I don’t pretend to know the first thing about designing a drone — much less desgining a drone-killer. But when I told the folks at Popular Mechanics that Darpa was looking for proposals for a weapon that could take out robo-planes, a team of artist– and engineer-types got busy. This is what they dreamed up.
Drone-Killer Designed
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Why wouldn’t you just use air-to-air missles or cannon slung under another drone? It seems to me that drones have got to be slow easy targets, why go crazy making a drone to kill drone.
Now a system designed to help hold air supremacy is areas where we have not move in ground forces yet, while freeing up other aircraft to take the fight to the enemy I might see a use for them, but I still think that just a larger drone with weapons hung from it would be a better idea.
It’s a problem I’ve thought about alot, in the “hobby” sort of way. (I’m a programmer, not an engineer).
I think the key for an air-to-air anti-drone is airbursting munitions, eg the Objective Crew Served Weapon and others. These munitions fly a
preprogrammed distance and explode, like the fuses in WWII anti-aircraft cannons (although they shifted to proximity fuses when they became available).
So rather than making it a suicide-drone (considering US procurement costs, a losing battle), the drone identifies targets and then shoots them down with basically a “flak gun”.
The other key is STEREO cameras. Mount the cameras on the wings, and that way the IR/visible cameras can compute range based on parallax. So you can identify the target 1km out, get its range and heading, lead the target, and shoot it down.
Of course, cheap proximity fuses makes this even better/easier, but may not be in-budget, while OICW and OCSW is estimated to be $30/shot or so, and being able to use a (soon to be) existing weapon’s ammunition is also a big win.
Finally, I think a turbo-piston engine, rather than just a piston engine, might be a good idea. You play with the boost level to both modulate power and to allow much higher altitude operation.
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As for an air-to-air missile, those things are HEAVY. And if you can only carry one or two, you are in trouble and might as well make the plane the missile (which it is in this case).
And the big problem: An anti-drone drone has to be cheap. If an opponent can field a competent $10,000 drone, with a $10M budget you can be facing 1000 simultanious bogies. Not pleasant for US air defense planning.
Thus you really need a anti-drone drone which is both inexpensive (so the US can field hundreds in theater) and which can attack multiple targets (eliminates both suicide and Air-to-air missiles). Thus I think a distance-fused and/or prox-fused flak cannon approach is the most feasible.
The best way to handle this would be a new family of Multi-Function radars.
Imagine an AN/APG-77 (from the F-22) type 4 faceted radar panel (3 sides with the forth on top for full 360 coverage without rotation)
You ask How can radar by itself help?
Simple, starting with the AN/APG-77, the radar can initiate a directed energy attack. Basically, the radar can focus a tight beam of microwave energy on an airborne target. If anyone left a fork in the microwave, you know that this will cause havoc with any targets avionics.
If the pulse fails to bring down the target, it can function as a fire-direction set for follow-up attack by CIWS, ground-based SAMS, etc.
This system can actually be deployed in a HUMMER and connect to a network of ground-based defenses and defend against all airborne threats. These can include drones, aircraft, PGMs, etc.
Because of the LPI (Low Probability of Intercept) aspect of the AN/APG-77, enemy SEAD assets will have a harder time tracking it, therefore giving the AN/APG-77 based system more time to defeat the SEAD mission.
What about designing a better SAM ? Why does it have to loiter or a plane first ?
My first question is . Why destroy something if you can capture it?
Second could a light weight net of entangling fibers be loaded onto an existing uav and the additional gps tracking compact radar and realtime satellite links be utilized to target enemy UAVs. When identified They would descend within a reasonable distance and discharge a canister that if spun and the edges of our net is just slightly heaver than the rest it will draw the net out and open to snag the uav as it falls.
This serves several purposes. the craft would be disabled and fall from the sky. the chance of the craft surviving this fall is a fifty fifty draw but if it is damaged beyond repair then its components could be used to teach us what the enemy is doing and if they survive they could be rebuilt to use for our own purposes and act as a fifth column behind enemy lines.
The capture and conversion of these UAVs could be of greater benefit than the development of a destructive drone. I suggest it may be better to capture these small unmanned arial craft than to destroy them with expensive missiles or munitions of any kind.
Woody
“And the big problem: An anti-drone drone has to be cheap. If an opponent can field a competent $10,000 drone, with a $10M budget you can be facing 1000 simultanious bogies. Not pleasant for US air defense planning.”
And then it’s going to be a $1000 drone, then a $100 drone. Then they’re going to cost next to nothing.
That’s why the US needs to get and maintain drone supremacy on the ground and in the air.
Remember kids, drone warfare is just a part of any nutritious meshwar.
Why not something based on readily available cheap radio controlled aircraft, only modified and enhanced to whatever purpose required? Possibly with a elctromagnetic amplfied pulse weapon to shoot down hostile craft etc?
Alternatively using forms of genetically modified cloned swarms of types of insects or birds to patrol and intercept airborne threats with cyberimplants as behavior modifiers also incorporating facets of nanotechnology?
How about an anti drone/drone armed with a shotgun type weapon. Just design a weapons pack for the current class of recon drone like Raven. The goal should be to make enamy drones no longer cheap as they are forced to upgrade their drones to get past ours. Soon the F22 will be cost effective.
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Why don't we keep our noses out of other persons business? Maybe be concerned
about our own terrorists( our government) !!!