Russian defence against drone swarms

So you don't see the value of aircraft such as this? Their incredible ability to land and takoff within extremely short distances just about anywhere, just about any surface, in any climate (even the harsh Arctic biome)? Their dirt cheap price? Their simplicity of their design? They would be built in very short time frames, and repairs would be very cheap, quick and simple.

Of course they are useful aircraft, but not for hunting and dealing with drones.

A Mil Mi-28, a Kamov Ka-52 or even light Ansat attack helicopter could be effective drone killers, but they're not nearly as cost effective.

They are cost effective in the sense that they could better do the job in question.

An Ansat helicopter with a chin mounted 40mm grenade launcher with airburst grenades initiated by laser beam would be ideal... but ground based vehicles would be just as effective but also much cheaper.

Your talking hundreds of times more expensive than the UCAV tail draggers that I'm suggesting.

Would take enormous skill to shoot down tiny drones in a light aircraft... it makes much more sense to use sensors and gun turrets and computers and airburst cheap rounds.

The build times of these UCAV taildraggers (just like their cost) would be a fraction to that of any aircraft available. Because of their low cost and their simplicity they could easily build hundreds if not thousands per year. Their small size and simplicity could allow them to be designed with folding wings, and compressed suspensions so they could be loaded in to a shipping container. Unlike helicopters they can reliably land and take off angles/sloped hills, and they're basically able to go anywhere their all-terrain vehicles could go.

A small flat area to take off and land is easier to find than a long flat area for an aircraft to take off from.

Most anti drone work can be done by ground based platforms, though aircraft will contribute...

Most drones are likely to be taken down with jammers and EW weapons which means operating your own aircraft or drones in the area becomes hazardous too.

These features would be very pleasing to countries like Syria. They could easily be a hot export item because of all these features.

They would be very useful, but not against drone swarms IMHO.

To combat drones, anti-aircraft systems of the future are being created, by Alexander Timokhin for VZGLYAD. 07.06.2023.

How should an air defense system be arranged against a swarm of kamikaze drones.

Russian drones - especially loitering ammunition - have become one of the most powerful means of destroying armored vehicles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the sky of a special operation. However, the same devices, and of a new generation, are being actively created in the West. This threat seems to be fully realized, and special anti-aircraft systems are being created in the country to deal with them. What do they look like and how can they be made even better?

At the end of June, an extremely interesting combat vehicle was shown at the International Youth Industrial Forum "Engineers of the Future - 2023" in the Tula region. So far, apparently, a prototype, if not a layout. We are talking about a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (ZSU) based on the BTR-82A, but with a new gun mount. The very appearance of such an armored vehicle shows that the Russian military-industrial complex has matured on the whole the right course to create new means of combating enemy UAVs.

Fighting vehicle and unmanned threat

First, about the installation itself. The base chassis is the BTR-82A, but the weapons are different. A weapon mount is installed on the vehicle, which has two 23-mm 2A7 cannons, previously used in a quad version on the Shilka ZSU, which was once a thunderstorm for low-flying aircraft. The combat vehicle is equipped with a radar station (radar), and in front of the turret there is a surveillance and panoramic system from JSC "NTC Elins" in a hemispherical case, apparently to provide the ability to detect a target without turning on the radar.

On top of the turret itself, there is an optical-electronic sighting system of an unknown type. Media reports claim that the machine is designed to destroy unmanned aerial vehicles. It is worth considering it from this point of view.

Firstly, the guns that this ZSU is equipped with are distinguished by a high rate of fire and density of fire. This can even bring down a quadrocopter. And the combined guidance through both radar and optical channels allows you to detect and hit the drone from a long distance. The base chassis of the armored personnel carrier greatly simplifies the development of the vehicle in the army, since the chassis is almost the same as the armored personnel carrier. The presence of optical detection systems allows you to "not glow" - not to detect yourself, including the radar for radiation, which can be like death in a war with an enemy who has electronic intelligence. In addition, the optical channel is insensitive to radio interference.

Does the army need a purely barreled air defense system (now there are either missile or rocket-gun systems in service)? Yes, it's very necessary.

In contrast to the wars of the past, small drones, both reconnaissance and attack ones, showed themselves massively in the same SVO. Quadcopters turned out to be incredibly important, primarily for reconnaissance. And these are very small products, which are impractical to shoot with missiles. Machine guns do not finish off, and it is often impossible to aim - the target is too small and too far away.

And in the wars of the future, kamikaze drones like our Lancet will appear massively, but used many times more massively, kamikaze copters like the Turkish KARGU or FPV drones that are now being massively used. And the most unpleasant thing is autonomous kamikaze drones operating as part of a swarm, without external control. Such a swarm acts like a swarm of bees - the drones are able to adapt in attack to the actions of other drones in the swarm, as a result, the strike group is actually self-governing. While flying in a given area, the drones themselves, without a command, massively attack everything that is recognized as a target.

Now such systems are on the verge of mass production in the United States. They are followed by China. No missiles will be enough to repel such attacks. And if they are not reflected, the number of personnel losses in the attack area will be in the hundreds of people per minute, and no trenches will save.

Today, at the front, to combat drones, so-called anti-drone guns are used, which are actually directed emitters of electromagnetic waves that can disrupt drone control. The problem is that the operator of such a gun is a visible target for enemy electronic intelligence, and therefore for artillery. There are software ways to deal with enemy drones, but their applicability is very limited.

Most likely, in the near future, the communication systems used to control drones, and their future resistance to interference, will make it impossible to combat them with the above methods. This is a question for several years. It is artillery systems that are the only thing that can fight the future unmanned threat.

The second reason why a return to anti-aircraft artillery is necessary is the so-called SDB - Small diameter bombs, bombs with a small diameter. These are ordinary gliding precision bombs, but small in size. Due to its small size, even one medium combat aircraft can carry dozens of such bombs and drop them in one gulp. Theoretically, air defense systems could shoot them down if the guidance systems allow, but again - no missiles will be enough.

The VZGLYAD newspaper has already written about the threat of a swarm of loitering ammunition and how to deal with it. Let's get a quote. “There is only one way to stop them - by creating and maintaining a fragmentation field of such density on their combat path that they cannot pass through it ... In five or six years, the commander of a company tactical group marching in a column will suddenly find a couple of hundreds of suicide drones heading for his armored personnel carrier or infantry fighting vehicle, and the Russian Armed Forces need to learn to repel such attacks now. Technically, Russia is capable of preparing for this, but it needs to be done, the problem will not disappear by itself.”

So, we have, in fact, the first explicit attempt by the Russian military-industrial complex to create an anti-aircraft system capable of withstanding a group of loitering ammunition. However, it is immediately clear what and how could be improved in this sense.

Fly in the ointment and repetition of the past

First. With a caliber as small as the 23mm and guns without programmers (and for 23mm there are no programmers for guns or projectiles in Russia for 23mm), this new ZSU will have a very high ammunition consumption per target. And the smaller the target, the more you will need to shoot to hit it.

With the massive use of at least copters by the enemy, such installations will shoot the ammunition load almost instantly. What is needed for an anti-aircraft artillery installation to be effective? Firstly, the possibility of using projectiles with a programmable detonation. Then the shells are blown up near the target, generating the same fragmentation stream, and not hitting the target with direct hits. This is how Rheinmetall's Skynex anti-aircraft gun works, for example, with a 35-mm automatic cannon and programmable detonation projectiles.

Secondly, to form a fragmentation flow, fragments themselves are needed, the source of which is the material of the projectile body and the explosive inside. The more metal and explosives, the more fragments, and this requires a large projectile - for example, 57 mm.

The value of developments in caliber 30 mm is primarily that it is theoretically possible to equip an infantry fighting vehicle or armored personnel carrier with a data receiver, with the help of which an armored vehicle will receive target designation for firing at an air target. And then a 30-mm projectile with a programmable detonation will make it possible to shoot down drones not only for special anti-aircraft installations, but also for any armored vehicle. Including the one that is fighting right now. Almost everything in the Ground Forces shoots in 30 mm caliber, from armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles armed with cannons to Tunguska and Pantsir.

Of the 57-mm systems, the Ground Forces now receive only the old AZP-57 anti-aircraft guns developed back in the 1950s from the S-60 complex. These guns are used in the NWO for shooting at ground targets in the absence of more modern weapons.

But there is another 57-mm system - the 2S38 combat vehicle of the anti-aircraft artillery system, created as part of the Derivation-Air Defense development project. This machine has just such a projectile that is needed, it is assembled on the BMP-3 chassis, it has a guidance system that does not unmask itself with radiation. Testing the machine is slow and difficult. But it is this installation that is closest to what will be needed in the future, and not a 23-mm ZSU based on an armored personnel carrier.

As for this machine, we see another opportunity to improve it. In light of the nature of the threats on the new ZSU, it is worth moving away from a pair of 23-mm cannons to one 30-mm, but with a programmable detonation of shells and an increased ammunition load. For all the insufficiency of the 30-mm projectile, such a solution would be more effective than the 23-mm one.

On the other hand, JSC "STC Elins" should pay close attention to the AZP-57 guns from storage. They have much better prospects for modernization than the ZU-23. Since the 2S38 is on endless trials, you can try to work on the AZP-57. Moreover, a special vehicle for combating drones has long been required by the Russian Armed Forces. The future, which has been predicted for quite a long time, is almost here.

https://vz.ru/society/2023/7/6/1219839.html

I would say LIDAR and EO systems would be the best way to deal with drones simply because anything spewing radar signals trying to detect drones is going to get targeted by enemy artillery.

I also think that a new 40mm grenade with a command detonated HE Frag payload would be a valuable addition to their arsenal.

It would make the round rather more effective if you could detonate it above targets with poor top cover, but also engaging air targets would be useful too, and the computing power needed could be contained in a box the size of a cell phone with optics and laser rangefinders build into the weapon rather than the ammo making the weapon more accurate and more effective and keeping the ammo affordable.

For instance, enemy troops firing from a window, you can lase the wall the window is part of and then add 1 metre to the range... fire a 40mm grenade through the window and have it detonate 1m into the room... would be very effective in dealing with enemy near the window shooting through the window at you. A normal grenade would pass through the window and might travel quite a distance to hit the back wall of the room and have no effect on those shooting through the window.

Equally troops firing from a trench, you could detonate your grenades directly over the trench.

They fit LIDAR to small drones for mapping terrain... how hard would it be to attach it to a small ballistics computer, a laser range finder would be redundant because a LIDAR is a 3D laser range finder... and night and all weather optics, plus some sort of transmitter to signal the grenade to detonate on command.

All the ballistics calculations could be done in the vehicle launching the grenades so the grenades themselves could be cheap, so you could launch multiple grenades into a drone swarm and detonate them all together to fill the airspace with fragments to bring down as many enemy drones as possible.

Another solution would be if you detect a drone swarm moving towards your forces a couple of air burst heavy artillery rounds with GLONASS guidance could be used to take out large numbers of targets at once... a 120kg Tulip shell could carry a lot of fragments or a very large EMP warhead...

And of course there are lasers, which could be used against clouds of enemy drones cutting through them like a sword if there are lots of them.

Drones are still new so work on defeating them is important, but it is also important to make any new technology dual use and also able to enhance existing weapons.

Being able to direct a HE artillery shell to a specific point in space and detonate it could be used for all sorts of things... from dealing with a drone swarm to a large enemy infantry attack trying to overwhelm defences with numbers.

Airburst HE shells in 30mm and 57mm as well as 40mm would be useful for other roles like dealing with targets behind front cover but with limited top cover... which can be located by drones but requires special weapons and ammo to exploit.

Another solution could just be a drone with structurally strong fronts that could be used to ram enemy drones and disable them.

Drones with heavy propellers that are reinforced like the blades on a motor mower because most swarm drones will be small and very lightly made to reduce RCS and IR signature so they will be light and mostly made of plastic so a drone with a big front prop with lots of blades spinning at high speed would make your drone fast and manouverable and you could fly around ramming tiny drones in flight...

Actually I was thinking of I-16 Polikarpovs at the start of WWII ramming German bombers because they ran out of ammo...

Fragmentation warheads, over the heads of friendly infantry? Yeah, that would never pass.

They would be required to replace the effectors with pure HE warheads. The area of effect would be worse, so you need to compensate with increased precision so either more complex automatic control or greater operator's skill.

Most, if not all drones aren't rated for minor overpressure anyway so even the explosive power of a small grenade should be enough.

Even heavy metal APFSDS arrows can be defeated by overpressure. The shock wave from a lateral interception would apply a destabilizing yaw and the projectile would impact at a bad angle or even miss the vehicle entirely, if its intercepted far enough.

Come to think of it, this thing is like an aerial Afghanit APS umbrella. Maybe this is the reason why the ground-based Afghanit lacks dedicated mortars for hard-kill. The tethered drone pulls double duty by providing airborne recon as well as top cover from air threats.

Russia Develops First 23mm Guided Detonation Munition - Source, 08.17.2023.

KUBINKA, Moscow Region (Sputnik) - The first guided detonation munition of the smallest caliber of 23 millimeters (0.9 inches), which will multiply the effectiveness of drone destruction, has been developed in Russia, a source told Sputnik on Thursday.

"For the first time in our country, we have managed to install a controlled detonation [mechanism] in a 23-mm caliber ammunition. The development will allow to multiply the effectiveness of hitting small targets such as copters and drones," the source told Sputnik at the Army-2023 international military-technical forum.

The test firing of the new munition type is set to take place in the near future, after which it will be demonstrated to potential customers, the source added.

Guided detonation munitions are designed to explode at a precise point on their flight path, calculated by the fire control system. In particular, when firing at ground targets, this makes it possible to hit enemy personnel hiding in a trench more effectively, as the projectile explodes when it reaches a point exactly above the trench. As a result, enemy soldiers are exposed to damaging factors such as shell fragments, high-explosive effect and shock wave.

When used against airborne targets, such as air-launched missiles or drones, these munitions provide a controlled detonation and create a field of attack elements precisely in the path of the projectile. This drastically reduces ammunition consumption and the time required to hit a target.

The 23x152-mm ammunition is mainly used in Soviet-era ZU-23-2 twin-barrel anti-aircraft autocannons and similar equipment. Such autocannons are designed to destroy air targets. Their rate of fire is 2,000 rounds per minute, and their range is 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) in height and 2.5 kilometers in range. Currently, there are several projects to modernize anti-aircraft cannons in Russia.

The Army-2023 forum is taking place in the Moscow Region's town of Kubinka from August 14-20. Sputnik is the official media partner of the event.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230817/russia-develops-first-23mm-guided-detonation-munition---source-1112679738.html

Until we wage war on the thinking machines and everyone goes back to melee combat that is.

And the game continues... 6 large drone attacks most of which are stopped but a few drones get through and starts a fire that destroys two transport planes... we don't know the full details but Russia strikes back with their own attack which of course we wont hear about doing much more damage because Ukrainian air defence is nothing like Russian air defence, but somehow the Orcs are winning according to some:

Russia has been nice so it has plenty of options to respond to anything Kiev does or achieves...