Andrei Bogdanov, CEO of Barcelona-based drone company UAVHE, is not developing his Baduga flying rifle for the military:
The problem Bogdanov is trying to solve is the control of feral pigs. The Twitterverse mocked an American user who suggested that he needed an assault weapon to prevent his yard being invaded by “30-50 feral hogs” in 2019. But controlling these animals, which cause an estimated $1.5 bn in damage in the US alone each year, is a major challenge.
Hunters usually only kill a few in a pack, causing the rest to scatter. In Spain where Bogdanov is based, hunters shoot some 400,000 wild pigs every year, but this is not enough to stop the population rising.
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Bogdanov, has developed Baduga, a hunting rifle mounted on a small drone. A smart suspension system keeps the weapon’s center of gravity below the point of attachment, and gyro-stabilization ensures that the barrel remains stable regardless of wind or motion. The sights, including a multispectral camera able to see in the dark, are mounted on the barrel.
Bogdanov says that the firing platform is effectively decoupled and independent from the drone, firing as easily as it would from a tripod. The system automatically compensates for recoil, and has a magazine of 60 rounds. A further development may see automated in-flight magazine changing.
Early versions of the design employed off-the-shelf gyros, the latest iteration is custom-built for this application and weighs around 4 kilos, with the rifle adding a similar weight. The platform is a standard heavy commercial drone, similar to those which carry movie cameras and survey instruments.
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Bogdanov says his setup achieves an accuracy of better than 0.1 minutes of arc, so the limitation is the accuracy of the rifle and ammunition.
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“Unlike ground shooters, a drone in the air has a more accurate picture of the direction and strength of the wind over the altitude spectrum — it is easily calculated from the drift of the aircraft relative to the ground,” says Bogdanov.
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So why not go down the obvious route and develop this specifically as a weapon system for the defense sector?
“Despite a common myth, developments for the military do not bring in a lot of money,” says Bogdanov. “We have shown it many times, but so far the matter has not gone further than talks and interest from military customers connected with it.”
Very cool. Military procurement officers can suck a dick. I can’t wait to see this technology used in domestic applications to autonomously control the range of various forms of rural and urban wildlife.