Russian defence against drone swarms

Tingsay wrote:Yeah, they have the Pantsir -SM to deal with that in the future. The missiles on the current Pantsir is too expensive for some of the drones .

They can send the new Derivatsiya-PVO 57mm anti-aircraft artillery system to Syria right now for testing if they like.

The-thing-next-door wrote:
If they do go for 57mm then I would suggest to equip it with both proximity HE shells and APFSDS then it would be an effective platform for killing a wide variety both air and ground targets.

Any insight into how widely deployed anti drone weapons will be deployed or what priority thier deployment will be given?

GarryB wrote:Actually swarm drones are not that simple... they need to be able to operate together in a group but not get in each others way... they need to be smart enough to get  a job done but dumb enough to be cheap and disposable.

To be effective they will need a flight range of more than 100km otherwise their launch systems could easily be destroyed before they launch their payloads.

The Pantsir is getting a new missile developed that has four mini missiles per launch tube to engage swarm threats... that means each vehicle will have 12 x 4 missiles ready to fire so a battery of 8 vehicles will have 8 x 12 x 4 missiles = so each battery could have up to 384 missiles ready to fire... that is a lot.

More importantly a few vehicles armed with 57mm guns with AHEAD like air burst rounds could seriously deplete any large scale attack very rapidly as each shell could scatter fragments over a 5m radius very rapidly and even minor damage would break a light UAV and bring it down.

Add to that EM pulse weapons that simply fry the little brains of the UAVs and of course the 2,500km range AESA radars located at every S-400 battery site could also generate a microwave signal beam powerful enough to cook a rabbit could also be used to blunt an attack... I think the Russians will be more ready than anyone else.

In fact i suspect the whole concept might backfire on the west because it is the Chinese and Russians that are in the best position to produce large numbers of small smart but still relatively cheap UCAVs for attacks on expensive but not well defended western equipment based all around the world...

GarryB wrote:

But for troops on the ground a zsu23-4 with upgraded radar should be good enough or even a zu-23-2 Zom with upgraded radar.

With respect a lot of people are not getting it.

23 x 152mm ammo has an effective range of about 2-2.5km... both horizontal and vertical... so even the cheapest UAV flying at 4km altitude with a belly full of hand grenade sized mini bombs could fly over your position and you could do nothing about it.

Russian experience in Georgia was that the 23mm cannon lacked range, most SAMs were too expensive for the job... the ended up using BUK and an R-73 from a MiG-29 to shoot down drones. MANPADS were ineffective at the time because the IR signature of a drone 3-4km up is tiny making a good lock too hard.

Verba would do a much better job but is not cheap.

Actually the best option would be Kornet-EM in terms of price.

Air burst 30mm cannon shells would be a step up because setting off a 30mm round in a group of UAVs means a chance of damaging them even if it wasn't going to hit it.

57mm shells means much higher engagement ceiling and rather more explosive and fragments to damage light UAV targets from further away without needing to hit anything.

A 23mm cannon burst means 200 shells streaking towards the target, but UAVs are small targets and most rounds will just blow past at a very high speed.

The chance of hitting the UAV is low if the target is small and they often are.

As you rightly point out missiles and guided rounds are expensive and limited in number... but air burst time fuses are cheap and easy to mass produce... the day of the large calibre AA gun might return... with advanced guidance and computer fire control system and air burst rounds it might become rather more efficient to deal with swarm attacks using a mix of 152mm artillery in air burst mode and EM pulse weapons.

Or the iranian systems mesbah-1 and sa-ir (ks-19) the air burst fragmentation of sa-ir 100mm round could cover quite a large area and the system is self loading and holds 4-5 rounds before needing reloading and if you had 12 guns with a velocity of around1,000 m/s. Max firing range of 12,700 m timed fuse. and 15,000 m proximity fuse (old figures iranians may have upgraded rounds) and you now have a cloud of shrapnel in the sky.

Assuming the drones themselves are unaware they are being engaged just a few well aimed shells with airburst fuses would totally ruin their day... you would not need to blow them into tiny pieces or obliterate them... just damage them and make them crash or just break something important.

A redesigned shell that has the fuse in the rear and the HE payload in the middle and fragments in the front section designed to blow forward like a claymore mine... fire it towards an intercept location and as the shell gets closer direct a laser signal to the rear of the shell to set it off and blast the interception area with 10kgs of tiny metal cubes at enormous speeds... good for some soft ground targets too...

There has been mixed reports as to if it was pantsir guns or missiles that did the job.

I suspect it was probably missiles.

Note the missiles on Pantsir and TOR are very simple and cheap command guided missiles with no sensor or high tech components to keep the price low so they can be bought and used in large numbers in a real war.

The important thing is using your own drones to locate the launch areas for these attacks and launching Krasnopol thankyou notes to the offenders ASAP.

Air burst shells are useful, guided shells are useful, but EM rounds would also be useful too... launch a 100mm plus shell into a group of UAVs and detonate an EM pulse weapon to fry them all in one go... would be a safe way to deal with such threats in a civilian area...

Of course conventional air burst ammo is safer for the people nearby too compared with HE rounds landing downrange...

GarryB wrote:23mm cannon are great multipurpose weapons that are suitable for a variety of threats including half assed home made UAVs made by terrorists even if they have CIA or Israeli assistance.

Most professional forces like Georgia in 2008 with the help of Israeli UAVs can provide systems that the ZU-23 is of no use against.

It makes sense to have a range of tools to deal with a variety of threats and most Russian ground force units include air defence forces with MANPADS (Verba/Igla-S) plus short and medium range SAMs like TOR and Pantsir and Sosna-R, but also guided missiles like Kornet-EM.

The point is that the number of land vehicles with 30mm cannon will be rather large... most APC vehicles will have them... armata based, Kurganets based, boomerang based, as well as other platforms like the BTR-82/3 and SPAAGs like the Tunguska and Pantsir where detonating a round in amongst a group of UAVs is the most useful and efficient way of dealing with them.

On the BTR-82/3 you can use a laser to get the range of a UAV, but Pantsir can use radar to track both the group of targets and the outgoing round and lase it at exactly the right time.

An air burst claymore in 152mm round would be vastly more effective too because its size would allow more fragments and a more spherical blast pattern, but also because 152mm artillery operates with most ground force divisions anyway, so getting target information from your pantsir battery and launching a dozen air burst shells in a coordinate in mid air to flood that area with shrapnel could stop an attack before it even starts... 6 vehicles firing two rapid shots and then return to their normal artillery support mission.... sounds ideal.

To be honest I have heard all the BS about Swarm technology and how wonderful it will be... what it wont be is cheap... they can't even make a cheap anti tank missile.

The technologies and systems to combat potential swarm attack systems should be based on existing systems and work together to allow even more flexibility... an air burst 152mm shell with directed fragments could be used against a group of UAVs, but could also be used against helicopters on an airfield, or a convoy of enemy special forces light vehicles... or whatever.

miketheterrible wrote:A shilka reborn is ideal. Tons of ammo, make them HE. And manpads with as you said Papa, radar system for detection/tracking.

It would be enough.

The-thing-next-door wrote:How about super heavy flak tractors with 4 152mm high velocity flak guns each and with rapid autoloaders and proximity fuses or even cheap guidance packages they could wipe swarms of air targets relitvely cheaply from a distance of 20 kilometers or more.