How do you kill a drone?
The modern battlefield seems to be jam-packed with remotely piloted vehicles, from the older-school US Predator/Reaper large drones to small reconnaissance drone the size of a pack of smokes, or even smaller. Some are armed with on-board missiles, some with guns, some are basically remotely-piloted bombs. Control could be by on-board programming, data-link, even fine fiber-optic cable (which is virtually unjammable.) The main question, though, is how to bring ’em down.
There have been quite a few suggestions – our own AW1Ed is on record favoring a Remington 870, some others here favor Mossbergs – but they are all shotguns. And shotguns by their nature are relatively short-range weapons – at halitosis range very lethal, but by the time you get out to 50 yards they may become marginal depending on the loads used. It’s probably safe to say that a load which won’t reliably kill a bird at a given range may not be too lethal to drones, either.
Norma, the Swedish ammunition company, has developed an anti-drone round optimized for military drones. It has a payload of 350 roughly 1/8″ (2.75mm to be precise) tungsten pellets at a muzzle velocity of 1327 fps. Even Norma says this has an effective range of about 60 meters, which if the drone is shooting at you is pretty darn close.Defense Express
The Russians have developed a DIY solution – reportedly they have found they can heat-shrink seven 4.5mm round balls (from Crosman, the American air rifle companies!) into a projectile which when fired from their AK-74s is supposed to function as a 5.45mm mini-shotgun. Pull the bullet from a round, insert this projectile in a cartride case, and they hope to down a drone. Unfortunately, battlefield reports report a dismal lack of success
“When shooting you are static, which makes it easier for the operator to aim the drone,” warns a Ukrainian manual on drone protection. Stopping to shoot, rather than taking cover, makes you an obvious target. Forbes
The article mentions, too, that typically in an attack now each soldier is being targeted by at least two drones. Stop to shoot at one, and you’re easy pickin’s for the other?
The Marines are taking another path. They propose adding a different aiming capability in a “smart scope” which will enable a Marine rifleman to hit a drome further than 60 meters away.
“The SMASH 2000L will give the rifleman the ability to quickly obtain a positive firing solution and increase their probability of kill when engaging Unmanned Aircraft Systems,” Flanagan wrote, describing the SMASH 2000L advanced fire control system.
“The SMASH 2000L provides easily attachable components that will enable a standard M4 to be utilized for targeting and defeating sUAS with conventional small arms fire while still enabling the Marine user to utilize that same weapon system to engage other/ground targets.” Marine Corps Times
A rifle bullet can engage a flying target far more effectively at a distance, true, but ya gotta hit the target. Supposedly the SMASH 2000L will allow the rifleman the firing solution to do just that.(H/t to Jeff LPH for this one.)
Had to find a picture of a standing rifle shooter, right?
Reminds me of a story about W.D.M. Bell, widely considered one of the, if not THE, greatest elephant hunters in African history. Among other things just pushing through brush trailing elephants he was said to have worn an inch of wood off the side of his rifle stock. Think about that a second.
Bell once attracted attention when he was living near Lake Victoria and some bird hunting aficianados witnessed him repeatedly shooting down fast-flying cormorants flying 100 yards above the local falls, well out of most shotgun’s effective range. When they sought him out, they were surprised to find he was running through some old .318 RIFLE ammo – he was disposing of 6,000 rounds of unreliable ammo which misfired a third of the time by shooting it. Imagine the skill needed to knock down a fast moving bird a hundred yards away… with an open-sighted rifle. We should shoot as well. (from from “Death in the Silent Places” by Peter Hathaway Capstick.)
You hit the nail on the head. A shotgun, whether it is firing slugs, pellets, or nets (yes they have those), isn’t going to get a drone before it gets you and most likely wasn’t doing anything to you except annoying you.
The Israelis came up with the SMARTShooter, the Marines made SMASH 2000L, and the Army has a new battle rifle with an incredible scope (that will do the same). You can either get good at shooting moving targets or use technology to your advantage. A little pellet or laser is only going to slow down a quad copter at best, you have to take out at least two motors or the controller to drop it. A fixed wing drone is even more difficult (tail or the controller again). None of this will matter against a bigger non-commercial one with a lethal payload. It starts its terminal dive long before you can see it! Now you need a missile or a very powerful laser!
Just my expert opinion!
Maybe something like a scaled down version of the ZEUS laser that the University of Michigan built!!!
The way old flak guns (and other ADA guns) worked was you began shooting well before the target was in range to create a wall of lead. The target would hopefully fly into it. This is even more likely with a drone as the operator has a much more limited perspective. This also involved having hundreds of projectiles in the air at once.
A shotgun slug can be lethal against humans at up to 1000 meters. Hitting something at that range is extremely challenging and is more like artillery. Slugs are a terrible choice for any kind of aerial target.
#4 buckshot is lethal to about 50 meters on animals targets. But we aren’t shooting at animals. With a drone you only have to hit something critical and not very hard to make it stop working. Even with the tightest choke possible, the shot will be spread out at 100 meters or so that 25 or so .25 caliber pellets to make it difficult to hit anything.
But why would you use just one gun? Air defense famously used multiple guns to get intersecting fields of fire. Quad 50s being favored by the US and quad 23mm guns being favored by the soviet’s. Four shotguns also makes sense, if you have no other options.
A quad 50 would also be a good choice for drone defense, if you could somehow swing the million or so dollars to buy (4) M2 machine guns, the vehicle mounts, vehicle and shit ton of ammo to carry around. It would have to be updated with modern sights as well. But again you would need multiple systems with overlapping PlFs, because drones come in packs.
5JC,
Actually we have reinvented the Flak gun, with proximity rounds. The Army currently uses them in .50cal and 30mm. That is the one system that I feel works well, but for some reason the Army has not really invested for base defense. They only come on the “Mobile” base defense system. Effective range gets it out to just about terminal dive range.
Not sure how many drones you have shot, but I have watched plenty get shot up and they seemed a lot more resilient than expected. The best laser operators were able to pinpoint where to shoot on the Drone, and it is specific to each drone. I have seen plenty of fixed wing drones continue to fly with large holes through the wings, fuselage and even the tail. I have seen Quad Copters lose two motors/props and still fly back to their owner.
Sure, and the number of fixed wing planes that returned home after being shot to pieces during WWII was surprising. But a lot more didn’t come back if they were hit. A drone is a little better because you can’t hit the pilot and so when a plane is flyable the pilot has to be capable of flying it.
I have seen literally hundreds of target drones get shot down. I’ve done gunnery with the Avenger and the BSFV (ADA Bradly). When I worked at MDA I saw even cooler stuff. Target drones typically are either rocket propelled (ballistic targets) or have a foam body with a little engine up front. Most of the time they will drag a sensor to simulate having a larger aircraft profile. The controls are fly by wire. You have to hit the engine, radio or a wire.
A drone carrying ordinance however is a little different. You can hit the ordinance, cameras and other parts that will disable or destroy it.
Perhaps cylindrical 30mm cases loaded with 00 buck in a smoothbore high ROF autocannon?
Kagan Dunlap covered BAE’s strike drone:
https://youtube.com/shorts/_0YB70d6JeY?si=UJuBLTVsRzhdOINc
My previous suggestion of using a Mossberg 940 Snow Goose is only for point defense by we limited resources mortals.
The absolute best way to kill a drone is to kill the operator(s). They can’t launch themselves so if you kill the operator they are done.
After that, flooding the air with broad band RF signals which a Patriot Radar (and a few others) can do, when it is fully switched on. Most drones will crash immediately at ranges up to 20 miles if they are lin the LOS. The Patriot is almost never fully switched on, on the battlefield because it then becomes a white hot glowing torch of a target for anti-radar missiles.
The third best way is lasers such as the HELIOS. Unfortunately nobody has built a good laser defense system that is land based. The challenges on land are actually greater than at sea, unless you are on a flat desert with access to a large power plant.
As drone/counter drone becomes more of a focus the more fiber optic-guided will be a thing.
Much in the way of IED evolution, the name of the game be incremental improvement to stay ahead of countermeasures.
Anything RF is on its way out, even with frequency hop.
I can see automated sentry drone whose sole focus is RF investigation, think about those spiders in the sewers in the Matrix.
(The below I can’t directly attest to the authenticity, may have seen it on cnn’s images of the week, this time snagged from reddit fwiw)
Agreed. Sentry drones seems like a viable solution with current technology.
I was thinking of counter-drone as well.
Get some of these high-school robotics club whiz kids to brainstorm on possibilities and see what develops from there.
Yeah, about that flooding the RF. Not so much. Seen the big microwave systems….not impressed. As for wasting a high demand Patriot radar on Drone defense…. you might have a problem with fratricide, not to mention destroying a valuable. high demand system.
Biggest problem with the lasers has been keeping them clean. We have used a few, best we got was a 20s kill…which is a lifetime to stay locked on. Maintenance is a b!tCH! That is why I said we need a variant of the ZEUS with lots of power in a single burst!
Fratricide is always a problem with radars. I had a artillery radar chief who I worked with in the late 90s. He had two Q37 radars destroyed by friendly fire during GWI, both by allied air craft. Pilots take few chances and abhor risk. US aviation killed more soldiers than the entire Iraqi military during the Gulf War.
A Patriot has to make a survival move after an engagement in any case. But yeah, it is a pretty big asset to squash a bunch of bugs. My point was more along the lines of if they could emulate it in some way, then they could kill drones with it. It doesn’t actually have to be hooked up to launch missiles.
You don’t need all the wonderful processing of the Patriot radar system. You just need the emitter/antenna, and a way to searchlight it.
Basicly, it’s a zorchlight.
If we want it to self-track and target, we still do not need all the BMD level stuff.
The biggest problem would be -not- frying nearby friendlies. We don’t want ADA to get a rep of reproducing only FLKs.
This is a job for Army Signal.
Given enough RF power you can make them glow in the dark.
Facts, some of the older RF equipment can flood the spectrum and drop the drone immediately.
I have a few old Kruse-Stork sweepers and plug ins to
cover whatever freq you want.
And various spectrum analyzers to “see” what’s up.
Klystrons, twt’s and a few other outdated things that could
easily become active.
It would be almost as much fun as sporting clays.
You get a nice aura just before their internal organs explode. One of my TROPO teams took out two USMC drones in the early days of Iraq. We told ’em twice not to take off in front of the two big antennas. 2Kw SHF kinda scrambled the drone’s little brain.
We had Ku OtM R2D2s, if memory serves at ~50 watts you could tell it was operational by-hand on a cold day.
No hand cancer… yet.
Got to give credit to General Dynamics Land System for the grounding on Strykers. Never had issues with EMF problems in any of the comms with all of it running; Ku, UHF, SINCGARS, FBCB2/BFT, DUKE (IED interference-r), the kitchen sink…
Couldn’t imagine 2k being kind to unshielded equipment. Anyone who’s held on to a vehicle whip base when the mic was keyed’ll tell ya shit burns.
They’re seriously grounded, bonded and shielded. The thing they don’t talk about with all that shielding is that if you have stray RF, it’s all staying in there with you. Every old 26Q, 31Q, 25Q, 31S and 25S is bald and wearing glasses due to to leaky waveguides.
Part of the reason I’d stay my happy ass in the hull.
Also used poorly grounded off-the-shelf active ear pro to ‘hunt’ bad connections or strays.
Tired, pissed off, and little support for line guys: Infantry means adapt and
overcomesuck less.Evacs flying into 95th evac DaNang were well aware of
the billboard antennas on Monkey Mountain and tried to
stay out of the “path” as they aproached.
Old technology was a blessing for them then.
I don’t think todays avionics coulda handled that.
We had a DKET (Deployable Ku Earth Terminal) at Bagram in the early days, transmission path was straight across the runway. You could spot the pilots that slept through their briefings because they’d abort a landing, pour the coal on, dump flares and chaff, and haul ass. It lit up every threat radar in the aircraft. Kinda cool watching flares bouncing down the runway in excess of 130 knots!
I foresee similar problems to what we had with the MMBJ – hands-down, the most effective EW weapon we had against IEDs, but it came with the downside of hamstringing our own COMMS systems.
Good units would combine gunner hand signals, vehicle spacing, and selective use of the equipment to make them work with enough practice – but most units simply aren’t good units and would not spend the time rehearsing the necessary drills when they could instead be hanging out at Green Beans.
It will be the same for any broad-spectrum counter-drone signal efforts: Mediocre commanders will not make the requisite effort to effectively accommodate such measures with their own use of drones.
I have the solution for destroying enemy drones:
AI controlled loitering ramming drones. Optionally armed with a short barreled shotgun. I am sure AI can regain control of the drone after shooting a shell at an enemy drone.
Drone counter drones seems to be the cheapest solution at the moment.
In the near future, we may be able to add small anti drone lasers to vehicles. I am not sure where we are as far as energy requirements to bring down a drone.
Then the problem becomes having enough of them. It would have to be hundreds. You would have to have more than the attacker, probably twice as many. Then enough to run 24hr operations on top of that.
Worst case you can always smile at the drone as it approaches in its attack run.
The enemy will be terrified.
I remember when SAFAD was a common skill (level 10)
For those whom may have forgotten, SAFAD = Small Arms For Air Defense.
I remember. The plan wasn’t to lead the aircraft like a goose and shoot it, it was to throw up a metric shit-ton of everything available and make a wall the aircraft had to fly through. We never actually got to practice it, though. Strange.
A drone/target moving at a 150+mph at you thats no bigger than a shoebox and carrying enough explosive power to hurt/kill you at 50 meters. Controlled by a a hairline fiber optic cable that’s protected from rf capabilities. Can be partially disabled and still get to you. Surrender and the Russians kill you, don’t surrender and fight till you die.
Great choices. Who ever figures this defense out is going to be one very wealthy person.
I have no clue how to overcome this, some gen z will step up to plate and surprise us all. Well maybe?
So, we gonna have to update this?
Ironically, my father, who started the war in Coast Artillery, spent some time in WWII working on the program that paired radar to AA fuzing so instead of somexperienced NCO ryeballing altulitude of targets, they KNEW ehat the incomers’ altitude was and had fuzes set appropriately. So I suppose he helped lay the groundwork for all you duckhunter radar jocks out there.
Combining several ideas. Take a 747 air craft and fill it full of directional RF jammers as well as an ABL left over from the early 2000s. Dirty lenses won’t happen with a Chlorine – Iodine laser. Use the laser to drop stuff far away and the jammer to take out anything that gets through.
Remember that air defense is a five layered fight. From launch to termination.
Something on the ground like the C-Ram and/or some pod mounted F2M2 Spikes for the last line of defense. Spikes are expensive though.
Looks like they decided to send a whole Patriot battalion set to the Ukraine. When it is cheap.miasile vs expensive air craft it makes a lot of sense. Expensive missiles vs cheap drones, not as much
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/07/21/us-and-germany-agree-to-deliver-five-patriot-air-defence-systems-to-ukraine-berlin-says
I think I posted a link a couple of months ago to a video of a tour of a Ukrainian factory which built drone jammers. Can’t seem to find it now. They had vehicle and backpack models. I assume they have made some progress since then.
Falconry.