HEADACHE TO DEFEND AGAINST
So what are the choices for militaries searching for to guard beneficial property if standard air defences would wrestle to detect and destroy such drones?
There are a selection of anti-drone programs (or Counter Unmanned Plane Techniques, C-UAS) obtainable, starting from weapons and missiles to digital jammers that disrupt the indicators between the drone and its operator. Different options are additionally being developed, similar to the usage of laser (directed power) weapons to destroy the drone.
Every has its downsides, nonetheless.
Missiles are an costly solution to down drones that may be cheaper by orders of magnitude, whereas they, like weapons, are restricted by the quantity of ammunition every system could be carried.
Directed power weapons have excessive energy necessities which suggests they have an inclination to have a big bodily footprint. Japan has constructed and examined a 10-kilowatt directed power C-UAS system that’s mounted on a big eight-wheeled truck.
Thus, a sufficiently giant drone swarm has the potential to overwhelm missile-, gun- and energy-based C-UAS programs with their sheer numbers. One other challenge is scaling, significantly in giant international locations like Russia, the place actually 1000’s of programs must be acquired to adequately defend each probably goal.
If the swarm makes use of the native cell phone community to function, because the Ukrainians are claiming, then jammers can be of restricted utility as they function on different frequencies. Either side within the struggle have additionally been rising the usage of fibre-optic drones within the battlefields of japanese Ukraine, the place operators management their drones through a fibre-optic cable connected to the drone that may stretch for tens of kilometres, that means they can’t be jammed by digital means.
The opposite potential resolution in opposition to the menace is what’s termed passive defences. These embody the constructing of hardened shelters that present all-round safety for high-value property which can be on the very least able to safety in opposition to smaller munitions explosive units.
It can take loads of effort and won’t come low cost, however the flipside is, what’s the price of leaving excessive worth navy property like plane weak to a menace that’s now not simply hypothetical? It’s a query that every one international locations can be rapidly making an attempt to reply now.
Mike Yeo is the Indo-Pacific Bureau Chief for defence media outlet Breaking Protection. He has has greater than a decade of expertise as a defence journalist, specialising in regional defence and safety issues.
