How about a “soft” gun mount designed to temporarily deform, then return to its pre-shot shape? For an analogy, think of a human firing a rifle - no permanent deformation there.
FYI, the drones the OP was talking about are like this, not like this. (and that’s a big one!)
They’re big- roughly the performance of a pre/early-WWII fighter, and as such, could mount something like 2-4 .50 cal machine guns.
Or just go old school and mount CRV-7 2.75" rocket pods but with gps guided heads. That way you get roughly 19 “shots” (Using a SUU-5003 pod) and have the option of a panic mode option where it fires all of them at once. Cheap and cheerful relative to the cost of a Hellfire.
See APKWS, which I linked to above.
Missed the link. Either setup would be pretty damn devastating on a Reaper/Gray Eagle or an armed Global Hawk.
The big issue with all these cheap-and-cheerful armed drones is they aren’t cost effective.
Arming a drone with a .50 cal or smaller weapon means getting very up close and personal with your target. Which mean you get shot down a lot.
Bigger weapons fired from farther away by bigger platforms is the cheap way.
The other cheap way is smaller drones that are aerial mines / torpedos. Just a guided flying bomb that closely approaches the target then detonates. Which works whether the target is a person or a machine. A model airplane-sized quadcopter armed with a hand grenade is a much better weapon than the same quadcopter carrying an M-16 action and 10 rounds.
The medium sized drone with a conventional firearm attached is just silly.
Agreed about the grenade-bearing model airplane. Based on what I have seen of such small RC aircraft, one might well be better off just buying an off the shelf rifle and optics with which to shoot the intended target. The rifle will be less dependent on good weather and may actually let you engage from farther away.
The main attraction of these proposed armed hobbyist drones is that they sound like they should be awesome and are hypothetically within the cost range a basement dwelling geardo can afford.
That APKWS that **Ravenman **points out is essentially a laser-guidance kit for unguided rockets like the CRV-7, Hydra 70 and FZ series.
Laser guidance would be the way to go anyway; more accurate, and perfectly fine for line of sight firing, which is what we’re talking about here anyway with drones.
Still too high profile. Robin-sized quad copter, CO2 cartridge, 12-inch carbon-graphite tube, blow dart, curare.
Predator identifies target, attached MurderRobin locks onto target and deploys, gets within range of the victim and deploys a fairly silent blow dart. MurderRobin then flies off maybe a mile or so and self-destructs. No collateral property damage, no collateral deaths (except in cases of mistaken identity).
Low velocity, low penetration, short ranged weapons like a poison dart would require catching the target outdoors under perfect conditions. People valuable enough to the enemy to even be worth a drone strike often have hardened homes and vehicles and plan their movements carefully. I concede such a thing could be used to murder some schmoe of little to no importance while he is out watering his lawn or the like.
Attach a bayonet to the drone and make it stab the target.
This is really it.
Your basic rural gun enthusiast thinks mounting one of his guns on a quadcopter would be cool as shit. If he owned a .50 cal HMG he’d be salivating over ways to aerilize it.
Some SF operative in purchasing or some engineer in a defense contractor starts from a very different place and so ends up in a very different place. Backyard tinkerers start from the tidbits they have on hand and invent a mission that sorta fits what they can bodge together. Real procurement is about recognizing a real actual mission then refining that definition then inventing the device to fill it.
The better terrorist type groups are composed of military veterans with some more real world experience. The less professional terrorist groups are full of simple gun fetishists. So on average they’re someplace in the middle.
Will somebody kill somebody someplace with a gun- or explosive-equipped small drone in the next decade? Sure. Will there be a worldwide scourge of flying death machines? Nope.
I’m a lot more worried about rednecks with Tannerite and too much time (and beer) on their hands.
No need to worry. They won’t have a leg to stand on.
Once the industry does perfect quadcopters with a 10lb useful load I’m sure we’ll see folks gleefully strafing deer groups with full auto AR-15 conversions.
Sorry! Sorry! That was me. I don’t mean no harm by it, I’m just a bear before I get half-way through the first cup of coffee.
Neat!
Where can I get a dozen or so?
I’ve got some neighbors…
Mod Note:
I am kidding. I do not wish harm to my neighbors (well, not to most of them…)