Russian defence against drone swarms

apparently not, in the second WW 12,7mm sere used as aa weapons till the very end unlike 7,92/7,62

That was mainly because they were used against manned aircraft that often carried light armour to stop rifle calibre rounds so the heavier rounds were necessary.

Manned aircraft are rather larger than most drones need to be so they can be seen and engaged at much greater distances.

If you are talking about hand launched drones that are hard to see at more than 800m away then it is pretty hard to justify using 23mm cannon or 12.7mm HMG rounds because their ability to penetrate armour becomes meaningless if they don't actually make contact with the target to set off their explosive payloads.

It's certainly more expensive in procurement and maintenance, but in which characteristic is it better? open platforms ensure much operational better awareness

Some sort of 360 degree hemispherical sensor operating in IIR and optical wavelengths perhaps using LIDAR technology to automatically detect small flying targets and direct an optical sensor in their direction is more useful than an open bed truck hoping the crew on the gun manage to spot a small elusive target that might be a kilometre away.

drones flying low are not met so far on the battlefield, guess signal to control is too weak

Have you not been watching Russian videos of drone attacks on Ukrainian targets... an optical drone flying at altitude spots the target and monitors the attack while a low flying Lancet approaches the target at very low altitude, normally popping up for the final dive on the target from an unexpected direction.

23mm/30mm explosive rounds are planned to be delivered on the battlefield this year later on.

That will make a difference... being able to fire single shots at a target will minimise collateral damage and the computation power of your average cellphone means a laser range finder and a palmtop computer you could be firing single rounds at most targets with a rather good chance of hits to bring down drones of all sizes.

A heavier drone might require three or four shots to cover it in fragments, but you wont be needing to fire off entire belts of ammo at targets to bring them down.

let's see if it works

Fight fire with fire. Wasps have been defending their nests this way for a very long time and they are generally successful.

No solution is going to be 100% effective all the time.

Just like no level of body armour will make you safe... gaps in the armour and simply more powerful ammunition being fired in your direction means this is true.

like one shot to one fpv drone? without agility unlikely to hit the area and then you send 2 drones one is hit by expensive round then next used time to reload and hit the target?

No. The Coalition wont be driving down the road with the convoy it is protecting swinging its gun round like a Shilka trying to shoot drones.... that would be ridiculous... you would use 23mm cannon or 30mm cannon or 57mm cannon with airburst shells for that, or even lasers.

The idea of the Coalition is that it fires a rather large shell that can fill a grid square with shrapnel so monitoring the front line you detect drones approaching your front line via airborne EO or LIDAR based system, nearby Coalition batteries can load up airburst shells and in dead ground between your troops and their troops that the enemy drones have to cross you fire a volley of airburst shells to cover a 400 square metre area of the battlefield with so many fragments any drones that were there are shredded.

For larger drones flying at higher altitude with cameras finding targets to attack you can fire a couple of rounds in it flight path with the same goal to burst midair where the drone is flying towards... most of the time they orbit areas or fly straight and level looking for targets so it wont matter how long the round takes to get there...

Jammers and other systems also need to be used together to make things difficult for the enemy... some 152mm artillery shells that home in on the TV video stream feed from the recon drone to take out the drone could be fired at the same time another 152mm shell designed to home in on the command control that is directing the drone...

Paradoxically, an old solution like Tunguska or Pantsir seems to be the best ATM. – guns with airburst ammunition and missile combos – and in the foreseeable future, in my humble opinion.

Ironically the old Pantsir was probably better suited with two single barrel 2A72 30mm cannon that could easily fire single shots or very short bursts.

The 2A38M cannon of the Tunguska and later model Pantsir is intended to fire at a very high rate of fire to hit much larger targets multiple times. It is also intended to create a shower of rounds around the point of aim so that if the target speeds up or slows down or climbs or dives or turns it will still get hit by shells.

My suggestionn was for drone swarms. Not individual highly agile drones.

The best way to deal with a drone swarm might simply be a 152mm shell with an EMP warhead set off in the midst of the swarm...

Of course the enormous variety of different drone types with different control methods and other features I rather suspect the more options to deal with them the better.

not necessarily much smaller

Such drones would be engaged by current air defence forces... which largely don't exist in western formations, but in Russian formations are rather good at their job most of the time.

It is the tiny drones including FPVs and suicide drones that are the problem.

Not sure what's your chance to hit fpv diving on you with mg at all.

Those tricky buggers that are tiny and fly between bushes and trees and wont be seen till they pop up for a dive 30m from the target will likely only be "shot down" by APS systems or men with shotguns sitting on top of the vehicles... or jammers/dazzlers.

Ideally you will spot such targets with airborne platforms using optical and radar and lidar sensors so each convoy or potential target along its flight path can be given warning of its approach... its low altitude means it wont be seen till it is very close or when it needs to cross large areas of open flat ground... this means shotguns at short range will be more effective than machine guns. Shot or cannister rounds from larger calibre weapons like grenade launchers would be interesting options too.

The problem is complex and some systems already in use can be adapted to fill that gap, but new systems also need to be developed including a swarm of drones that kill enemy drones.

BTW Valkyrie (ukro recon drone ) 1,6m wingspan, flying on 2000m you'd engage with 7,62mm?

If it is going to fly at such an altitude it should be straight forward to detect and engage with standard and conventional air defence systems like Verba and Pantsir mini missiles.

The new missiles they are working on with ARH and 3kg warheads would also easily deal with such a problem.

So you are talking about future and sophisticated solutions? then why to install it on ancient BTR not on something new? Any cheap modern platform shall be good enough

Because BTRs are cheap and are in service... you need something that can be deployed almost anywhere to support support convoys of mostly trucks and support vehicles so a BTR is ideal really. Newer vehicles like the Typhoon and Boomerang range of platforms will have better armour but wont be easy to put into serial production like a BTR-80 or BTR-82 vehicle could. I would say Tigr platforms would also be good too in terms of mobility and cost.

I would think an anti drone vehicle would be incorporated into all Russian armoured vehicle families anyway, but Terminators might be adapted to the role too.

Perhaps most vehicles will be getting anti drone systems from cages to jammers and modified APS systems that can deal with drones as well, but separate convoy protection vehicles with lasers and jammers and specialist drone or missile detection equipment and guns are needed along with dedicated armoured vehicles like Terminator that be upgraded to deal with drones too... with air burst cannon shells and LIDAR and a datalink to nearby airborne sensors looking for small targets...

There will also be defensive drones.

Of course sometimes an Su-25 will come across a drone....

I have and it appears that the Lancets consistently dive in the final phase only. i have never seen Lancets flying flat and low in residential areas.

The enormous size of their huge white wings would make them an obvious target for enemy ground forces... it would have to fly low to get to the target.

Flying high makes sense if you are trying to find targets to attack but to avoid being shot down it makes more sense to fly very low and very fast... or be very small and not noticed.

guess that's the idea behind it, Russian ammo burts time is to be laser controlled form gun... apparently testing was postive

Air defence is maths... the amount of time it takes for your shells to reach a point of interception gives you a flight time period for the target. If you know the targets aerodynamic performance then you can calculate how big the interception box is. Its ability to speed up or slow down, to climb or descend, its ability to turn left or right and accelerate or slow down. If I make it simple and make it a 100m engagement with a rifle and a human being on flat open ground between the time you fire and the time the bullet would intercept the target is an amount of time... say 0.08 seconds. The distance the target can move in 0.08 seconds would form a box of x by x size if they know they have just been fired upon and are trying to dodge the bullet. If the bullet explodes at 98m and showers the target box with fragments then you might only need to fire one shot to assure a kill because no matter what the target does they can't move their vulnerable bits out of your interception box.

With Tunguska the box gets filled with 30mm cannon shells so it does not matter how hard the target aircraft manouvers some of those cannon shells will hit and do damage and a damaged aircraft will have reduced ability to evade the next burst of shells and will therefore likely be hit with more 30mm shells the next burst assuming it survives the first.

Tunguska is being replaced by 2S38 because even at an enormous rate of fire at 3km range the gaps between the 30mm shells is still too big and could let cruise missiles fly through without a single hit. In comparison a burst of 57mm shells that explode and send tens of thousands of fragments around the point of aim each means that interception box gets filled again and the target can't escape.

Air burst 30mm shells is a serious improvement against small targets but against big targets like an Apache the fragments might not be heavy enough to do serious damage so you use normal HE rounds because they were already getting the job done.

Your assessment aligns well with the described scenario.However, it's too complex for practical implementation. Consider the scenario: troops advancing, drones appear suddenly. Would you start shooting? not to mention how much is one round worth? 10? 50 drones?

I would say they are not stupid and any infantry advance would be covered by a few coalition frag rounds in the fields in front of them to make enemy troops put their heads down and for enemy drones to be thinned... but I would also suggest a Russian advance would also incorporate its own drones and its own artillery to clear the way first.

Sending your own drones often reveals enemy positions so being able to launch 152mm shells from 30km away or more to explode in the path of enemy drones... well the enemy wont know where your positions are because of your muzzle flashes...

In this scenario, a higher rate of fire could prove to be more advantageous. A one-second burst would dispatch approximately 65 rounds, effectively covering a larger area surrounding the incoming drones. Considering the typical altitudes and speeds at which drones operate, the range of a 30mm caliber is indeed valuable.

30mm rounds are certainly part of the solution, and if the 23mm air burst rounds can be a little cheaper and the gun being lighter and with less recoil then they should all be used where sensible. The 30mm rounds will definitely have better reach and punch.

The Terminator has two dual feed 30mm cannon. Its primary mission is enemy position suppression for which HEI-T is probably a favourite round. With two guns each with two belt feeds one feed for each gun can be HEI-T rounds so both guns can fire at once at a ground position and blow the sht out of it. That leaves one feed for each gun so it makes sense for one feed for one gun to be API-T or APDS-T or APFSDS for anti armour use if you come across a hard target, and the remaining barrel can have HE air burst shells... it can fire in its high fire rate about 8-10 rounds per second, which would be plenty most of the time... in fact firing 10 rounds would probably be wasteful. With a good ballistics computer and air burst mechanism that sets the rounds off at a good distance you probably only would need 2-4 shells per target for most targets. A target pulling high gs trying to evade would be trickier but would not be completely safe either.

All of the above (including the shotgun) is good as a last ditch defense against kamikaze type drones, but you do need long range means of countering recce drones. These drones do come in different guises from tiny FP types to very large high altitude types. Even supersonic/hypersonic ones. These recce drones are the most dangerous ones as they can spot you miles away without even been noticed.

Very much agree... it is the drones with cameras that find targets and monitor attacks so the attack drones don't need to fly high looking for targets they can fly directly towards their target and using the view from the recon drone it can see which way the target is facing and attack it from an unexpected direction... and you can launch several attack drones while the attacks are monitored by the recon drone and once a target is destroyed they can attack the next target.

Taking out the recon drone would be top priority.

I would say a laser based weapon system with a lidar sensor and optics with thermals and an IRST system that detects warm spots in the air (ie not an imaging system that has to scan the entire sky). The IRST will rapidly find things in the air and then you can use an imaging IR or IIR system to look at it and identify it and a laser to engage or perhaps a cannon with an airburst shell to take it down.

Ideally you want your own recon drones airborne that can spot enemy recon drones and also enemy FPV and suicide drones to warn friendlies in the area of their presence. Being aware of a threat (as opposed to just generally jumpy) can make things rather better.

At one time there were combination weapons that were being developed... perhaps the integration of a grenade launcher together with a 9mm SMG could be something that is useful where the grenade launcher might be loaded with super shotgun like rounds, while the SMG portion can be used in trench warfare at close range.

There was a weapon shown that used a big 20 round drum magazine for a 30mm grenade launcher, it was called Arbelet or something. Perhaps making it a bullpup grenade launcher with an underbarrel new model SMG in 9mm.

Or perhaps that compact 5.45x39mm MA weapon could be attached underneath a grenade launcher type weapon... the MA is only 2.5kgs.

This is the page for the 30mm Arbalet and as you can see it is a substantial weapon likely with heavy recoil.

I would say a modified version of it in bullpup layout with an over the shoulder design perhaps with the 10 round magazine behind the shoulder and the MA under the front portion of the weapon...

Or perhaps a long barrel bullpup 12 gauge with an MA underbarrel rifle?

The grenade launcher could act as a range weapon as well as an anti drone weapon over shorter ranges with a SMG... perhaps a Klin or the full auto model of the Boa constrictor pistol attached to it.

The US is looking at an 18.5mm grenade launcher based on the 12 gauge round and I believe the Russians are looking into that too... maybe a 23mm calibre shotgun model based on the KS-23 with a SMG lower would be interesting.

The idea is to be able to combine the grenade launcher role with the shot gun role...

A shotgun is a very versatile weapon but against humans you really only have buckshot and solid slugs. Adding small grenade rounds would make it rather more effective, especially if you could launch them a few hundred metres.

The Russians have the KS-23 shotgun so using that shotgun ammo would enable larger grenades to be designed and perhaps grenades with special features, like flechette rounds etc.

Of course they already have air burst 23mm projectiles and 30mm projectiles so they could be adapted to use in a grenade launcher of these calibres too...

Of course having said all that, perhaps another solution for drones is rifle scopes with built in laser range finders and ballistics computers so you can hit moving targets with rifle fire. Mounting such sights on light machine guns like the RPK-74 or the new RPL-20 belt fed weapon could make them rather useful against flying targets too.

Just as an example of what can be improvised at the front line:



One of the conflicts in Chechnia there were too many 40mm and 30mm grenade launcher grenades and not enough hand grenades so the men on and near the front line got to work...

Full 360 degree rotation of a turret in 1 second would be disturbing.

As Mir points out the observation drones are the key because they make the attack and suicide drones more effective.

A LIDAR system should enable a ground based optical system to detect even the smallest lowest RCS and lowest IR drones to be detected without giving your presence away to observation sources enormous distances away like you would with high energy radar.

EW kit to detect electronic communications would assist the process too even if it just locates drones and transmitters...

I think aerostats with MMW radar and EO sensors like FLIR and IIR as well as LIDAR operating at an altitude of maybe 4-5km altitude to keep it out of small arms fire range and also give an excellent unimpeded view of the battlefield and remain on station for weeks to months rather than minutes or hours.

Once you have the eyes in the sky then warning and command and control become much easier to deal with the threats spotted.

Of course APS type systems will still be needed for armoured vehicles to protect things launched from very close range from RPGs to ATGMs and drones of all types.

Airborne anti drone drones will need to become a thing as well.

Look at this:

5.56mm microgun. 16 lbs empty, up to 6000rpm.
Imagine a mini CIWS armed with this bad boy in 5.45mm.

They actually designed a 5.56mm six barrel gatling along with the other types including the 7.62mm and the 20mm and the 5.56mm was found to be rather useless.

It is essentially ineffective at ranges more than about 400m and uses an enormous amount of ammo, which most of the time is unnecessary.

HIgh rate of fire is useful against small fast targets, but its cost and lack of effective range make it rather less useful than a more conventional LMG with a belt feed.

The Russians have gatlings in 7.62x54R and 12.7x108mm and in 23x115mm and 30x165mm, but they didn't proceed with 5.45mm or 14.5mm designs AFAIK.

Enormous rates of fire are a bit redundant if you can have airburst cannon shells... cheaper and easier and with much better range and performance.

A 23x115mm single barrel gun... say based on the KPVB should be able to engage targets out to about 3-4km with airburst shells compensating for the much lower rate of fire.

There was an Aussie company who thought their metal storm weapons would also be big but again, really, it is only Air defence and anti missile systems that benefit from very high rates of fire and as we have seen in the Ukraine the west doesn't care about air defence or anti missile systems... they are attack and aircraft oriented.

Twin machine gun installation with optics.

Is it two or is it three?

I would like it to have four and it could be the Maxim of the 21st C...

One big problem I see is that it is a one shot type of thing with a relatively slow rate of fire; what if a single soldier misses and/or is attacked by more than one drone?

It is not heavy so you could carry 2 or three... the grenade launcher has a ejection lever to eject an unfired grenade which would allow you to load one and fire and eject the device and then muzzle load another device and fire without having to remove the empty shotgun shell and reload it manually.

This is not intended as a replacement for a shotgun, this is so soldiers already carrying 40mm grenade launchers can fire shotgun rounds at targets... keep in mind they still have their 5.45mm and 762x39mm calibre rifles they can also fire if necessary. Equally when fighting in trenches having a shot gun round you can fire into a bunker before you enter would be more handy than a grenade launcher grenade that might not fuse properly over such short distances.

With a barrel length that short I would say you would get rather good spread with maybe a 1m wide spread at 10m which would make hitting drones rather easy if you know what you are doing.

12 gauge shotgun rounds are cheap compared with 40mm grenade rounds so you could get a lot of practise in.

Having half the guys in your platoon armed with these should mean rather better coverage than if you issued two or three shotguns to those units.

I guess repeating fire shot-guns are still urgently needed, and are still the best weapon to fight against the smaller drones.

I would agree with that but having a shotgun round and then potentially a burst of 30 rounds of assault rifle calibre rounds means they are not totally vulnerable after that shotgun round has been fired.

Ignore video games for a few seconds, unless you are fighting in trenches or buildings a shotgun is a largely useless weapon of war.

It is a very versatile weapon. If you get shot down in mountains then shotguns are great for survival and food gathering, but for anti personnel use it only has solid slugs and buckshot that would be of any use against humans. Buckshot might be effective to 30-40 metres and a solid slug maybe 100m if you manage a hit but in terms of anti personnel use you are better off with a submachine gun most of the time.

When trying to kill something with a firearm you normally aim for a weak spot or vulnerable spot... brain, heart, lungs, and with a rifle you have a chance of putting the bullet in the right place to hit that vulnerable part. With buckshot you will know the spread at different distances but you have zero control over where the projectiles hit.

Shooting at someone at 40m you might get lucky and one buckshot projectile goes neatly through the targets heart and all the other buckshot miss completely. At 20m you might hit the target four or five times but not anywhere that is immediately lethal. Of course hitting them four or five times means their chances of survival is lower but if you don't hit an important area they might be able to limp off into the bush and you might never find them.

SMG are effective at short range with multiple hits.

If you are going to be shooting at drones then an interesting weapon might be the American 180. It fires standard .22lr rifle rounds that are tiny and super cheap. You could probably hit targets out to 100m easily enough and it has a very high rate of fire... very cheap ammo, almost no recoil, and each round would damage a drone made of plastic or light materials...

Here is a vid:


A brick of 500 rounds of .22lr is relatively cheap and compact... you could probably carry a few thousand rounds easily enough if you wanted to.

I would say using light high velocity rounds like stingers would allow a 100-120m range for engaging light targets.

Not good for use against a human or animal target... essentially it relies on multiple hits to bleed a target... like trying to kill someone with a machette... it would work but it would be gruesome.

Nice.

I think Nomadski mentioned the idea of a net gun a while back, but this is a good implimentation of it.

The problem is that a net is light and would slow down too quickly on its own and rapidly become ineffective and would also be too hard to aim.

Also normal materials like nylon or cotton would not be that durable after being fired from the gun.

This design, which has to be hand loaded takes shaped lead weights connected to kevlar strands that link the projectile weights together.

If you just had the weights they would act like buckshot so as the distance increased they would spread further and further apart so beyond about 30-40m depending on barrel length and choke type the buckshot might be too far apart to reliably hit a small target.

Having kevlar strands linking the projectiles they will remain in a group and not spread beyond a specific width.

Ideally you would want some spin to spread the weights out evenly in a circle with the strands like spokes of a wheel giving maximum width to hit the target and the spokes would wrap around drones and foul or damage propellers and bring the target down but the weights will form a mass that slowly spreads out and then likely contracts because of the tension on the strands.

The point is that the strands not only stop the projectiles spreading out too far, they also fill the space between the projectiles so even if projectiles go around the target the strands will make contact and do damage.

An airburst shell spreads fragments between the projectiles fired, but this is just as good.

These rounds can be fired through any shotgun capable weapon including the new 40mm grenade launcher adapter above, which makes the shotgun more versatile and useful.

With the kevlar strands keeping the projectiles from spreading more than a metre or so this would actually make it effective to much greater ranges than buckshot is normally capable of.

As mentioned in that video this could extend effective range for shotguns out to 100m.

It can also be applied to different rounds too including 10 gauge shotguns which would allow more weights to be used and longer bits of kevlar strands to cover a wider path of flight.

It would also be interesting to use such a load in something like the 12.7x55mm weapons they have developed, or make a 40mm grenade version that uses a small explosive charge to blow weights and kevlar thread nets forward set to explode at a certain distance or designed to be set off at a variable range like the command detonated 23mm and 30mm cannon rounds.

Can they recycle it?

They would be handloads. Probably would not be worth the effort of collecting the components to reload most of the time.

Shotgun rounds are bulky and carrying your empties back with you... just cheaper to make new rounds.

I would add that net guns traditionally are enormous and heavy and have quite substantial recoil but also much too short an effective range to be useful against a drone that might be carrying a bomb.

Net guns used to capture deer in the wild are generally fired from helicopters and are not "carried any great distance because of their size and weight.

They are also fired from relatively close range... more vertically down than horizontal and from distances of 10-15m or so... which would be too close to use against a drone possibly carrying an explosive charge.

This design (from the video) would be useless for deer or animal recovery, but looks rather good for defeating light small drones out to quite useful ranges...

The problem with the assault rifle versions is once each rifle fires 30 rounds it takes a few seconds to reload each one and cock it ready to start firing again.

The belt feed weapons are better because you don't have to stop every 30 rounds. Also you can load one machine gun with tracer rounds every ten rounds and use that to aim rather than the gun sights so you can walk your fire onto target.

Combat experience is a bit ambiguous with tracer fire... many fighter aces refused to use it because against an unaware target seeing tracer rounds fly by warns them they are under attack, while novice pilots find it better to get hits on target when you can visibly see where your bullets are going and their spread.

In the case of air defence you could probably argue for tracer against manned aircraft because it can make pilots panic and make mistakes when they see all the bullets coming up trying to kill them even if they might not penetrate the aircraft armour. With a drone it might just make it easier to walk fire onto the target to hit it.

Essentially you aim short and gradually move your aim closer and closer and when you get rounds hitting the target you stop adjusting and keep hitting it until it goes down.

Good point about simple solutions being best though, I was thinking about the under barrel 40mm grenade with the shotgun adapter and I thought if you replace the 40mm grenade tube for a five or six shot 12 gauge revolver cylinder you could have a multi shot shotgun and an assault rifle...

But then I thought the 40mm grenade launcher is only about 1kg and changes the balance of the weapon to make it rather front heavy so adding a shotgun with a five or six shot cylinder would be probably double that weight and much worse.

Probably what you want is two weapons combined that compliment each other and I would guess some sort of modular arrangement like a bullpup grenade launcher with an underbarrel SMG where the bullpup grenade launcher could be made in different calibres including a shotgun calibre.

The Americans are working on a 12 gauge grenade launcher... so essentially a shotgun that fires grenades.

The Russians have a 23mm calibre shotgun in production with ammunition for it in production as well, which would allow larger more powerful and more effective grenades.

A grenade launcher can lob grenades out to useful distances and a shotgun is useful over short ranges while a SMG would be effective over mid ranges.

Being able to lob grenades to a couple of hundred metres would be useful, while the SMG would provide short range fire power... as would the shotgun rounds.

A net round in the 23mm calibre should have good range too... probably at least to the 100m they hope the 12 gauge model will be effective to.

In terms of ammo I would say a box mag for the shotgun/grenade launcher would be best while the SMG could use a mag like the Bizon SMG so it contains a decent amount of ammo but does not stick down too far.

The SMG could be an existing type like Kedr/Klin or SR-2 with a piccatinny rail attachment to the shotgun/grenade launcher.

Being a bullpup layout weapon would be good for the shotgun/grenade launcher to achieve better effective range with the extra barrel length.

Russia has drones to test with... why not test simple and cheap...

Though as mentioned they will be adding thermal sights to make them day night and all weather capable.