Russian defence against drone swarms

GarryB wrote:the Russians will track down who launched the attack, who supported them, who paid for the attack, and who turned a blind eye to let it happen... and then piss on their parades.

Post Moscow theater attack, post Beslan attack Russian government never did anything of what you have suggested.

GarryB wrote:I would think it would be a rather brave faction that tried a chemical weapon attack on Russia... the response could be very personal and in kind

Such attacks on Russian cities could well be launched by terrorists within Russia like Chechens.

jhelb

Do you really think anyone involved in the theatre attack and Beslan is still alive? Just because Mother didn't go on world TV and announce smearing a herd of morons in to the mud does not mean it didn't happen. Anyone who needed to know of the smear, knows of it.

As Papa said, stop wasting electrons on your foolishness.

Auslander

Such attacks on Russian cities could well be launched by terrorists within Russia like Chechens.

I would say again, of all the countries in the world, Russia is probably best placed to deal with such issues... it has the equipment and the technology and the intel.

Did you notice that Putin warned the US of the 11/9 attack two days before it happened... Putin has warned the west about a lot of things before they happened... I think instead of a democrat cess pool of shit stirrers like they have in the US that the Russian intel agencies do their jobs well and are to be respected, and are critical to help Putin make the right choices and decisions at the right time.

Obviously if Putin was an orange monkey, or a retard like bush jnr or an asshole like oblama they would still do a good job but it wouldn't make any difference... perhaps that is what happened in the US... all the good intel people realised they were wasting their time because the boss reads what he wants to read and spins it the way he wants to spin it so he can do as he pleases. Putin is not stupid and Russia has benefited greatly from his leadership.

BTW didn't the theatre siege and the beslan massacre lead directly to two invasions of Chechnia... the first not so successful, the second successful on many levels.

I would agree with Auslander that certain people got what was coming to them... it isn't easy giving someone brain cancer...

"it isn't easy giving someone brain cancer."

Strange that the same thought was in my mind when that diagnosis first became known. Either that, or karma is a cast iron bitch.

Research Institute "Vector" on UAV counteraction systems

Our blog has already published an interview with the director general of the Research Institute "Vector" (part of the Holding "Roselectronics") Sergei Skorykh. We also managed to visit the enterprise itself and get acquainted with the Sickle product, designed for radio suppression of small UAVs.

Sickle system.
Suppresses communication channels, control and satellite navigation system UAV (s) bmpd

GarryB wrote:drone should be relatively straight forward... whether the drone uses its radar closer to the enemy or perhaps inside enemy territory, or the Su-57 scans for targets and the much closer but radar silent drone listens to the radar return... assuming they are synchronised then the drone being closer to the target should receive a better signal return because the signal has not travelled as far and it would also detect signals not heading directly back to the source of the radar signalling so radar waves deflected away from the Su-57 that is scanning might be detected by several drones operating with the aircraft.

The US Air Force is now trying to use Swarm Drones to overwhelm enemy air defenses. The idea is that a large aircraft - C-130, C-17 or even a fighter aircraft like the F-18 will carry a few hundred drones as close to enemy airspace and then launch these drones.

Eventually hundreds of these hard to detect drones ( because of small size, stealth) will attack enemy positions on the ground.

jhelb wrote:
The US Air Force is now trying to use Swarm Drones to overwhelm enemy air defenses. The idea is that a large aircraft - C-130, C-17 or even a fighter aircraft like the F-18 will carry a few hundred drones as close to enemy airspace and then launch these drones.

Eventually hundreds of these hard to detect drones (because of small size, stealth) will attack enemy positions on the ground.

Well these drones will not be difficult to fight. The problem is current air defenses are not optimized to defend themselves against them. I suspect a new or updated point defense complex with a gun and a new radar to protect air defenses and bases.

jhelb wrote:

The US Air Force is now trying to use Swarm Drones to overwhelm enemy air defenses. The idea is that a large aircraft - C-130, C-17 or even a fighter aircraft like the F-18 will carry a few hundred drones as close to enemy airspace and then launch these drones.

Eventually hundreds of these hard to detect drones ( because of small size, stealth) will attack enemy positions on the ground.

The thing is that such drones are more expensive than cruise missiles because they need to be long range (if not the c-130 or c17 are dead meat before they launch them), stealthy (if not the AIDS will detect them and move its air defence systems) and they need to cooperate btw themselves and use same guidance methodes as cruise missiles ( gps will be jammed). They also need sensors to detect radars or ground targets ...

So they are just slower cruise missiles but also need to be much smarter than simple cruise missile. If they are too slow they will need hours before coming near their target which by the time would have moved away.

At the end a su-34 with 6 kh-31 would do a better job.

The US Air Force is now trying to use Swarm Drones to overwhelm enemy air defenses. The idea is that a large aircraft - C-130, C-17 or even a fighter aircraft like the F-18 will carry a few hundred drones as close to enemy airspace and then launch these drones.

They have been talking about this for some time now and I really can't see them doing a better job at making this a reality, than they did with the light cheap unified light stealth fighter to replace all 4th gen fighters with a small light capable strike fighter that everyone will use... one set of spare parts for everyone, it will be cheap because we will make thousands of them... the US alone will use 3,500 of these aircraft and Americas allies will all use them too...

This is American so it is going to end up being too expensive and so they wont be able to make enough to make a difference let alone be decisive.

The problem is that cheap and simple is not something they understand... they wont make much of a profit with cheap and simple and so they don't do it very well.

The huge irony is that Russia and China will likely be brilliant at cheap and simple and their counter systems are going to be a real serious threat to the west... the west has a history of developing stuff but not really developing or introducing defences against such stuff... so their ships are vulnerable to even their own subsonic anti ship missiles like the British boats in the Falklands, ironically you could argue that the pack attack programming of missiles like Granat and Vulkan is actually what they are talking about today for their own use in anti ship missiles.... amazing new tech there guys... welcome to the 1970s...

Small means fragile, so air burst 57mm cannon shells and 30mm cannon shells would be a good start, plus EMP jammer beams and rounds... perhaps artillery sized shells so they pulse away from the target and don't damage local infrastructure... and of course the blatently obvious... attack the launch platform before these things are released.

BTW have you noticed the trends in Russian SAMs? Big long range SAMs being replaced by small lighter missiles which still have decent range but replace the old big missiles by a factor of four or more... SA-6 had three missiles on the TEL, SA-11 has four, SA-17 has four as well but the new model replacement has 6 or 12 missiles. The original SA-9 had four missiles ready to fire and the SA-13 has 6, while the SOSNA-R has 12 missiles. The Tunguska originally had four missiles and the standard 2S6M has 8, while Pantsir has 12 and now they are developing special missiles that fit four small missiles to a single tube... the original Tunguska is not used any more but standard 2S6M units could therefore have 4 x 8 = 32 ready to fire missiles each and the Pantsir could have 4 x 12 =48 missiles ready to fire per vehicle... and new models shown can have up to 24 missile tubes per vehicle so 4 x 24 is 96 ready to fire missiles... plus of course guns, and new guns on the way have over 100 57mm rounds on board ready to fire... and that is without any of these swarm drones they keep talking about being fielded. (I missed OSA... with originally 4 missiles open and exposed that was replaced by 6 missiles in boxes ready to fire and of course the TOR system replacement with first 8 missiles ready to fire and now the current model, 16 smaller lighter faster longer ranged more accurate missiles ready to fire..)

Just look at the expansion of ready to fire missiles from the old systems to the new ones the increase in actual ready to fire missiles has literally exploded, and that doesn't include other weapons that can be used from MANPADS and ATGMs like Kornet that have been designed to have anti drone and anti aircraft capability designed in to them.

GarryB wrote: plus EMP jammer beams and rounds... perhaps artillery sized shells so they pulse away from the target and don't damage local infrastructure...

A couple of questions:

(1) What are these EMP jammer beams and rounds. By beams I suspect you are referring to a system like Krasukha and Palantin but what are EMP rounds ?

(2) If you jam, shoot down these drones and they fall in civilian areas they will still cause a lot of damage isn't it because once they fall the warhead they are carrying will explode on the ground.

(3) What if these swarm drones take advantage of blind spots in air defence and attack the target ? Even in a networked air defence system there will be blind spots.

jhelb wrote:

GarryB wrote: plus EMP jammer beams and rounds... perhaps artillery sized shells so they pulse away from the target and don't damage local infrastructure...

A couple of questions:

(1) What are these EMP jammer beams and rounds. By beams I suspect you are referring to a system like Krasukha and Palantin but what are EMP rounds ?

(2) If you jam, shoot down these drones and they fall in civilian areas they will still cause a lot of damage isn't it because once they fall the warhead they are carrying will explode on the ground.

(3) What if these swarm drones take advantage of blind spots in air defence and attack the target ? Even in a networked air defence system there will be blind spots.

1) it's a "bomb" that create an electromagnetic pulse which destroys transistors. Actually it doesn't destroy them but make them useless. The onboard computer of the drones will stop working and the drone will crash.

2) most likely they will crash in open fields because the air defnece protects civilian and military infrastructure. The warhead will be very small. No real danger.

3) blind spot are known by the IADS. That some useless piece of land where there is nothing (like btw two mountains). Nothing to protect there. When they exit the blind spots they will be detected and destroyed.

In Saudi-Arabia one of these blind spots was the largest oil facility in the country.

Swarm drones, as envisaged by such proposals and differently from usual cruise missiles, are supposed to fly to the target and get back, so even taking advantage of blind spots would not suffice, even after reaching their intended target they would still be vulnerable to araction during their return flight.
Also because from 2006 Lebanon conflict almost it has been found that one of the most efficient method to hamper an air dominance strategy based on the possibility of a large use of precision weapons is to negate them targets to engage with said systems, trough concealment, dispersion and even burrowing  of  the whole structure of an insurgent movement or even a whole non-statal armed force  of the dimensions of Hezbollah, ISIS and. as the latest example, the Houti army in Yemen.
So sending hundreds of swarm drones just to engage some secondary opportunity objective spotted trough aerial reconnoissance or by special forces could even turn out to be, in the end, counter productive, even in case of a successful engagement if such a thing lead to the destruction of a consistent part of them by a post hit reaction of AD.

(1) What are these EMP jammer beams and rounds. By beams I suspect you are referring to a system like Krasukha and Palantin but what are EMP rounds ?

Using high explosive to generate an EMP pulse... it is only local and I would expect it would not be effective much beyond the fragmentation range of a similar sized munition, but where a fragmentation bomb has individual fragments that spread apart as they travel meaning as distance increases the gaps between the fragments gets bigger and bigger so at a larger distance the chance of getting hit with a fragment is low let alone a hit that would damage the drone. An EMP pulse offers better coverage against smart targets.

Very simply if the target is a bomb and it just has a fuse then an EMP round might just dud the round, but if it has a mechanical backup fuse it will go boom anyway.

For a smart drone it needs to be able to fly by itself, it needs to communicate with other drones in the swarm, and it needs to have sensors and to be able to make its own decisions based on criteria... it needs to have some level of intelligence which is what the EMP would destroy.

(2) If you jam, shoot down these drones and they fall in civilian areas they will still cause a lot of damage isn't it because once they fall the warhead they are carrying will explode on the ground.

That is possible... one of the most successful Scud attacks during Desert Storm featured a Scud that hit an American Barracks... at the time they were saying 100% kill rate for Patriot of course, but it is certainly possible... in fact likely that this Scud would have been hit several times before impact... perhaps changing its trajectory to hit the barracks that perhaps it might not have otherwise hit.

Generally modern weapons have proximity and impact fuses, but these are only enabled when you get near the target, so hit them early enough and they become an IED bomb threat on the ground... firing air burst shells is more likely to set them off directly but can cause damaged targets to fall to the ground and do damage... not really much you can do about it.

Saw quite a few Patriot launches where the missile just arced over and hit the ground... war zones are dangerous.

(3) What if these swarm drones take advantage of blind spots in air defence and attack the target ? Even in a networked air defence system there will be blind spots.

There are enormous blind spots in western air defence networks because they are arrogant and think they have cruise missiles and they have drones... but until Russia actually used cruise missiles in Syria they were astounded that Russia has cruise missiles... now that the Houthies have attacked Saudi Arabia they have realised other countries have drones and cruise missiles and they might start adapting their current SAMs to deal with very low flying slow targets.

These drones will be communicating with each other and avoiding the ground which generally creates communication traffic which will give away their position... not to mention the carrier aircraft will also be noticed too.

If 500 drones hit a Russian hydro electric power station... they would only do it in time of war and getting 500 drones within range of the target will be a much more costly exercise than launching a tomahawk... if there are these blind spots for swarm drones then there will be blind spots for cruise missiles too...

In Saudi-Arabia one of these blind spots was the largest oil facility in the country.

Makes you wonder what their coverage is over the rest of the country... what were they focussing on protecting?

It clearly wasn't their main source of income.

The Swarm Drone Strategy is a declaration that stealth wont penetrate current Russian air defences... the Russians on the other hand have gone for very high speed and manouver performance which seems like the best direction to head to and they have a significant lead in that they have a missile design on the verge of service entry and their new ships and upgraded old ships will be able to carry it as standard ammo...

80 Calibre missiles is a potent war load for an upgraded Kirov class ship, that could be used against 65-75 targets with a weak enemy, or perhaps 20-30 targets of a medium enemy, or 10-15 targets with a peer enemy. 80 Zircon missiles on the other hand would be a struggle for most modern armed forces to deal with... we are talking about 50-60 targets for that weapon load out against a peer enemy...

And their newer larger ships are only going to carry more.

nd their newer larger ships are only going to carry more. Back to top Reply with quote wrote:

Russia is not building larger ships.

Maybe they will build bigger in 20 years. For now, frigates with a displacement of 4,500 tons are being built very slowly.Russia is far behind the navy and the construction of new ships behind China and the US. You won't be as powerful as you won't dominate the oceans.

GarryB wrote: Generally modern weapons have proximity and impact fuses, but these are only enabled when you get near the target, so hit them early enough and they become an IED bomb threat on the ground... firing air burst shells is more likely to set them off directly but can cause damaged targets to fall to the ground and do damage... not really much you can do about it.

Right. So shooting them down is not an option over a major urban center. So how do you deal with them ?

Jamming - Doesn't work in the case of autonomous drones with pre fed co-ordinates of terrain control mapping data.

Sensor Based Interdiction - Disrupting the drone's flight sensors, motion sensors, gyroscopes etc. But this will cause the drone to crash and that will set off the warhead.

Drones are controlled over wireless links with a typical span of control being over 2 km. This makes it possible for it to be controlled from anywhere within a 13 sq. km area-an area larger than most city suburb. This makes tra­cing a drone operator a practically impossible task

GarryB wrote:These drones will be communicating with each other and avoiding the ground which generally creates communication traffic which will give away their position...

Please state what you mean by "avoiding the ground"

Maybe they will build bigger in 20 years. For now, frigates with a displacement of 4,500 tons are being built very slowly.Russia is far behind the navy and the construction of new ships behind China and the US. You won't be as powerful as you won't dominate the oceans.

With 16 Zircon missiles their corvettes are already better armed than any current western ship... quality is more important than quantity...

Cirkon has a range of 1000km, so this small frigate to launch a rocket must enter the range of aviation from the aircraft carrier group. Only Mig-31 from Kindzal and Tu-22M3 can operate outside the range of tactical aviation from an aircraft carrier.

Right. So shooting them down is not an option over a major urban center. So how do you deal with them ?

Didn't I just say that the US was shooting down Scuds over all sorts of areas including built up areas and failed Patriot missiles were landing all over the place... they fired an average of about 32 Patriots for each Scud, and there is no evidence a single Scud was destroyed in the air by them.

Major urban areas are not packed wall to wall with humans and these tiny drones wont have very big payloads... they will rely on precision to be effective against point or soft targets... the risk to the general public would be very low.

Jamming - Doesn't work in the case of autonomous drones with pre fed co-ordinates of terrain control mapping data.

Jamming does work because it blocks communication with the drone and any corrections it might be sent... if it doesn't recognise the terrain and gets lost it can't dial up the internet or GPS to locate itself.

Sensor Based Interdiction - Disrupting the drone's flight sensors, motion sensors, gyroscopes etc. But this will cause the drone to crash and that will set off the warhead.

The chances it will land in an open field or a even a street are pretty good and its warhead, as I have said will be very small because it is a small drone and for it to have any decent range will need much more fuel or battery power than explosive.

On top of that most munitions are not armed until they approach their target to prevent it from being set off by various systems that activate proximity fuses in munitions, which would result in duds most of the time.

Drones are controlled over wireless links with a typical span of control being over 2 km. This makes it possible for it to be controlled from anywhere within a 13 sq. km area-an area larger than most city suburb. This makes tra­cing a drone operator a practically impossible task

Of course because there is no way that a wireless transmitter sending a signal to a drone could ever be traced... except that it is very much like a mobile phone and they can be very accurately traced... very very accurately traced...

And such guidance can be jammed and the source traced at the same time.

Please state what you mean by "avoiding the ground"

When you fly a plane you need to stay in the air by not flying into the ground... flying into the ground is called crashing... manned planes do that all the time.

Air pressure altimeters tell you your height based on air pressure and are generally given as height above sea level, while radar altimeters use a radar pulse that bounces off the ground below the aircraft or missile to tell what actual height you are above the ground... the latter is passive but wont warn you about high ground or mountains or even trees and power cables... the latter warns you about things below your aircraft that you can fly in to but can be detected.

Some aircraft like helicopters have small flat antenna that faces down and gives altitude when the aircraft is closer than 200-300m to the ground... otherwise the flight control system reverts to air pressure and altitude above sea level... that means the radar only needs to work over a few hundred metres distance so it doesn't have to be very powerful but it can be detected. Larger aircraft like Tornado strike aircraft and Fencer strike aircraft use terrain avoidance radar... a mode for their nose mounted radar used to detect terrain ahead of the aircraft to avoid crashing... imagine flying along a low flat plain and then a steep cliff face 500m tall... a small flat radar pointing down showing altitude above ground wont see the cliff and you would fly straight in to it with no opportunity to climb... which is why high speed aircraft use nose mounted radar for the job... which can also be detected.

A properly equipped SA-13 has all sorts of boxes and sensors attached to the turret to detect terrain following radar and altitude sensors for strike aircraft and cruise missiles respectively to warn the operator such things are approaching... a drone would need some way of detecting and avoiding the ground too.... but also knowing what altitude it is at.

Cirkon has a range of 1000km, so this small frigate to launch a rocket must enter the range of aviation from the aircraft carrier group. Only Mig-31 from Kindzal and Tu-22M3 can operate outside the range of tactical aviation from an aircraft carrier.

Which carrier based fighter aircraft has a radius of 1,000km?

All this discussion started from the idea of swarming drones launched by an AC-130 or similar planes and successively retrieved, so something totally different from the one-way suicide drones like the one used by Houti or even the same Harop used by Israel to try to overcome Syrian air systems.

The former are at all effects military planes, the latter are another peculiar form of missile, exchanging speed with longer range and even the possibility to stay in the area in order to attack opportunity targets.
So jamming will work well with the first, less with the second (but good against loitering ammos).
First ones have the added vulnerability of the possibility to be engaged during the return flight, hitting the intended target in this case is not enough a.t.c.would give up a sign of their own presence.

US already experimented such a concept during the Cold War: it worked even then and quite well also BUUT the logistical tail added was, to put it simply, absolutely impossible to deal with.
And they still had conscription then...

marcellogo wrote:All this discussion started from the idea of swarming drones launched by an AC-130 or similar planes and successively retrieved, so something totally different from the one-way suicide drones like the one used by Houti or even the same Harop used by  Israel to try to overcome Syrian air systems.

The former are at all effects military planes, the latter are another peculiar form of missile, exchanging speed with longer range and even the possibility to stay in the area in order to attack opportunity targets.
So jamming will work well with the first, less with the second (but good against loitering ammos).
First ones have the added vulnerability of the possibility to be engaged during the return flight, hitting the intended target in this case is not enough a.t.c.would give up a sign of their own presence.

US already experimented such a concept during the Cold War: it worked even then and quite well also BUUT the logistical tail added was, to put it simply, absolutely impossible to deal with.
And they still had conscription then...

It could very well happen that US transport plane releases drone swarms in attack formation only to find out them attacked decoys only and than carrier plane gets destroyed in return.

What at one moment in time US sees as a great opportunity to destroy Russian air defense asset with swarm drone tactics may only be decoys placed as to lure opponent into thinking

he is good when he is not into prepared SAM trap. It is difficult to detect targets in depth and when thousands of decoys lights up all controlled by IADS supported who can be certain

into anything? Your only option is to take risk in a hope you will eventually still sooner than latter (until you loose your planes) figure it out the concept you are up against.

GarryB wrote:

Maybe they will build bigger in 20 years. For now, frigates with a displacement of 4,500 tons are being built very slowly.Russia is far behind the navy and the construction of new ships behind China and the US. You won't be as powerful as you won't dominate the oceans.

With 16 Zircon missiles their corvettes are already better armed than any current western ship... quality is more important than quantity...

They plan to put Zircons on 855M SSGNs too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasen-class_submarine#Design

Also the Papanin class OPV can carry Calibr CMs & could be armed with Zircons as well, if need be; if not, their larger icebreakers could.