what's the state of the art in countering military UAVs?

[md2000]

@GreedySmurf

Hell a biplane where the rear gunner has a .303 rifle would do it

(OK maybe not against the Global Hawk, but only because I doubt a Sopwith Camel could get to 60,000 feet )

A lot of people don’t seem to realise that UAV’s are only really effective where you have complete air superiority, and your opponents ground forces have negligible SAM capabilities. Lacking those two factors, and you’re going to be using up a LOT of UAV’s.

In fact, the Predator feeds were apparently not even encrypted - a captured Taliban computer contained video feed recorded over the air from a UAV. Receivers at Radio Shack, $75, I presume.

This illustrates the arms race. If the enemy does not have even the misiles to typically knock these things down, why load them with countermeasures? OTOH, if they are listenin in, it’s time to encrypt. At several tens of thousands of feet, you need radar to find them; radar is easy to detect, expensive to acquire, and so a very handy target. If they find the UAV wih binoculars, mount adaptive lights just bright enough under the craft so it does not appear as a dark spot in the sky… or fly at night with IR vision.

One advantage of UAVs is that they can do suicide missions - if your task is to acquire images then likely you can get and send that information before the UAV is finally put out of commission. (For strikes, there’s cruise missiles). Another is that the weight of the pilot is replaced with fuel, so these devices can often linger at the target area for hours. Modern fighters are lucky to have half an hour between arrival and time to leave.

I assume there is not a (publicly admitted) drone deployed with the ability to reach its target undetected, because in case the device crashes, why give up that tech to be sold to your enemies by the local guerillas. Not needed in Afghanistan.

[ralph124c]

I sit possible to jam the control signals? Find the frequency band sed, them blast the area with high power noise?
Of course, since the control system is Windows based, someone will find a way to hack into it.

[Boyo_Jim]

@md2000

…I assume there is not a (publicly admitted) drone deployed with the ability to reach its target undetected, …

It’s not a secret, and there are more than one. Every service has to have its own stealthy something.

[engineer_comp_geek]

@ralph124c

I sit possible to jam the control signals? Find the frequency band sed, them blast the area with high power noise?
Of course, since the control system is Windows based, someone will find a way to hack into it.

They probably use spread spectrum signals which can’t be easily jammed since they are splattering the data all over different frequency bands. Jamming every frequency at once takes too much energy to be practical.

I suspect they use something like VxWorks for the operating system. Windows, even the embedded version, is not a real time control operating system.

ETA: On the other hand, the operator interface probably is Windows based. Wasn’t thinking about that side of it.