based gun. Possibly with computer control and links to a local radar system capable of picking up drones. Something between a shotgun and a flak cannon. Something that can just quickly clear the local skies of small targets up to a reasonable altitude. To counter drones it has to be something re-usable with cheap cheap ammo.

19310

Yes but ishak is more mobile, cheaper and can be made without fancy tech.

But what you describe exists:
image

19311

If a $20,000 drone can do millions in property damage and the economic cost from casualties, from a financial perspective killing it with $500,000 missile is justifiable, just not sustainable. Maybe the better choice is to take out the cost on Iran directly so it is not feasible to keep supplying the drones to Russia. Direct airstrikes/xruise missile strikes on Iranian military infrastructure.

19312

Normally I’d say something happening to drone factories in Iran might be a good move. However, with the protests going on in Iran right now, anything that causes a rally-around-the-flag effect in Iran is a bad thing.

What I hope for is that the current Iran regime is toppled and a new regime friendlier to the West and Ukraine replaces it.

19313

Rheinmetall have some kind of radar guided ground based anti-drone cannon, they made ad videos of it just picking off drones like it’s nothing.

At the next level up you can imagine a medium-sized drone carrying light multirole missiles. Can take out drones and APCs, and the missiles don’t have the fancy stuff that drives the price up. The advantage of this is that it can cover a wider area than a ground based platform.

Then a bit further back you would have long endurance platforms with small AESA radar for austere AEW and ISTAR capability, which tells your ground operators what to send the smaller hunter drones after.

Then way way back (for NATO at least) you have the manned wedgetails and rivet joints.

It seems the natural way to develop things to me, but who knows.

19314

If a $20,000 drone can do millions in property damage and the economic cost from casualties, from a financial perspective killing it with $500,000 missile is justifiable, just not sustainable.

Yeah. It’s the same even with a $2,000 spotting drone. If that drone’s presence at the moment, at that location, is going to enable an artillery barrage, it could very well be worth using a million dollar missile on it. Though it still sucks.

I’m only half joking, but what if the US publicly announces that for every 1000km range Iranian drone that explodes in a Ukrainian city, Ukraine will be provided one equivalent range missile/drone.

19315

APKWS fits that bill admirably.

19316

I don’t think Iran really cares. And if Ukrainians kill Russians, neither does Putin. Putin just wants his terror weapons.

19317

I agree it wouldn’t change Iran. But right now US providing weapons with range greater than say 150km is considered an escalation, and so those aren’t going to Ukraine. But as a response to new Iranian long range weapons, maybe it’s less escalatory and more likely to happen.

“Hey Russia, if Iran can sell you 1000km weapons, surely you can’t complain about us selling Ukraine 1000km weapons?”