The Ukrainian Special Forces Command recently recommended placing a dedicated shooter at the back of every military vehicle near the frontline as a desperate defense against small drones:
According to Bradley, hobbyist quadcopter drones, like those made by Chinese maker DJI, tend to have a body made out of thin plastic as well as rigid but flimsy propellers in order to keep their weight down. That makes them “very easy” to damage with widely available 12g sporting rounds, he added.
In contrast, first-person view drones are generally built with thick carbon fiber frames and softer plastic propellers more resistant to impact, reflecting their heritage as machines designed for high-speed racing. Sporting ammunition typically cannot damage FPV sufficiently at almost any range, according to Bradley.
“Drones require more energy on target when they are in the air,” he explained. “When they are hit they simply move as they have very little inertia — the movement robs the pellets of kinetic energy, rather like punching something in zero gravity, less energy is transferred to target as it is used up moving it backward.”
The Ukrainian Third Assault Brigade demonstrated these challenges as part of an experimental shooting conducted earlier this month, simulating an FPV drone attack to test which kind of bullet is most effective. Soldiers compared shooting standard cartridges and specific anti-drone ammunition using different types of guns, including shotguns.
In the majority of cases, not only was the FPV not downed, but even when it was damaged, the system kept flying as the shot was too weak. In the one instance where the target was hit with an anti-drone charge, it crashed and caught fire near the shooter, barely missing him.
Sweden’s Norma has developed a specialized 12-gauge shotgun cartridge, the AD-LER (Anti-Drone Long Effective Range), to combat FPV drones:
The creators ultimately selected #6 shot with a 2.75 mm diameter, which provided an optimal balance between shot dispersion and kinetic impact.
[…]
Developed as a result, the AD-LER cartridge contains 350 tungsten pellets, weighing a total of 34 grams, and can deliver effective fire up to 60 meters. For testing, they chose the Benelli M4 Drone Guardian shotgun with a special barrel choke.
Of course, tungsten #6 birdshot is already on the market. Tungsten has the density of lead, without being toxic, which is why it’s now used to hunt waterfowl — and it’s harder than steel, which is why it’s now used to hunt drones, too.
I’m well advised by the experienced that shotguns are the best thing for counter-drone point defense. Several kills to the credit of source.
I don’t know what that “Hevi-Shot” birdshot is, but, at 12 gm/cc, it ain’t really tungsten.
Pure tungsten is much more dense than lead. It weighs in at ~19.25 gm/cc, whereas lead is about 11.35 gm/cc. (Steel, for reference’s sake, at about 7.8 gm/cc.)
Pure tungsten is even more dense than depleted uranium, which is 19.1 gm/cc.
Thing is, almost nobody uses pure or near-pure tungsten. Cemented tungsten carbide is a lot closer to lead, at about 14 gm/cc. The “tungsten heavy alloys,” which are usually W-Fe-Ni, are about 17-18 gm/cc.
Anyway, this is all kind of academic. “AD-LER can deliver effective fire up to 60 meters” means that it’s damn near useless, as most drones will close and move at around 500 meters in altitude, unless they’re the ground-hugging fiber optic (tethered) type. In either case, if you’re really lucky, you’ll get one shot.
A better weapon would be something like the old OICW — an airburst grenade launcher that can sight range and might have various proximity sensors. It’s said that the OICW was a complex weapon to use, a bit beyond the average infantryman’s capabilities. More elite or selected soldiers supposedly found it very effective. With today’s tech and modern sensors and optics, it might be possible to introduce an improved model that even conscripts can use effectively. This could be a drone-killer out to 500m and beyond.
I think the issue is that not all drones are alike, and a hovering drone providing overwatch or preparing to drop a grenade is very different from an evasive carbon-fiber FPV drone striking at 100 mph from an unexpected (low) angle.
And most soldiers aren’t skilled shotgunners.
I’m not sure why the Hevi Shot’s “tungsten” is just slightly denser than lead, but being much harder than lead seems quite useful for downing FPV drones.
I would think a 40-mm round of steel shot would be cheap and maybe effective, and not require such a specialized weapon.
Tungsten core for density, wrapped in something cheaper that won’t scratch barrels so much?
Anyway, this seems a reiteration of the same old problem with different parameters. Air defense, but even more widely distributed. So “anti-air artillery, but lighter, cheaper, and traversing fast” seems to be the most likely solution. And various military industries already worked on airburst grenades, indeed.
Maybe even integrated “point defense turret lite”, in that UAV and UGV must be detected and tracked first, and then why not feed targets to fire control directly?
Would be interesting if it were tungsten-nylon or tungsten-tin. The US Military experimented with those two a couple decades ago.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA455868.pdf
Tungsten-nylon would be very soft and possibly also quite brittle — a weird combination of properties.
This page, though, makes it seem as though “Hevi-Shot” is just another variety of W-Fe-Ni alloy — though on the extreme iron-rich side of the spectrum: https://www.ballisticproducts.com/Hevi-Shot/products/67/
That’s a lot harder than lead, though, that’s for sure.
It would be funny if clay pigeon shooting becomes a component of tomorrow’s infantryman training.
Adept, the point is to shoot the kamikaze FPV drone that’s going to fly into you and explode. 60 meters, or even a few more than it hits you and explodes is better.
Not to mention soldiers must have a way of returning fire or it’s over psychologically.
The greatest 2nd Amendment type mobilization in history was North Vietnam giving every man a rifle and telling him to shoot at the aircraft. Not only did it greatly complicate the problem under 2000 feet, far more importantly it mobilized in their minds every man and boy in North Vietnam. Nothing is more positive commitment than shooting at the enemy.
VXXC, we’re in complete agreement. It’s just that an effective range of 60m leaves no room for error, and drones can very easily adapt to it. (It would be trivial for anti-personnel drones to drop grenades from a 100m altitude, for instance.) An airburst weapon, like the 20-year-old OICW prototype, might possibly give soldiers a better fighting chance. But — complicated to build, complicated to use, and a clear break from tradition.
We had proximity fuses for 40mm rounds in 1944.
The original proximity fuses detected airplanes — or the earth, if used for air bursts above infantry. Drones have the radar cross-section of a bird. I don’t know if that’s easy to address with a new, improved round.
The old style proximity fuses with vacuum tube could be a capacitance relay or radar.
Capacitance relay is basically impossible to fool into a false negative, but easy to feed a false positive. Any conductive object of sufficient size is the same to it, even just foil on paper base.
Radar can be more selective, but… it’s a well-known beast. IMO any version useful in a fuse (very limited in time to process the targets, mass-produced in grenade size, let alone micro-grenade) is unlikely to perform well against any countermeasures beyond basic dipole chaff.
All in all, with a radar-controlled weapon, timed fuses would be cheaper and likely no worse in performance than proximity fuses will be once countermeasures appear (which will happen anyway, vs targeting radars).