The Iranian attack a few weeks go got me thinking. All of the Iranian drones were shot down, but they were shot down with missiles, either aircraft and land-based, which are damn expensive. Now, no drone today is faster or more maneuverable than a WW2 fighter plane. So why not create the equivalent of a remote-controlled P-51 Mustang? Instead of intercepting a swarm of drones with expensive missiles, you launch your own swarm of reusable Mustang-drones armed with cheap chain guns, each of which takes down multiple targets before its ammo runs out and it returns to base.
I sure hope neither me, my loved ones, or our houses are under the shootdown area, whether from a bullet that misses or under the drone that’s hit & now tumbling out of the sky, cause either one is gonna leave a mark. There’s a 35 mile concentric ring no-fly zone around wherever POTUS/V-POTUS are. There are plenty of clips on YouTube of some Cessna pilot or another busting it & being escorted out by fighters. I don’t believe the military has ever shot down a civilian plane over the US but they definitely updated those plans in the aftermath of 9/11 & it is in the realm of possibilities. Oh great, we saved important one old dude, albeit one with a long succession plan & instead took out a schoolbus full of innocent children.
Ukraine reportedly shot down a drone with a Yak-52. According to Wikipedia the YAK-52 was built in the 70’s-90’s as a trainer. Top speed listed at 177 mph.
Not a drone, but looks like other people are thinking in the same direction.
That Paladin system is sized to shoot down hobbyist toys. I’d prefer one not fall on my head, but if it land on the roof of my car it’ll end up with a few scratches that will probably buff out.
The thing to complain about is not enemy drones being destroyed overhead. It’s the fact there are enemy drones overhead. That’s the problem that needs fixing.
I’m guessing here:
I would assume that a missile has a whole lot of expensive electronics. It needs to identify the enemy drone, communicate with a command center , calculate the drone’s trajectory, maybe lock in on its heat signature, and calculate the missile’s trajectory, calculate the intercept point, and then detonate explosives at the moment of interception. You also need the missile to have, say, twice as much speed as the incoming drone, so it can cover a long distance and catch up with the drone. That may require a jet engine, vs the propeller-driven drone.
That may be cheaper than the missiles that were used against the Iranian attack, but it won’t be as cheap as a P-51 Mustang .
But I’m just guessing.
We need Stranger on a Train for some real info.
It doesn’t have to be that fast: in WW2, Mustangs, Spitfires and Hellcats were regularly intercepting Messerschmitts and Zeros, despite not being significantly faster than them, and the drones we’re trying to intercept are not nearly as fast or nimble as those German or Japanese fighters.
Remember, we’re not actually building a Mustang here - we’re building a reusable unmanned drone whose speed, maneuverability and armaments are equivalent to those of a P-51 Mustang. With modern engines, composite materials, avionics and guns, that doesn’t sound like too much of an engineering challenge, nor does it sound very expensive, particularly as, unlike a missile, they can be used over and over again.
Unfortunately, the Roadrunner may still be on the wrong side of the need for the bullet to cost less than the thing it targets. A Roadrunner is “in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars,”, while the Iranian Shahed is as low as $20,000 per drone.
I think you need something reusable that fires cheap, but smart, bullets. A P-51 sized drone is probably overkill, though.
I suspect it’ll get cheaper if you buy in bulk. I am mildly surprised that they’re building their own turbojets rather than buying some off-the-shelf engines for RC airplanes. But the rest of it should be pretty typical mass-produced electronics, sensors, etc. And it’s still a lot cheaper than a typical missile.
The Roadrunner was rolled out as a potential base defense system against planes like fighter-bombers. For that use, they are a lot cheaper than the thing they are targeting.
That’s more of a standard quadcopter. Still no explicit top speed, but probably 100-150 mph. They have kinetic and munitions variants. The munitions version could likely take out a Shahed.
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Anti-drone warfare has to be a layered concept. What’s coming at you has to be identified, tracked, and terminated at a reasonable point. Is it a large drone (older fighter fitted with remote controls)? A short range quadcopter? Bigger with a prop, or a turbo jet? They come at you in all sizes, speeds, and directions. What are you protecting: a city, airbase, single building, a tank, missile launcher, bridge, refinery, individual person giving a speech or in transit?
On defense, we have varieties of semi to incredibly expensive ground/sea launched missiles. These should be for the fast mover drones and ones that can maneuver. Fighter jets have an array of slightly less expensive missiles in the IR spectrum and expensive radar guided missiles. Yes, they still have a gun but not much practice aiming and you have the debris problem from a close in explosion. We have ground gun systems like the Gepard and follow on systems. A good match expense wise but range is a problem. Anti-drone drones would have to be matched to the target. They’d need a flight envelope and defeat system (gun, warhead, etc…) matched to the target(s).
Extensive anti-drone jamming has variable effectiveness - a real cat and mouse situation where both sides have to rapidly change tactics and react. Electronic warfare with high power radars, microwaves and lasers are feasible but have their own shortcomings.
I’m just touching on some of the problems/situations). This stuff is hard and failures are expensive and deadly.
Here’s a listing of those systems and the country developing it.
Article also touches on Directed Energy research and developments.
United States: Land-Based Phalanx Weapon System
Israel: Iron Dome
Germany: MANTIS Air Defence System
Germany: Skynex
Italy: Porcupine
Italy: DRACO
China: LD-2000
Netherlands: Goalkeeper
Russia: AK-630