The experience of African drills and Soviet cosmonauts can be useful in the development of means of destruction of unmanned aerial vehicles
I read with great interest the articles devoted to the problems of countering unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). A lot of valuable information for thought and fruitful discussions.
I fully agree with the authors that mini-, micro and nano-UAVs pose the greatest problem for modern air defense systems. Large vehicles are generally not a problem for military air defense because of their relative slow speed and dependence on remote control in maneuvering. Their ability to perform sharper anti-aircraft maneuvers in comparison with aircraft gives an advantage only when protecting against man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems. Such UAVs can be relatively successful for long-range attacks of an admittedly technically weak enemy, as in Afghanistan and Yemen. The experience of the 2008 Georgian campaign showed that fighters easily destroy even medium-sized UAVs. And large ones are now only interesting as a start for the development of unmanned aerial platforms for exotic weapons of the future.
UAVs arose, developed and are being improved as a typical weapon of partisan, sabotage and terrorist insurgencies. They are conducted by mobile lightly armed units, whose purpose is not to capture and hold territory, but to inflict maximum damage on the enemy, primarily in people. The weaker armed in this way can achieve exhaustion and demoralization of the enemy. The stronger side is trying to destroy the militants with the least human and material losses for themselves, relying on their military-technical capabilities. It should be noted that the first and most important thing for which all types of modern UAVs are created is reconnaissance in the enemy's position, target designation and fire adjustment. This is precisely why small-sized UAVs are most dangerous now, because they allow delivering the most accurate strikes from distant, protected and closed positions with a minimum consumption of ammunition. Large strike UAVs are a threat only to those who do not have full-fledged air defense. True, recently there have been opportunities for conducting electronic warfare with the help of drones. There are reports that one medium-sized UAV with electronic warfare equipment is capable of suppressing all radio electronics for 10 kilometers around it. But such capabilities are hardly applicable in ordinary front-line operations, because their own radio communications and radar will be suppressed. So this is more likely for specially planned operations of a front-line or anti-guerrilla nature.
Since the number of various insurgencies and wars around the world in our time is growing like an avalanche, governments quickly appreciated the Israeli experience in the use of UAVs and began to actively introduce it into the practice of their armed forces. The Americans widely used drones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the British - in the Special Airborne Service, the French equipped the Foreign Legion with these devices. NATO units in Europe are also heavily saturated with various UAVs. They are an indispensable part of the weapons of private military companies.
From now on, I will begin to polemicize with respected experts. Their approaches consist in the fact that mass armies, approximately equal in armament and number, appear in the theater of operations, which create continuous fronts, echeloned defense lines. In our time, such events are impossible for many reasons. Therefore, I will confine myself to the remark that if the war still went according to this scenario, then the use of small UAVs would depreciate by itself, even without special means of protection against them. The experts themselves said that the launch and control sites for such UAVs should be deployed in the front line or on the battlefield. So there is no need to protect yourself from these UAVs. Enough, noticing that the "bird" flew out, immediately process the launch site from artillery or mortars, and there will be no one to control the drone, receive data from it and meet it if it comes back. But even if he fulfills his task, the subunit, which was thus reconnoitered, must quickly prepare for a regular fire raid, changing the location of those "items" that the enemy would very much like to eliminate. I don’t think it’s difficult to do this in a platoon or company.
The experience of confronting massive armies with the large-scale use of small UAVs was only in the last US-Iraqi war, when Saddam Hussein was overthrown. The US Armed Forces then quickly seized air supremacy, scattered large infantry and tank groups of the enemy with high-precision strikes, his army lost control and demoralized, after which the occupation troops occupied all the cities of the country. But then the Iraqis came to their senses, reorganized and began guerrilla warfare in small mobile groups along roads and in cities. And, by the way, there were cases when they successfully used their small drones to control the fire of mortars and small-caliber MLRS on the chassis of high-speed SUVs. And this tactic nullified everything that the US military initially achieved in Iraq.
Now directly about the methods of dealing with small UAVs. In their articles, the authors considered many possibilities and potential technical solutions. I'll start by examining these proposals. I will not consider the methods of electronic warfare against UAVs, because the current possibilities are a double-edged sword, since they are capable of harming not only the enemy, moreover, they are complex and cumbersome.
I fully agree with the authors that it is necessary to intensively develop means of timely detection and tracking of UAVs, as well as reliable sights. Moreover, all this should be light and small-sized to miniature. As for the means of destroying UAVs, there is again something to argue about.
The authors solve the problem of the destruction of small UAVs in the context of frontal military operations, but do not take into account the many objective difficulties that will fundamentally hinder the use of such UAVs in such situations. This is the possibility of strong radio interference, the deployment of smoke screens, the danger of fire strikes at the UAV control station on the battlefield and in the front-line zone. I repeat that small drones were originally designed for battles with partisan units that did not have any means of defense against UAVs, except for a quick withdrawal and primitive camouflage.
It is worth recalling here that small UAVs can be detected by modern means only at distances that do not allow the current anti-aircraft systems to quickly prepare for effective firing at such targets, but even if it is possible to open aimed fire in time, the current ammunition is very poor at hitting small UAVs. To solve this problem, it is proposed to create an entire air defense subsystem to combat small UAVs, equipped with many types of weapons specially designed for this. For reliable destruction of micro and nano-UAVs, according to experts, it is required to design weapons based on new physical principles (laser, beam, electromagnetic, etc.); to increase the detection range, it is necessary to use towers, balloons and helicopters with special radars. It is proposed to dramatically increase the density of anti-aircraft artillery fire, develop projectiles with increased lethality, so that they explode exactly near the UAV and create clouds of threads, needles, small fragments, use oculometric sensors so that the anti-aircraft gunner controls the fire of the gun with his eyes … SAM with powerful emitters, laser weapons. What can you say here? On the one hand, it can be recalled that, among other valuable qualities of small UAVs, there is such as cheapness to manufacture and operate. That is, you can not feel sorry for them, quickly restoring losses. But the means of combating them are proposed to be developed as if it were a strategic weapon. The use of all of the above will be at least an order of magnitude more expensive than those UAVs that need to be destroyed. In addition, the development of all these tools will take an unknown amount of time and a lot of money. And when they do it, it will turn out to be something complex and cumbersome, limited in mobility, with poor maintainability. Wouldn't it be better to follow the example of NATO members, who are not at all concerned with creating separate subsystems for combating small UAVs.
I believe that now it is necessary to solve the problem of saturating Russian troops with domestic UAVs with performance characteristics that are not inferior to NATO models, creating opportunities for their constant modernization and improvement. And the task of fighting them should be solved without haste, proceeding not from the theoretical needs of frontal operations of an army scale, but from the specific needs of mobile tactical groups, airborne and special forces.
During the Boer War in South Africa, the Boers successfully used their guns against the British to hunt elephants and rhinos. These heavy muzzle-loading smooth-bore shotguns were equipped with buckshot and, when fired, successfully hit small enemy clusters at a distance of 700 to 1500 steps, that is, up to 750 meters. The maximum flight altitudes of the nano-UAV are 300, micro - 1000, mini - 5000 meters. In addition, all these UAVs are capable of working only in clear calm weather and are terribly vulnerable.
As you know, birds are shot in flight. Why not create a smooth-bore shotgun capable of aiming, heap and shock launch a shot sheaf at a distance of about 400 meters. This is technically solvable. The barrel, of course, will be long, its channel should accordingly narrow towards the muzzle for accuracy and range of fire. You will also need ammunition of appropriate power. So that the "instrument" does not come out heavy, it is worth using modern composites in its manufacture. So that the recoil when fired does not tear the shoulder and knock down, try to design a spring stock or make the barrel moveable, like a cannon on a gun carriage.
Now about aiming. Small UAVs are visually detected when looking towards them at a distance of 200–400 meters, and from the side at a distance of 500–700 meters, through an optical sight - at a distance of 2–3 kilometers. Quite enough for making a gun and target acquisition. True, the shooting will be of a sniper type, besides, in addition to an optical-electronic sight, a ballistic computer will be needed to correct for speed and other interference. In general, a gun with a big stretch will fit only for hunting nano-UAVs, and for others only if they go down to the appropriate heights. But all these shortcomings can be easily removed if, according to the same principles, we create multi-barreled anti-aircraft automatic guns for firing shot. Here and ammunition will be more powerful, and the barrels are longer. Sights and calculators - of course. And the installations can turn out to be light, compact, they can be put on off-road vehicles or carts carried by pack animals. It is not at all necessary to make anti-aircraft guns that hit for kilometers. 400-500 meters of sighting range is enough. And let the helicopters that match them in speed, altitude and maneuverability hunt for UAVs with a higher flight altitude. And they shoot these UAVs from the same automatic shot-shots as in ground anti-aircraft installations. This will be an adequate answer to the problem of small drones.
There is information that work is underway in Israel on a nano-UAV the size of a hummingbird. They are designed to detect and aim high-precision weapons at very small groups and even single snipers and terrorists in the greenhouse, buildings or folds of the terrain. Such "hummingbirds" must detect and even pursue their objects until they are destroyed. But there is a regularity: the smaller the UAV, the lower the ceiling of the height from which it can operate effectively, the lower its speed and mobility. I believe that the usual pump-action shotgun, which is already armed with many armies for close combat, will do for hunting such "hummingbirds". Only it must be supplied not with buckshot, but with shot ammunition for better hitability.
The satirist Mikhail Zadornov has a reprise of how unlucky Americans spent a lot of time, money and effort to create a ballpoint pen for working in zero gravity, while our cosmonauts wrote with pencils without any problems. It looks like we've changed places on the issue of countering drones. Now from the American agency for advanced research DARPA comes information about the development of smart bullets for sniper rifles.50 caliber. This ammunition is just designed to destroy small drones at long distances. To hit the target, you just need to grab it into the appropriate sighting device and shoot, and then the bullet will do everything by itself. Such ammunition, of course, costs money, but much cheaper than drones.
