Posts Tagged ‘Stryker’

Two Approaches To Drone Defense

Saturday, October 19th, 2024

The Russo-Ukrainian War has nailed down the fast forward button on drone evolution. The success both sides have had with taking out expensive equipment with cheap drones has prompted a lot of the usual suspects to dust off their standard “the tank is obsolete” talking points.

But military technological evolution is always a two way street. Offense pulls ahead for a while, only for defensive countermeasures to quickly catch up. Such is the case with drone warfare, and now we’re seeing some promising approaches to cost-effective anti-drone weapons.

First up, in an “everything old is new again” war featuring static lines and trench warfare, it should be no surprise that a World War II staple, flak cannons (AKA ack-ack, AKA “Archie”) is making a comeback.

Case in point: Rheinmetall’s Skynex system.

I said SkyNEX! SkyNEX!

It uses a 35mm auto-cannon, and can use both an integrated radar and remote target acquisition (much like Patriot, etc.). I’m having trouble tracking down reliable cost per shell estimates (it uses the same AHEAD ammunition that’s been around a while), but I’m sure it’s considerably cheaper than using using ground-to-air missiles.

It’s not exactly new, since Rheinmetall was working on a 35mm system at least 15 years ago. What’s new is that it’s actually gotten to the point that Austria is taking delivery of systems and Ukraine is testing it.

A second approach that’s also been long in coming which is now finally seeing field testing is lasers:

  • The $10 million BlueHalo Locust Laser Weapon System burns at 3000°F and costs $3 in energy a shot.
  • “Under a dozen are currently deployed with the US Army in classified overseas areas to take down unmanned aircraft.”
  • “Laser weapons are one of several relatively inexpensive responses to drone threats, but compared to traditional weapons, there are challenges. They have a shorter range and limited power and can be harder to fix when something goes wrong.” In the past, they were also demonstrably more fragile than traditional projectile weapons.
  • “The Locust laser weapon system is a palletized high energy laser, or P-HEL. Weighing in at 3,400 pounds and measuring seven feet high by seven feet long, the Locust can fit on the back of large Army vehicles like this Stryker.”
  • “The laser software is designed to look like a video game like Call of Duty, and it’s operated with an Xbox controller.”
  • “Here you can see those individual fiber channels that all come together. Each one of those represents a little bit of a different spectrum of light, all coming together into the beam control unit here.” Laser pumping has been around for a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in a field-tested weapon before.
  • “This white rectangle is an 18 wheeler truck about a half mile away. In just 1.5 seconds of beam contact, it melted this two inch steel coin glued to the side.”
  • Locust costs about $3 a shot, which is lower than even the cheapest drone, and range is about 3 miles.
  • The whole thing is modular, so presumably fresh batteries can be rotated in after heavy battlefield use.

    • Laser weapons have been in the works a long, long time, but the energy consumption was so high that nuclear power was required as an energy source for combat lasers (hence why the Gerald R. Ford class of aircraft carriers comes with two nuclear reactors). But battery and laser technology have continued apace, and now you can put it on existing military vehicles. Perhaps even the bed of a pickup truck for an anti-drone technical.

    Defense analysts and science fiction have long wondered what the battlefield would look like when beam weapons could actually be deployed on it.

    Well, we’re here.

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