Drone arms race. This is fantastic.
Drones purposed for neutralizing drones purposed for neutralizing enemy vehicles.
Can’t jam em using radio? Jam them with nets!
What’s next??? Maybe they’ll accelerate the adoption of EDFs to prevent net from jamming the propellers?
Maybe fancy anti-netting systems- like an onboard pair of scissors!
I can imagine some kind of light grating (like a cope cage) preventing a net from getting into the propellers.
Personally, I think consumer-grade drones are around their maximum lethality in warfare now, and that countermeasures will gradually catch up before an equilibrium is reached. Much like heavy water-cooled machine guns were at their maximum lethality sometime during WWI, before stuff like armour, mobility, snipers, and accurate medium-range strikes (artillery and CAS) started countering them.
Especially now that a lot of military powers not actively involved in the war (US, a bunch of European militaries, China, India, …) see a very clear incentive to invest heavily in developing anti-drone capabilities. Before long, I think we’ll see highly effective “interceptor drones”, possibly even autonomous ones, that can track a given infantry unit and provide air cover (basically the development that happened for aircraft). I also think we’ll start seeing more and better purpose-built anti-drone weapons that ordinary infantry can carry (like MANPADS).
Drones are easy to take our with WWI level weapons, and there is good reason to think those can be automated. It will take some time to get it all working, but since drones are in reach of any 2 bit wanna-be terrorist it is important to have them. I could probably build (with effort) something to take out 1950’s era fighter planes cheaper than our current options, but either you can’t build something of that level or you are skipping up to modern 5th generation fighters so it isn’t worth it.
A drone with wire cutter propeller blades to shred nets and fibre wires.
🎶Spider Drone🎶
🎶Spider Drone🎶
🎶Doin’ things🎶
🎶a Spider Drone does🎶
Sharpened blades on the drone, mini flame thrower…
Do they come by later and dispose of it? It cannot move, but still has camera (for reporting teoop movement) and ordinance (for blowing up those close by)…
The moment I read your comment, I started thinking of how I would approach disarming that thing.
The answer is that it’s still dangerous. Effectively it’s now an IED that the enemy is watching, and is still under the enemy’s control.
The camera can still see, and you have to assume it also has remote detonation control.
To disarm it by cutting the fiber optic line, you’d have to go around it, in a manner that the immobilized drone, and any other monitoring enemy drones couldn’t see you.
Better just detonate it with a dropped munition, or monitor it and wait for the Russians to risk their own butts trying to retrieve it.
Cut the fiber optic cable then retrieve it to learn more about Russian capabilities.
