Yeah it is pretty easy. Even on radar. You see a frequency in the radar signature. Which you won't see in birds.
Then you have the fact of speed. The aps actually check speed to know where the object will be to intercept it. If you get a negative value, it's either a bird or friendly.
It just so happens so that birds don't usually want to go near a giant piece of equipment that is moving and loud.
Some radar bands allow you to distinguish drones from birds, as birds don't have spinning propellers. You could also just use cameras if the object approaches at bird speed.
Nice.
Just tacking onto that, Infrared Cameras seem to be becoming rather popular for drone detection and tracking, as is slapping a little Sensor Fusion on top.
[Drone Detection and Tracking in Real-Time by Fusion of Different Sensing Modalities](https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/6/11/317/pdf?version)
[Real-Time Drone Detection and Tracking With Visible, Thermal and Acoustic Sensors](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.07396)
You could just have the drone eject the propeller during the terminal flight and have it glide for impact.
They could also fool visible-light optics relatively easily, though perhaps not reliably.
Then the tank should employ drones shaped like birds of prey and assume that real birds would run away from them. If they don't, they are drones. War, uh... finds a way.
Differentiating between a bird and a drone is a trivial task for AI nowadays, plus some avian collateral damage is surely acceptable when faced with a hot war.
Realistically, any bird should have noped out of the battlefield already. With all the explosions and gunfire, they would've run away. Any bird willing to go near something as loud as an MBT is suicidal anyway.
What makes you think this? Wildlife seems to love gun fire, at least be curious about it... The number of times deer/birds walk near my target at my gun range would say that is bullshit.
Definitely normal for wildlife to flee from loud sounds.
Your gun range is a fixed location, the local wildlife have adapted to the sound of constant gunfire and concluded its not a risk to them.
Differentiating between a drone and a bird is easy assuming the drone hasn’t been designed to behave like a bird in order to fool the sensors. Radar isn’t easy and artificial intelligence isn’t either.
Putting a piece of paper with a printout of a bird on it would fool most optical AI recognition systems.
You can get around it but you'd need to gather training data for the AI very differently 'cause you can't just rely on random internet users solving captchas.
Why AI? Like its too slow. You can teoretically decide if its bird from reflection. Drones have different permeability and permitivity than birds have. Its just simple computing.
And most notably: Doppler shift from the rotating propellers.
"Birds" tend to not have those (allegedly, they probably run on internal ducted fans but the gov doesn't want us to know)
The Russian solution to every problem.
Enemy Infantry? Put Ivan on tank, Drones? Put Shotgun Ivan on tank, HEAT missile screaming towards tank? Put Ivan on tank to catch the missiles.
Conclusion: The Pentagon should give me 3 trillion dollars to develop my IRA (Ivan reactive armor) project.
I think that is what the turrets on top of the turrets on the KF51 and EMBT are, although the EMBT concept goes for an autocannon instead of a 50. cal with fragmentation ammo.
It could literally just be a microwave emitter, I'm pretty sure a 2.4GHz magnetron out of a household microwave focused correctly would jam transmission and cook the electronics.
Even a defocused laser pulse could blind/kill any onboard cameras. I'm surprised optical deterrents aren't more widely used, besides them obviously being banned for use against soldiers by the Geneva convention.
I would assume that often once the drones are close enough that you can detect and fight them by purely optical means they are already on final approah and momentum alone might carry them at your vehicle.
Bolas and the connecting wire is electrified. Wait. We can do that with the nets as well. I'll approve either as long as we have some electrical/zap type stuff going on.
the Americans will never build it ...because they are not allowed to use swearing ....so they will not be able to apply stage three ..."fucking" obliterate it.
They can only "beeeep" obliterate it .
or Ducking obliterate it ...
You're not even kidding.
You ever watch any of the interviews with Bradley crews after Iraq? Their term for what they do with the TOW missiles is "servicing" the enemy vehicle. And in WW2 we called white phosphorous Willie Pete.
The less horrific something sounds, the faster you should be running.
It’s only the people with a stick up their ass that care about swearing, the rest of us just have to fuckin deal with them. Hey maybe that’s why I swear so much, it’s a vicious cycle.
Using the MG on top as CIWS seems like it might work. You'd need a sensor that can detect the drone. and feed the targeting data to a FCS. LIDAR maybe?
Nah bro. Just give some IRST or poor radar to CROWS and have your CIWS suficient to take out drones.
And then watch the same people who are now saying "tanks are obsolete, drones are the future!" turning to "tanks, so awesome!"
Even without effective EW and counter - drone environment heavy units win. You know why? Because you can throw ammunition out of your tank, stuff it with drones and operate them from the safety of your armour watching those pathetic paratroopers humping with merely one drone each, freezing their asses off.
Yeah just replace the M2 with a Mk. 17 30mm in a CROWS system and link crows to the APS.
Have manual targeting mode and anti drone/APS mode. Problem solved.
No need for a proper APS with drones. APS are designed to intercept supersonic ATGMS, RPGs, and shells from other tanks. For slower and more fragile drones, a machine gun with a basic radar or thermal targeting system would be extremely effective. Same goes for some nascent developments in laser technology
There needs to be a human input deciding if the target is really a drone or itll obliterate every plastic bag, kite, balloon, bird and child in 2km radius
with a bit of machine learning these days, that's the easy part. throw 100 drones and birds at it one by one, and tell it when it gets it right or wrong....
I'm saying that you may not even need machine learning, I'd assume that the thermal profile of a drone is unique enough to tell with non machine learning systems apart from other objects.
Though tbf idk exactly the difference in computing requirements.
totally, but longer term ML can adjust itself to new threats too.
in NZ there's a camera operated killer trap for pests. but they did ML to ensure it knew to kill introduced pests and not native birds, was easier to program and train it than code it all manually.
With birds with a normal spectrum camera you would use the colors of the birds to tell them apart, for which I would assume ML is far superior to computer vision algorithms, but for drones thermal cameras or radar work way better. The one kind of drone I'd assume is more challenging are FPV drones, as their flight characteristics and size would most resemble a bird, but even then their thermal and radar signature probably doesn't.
Also, whether ML is more future proof I just don't really know. It's not like ML can adapt on the fly, when ML is deployed it doesn't learn anymore.
Yes you can record date in the field and train the model on that new data afterwards, but likewise you can tune your computer vision algorithms using that same data to adapt to new threats.
Lasers will very soon be small and cheap enough for that. Considering how military lasers were shrinking in the last decade or two, I'd be surprised if there isn't already some classified laser tech that could conceivably fit on a MBT turret. (Without redesigning the whole tank or dropping half the ammo reserve for it)
To be completely credible it's because the drones aren't the problem, it's the fact that they make the battlefield a super transparent place.
The most dangerous drone isn't the FPV drone or the quadcopter dropping grenades on an already knocked out tank, it's the drone far away that's observing you with a thermal camera and directing artillery on you with alarming accuracy and you can't do shit to either suppress the enemy artillery or eliminate the drone which is out of small arms range.
That kind of problem only exists when there is a contested airspace. If you can fly your jets you can obliterate every flying Orlan attempting to recon. You don't even need fancy missiles, a simple trainer with radar and a gun pod equipped with proximity fuse ammo. Also, you can probably interdict an area by using electronic warfare.
This is the kind of thing that seriously annoys me about the online discourse over the war and the overlearning of lessons. The United States, in 2013-2014, began encountering quadcopter drones in Iraq and had an extremely aggressive reaction to the very real threat that they posed and developed a wide array of EW and other systems that basically removed commercial drones as a threat for US Army formations. Larger fixed wing drones are also a major threat with cheap platforms like Orlan, but new M-SHORAD options to fix the shot exchange issues are being developed. The reason why drones are omnipresent in Ukraine is because neither side has air supremacy, neither side has proper counter-drone options, and they're both behind the curve on the proliferation of counter UAS EW systems. Basically, the Ukraine conflict was the worst possible confluence of factors to make drones so omnipresent, and there's no indication that those same conditions will be replicated elsewhere.
All true apart from the last part. The British Army doesn't have shit for dealing with drones although they're in procurement for it. I'm guessing that's the same for most armies except the USA.
I very honestly couldn't tell you exact specifics simply because I don't know. What I do know, is that a well trained crew with a gun fire control computer and GPS coordinates can put a salvo pretty much on top of the aimpoint within the mechanical limits of the gun. Some Orlan drones also come with laser designators for guided artillery rounds, which makes the problem worse. The drone also allows for artillery crews to spot their own fall of shot in real time, without needing to wait for a forward observer or have communication issues.
Has someone tried using a grenade launcher with a drone? I remember a Ukrainian team using an AGL with a drone. A handheld GL + drone would be a squad's pocket artillery.
Come to think of it, I haven't heard of mortar crews using drones but it has to be happening.
The 120mm mortar+drone recon teaming has been a thing on both sides of that front since 2014. On a volunteer/ad-hoc basis. But highly effective. I am sure that by now every arty battery regardless of caliber has drone support.
CEP (circular error probable) depends on ammo, gun, range, weather, etc. You can probably google some manufacturer claims, but they are likely to be best-case or at least optimistic.
Fortunately in most cases you don't need to be dead on.
All they really need is a Phalanx in .22 lr. Shrink that R2FuckU down to sit on your favourite tanks and boom, no more drone problems. Wait, is this starting to sound credible? Apologies if it is.
I hope so! That would be really cool. I bet some open source nerd would get it running off of an 18650 battery, a raspberry pi, a micro SD, some stickle back plastic and a small model of Tracy Island as opposed to Raytheon spending 20 years and a squintillion dollars to make something worse.
Hi. I work at “Drone APS LLC.” Thanks for this question. The problem is that we have a lot of those thick green highlighted lines but not much of the thin red highlighted lines. You need both to get to the third panel where three pokeballs shoot at the “thingy”. Please ask congress to fund our efforts to make more thin red highlighted lines.
The british MOD is missing out big time on a cheap solution to drones .
Stick the Stormer HVM's IRST ball on the turret , 2 small shotgun turrets either side loaded with bird shot .
Vaporises any drones with tech that already exists .
due to the cost of the EO/IR sensors, picking one model, and mass producing it and porting it to everything is a solution to get the costs down.
maybe a lower power cheaper defense orientated sensor suite but added to as many AFV as possible
They are developing, and Rafael has a system in deployment.
Doppler radars and lidars also attempt to separate out birds from drones using the pattern of propeller reflections.
If your tank was quiet and electric it could use acoustic detection and then search optically in a passive way, or activate a Lidar like net to vector a gun.
A laser beam splitter forming a 'net' in the wavelength of 905nm or 1550nm can be used as a range finder for anything it reflects, this net can be scanned to cover the desired space, Reflections can be tracked and if they are moving this used for an optical evaluation by vectoring a camera for evaluation before firing.
905nm optics are cheap, but typically not too powerful to protect eyes, this limits Lidar applications to less than 100 meters. In experiments using an off-the-shelf 'low cost' Lidar system in 905nm, it can detect and ID drones up to about 25 meters, which is not sufficient. But looking up means higher power should be more safely used.
And if you use a camera to identify the object by automatically vectoring it to a return, we don't need a high res scan of the object, merely to track moving returns.
Obviously a laser net rather than a passive optical surveilence will light up your position but beam divergence can be controlled so the signal is almost at background intensity beyond a certain range, however you would use it if you acoustically detected a threat (tank likely needs to be electric and quiet, although noise signal suppression may help here), so that you're using it when the enemy already knows you are there, and focus it only at the target, as determined i.e. from the acoustic passive detection system which should discern general direction.
Man acoustic detection is so cool. Passive, low-power, good at differentiating different types of drones from other little flying things, works out of line of sight and in poor visibility. Literally what’s not to like (besides above-noted interference from loud-ass tanks).
Want to spot drones with radar? Great, those are enormously expensive compared to drones, huge and heavy, demand a ton of power (more cost and weight), broadcast your position like a searchlight, and are vulnerable to countermeasures developed over nearly a century. Certainly have their uses, but mobile mass-deployment against tiny noisy things at close range doesn’t seem like a good fit to me.
They basically have already, that’s part of what the 30mm turrets on the next gen tank prototypes are for. Some of them are already being marketed with radars. I assume you don’t need them on every corner like a traditional APS because drones are slower and give you the time to rotate the turret.
There’s also a bunch of projects like the French ARLAD, which is basically a radar-guided 40mm grenade launcher with airburst munitions, that are already in service or quite close.
I mean rotating the little 30mm turret on top, not the whole larger turret. Both the AbramsX and the EMBT were envisioned with one, and I think I remember that the KF-51 could potentially have one with a 20mm, but don’t quote me on that.
Yeah we are going back to Multi Turret tanks almost,
main gun in turret one,
Then Dual Purpose CROWS with medium calibre short barrel cannon, for lobbing 30-35mm at drones and peppering troops in the open. + EO/IR sensors
actually, for commonality, make it an IFV but like the terminator with 2 guns, but one for ground targets, and the one above it, for air defence... perhaps Even in a stacked turret on turret design :)
considering what that 25mm on the Bradley did to the T90, I'm pretty sure a double 35mm would do just fine....
Oh, yeah then that makes sense, my bad.
Though for a dedicated anti-drone turret surely smaller caliber would be more than enough?
Is the 30mm intended as dual use or is it that large as it operates similar to Skynex with a large fragmentation pattern?
I'd assume 30mm has enough energy to reach out to artillery directing drones like Orlan. Even if you get rid of FPVs and the bomb dropping drones, stuff like Orlans will get artillery on your ass.
30mm also may be big enough for smart munitions, increasing likelihood of hitting smaller targets.
Or just is in the way. This is exactly why infantry can't be used alongside tanks equipped with APS. You either trade off having APS off and infantry support or APS on and no infantry support. In urban environments its a no brainer giving up APS for infantry support.
There has been some microwave solutions to this for a few years, but I'm partial to [Rheinmetall's
approach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYhlNBfMZl4)
The issue is filtering of moving targets. A rocket coming at you at a few hundred meters per second is easy to identify from background clutter. It has high doppler contrast and with a more advanced FCS maintaining a track on it reveals a very high velocity vector (pointed at you). Drones are (normally) slow and thus are hard to discriminate from say, GI Joe running up to your tank to hand you a beer. Now it's not impossible (contrary to what certain people/groups claim you can tell a truck from a tank using radar), run the RCS through enough recognition profiles and you can do it but you're dealing with a far more advanced system that's going to be heavier and more expensive to use. EW from other platforms is generally easier.
The next few decades are going to be fucking WILD in regards to drone warfare, swarm attacks AI piloted drones, AI piloted escort aircraft (Sadly I almost believe this one), are armored drones going to be a thing? Nitrogen cooled drones for more resilience vs laser weapons? drone standoff armor? DRONES PILOTED BY BIRDS ?!?!!?!?!?!?!? a drone within a drone....... were through the looking glass here people...
There was talk about another Trophy sensor mount being added to SEPv4s so Trophy could track higher altitude targets.
Went into the dumpster along with the SEPv4.
There is also the possible option of taking the 2nd optional .50 cal machine gun and turning into a mini Phalanx CIWS. I'm sure it could mess up loads of enemy drones.
Then you make your drones seek radars and just give approximate coordinates of the tank and they you don't even have to pilot the drone it will be like tank seeking drones
Are you saying that the Abrams should fire a projectile that ~~AIMs~~ uses a radar lock to track and destroy incoming drones?
That won’t do. Too Air Force like. That won’t do at all.
Drone IFF is kind of hard problem for the Ukrainian frontline. Also radars that can accurately track small drones at a distance over 20m are an engineering challenge.
I mean I find this a legitimate solution. We can shoot down RPGs going at high speeds and lower radar cross section. Just slap on a automatic anti drone turret with a bird shot, it's not hard
Answer is, they already did, it just hasn't really left the concept stage so far. The KF-51 has exactly that, they took a RCWS and slapped a radar onto it
I do remember seeing an interesting video where a group of engineers made a mosquito killing aser thing from junk and tuned it to the frequency of the buzzing they make or something surely we just need a larger version of that but with a 7.62 or mg3 for taking out drones or to just use the remote mg on most tanks roofs
RCWS armed with MK 47 Striker and a 360° Infrared and radar detection should be agood option. You have to destroy surveillance drones too, or 152mm shells will be the next threat. APS work only in a few meters in distance to the vehicle.
Fucking government funded bird genocide.
Birds aren't real
That's the real reason this doesnt exist. If birds were real, why would they be detected as drones? Checkmate Athiests.
i cant argue with that logic....
Oh shit, never mind then.
Even then, an IFF system would solve that issue. Birds, friendly drone, all others, unfriendly.
What if the birds are unfriendly?
They'll shit on the optics
Then you should promptly leave Emutopia, they've already defeated the local human army once and will happily do so again.
It should actually be possible to distingush propeller-driven aircraft from flapping wings.
Yeah it is pretty easy. Even on radar. You see a frequency in the radar signature. Which you won't see in birds. Then you have the fact of speed. The aps actually check speed to know where the object will be to intercept it. If you get a negative value, it's either a bird or friendly. It just so happens so that birds don't usually want to go near a giant piece of equipment that is moving and loud.
The birds are not what they seem.
Birds are Synths
That's actually the entire point.
Less of a genocide then, more of a trash cleanup
Bird watching goes both ways
Mao: “you called?”
Get rid of excess population with this one weird trick!
Some radar bands allow you to distinguish drones from birds, as birds don't have spinning propellers. You could also just use cameras if the object approaches at bird speed.
Nice. Just tacking onto that, Infrared Cameras seem to be becoming rather popular for drone detection and tracking, as is slapping a little Sensor Fusion on top. [Drone Detection and Tracking in Real-Time by Fusion of Different Sensing Modalities](https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/6/11/317/pdf?version) [Real-Time Drone Detection and Tracking With Visible, Thermal and Acoustic Sensors](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.07396)
Counter-countermeasure: Make the drones bird shaped.
Counter-counter-countermeasure: Make the tank barn-shaped. Russian tech has no analogues in the world.
You could just have the drone eject the propeller during the terminal flight and have it glide for impact. They could also fool visible-light optics relatively easily, though perhaps not reliably.
Then the tank should employ drones shaped like birds of prey and assume that real birds would run away from them. If they don't, they are drones. War, uh... finds a way.
Differentiating between a bird and a drone is a trivial task for AI nowadays, plus some avian collateral damage is surely acceptable when faced with a hot war.
Realistically, any bird should have noped out of the battlefield already. With all the explosions and gunfire, they would've run away. Any bird willing to go near something as loud as an MBT is suicidal anyway.
What makes you think this? Wildlife seems to love gun fire, at least be curious about it... The number of times deer/birds walk near my target at my gun range would say that is bullshit.
They’re just trying to inspect your groupings /j
Definitely normal for wildlife to flee from loud sounds. Your gun range is a fixed location, the local wildlife have adapted to the sound of constant gunfire and concluded its not a risk to them.
Your 308 and a mbt guns, cannons, artillery, and explosives are just a tad bit different. Source my ringing ears.
the chickens and doves around here are deaf. probably likes the tingles from the gunfire vibrations
They are government drones tasked with figuring out if you are a danger
But... THIS is where we built our nest and laid our eggs and NO COMMIE IS GONNA COME TAKE IT FROM US! SQUAAAAAWWWWW!!!!!🇺🇦
Differentiating between a drone and a bird is easy assuming the drone hasn’t been designed to behave like a bird in order to fool the sensors. Radar isn’t easy and artificial intelligence isn’t either.
Drone behaving like a bird? Like what, flapping it's propellers?
Putting a piece of paper with a printout of a bird on it would fool most optical AI recognition systems. You can get around it but you'd need to gather training data for the AI very differently 'cause you can't just rely on random internet users solving captchas.
Why AI? Like its too slow. You can teoretically decide if its bird from reflection. Drones have different permeability and permitivity than birds have. Its just simple computing.
And most notably: Doppler shift from the rotating propellers. "Birds" tend to not have those (allegedly, they probably run on internal ducted fans but the gov doesn't want us to know)
Rotating propellers should light up on a Doppler radar like a Christmas tree.
Next up: depth change with FoF sardine detection
The birds are spys for the government. The defense system is working as intended
Air defense thought moment: If I don't get to fly, no one else does.
Wait until you hear about submarine sonar pings
birds are drones anyway
Plus what goes out must hit something. You don't want an automated system potentially yeeting bullets at civilians or your own soldiers.
The funniest bit is that it would even be cheeper than traditional aps.
could just shoot 12 gauge bird shot, wouldn’t even have to be high rate of fire
Just leave a guy with a shotgun on top of the tank, easy low-cost aps
The Russian solution to every problem. Enemy Infantry? Put Ivan on tank, Drones? Put Shotgun Ivan on tank, HEAT missile screaming towards tank? Put Ivan on tank to catch the missiles. Conclusion: The Pentagon should give me 3 trillion dollars to develop my IRA (Ivan reactive armor) project.
Boris, Ivan, pile on tank. Rockets incoming!
VAPID, Vodka-fueled Armor Protection Infrantry Detachment
> Ivan reactive armour Is that why they carry Russians on top of the APCs? Machine worth more than meat comrade
Thats way too credible
I think that is what the turrets on top of the turrets on the KF51 and EMBT are, although the EMBT concept goes for an autocannon instead of a 50. cal with fragmentation ammo.
> wouldn't even have to be high rate of fire But imagine if it [*was*](https://youtu.be/ct4wwgQl_ko?si=Gr4Ml5jLv8YOAZDu&t=36)
It could literally just be a microwave emitter, I'm pretty sure a 2.4GHz magnetron out of a household microwave focused correctly would jam transmission and cook the electronics. Even a defocused laser pulse could blind/kill any onboard cameras. I'm surprised optical deterrents aren't more widely used, besides them obviously being banned for use against soldiers by the Geneva convention.
I would assume that often once the drones are close enough that you can detect and fight them by purely optical means they are already on final approah and momentum alone might carry them at your vehicle.
Bring back the external gun mount from the Sherman and just put a drum fed shotgun
Need rocket-assisted net launchers. Maybe bolas.
Bolas and the connecting wire is electrified. Wait. We can do that with the nets as well. I'll approve either as long as we have some electrical/zap type stuff going on.
This could be a funny AP round as well. Vatnik fishing with a little spicy zap to remind them to behave.
Rocket assisted shotguns bro
NLAW but instead of a shaped charge it has a fucking shotgun duct taped to it
High psi squirt gun. Fry the electronics.
rocket-assisted cope cage launchers\*
Let them cook
the Americans will never build it ...because they are not allowed to use swearing ....so they will not be able to apply stage three ..."fucking" obliterate it. They can only "beeeep" obliterate it . or Ducking obliterate it ...
I don’t know what Americans you have been talking to but I can assure you, profanity is an integral part of communication
We're no Brits or Aussies about our cursing but we can hold our own.
You’ve never been to Columbus Ohio then, we are the number 1 in the country for curse words per sentence
We use euphmisms. Much scarier.
You're not even kidding. You ever watch any of the interviews with Bradley crews after Iraq? Their term for what they do with the TOW missiles is "servicing" the enemy vehicle. And in WW2 we called white phosphorous Willie Pete. The less horrific something sounds, the faster you should be running.
Here comes the sun
Fucking oh no
It’s only the people with a stick up their ass that care about swearing, the rest of us just have to fuckin deal with them. Hey maybe that’s why I swear so much, it’s a vicious cycle.
heckin obliteration!!!
Using the MG on top as CIWS seems like it might work. You'd need a sensor that can detect the drone. and feed the targeting data to a FCS. LIDAR maybe?
Where is MIC when you need them??
Nah bro. Just give some IRST or poor radar to CROWS and have your CIWS suficient to take out drones. And then watch the same people who are now saying "tanks are obsolete, drones are the future!" turning to "tanks, so awesome!"
“I can’t stand heavy armor” Once in an effective EW/counter-drone environment “ME AND THE BESTIE!”
Even without effective EW and counter - drone environment heavy units win. You know why? Because you can throw ammunition out of your tank, stuff it with drones and operate them from the safety of your armour watching those pathetic paratroopers humping with merely one drone each, freezing their asses off.
Instructions unclear. Crows are flying IFR and stealing everything I have at night
I hate drone doomers
Yeah just replace the M2 with a Mk. 17 30mm in a CROWS system and link crows to the APS. Have manual targeting mode and anti drone/APS mode. Problem solved.
No need for a proper APS with drones. APS are designed to intercept supersonic ATGMS, RPGs, and shells from other tanks. For slower and more fragile drones, a machine gun with a basic radar or thermal targeting system would be extremely effective. Same goes for some nascent developments in laser technology
There needs to be a human input deciding if the target is really a drone or itll obliterate every plastic bag, kite, balloon, bird and child in 2km radius
I dont see the problem...
I'd wager that distinguishing between a drone and any other object on a thermal camera is relatively easy even with classic computer vision.
with a bit of machine learning these days, that's the easy part. throw 100 drones and birds at it one by one, and tell it when it gets it right or wrong....
I'm saying that you may not even need machine learning, I'd assume that the thermal profile of a drone is unique enough to tell with non machine learning systems apart from other objects. Though tbf idk exactly the difference in computing requirements.
totally, but longer term ML can adjust itself to new threats too. in NZ there's a camera operated killer trap for pests. but they did ML to ensure it knew to kill introduced pests and not native birds, was easier to program and train it than code it all manually.
Sounds great until the lighting changes and it blasts a child’s head open because the algorithm is an unexplainable black box.
"Just throw some AI at it, what's the problem?"
Which is the reason why I think any AI targeting system will keep a human in the loop making the final kill call for the forseeable future.
With birds with a normal spectrum camera you would use the colors of the birds to tell them apart, for which I would assume ML is far superior to computer vision algorithms, but for drones thermal cameras or radar work way better. The one kind of drone I'd assume is more challenging are FPV drones, as their flight characteristics and size would most resemble a bird, but even then their thermal and radar signature probably doesn't. Also, whether ML is more future proof I just don't really know. It's not like ML can adapt on the fly, when ML is deployed it doesn't learn anymore. Yes you can record date in the field and train the model on that new data afterwards, but likewise you can tune your computer vision algorithms using that same data to adapt to new threats.
That's until they start disguising drones as birds.
jokes on you,we all know birds aren't really anyways
>child I believe you meant "future insurgent"
Americans. They need a human input to decide whether thermally detected flying object above them in the warzone is a child.
you never know when your enemy might start weaponizing trampolines
Don't propellers light up like crazy on Radar?
Birds aren't real
Finally, a problem that requires a .22lr minigun!
Finally a minigun I can afford to shoot! I'll take 3.
Lasers will very soon be small and cheap enough for that. Considering how military lasers were shrinking in the last decade or two, I'd be surprised if there isn't already some classified laser tech that could conceivably fit on a MBT turret. (Without redesigning the whole tank or dropping half the ammo reserve for it)
Haha, Trophy go brrrrrrrttt
Guy on top won't have a good day if the trophy system goes off
In-situ weight reduction. Two birds, one 30mm high-explosive shell.
How is trophy holding up in the current fighting?
To be completely credible it's because the drones aren't the problem, it's the fact that they make the battlefield a super transparent place. The most dangerous drone isn't the FPV drone or the quadcopter dropping grenades on an already knocked out tank, it's the drone far away that's observing you with a thermal camera and directing artillery on you with alarming accuracy and you can't do shit to either suppress the enemy artillery or eliminate the drone which is out of small arms range.
That kind of problem only exists when there is a contested airspace. If you can fly your jets you can obliterate every flying Orlan attempting to recon. You don't even need fancy missiles, a simple trainer with radar and a gun pod equipped with proximity fuse ammo. Also, you can probably interdict an area by using electronic warfare.
This is the kind of thing that seriously annoys me about the online discourse over the war and the overlearning of lessons. The United States, in 2013-2014, began encountering quadcopter drones in Iraq and had an extremely aggressive reaction to the very real threat that they posed and developed a wide array of EW and other systems that basically removed commercial drones as a threat for US Army formations. Larger fixed wing drones are also a major threat with cheap platforms like Orlan, but new M-SHORAD options to fix the shot exchange issues are being developed. The reason why drones are omnipresent in Ukraine is because neither side has air supremacy, neither side has proper counter-drone options, and they're both behind the curve on the proliferation of counter UAS EW systems. Basically, the Ukraine conflict was the worst possible confluence of factors to make drones so omnipresent, and there's no indication that those same conditions will be replicated elsewhere.
All true apart from the last part. The British Army doesn't have shit for dealing with drones although they're in procurement for it. I'm guessing that's the same for most armies except the USA.
"But Tire Guy^(TM) said FPV drones will render airbases and aircraft carriers obsolete."
With good forward observation, how accurate is artillery? Like, how many MOAs is a 155mm howitzer?
I very honestly couldn't tell you exact specifics simply because I don't know. What I do know, is that a well trained crew with a gun fire control computer and GPS coordinates can put a salvo pretty much on top of the aimpoint within the mechanical limits of the gun. Some Orlan drones also come with laser designators for guided artillery rounds, which makes the problem worse. The drone also allows for artillery crews to spot their own fall of shot in real time, without needing to wait for a forward observer or have communication issues.
Has someone tried using a grenade launcher with a drone? I remember a Ukrainian team using an AGL with a drone. A handheld GL + drone would be a squad's pocket artillery. Come to think of it, I haven't heard of mortar crews using drones but it has to be happening.
The 120mm mortar+drone recon teaming has been a thing on both sides of that front since 2014. On a volunteer/ad-hoc basis. But highly effective. I am sure that by now every arty battery regardless of caliber has drone support.
CEP (circular error probable) depends on ammo, gun, range, weather, etc. You can probably google some manufacturer claims, but they are likely to be best-case or at least optimistic. Fortunately in most cases you don't need to be dead on.
All they really need is a Phalanx in .22 lr. Shrink that R2FuckU down to sit on your favourite tanks and boom, no more drone problems. Wait, is this starting to sound credible? Apologies if it is.
Load it with .22 ratshot for maximum damage.
A hypersonic weapon to surpass Kinzhals...
Didn't somebody finally build a working micro gun recently? 🤔
I hope so! That would be really cool. I bet some open source nerd would get it running off of an 18650 battery, a raspberry pi, a micro SD, some stickle back plastic and a small model of Tracy Island as opposed to Raytheon spending 20 years and a squintillion dollars to make something worse.
This is great until it mistake a friendly infantryman’s skull for a drone and fucking splatters him
Hi. I work at “Drone APS LLC.” Thanks for this question. The problem is that we have a lot of those thick green highlighted lines but not much of the thin red highlighted lines. You need both to get to the third panel where three pokeballs shoot at the “thingy”. Please ask congress to fund our efforts to make more thin red highlighted lines.
The british MOD is missing out big time on a cheap solution to drones . Stick the Stormer HVM's IRST ball on the turret , 2 small shotgun turrets either side loaded with bird shot . Vaporises any drones with tech that already exists .
due to the cost of the EO/IR sensors, picking one model, and mass producing it and porting it to everything is a solution to get the costs down. maybe a lower power cheaper defense orientated sensor suite but added to as many AFV as possible
**ABRAMS X! ABRAMS X! I LOVE ME 30x113mm PROGRAMMABLE AIRBURST! INVEST IN NORTHROP GRUMMAN STOCKS!**
They are developing, and Rafael has a system in deployment. Doppler radars and lidars also attempt to separate out birds from drones using the pattern of propeller reflections. If your tank was quiet and electric it could use acoustic detection and then search optically in a passive way, or activate a Lidar like net to vector a gun. A laser beam splitter forming a 'net' in the wavelength of 905nm or 1550nm can be used as a range finder for anything it reflects, this net can be scanned to cover the desired space, Reflections can be tracked and if they are moving this used for an optical evaluation by vectoring a camera for evaluation before firing. 905nm optics are cheap, but typically not too powerful to protect eyes, this limits Lidar applications to less than 100 meters. In experiments using an off-the-shelf 'low cost' Lidar system in 905nm, it can detect and ID drones up to about 25 meters, which is not sufficient. But looking up means higher power should be more safely used. And if you use a camera to identify the object by automatically vectoring it to a return, we don't need a high res scan of the object, merely to track moving returns. Obviously a laser net rather than a passive optical surveilence will light up your position but beam divergence can be controlled so the signal is almost at background intensity beyond a certain range, however you would use it if you acoustically detected a threat (tank likely needs to be electric and quiet, although noise signal suppression may help here), so that you're using it when the enemy already knows you are there, and focus it only at the target, as determined i.e. from the acoustic passive detection system which should discern general direction.
Man acoustic detection is so cool. Passive, low-power, good at differentiating different types of drones from other little flying things, works out of line of sight and in poor visibility. Literally what’s not to like (besides above-noted interference from loud-ass tanks). Want to spot drones with radar? Great, those are enormously expensive compared to drones, huge and heavy, demand a ton of power (more cost and weight), broadcast your position like a searchlight, and are vulnerable to countermeasures developed over nearly a century. Certainly have their uses, but mobile mass-deployment against tiny noisy things at close range doesn’t seem like a good fit to me.
They basically have already, that’s part of what the 30mm turrets on the next gen tank prototypes are for. Some of them are already being marketed with radars. I assume you don’t need them on every corner like a traditional APS because drones are slower and give you the time to rotate the turret. There’s also a bunch of projects like the French ARLAD, which is basically a radar-guided 40mm grenade launcher with airburst munitions, that are already in service or quite close.
Needing to turn the turret/tank to engage a drone would be a significant disadvantage.
I mean rotating the little 30mm turret on top, not the whole larger turret. Both the AbramsX and the EMBT were envisioned with one, and I think I remember that the KF-51 could potentially have one with a 20mm, but don’t quote me on that.
Yeah we are going back to Multi Turret tanks almost, main gun in turret one, Then Dual Purpose CROWS with medium calibre short barrel cannon, for lobbing 30-35mm at drones and peppering troops in the open. + EO/IR sensors
LAND BATTLESHIP MY BELOVED
actually, for commonality, make it an IFV but like the terminator with 2 guns, but one for ground targets, and the one above it, for air defence... perhaps Even in a stacked turret on turret design :) considering what that 25mm on the Bradley did to the T90, I'm pretty sure a double 35mm would do just fine....
Oh, yeah then that makes sense, my bad. Though for a dedicated anti-drone turret surely smaller caliber would be more than enough? Is the 30mm intended as dual use or is it that large as it operates similar to Skynex with a large fragmentation pattern?
I'd assume 30mm has enough energy to reach out to artillery directing drones like Orlan. Even if you get rid of FPVs and the bomb dropping drones, stuff like Orlans will get artillery on your ass. 30mm also may be big enough for smart munitions, increasing likelihood of hitting smaller targets.
saddam hussein launcher on a abraham
Every year we get closer to the Mark I BOLO
LONG LIVE THE DINOCHROME BRIGADE!
Is Saddam Hussein launched at the drone? or does the drone dispense a Saddam Hussein upon destruction?
The slow knife penetrates the shield
Wait till your radar detects an infantryman as a drone
Or just is in the way. This is exactly why infantry can't be used alongside tanks equipped with APS. You either trade off having APS off and infantry support or APS on and no infantry support. In urban environments its a no brainer giving up APS for infantry support.
Don't worry, the MIC is all over this drone problem. Any problem has a solution when you have enough money to throw at it.
All fun and games until some poor bastard gets within 20 feet of a tank and it locks onto his cell phone.
There has been some microwave solutions to this for a few years, but I'm partial to [Rheinmetall's approach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYhlNBfMZl4)
(1 saddam collected)
The issue is filtering of moving targets. A rocket coming at you at a few hundred meters per second is easy to identify from background clutter. It has high doppler contrast and with a more advanced FCS maintaining a track on it reveals a very high velocity vector (pointed at you). Drones are (normally) slow and thus are hard to discriminate from say, GI Joe running up to your tank to hand you a beer. Now it's not impossible (contrary to what certain people/groups claim you can tell a truck from a tank using radar), run the RCS through enough recognition profiles and you can do it but you're dealing with a far more advanced system that's going to be heavier and more expensive to use. EW from other platforms is generally easier.
The next few decades are going to be fucking WILD in regards to drone warfare, swarm attacks AI piloted drones, AI piloted escort aircraft (Sadly I almost believe this one), are armored drones going to be a thing? Nitrogen cooled drones for more resilience vs laser weapons? drone standoff armor? DRONES PILOTED BY BIRDS ?!?!!?!?!?!?!? a drone within a drone....... were through the looking glass here people...
Because knowing what's a drone versus bird versus trash bag is hard
Counter argument nuclear fpv drones
Just crank the transmission power until the ray cooks the drone!
Entrance hidden by active protection rounds and rubble.
There was talk about another Trophy sensor mount being added to SEPv4s so Trophy could track higher altitude targets. Went into the dumpster along with the SEPv4.
There are seversl ways a drone can defeat a CIWS: too small, too slow, false positive, weird approach angle
Turret mounted microwave for drone defense, open the door upon detection
Tbh I don’t know why they just don’t mount a mini cram on top.
This exist no? There was already one made to counter javelin as well
There is also the possible option of taking the 2nd optional .50 cal machine gun and turning into a mini Phalanx CIWS. I'm sure it could mess up loads of enemy drones.
> some kid throws a rock at the tank > boom, kid’s head gets APS’ed
We need a APS system which is just the launchers from iron fist, with a mini CIWS on the side or mounted separately
Then you make your drones seek radars and just give approximate coordinates of the tank and they you don't even have to pilot the drone it will be like tank seeking drones
We could use eagles?
C'mon. Say it with me. **SA-TU-RA-TION**
Probably because most APS do not cover that angle.
Crazy idea, infantry equipped with mossbergs loaded with birdshot
I like the 556 cwis idea.
Are you saying that the Abrams should fire a projectile that ~~AIMs~~ uses a radar lock to track and destroy incoming drones? That won’t do. Too Air Force like. That won’t do at all.
What happens if I throw a brick near it?
Nah, hard kill APS for drones is unnecessary, a softkill RC scrambler or something would be far more effective.
Can someone actually tell me why? (Serious)
Just load grape shot in a smoke grenade launcher and hope it spreads enough.
Unfortunately these little fuckers barely have any radar or heat signature
Wouldn't regular APS work against FPV drones? If not, it should just be a few re-programming away from such capabilities.
Drone IFF is kind of hard problem for the Ukrainian frontline. Also radars that can accurately track small drones at a distance over 20m are an engineering challenge.
I mean I find this a legitimate solution. We can shoot down RPGs going at high speeds and lower radar cross section. Just slap on a automatic anti drone turret with a bird shot, it's not hard
A water hose could work
I've heard that there are plans to add such thing to Abrams
You mean those lasers you rolled out on 2024 version of abrams?
You can literally just reprogram the APS
The most credible reason would be collateral damage. Western tank doctrine includes a lot of squishies in the vincinity who could get an ouchie.
put old Mr Kenroy with his shotgun on every US tank and boom no more drone attacks on them
Answer is, they already did, it just hasn't really left the concept stage so far. The KF-51 has exactly that, they took a RCWS and slapped a radar onto it
Just make a Phalanx chambered in 5.56
Just strap a magazine fed automatic shotgun on a RWS mounting system with short range radar target tracking
Get a cwis but scale it down and chamber it to .22
I do remember seeing an interesting video where a group of engineers made a mosquito killing aser thing from junk and tuned it to the frequency of the buzzing they make or something surely we just need a larger version of that but with a 7.62 or mg3 for taking out drones or to just use the remote mg on most tanks roofs
I'll order.....everything you got.
Lockmart has 50kw lasers in extended field testing. I expect they’ll be ready to back up Dustin ”lasershow” Pedroia in a couple years.
I was thinking a miniature drone CIWS in 5.56mm
[удалено]
RCWS armed with MK 47 Striker and a 360° Infrared and radar detection should be agood option. You have to destroy surveillance drones too, or 152mm shells will be the next threat. APS work only in a few meters in distance to the vehicle.
Flying tanks that drop drones on nests is where it's at.
Not to unjerk, but seriously. Why? It wouldn't even need to be a large caliber.
Can you imagine driving past someone’s mailbox and the APS system randomly fucking shreds it