Britain looks to counter jet powered attack drones

Lol. Who requires a “drone swarm” to overwhelm an air defence which barely exists?

Four QRA fighters spread over the entire country do not constitute a credible air defence against a sneak attack by anything.
One SSGN could take out the bulk of our MPA and northern fighter force in a single strike.

80 years after the Doodle bug !

I would think taking out a jet-powered uncrewed aerial vehicle would be pretty much the same as taking out a jet-powered crewed aerial vehicle

Would not take much to over load our only full Air Defence Regt and 4 QRA aircraft. That is all that protects the entire country. And the Air Defence Regt is not even set up, is parked in garages un manned 24/7. The only place with British manned air defence in the world is the Falklands.

The notice doesn’t commit to future procurement.
Tick.
MoD HMG warn all and sundry on the dangers.
Tick.
MoD HMG have GBAD plan regards the Army in place for years now, and talk of it often.
Tick.
HMG MoD still won’t provide any firm details on the what, when, how many, and how in reality MRAD is to “double” and SHORAD is to “Triple” with no increase in personnel, nor how Wavell is trying to address this with any internal orbat reorgs.
Tick.
And that is just for the Field Army.
For the wider UK CNI and Military, Intelligence key nodes, MoBs, and other critical points of failure, we have “saturation of EXISTING LAYERED AD SYSTEMS.”
Those systems being what exactly? Layered? Does the public actually believe this stuff?
The UK ASCS ASF is comprehensive regards C3, RRH, the RAP, and the QRA system it links into works. But it is wafer thin, only one CRC remains, there is no known alternate, and there is no GBAD whatsoever as a part of the ASF beyond an RAF Regiment Sqn which contributes a handful of CAUS, some LMM Launchers, and an undisclosed and very low key purchase of an unknown number of Silent Sentry CAUS.
And I believe this unit may well be primarily for defence of deployed RAF assets, not just the home base.
As usual, endless words.

This is I presume meant to be funny.

So they’re looking at a suicide Drone, in effect?
Rather than a one way Strike Drone, one to hit incoming jet powered Drones.

NATO probably has command of fast jet and manned airspace but drones is for all actors.

As experience in Ukraine has shown, with decoys and weight of numbers there is no real defence. Imagine a disguised container ship in the North Sea, within minutes a drone swarm is launched at Bacton, Walpole and a few other sites. Result, no gas, no electricity for the east of England. Attacks on airfields like Waddington? Well use your imagination.
This government, and all others are full of brown stuff.

MOD should take a good look at Israel’s layered air defences, which were proven to shoot down anything from drones to Ballistic missiles.

Wire fences around military and critical civilian sites were introduced primarily in the 20th century to keep out unwanted visitors, a first line of defence. Today, every site deemed necessary for perimeter fence protection will now qualify for drone protection, too, jet-powered or otherwise. That is a daunting task for governments to swallow due to the enormity of the land space involved and the staggering costs. Suddenly, defence requirements have escalated in terms of scope and costs. MOD is no longer just concerned with budgeting new kit for the three services, but has to combat new cheap technologies (some obtainable from a high street store) and could blow current annual budgets out of the window. The days of rational programme timelines could be a thing of the past, and AI may save our bacon or be a further exacerbator. Instead of just wire fencing, we may have to resort to huge anti-drone nets strung above sensitive installations, which will be both unsightly and horrendously expensive.

It wouldn’t take much to overwhelm an air defence that barely exists!

Overwhelm traditional layered air defence systems… well a start would be actually have a traditional layered air defence system for our critical infrastructure and expeditionary land and air forces.

Is there not another name we use to call jet powered One-Way Effector Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (OWE-UAV)

I’m pretty sure we use to call them cruise missiles,

I seem to remember a few of these being fired into the UK in 1944.

I got a Blinding Idea, why not invent a really cheap Laser that only costs 10 pence per shot that can hit a Cricket ball travelling at mk 2 ?
Seriously, we could site them all over the Country and let Jims wife control them.

Can’t be that expensive surely ?

Computing the intercept point, head on, tail chase or beam attacks will make that complex. Unless the drones are dotted every 10 miles or so across 90,000 square miles of territory, they will need to be high performance with enough growth potential to counter new enemy drones.
The intercept drone would need to be fast. You might get lots of early warning to ambush the swarm, but leakers or multi axis attacks from merchant shipping might give no time.
How about unmanned hawk sized aircraft with a laser guided version of CRV-7 rocket pods and a cannon?

With 200m wind turbine style towers and a very high powered lasers then a flak tower chain could be created near key assets.

UK doesn’t have ‘layers’…at best it has ‘patches’

Been talking about this since Armenian conflict with Azerbaijan almost a decade ago.

So , the first question that needs to be answered is, is this for fixed air defence systems or battlefield? In either case systems are available of the shelf now, so I don’t understand the issue. For fixed locations such as Lossiemouth, HMNB Clyde SAMP/T-Land Ceptor for anti cruise missle-anti land attack missile defence. Point defence for anti drone systems could be the Edge/Halcon Sky Knight up to 4 launch containers each with 64 missiles, a max of 80 in flight at the same time up to 10 km range coupled with 4 35mm Sky Ranger rotary cannons.
For battlefield or mobile defence then the Sky Ranger turret with the 35mm cannon either on Boxer or a tracked vehicle with a 9 round launcher for the Cheetah C-RAM missile from Denel Dynamics. I think Rheinmetall and Edge/Halcon are working togheter on the 30/35mm gun Sky Knight combination.
However, both Sky Knight and Cheetah would cost 100,000 to 200,000 per shot. Then again it is not the cost of the incoming drone but the cost of the damage that it could do.
As for SAMP/T and Land Ceptor layer defence for areas such as Lossiemouth and the Clyde, is based on what I would do if I was an enemy wanting to take on NATO. I would prepostions 2-3 SSGNs 250 miles of Northern Scotland and take out these two bases with my opening war shots. Three SSGNs would be ideal as one I would station equidistant between Cornwall and France 200 miles out and take out, Devonport, Portsmouth and Brest. If I could get some going further inland to Lincolnshire and Norfolk even better. So for say RAF Marham, Brize Norton Land Ceptor with Sky Knight-Sky Ranger would be enough as one they would have notice, and secondly the SAMP/T batteries in Scotland, Cornwall and possibly Cheshire/Shropshire would thin out the incoming cruise missiles from SSGNs. At the moment Russia could launch 64-96 of missiles from SSGNs in an opening salvo. I wonder when the last time was that the RAf did a squadron scramble! It is unlikly that there would be a mass uav attack on the western UK due to range and flight paths but a cruise missile attack is more likely. As for an attack coming via Europe to the Eastern UK that is even more unlikely unless it is a ballistic tragectory.

As an after thought for a mass drone attack has anyone ever thought of EMP burst munitions for example the CHAMP missile (Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project) as a starting point.

Hi Ron, I’m presuming you are thinking along the lines of a non-nuclear EMP (NNEMP) weapon as per CHAMP and HiJENKS? These types of weapon have sort of existed in prototype and test form since the 1950’s, but as far as I know have never been put into production. Perhaps with the actual threat from drone swarms being a real thing, there is now a valid case.

My understanding is fairly rudimentary, but the basics for NNEMP are that if you quickly charge up some windings, then short them out, this creates an EMP. A lot of this is based on transformer and motor electrical theory, but it has been shown to work. It works over a much smaller area, then say a nuclear initiated EMP. For NNEMP, the EMP is scalable though, so you can tune the blast to the required effective distance, based on the number/size of the windings and electrical charge. It also means you could use it more easily within a highly populated area. As the effect is much more localised, so the damage to civilian electronics is smaller. But it doesn’t stop it from being used over the sea or not highly populated areas.

I think there may be justification in looking at EMP to deal with swarms, as a means of thinning out the herd. Thereby allowing other systems such a directed energy weapons or kinetic weapons to finish off the leakers.

Looking at what is currently available, there are a number of “off the shelf” methods to counter either drone swarms or higher speed drones. Clearly using surface to air missiles is the primary means, but the cost per shot vs cost per drone is staggering unbalanced in favour of the drone. So a plan B option is needed. The next choice would be a kinetic means, using anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). However, much like the Korean war and later Vietnam war showed. As aircraft fly faster and higher, AAA becomes much less effective. Using today’s technology of guided shells, it can be made a lot more effective, but again the cost per shot sharply increases. For example the BAe hyper velocity projectile (HVP) is expected to cost around $100K per round. Whereas a Shahed 136 (propeller powered version) costs depending on the version between $20K and $50K to manufacture. So there’s still a cost disparity.

The next option that has steadily been making progress, are directed energy weapons. So far these come in two flavours of either laser or Microwave (RF). Both have a very low cost per shot and have a near inexhaustible magazine depth. However, both are line of sight weapons which are more classed as close in weapons with a range of under 10km. So individually can’t provide area coverage as their effective ranges are too short. Again they would be more suited to protect high value targets or dealing with leakers.

Operationally, you want to intercept the drones as far away as possible or at the limits of your sensors. To do this you need a stand-off capability. You can use manned aircraft that are either on a combat air patrol (CAP) or divert aircraft under control from a fighter controller. However, again using the standard beyond visual range air to air missiles (BVRAAM) or within visual range air to air missiles WVRAAM. These are more than capable of deal with drones, but the cost disparity again is huge. The US has shown a newer method, which is using the BAe made advanced precision kill weapon system (APKWS). This is based on a 70mm Hydra unguided rocket, where BAe fit a guidance and semi-active laser seeker sensor, which together costs around $25K. Making it more in-line with the cost of a Shahed for example. The downside is that from a fixed wing aircraft, its range is dependent on the launch platform’s speed, but in general maxes out around 10 to 11km. The other downside is the way semi-active laser seeking works. Where the target must be constantly illuminated throughout the engagement, before the next target is acquired and illuminated. The US have said the system works well, but takes too long to engage multiple targets, which could make the launch/illuminating aircraft vulnerable. BAe are subsequently developing an additional IR based seeker, to giving APKWS a means of fire and forget.

I think we all recognized that the idea was coming, but anti-drone drones are now being fielded on trials, with notably the US Navy. Who have fitted the Anduril Roadrunner-M to one of their Arleigh Burkes that is deployed with the Gerald.R.Ford carrier group. Costs range from $125K to $500K per round depending on which source is read. According to Anduril: ““Roadrunner-M innovations include faster launch and take-off timing, three times the warhead payload capacity, ten times the one way effective range, and is three times more manoeuvrable in G force, compared to similar offerings on the market,” What we do know about it, is that it uses a pair of small turbojets and is a tail-sitter Vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone, with a purported flight duration of 40 minutes, giving it a modicum of a loitering capability. It uses an IR sensor to search for and acquire a target, then uses onboard AI to validate the target, giving it a fire and forget capability. The VTOL capability allows it to return to near its launcher for refuelling and repacking in to its launcher, for further use. In some ways the Roadrunner-M can be likened to a ground launched aerial mine. Where it can sit for days, before being needed. Anduril talk about a nest of Roadrunners, being used to protect areas from drones, but also cruise missiles and aircraft.

But again the Roadrunner is a reactive weapon that has a relatively short range and duration. Perhaps something like a anti-drone mothership is required. The MQ-9 has already demonstrated its ability to target drones using APKWS over the Red Sea. If the IR seeker BAe are developing for it pays off, perhaps this would be a way to engage targets a fair ways off, where the MQ-9 patrols a given area.

In another conversation with Ron, he mentioned what about using EMP. As far as I know EMP has not been used with a production weapon. However, as drone swarms are now a thing, perhaps this needs to be re-evaluated. Non-Nuclear EMP (NNEMP) has been around since the 1950s. With a number of successful trials using various ways of delivering the “payload”. NNEMP is scalable, so you can tailor the pulse size and duration. I think the overall problem though is weight, as much like a transformer or generator. You need a certain number and size of wire inductors, a soft iron as an armature, plus a capacitor bank to build up a large inductive field in the windings. This then gets shorted out, which causes an electromagnetic pulse to be created. So the size of the pulse is kind of determined by the size of the transformer/generator that can be carried. The problem is how is this weapon deployed? As you’d want the weapon to be in place to engage large swarms. Perhaps another large loitering drone based on the MQ9 would be suitable. Where it could stay on station for 8 hours or more, perhaps doing a parallel ISTAR role. Additionally if it has spare weight capacity, it could carry a few APKWS, for the odd drone it comes across. But then use its NNEMP to target a drone swarm. Admittedly, a MQ-9 isn’t cheap, but if it can do multipole roles as well as being an EMP weapon against large drone swarms. Perhaps the cost balances out.

Rather obviously the people who know most about jet powered UAV countermeasures are our good friends in AFU who have developed ground based interceptor missiles to strike the Gorant / Saheed attacks that the terrorist state sends.

Given that existential threat for Ukraine and their limited manufacturing capacity, who could doubt the value for money and combat effectiveness of such interceptors.

MoD purchase in significant numbers will enable volume savings for all.