3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment has joined forces with the US Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment to test the latest counter-drone equipment and tactics during Exercise Flytrap in Lithuania.
The exercise saw both units fight mock battles to test each other’s kit and tactics against drones, covering the full spectrum from detection to destruction.
Major John Bryning, Officer Commanding A Company 3 PARA, said drones presented two distinct threats on the modern battlefield. “It is a lot harder to remain undetected and, once you’ve been found, you can expect to be targeted very quickly and precisely,” he said.
Major Bryning described the exercise as a test of work done to understand how drones are being used in Ukraine and to develop countermeasures. “Firstly, we’re trying to make ourselves less visible using camouflage and concealment, dispersing troops, and exploiting weather conditions — and that is applying basic soldiering skills to a new problem. We’ve also been issued kit that offers different ways to both detect and defeat drones, whether that’s to shoot them down as a hard kill or jamming as a soft kill.”
Equipment used to find and track drones included body-worn radio frequency detectors, which warn of a drone’s presence by picking up its control signal, and Cortexa Guardian, a miniature radar. To defeat drones, troops were equipped with drone guns capable of jamming control signals, and the rifle-mounted SMASH sight, which uses artificial intelligence to track and predict a drone’s movement and only allows the rifle to fire when it is aligned to hit.
AI gets used nowadays to describe almost anything running an algorithm as far as I can see.
Does the smash sight really have AI so that it…what…learns how certain drones are going to manoeuvre…recognise different drone types and learn how they are going to react…say to themselves ” ah yes…this type of drone does duch and such” or is it just a clever predictive point of aim device? ( no AI).
Aside from that its nice to see that there are a range of anti drone devices being fielded already, at least for the small drones.
Miniature radar?? New one on me.
AA
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I tend to think the latter with some form of ‘helper’ software to improve performance. Whether that is true AI or not is probably up for debate all something of a buzz word now that could be applied to all manner of long used tech, but probably has some learning capability that can improve performance over time from experience, or perhaps learn about any detectable inbuilt capability a given drone may display to resist being targeted. All incremental improvements in a war of measure and counter measure no doubt.
Smash sight doesn’t use AI, and LLM’s aren’t really AI anyway. But if you look at the data centers required to run LLM’s you’d probably guess why it isn’t possible. It’s just a sight that has a basic predictive program running and an electronic control on the trigger. Soldier holds trigger down, until SMASH sight detects you are pointing the weapon in the right direction, and then it fires.
Just looked it up…impressive bit of kit.
The biggest commercial drone swarm, over one thousand synchronised drones in the air at the same time, was created by Verge Aero in 2024
‘Verge Aero offers a (COTS) full-stack system that includes both drones and design software, allowing customers to create and run shows without building their own infrastructure.
“The software is the driver,” Franzwa said.
The platform lets users design and simulate shows in a visual interface, automatically accounting for constraints like drone spacing, speed and safety limits. Recent updates include AI-assisted tools to speed up design.’
That is now the threat, Close Air Support in the offense provided by thousands of drones. Ukraine has already utilised attacking drone swarms. Russia is not far behind. China, of course, also has the technology.
The British Army will, no doubt, shortly be contracting a Verge Aero systems user to design a drone swarm offensive and practise/exercise defending against it, practise utilising it in the offense, develop appropriate CONOPS/SOPs.
And pictures of African people get used to describe white men who risk their lives for women like Lisa West every day. She ought to show more respect to them or they might not be around to save her for much longer
And the RAF Regiment in Iraq have shot down 100+ Iranian drones.
Indeed. Many congratulations to the splendid Royal Air Force Regiment!
“I would argue this place would be a smouldering wreck if it wasn’t for you guys,”
Alistair Carns, Armed Forces Minister
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