A Chinese military magazine published an article in January that outlined the important role that China’s large fleet of drones would play in a war over Taiwan. When one looks at the large number and large variety of aerial drones that China is currently building up, that certainly seems feasible.
The PLA’s drones come in all shapes and sizes, from large jet-powered intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) drones to large propeller-driven drones that look a lot like the U.S.’s famous MQ-9 Reaper, to helicopter drones of all sizes, to very small winged drones, to even smaller quadcopters. Most of these unmanned aerial vehicles have small cameras or some sort of sensor to feed back ISR data to their controllers. The biggest ones can carry large anti-ship and ground-attack missiles. But the Ukraine war has shown that even the smallest drones can be adapted to drop deadly grenades on enemy troops and enemy missile systems.
Considering the threat drones pose to Taiwan’s troops and crucial mobile missile systems, it is not surprising that it has recently launched a project to catch up to China by creating a large number of its own drones. We have now learned that Taiwan is also running a project called the Drone Defense National Team that aims to develop the country’s drone-killing capabilities. Of course, when one has to defend an island from a large number of attacking drones, it does make a lot of sense to invest resources in anti-drone systems.
Yu-Jiu Wang, (王毓駒) CEO of Taiwan-based firm Tron Future, told Defense News this month that his company is currently the prime contractor for Taiwan’s anti-drone development program. Tron Future’s counter-drone radars are already used by the Taiwanese Army and Wang says the systems are ready for mass deployment, with increasing demand prompting the company to aim for a production rate of 100 per month for this year. He told Defense News the company’s T.Radar Pro anti-drone radar is a top seller because it is very portable and weighs only 15 kilograms. Wang said the radar can either be bought separately or as part of the company’s larger anti-drone system, which includes a drone-disabling jammer and an “interceptor” that can combine to create an anti-drone “dome” measuring 5 kilometers in diameter.
We will look at this “interceptor” vehicle later in the article, but first we’ll do what Taiwan’s military scientists are currently doing — we’ll take a look at all the different technologies that different countries are developing to counter large and small drones, as well as drone swarms.
Types of ‘interceptors’
The Ukraine war has shown that small quadcopter drones offer a unique challenge for soldiers on the ground. Even if these off-the-shelf drones are not fitted with grenades that they can drop on you, they are still very deadly as they are showing their controllers via video feed where to send their artillery or kamikaze drones to kill you. So, it is very important for ground troops to neutralize even the smallest of spy drones as quickly as possible. Many times, the defenders would only have their rifles with them, forcing them to try and shoot down the drone with narrow bullets, which requires a lot of skill and even more luck.
A better weapon to counter such small yet deadly drones would be a shotgun loaded with large shot pellets that can travel farther than small shot pellets. The advantage of shotgun shot is that it expands into shrapnel clouds, so it can hit small, moving targets more easily. Of course, the problem with shotgun shot is that it is most effective at short distances, as the shrapnel pellets quickly run out of energy and fall down to Earth.
One solution to this problem is to launch a “shotgun shell” at high velocity at a drone, and to make sure the shell only detonates right before it reaches the target — in order to create a perfect shrapnel cloud. An anti-drone weapon that uses this logic is the Oerlikon Skyranger 35 unmanned gun turret, which can be installed on a range of wheeled or tracked armored fighting vehicles. This turret contains an auto cannon, radar and optical sensors that fires and controls a special kind of 35 millimeter shell. The system is controlled from inside the safety of the vehicle and uses its external sensors to track small or big drones and drone swarms.
When the controller pushes a button, the cannon fires a burst of around 20 shells — at a speed of 16 shells per second — at the point where it calculates the drone or drone swarm would be when the shells arrive. As each shell exits the gun’s muzzle, it receives programming data from the gun that tells it exactly when to explode. This moment of explosion is calculated by the system and causes the shells to detonate a few meters before the targets, creating a large cloud of fast-moving shrapnel that can easily destroy a large drone or a swarm of drones.
This kind of “programmable shell” fired by a smart cannon system is probably the most violent way to stop a drone or drone swarm, and it’s definitely not cheap. It does however represent one type of technology that Taiwan’s scientists would be looking at in their search for ways to stop drones and drone swarms.
Radio guns
Another popular anti-drone technology that Taiwan would be looking at is the radio-frequency disruptor. This usually comes in the shape of a man-portable device that looks like an oversized gun. The soldier simply aims the disruptor at the drone and pulls the trigger, causing the “gun” to send strong radio signals to the drone, which overpowers the drone’s connection to its controller’s signal or GPS signals. This usually forces the drone to land immediately or to return to its starting position, thus allowing the defenders to track where the drone’s human controllers are located. These types of radio-disruptor guns are being used with relative success in Ukraine, but it is possible that future drones would not depend on radio controls or GPS to find their way, which would make such guns much less useful.
On the other hand, the Skywall Patrol looks like a bazooka from Starship Troopers and uses compressed air to fire a net that catches the drone and stops its rotors from turning, forcing it to fall to the ground. The big limitation of this net-based interceptor is that its range is less than 100 meters, and the maximum range of any net cannon is only 300 meters. Another net-based anti-drone technology is a drone that flies to the target drone and then fires its net cannon from close range. This works well against drones that did not spot the approaching anti-drone, but is less effective against moving drones and drones that spotted the threat and are evading. Other “net drone” types simply carry a net that hangs beneath the drone, and the controller then maneuvers the net drone until it traps the target drone in the hanging net. Again, this works best against drones whose operators did not see the threat coming.
Birds of prey like hawks and eagles have also been trained to catch small quadcopters successfully. However, this might not be an efficient way to do it, as raising, training and caring for a raptor requires a lot of time, money and skill. Also, the bird’s claws can be injured by the spinning blades of target quadcopters, which could either disable the bird or make it not want to catch the quadcopters anymore.
Lasers and EMPs
Directed energy is another “non-gun way” that Taiwan’s scientists would be looking at to destroy drones and even larger systems like cruise missiles. Directed energy refers to weapons that focus the energy of light via lasers, and weapons that focus electromagnetic energy via microwave emitters.
Lockheed Martin recently developed a 100-kilowatt laser system called ATHENA, which can be placed on light trucks like humvees. The ATHENA has shown that it is capable of detecting and destroying drones by burning holes in their vital parts. 100 kilowatts is considered to be the minimum power input required to create a laser beam that can stop mortars and drones, but the company is also experimenting with a 300 kilowatt laser that would require a heavier truck with a larger generator, larger battery, larger cooling system, and larger components. A 300 kilowatt laser is considered to be the minimum strength needed to bring down cruise missiles.
The U.S. Air Force recently developed the THOR system, which uses high-powered microwave energy to destroy aerial drones. This system has proven to be very effective against single drones and drone swarms. It is basically a high-power emitter that focuses microwave energy to create electromagnetic pulses that it then aims in the direction of the target via a flexible gimbal system. The pulses are propagated through the air at high speed but turn into strong electrical currents when they encounter metal. So, it basically fries the electronics of the average drone by flooding it with powerful electrical currents that the drone was not designed for, thereby burning and melting its thin circuits. This type of EMP weapon creates a wide energy beam with which it can quickly disable multiple drones.
Missiles
Taiwan would also be looking at man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) like the shoulder-fired Stinger, which can be used to shoot down small or large drones. However, the Stinger is designed to track the heat signature of large and hot jet engines, so it needs to be adjusted to track small drones that do not emit much heat. When one considers the price of the Stinger missile, it would rarely make sense to use such a hot rod to destroy a small drone, so it would make sense to develop a smaller version that is cheaper and focused on shooting down small, cool and slow drones.
One example of such a price-effective missile is the APKWS kit, which is a standard “dumb” 70 millimeter rocket that has been fitted with a “smart” guidance kit, called an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS). BAE Systems said in January that it had successfully tested a specialized anti-drone APKWS kit against Class 2 drones (drones weighing between 25 and 50 pounds that can fly faster than 100 miles per hour).
Coming back to the anti-drone system currently being produced by Taiwan’s Tron Future company, it is interesting to note that this system uses yet another interceptor technology. It pairs the company’s anti-drone radar and a drone-disabling jammer with an interceptor vehicle called “T.Interceptor” that is itself basically a small delta-wing drone with an interchangeable warhead. The company’s CEO says the user can elect to use a “soft-kill” warhead that will bring down but not destroy the target drone, or a “hard-kill” warhead that is designed to destroy the target drone.
Image: U.S. Army, Public Domain
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