A new era of aerial combat has arrived over Ukraine: drone vs. drone warfare.
These aerial duels do not involve bullets, missiles or bombs. In some, hobby-type camera quadcopters used to spy on enemy positions simply crash into each other in crude aerial demolition derbies. In other encounters, highly sophisticated aircraft use precision fire nets to hook other drones using advanced radar backed by artificial intelligence and the latest aerospace engineering techniques.
Caitlin Lee, who leads the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and Autonomous Research Center at the Mitchell Aerospace Institute in Arlington, Virginia. – Collisions with drones.
And actions in Ukraine suggest that even newer kinds of aerial warfare are coming to the wider world of warfare, including combat drones armed to fight in tandem with manned aircraft. The Air Force currently envisions a fleet of 1,000 high-performance unmanned aerial vehicles paired with state-of-the-art fighter aircraft. The plan is a response to China’s growing challenge to the U.S. military’s 75-year air superiority. Beyond the battlefield, weaponized drones can easily threaten crowd safety at major sporting events, prison security, critical infrastructure, and more from the skies above any city. (Of course, many of the underlying technologies are also expected to bring about positive changes in the realm of peaceful applications. Drones have already successfully transplanted highly perishable donor organs into patients in haste. are available.)
Ukraine saw its first drone dogfight as the proliferation of low-cost, low-altitude aircraft on the market, such as Chinese drone maker DJI’s quadcopter. People can creatively modify these hobbyist machines for combat, allowing drones to conduct overhead surveillance and drop grenades. Defending against such a small drone weighing only a few ounces or pounds is difficult. First of all, they are difficult to detect.
Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute Director Sarah Klepps said: “So what countries like the US are spending billions of dollars trying to solve is the real sensor problem. [heavily on] It was countered by improvised explosive devices far cheaper and more sophisticated than the systems our military were trained to destroy. These are essentially flying IEDs that have failed military forces in similar ways, creating an asymmetric advantage that has been difficult to counter. ”
Another challenge these small drones present is that they are now widely available and cheap enough to buy in large quantities. While individual machines modified for combat are not capable of causing massive destruction, the number of potentially vulnerable targets is nearly limitless, Kreps said. This allows groups with less resources to attack stronger enemies.
In 2016, French special operations forces deployed in Syria first saw small commercial drones imaginatively transformed into tools of war when the forces were attacked by IS fighters. “Lack of resources now have access to air power that they did not have in the past. So it is changing who gets into the fray. Organizations created in 2020.
The US government classifies small drones into three categories. Group 1 represents aircraft with a total takeoff weight of up to 20 pounds. Group 2 covers the next tier between 21 and 55 pounds. Group 3 includes unmanned drones weighing as much as 1,320 pounds.
While the era of drone warfare has clearly begun, it remains to be seen whether these smaller aircraft are playing a decisive role in the larger Ukrainian battle by creating offensive breakthroughs and opportunities for one side to seize the initiative. “I think the open question is, do drones need to be more sophisticated… to hold ground, much less actually retake territory?” To contribute to combined arms operations?” she adds.
Defense experts aren’t waiting for small drones to become more sophisticated before taking steps to defend them. In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, Congress directed the Pentagon to create a plan to develop and deploy defense systems to counter small drones. And this year, the Pentagon will spend about $700 million on anti-drone research and development, and he will spend $78 million on procurement. A private research firm estimates that the market for systems to counter small drones will grow from about $2.3 billion in 2023 to $12.6 billion by 2030.
That potential has prompted more than a dozen companies around the world to develop anti-drone technology, including Blighter Surveillance Systems in the UK and Dedrone and DeTect in the US. Such systems can be ground-based, handheld, or drone-based, and can use electromagnetic interference, lasers, and other techniques to shoot down other small aircraft.
Fortem Technologies, a startup based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, has jumped into drone warfare by adapting previous research on small radars. The company says it has developed a complete system for detecting small drones and capturing them in the air with nets.
Fortem’s DroneHunter F700 has six rotors, a radar backed by autonomous technology, and two “net heads” that can accurately fire webs at enemy drones. If caught in a trap, the small drone will be dragged out by his DroneHunter. Larger drones are also netted, but then released. Since the net is preventing it from flying, it will fall to the ground under its own weight. Then, a parachute attached to the net deploys to soften the landing.
The company’s CEO, John Gruen, said:
The US government uses this technology to protect unnamed “strategic” sites.And Ukraine is flying Fortem’s new drone To patrol the skies and catch small Russian aircraft intact on the spot.
Ukraine first deployed DroneHunter last May to track Group 1 and 2 drones that Russia was using to spy on front-line Ukrainian forces. DroneHunter has degraded Moscow’s ability to use drones to collect artillery-targeting data on Ukrainian military positions and sabotaged larger kamikaze drones aimed at critical infrastructure.
When Russia began launching Group 3 drones, the Iranian-made Shahed unmanned aerial vehicle, as kamikaze weapons, Fortem began modifying DroneHunter to intercept these armed drones. The system has captured more than 5,000 targets with his drones during development flight tests, Gruen said. This has allowed Lockheed to attract the attention of Martin, Boeing and other giants Capital his venture arm. These companies invested his $75 million in expanding Fortem’s business.
Importantly, DroneHunter operates autonomously. Once positioned, they race to the action, making independent decisions on every move, catching prey in their nets, and returning with new nets rigged.
“There has been some debate about using autonomous drones in combat, but so far countries seem to have avoided using drones in their lethal capacity,” Kreps said. But at the same time, we’ve also seen an increasingly porous line between semi-autonomous drones (the way the US has used them to counter terrorism) and fully autonomous drones.”
In situations like Ukraine, the West widely supports giving countries the tools they need to defend themselves.
