Our future ground based anti-air capabilities seem to be coalescing around CAMM and Lightweight Starstreak but have a look at this video.
The caption reads
While NATO countries fly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) high above Libya, none of these UAVs, or the vital intelligence they provide, was available to the Libyans fighting to free their country — they were fighting blind. So, they got one of their own. The Libyan rebels have been using the Aeryon Scout Micro UAV to acquire intelligence on enemy positions and to coordinate their resistance efforts. This video gives sample photos and video from both the Scout’s daylight and thermal payloads.
With this kind of unmanned system, relatively unsophisticated in comparison to a Reaper of course, defence economics come into play.
Systems like these, costing less than £10,000 can be easily obtained on the open market in significant quantities, operated without extensive training or worrying about airspace management, carry day and night sensors and generally provide enemy forces with a big asymmetric advantage.
It doesn’t take an overactive imagination to see how they could be easily weaponised either.
If all we can counter them with is hundreds of thousand pound missiles, do we have an operational and economic problem?
TD mentioned CAMM/FLAADS at the beginning. Rather than proliferating multiple solutions for multiple threats, CAMM seems to be a neat one-size-fits-all solution for a variety of threats from UAV’s to cruise missiles, popup helos and low flying FBA. Based on existing tech, modular design, low risk and adaptable, it’s just ASRAAM (proven) with a different seeker screwed on the end. Cost savings across the land, maritime and air domains would make this a good idea.
I have heard tales of the more tech savvy equipping RC helicopters with webcams, providing real-time images. Obviously very basic and easy to detect/jam but I don’t think it would take much to get more reliable/secure.
I wonder if you compared that £70 toy’s imagery with that obtained from earlier UAV’s what you would see, scary stuff I think
Errr, this is just getting silly:
http://www.firebox.com/product/3616/Silverlit-I-R-Spy-Camera-Helicopter
@ AndyW – Skynet!
On a more serious note, this is the downside of going hi-tech. Cyber-security is going to be hugely important.
What concerns me is that, if you have the capability to build/deploy a UAV, that far exceeds the ability to build an RC aeroplane with a GPS/INS and a decent sized bomb in it and send it off on a none way trip down a pre-planned route. Such a device, whilst not as flexible as HAROP or Fireshadow, could prove a real nuisance in the wrong hands. It would also be much harder to shoot down as it wouldn’t be loitering about overhead but arriving relatively fast and low, using terrain masking to limit its exposure to defences.
Has anyone seen this Wired Dangerroom article?
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/
American UAV’s infected with virus…
“A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones.
The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.
“We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back,” says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. “We think it’s benign. But we just don’t know.”
Had to happen sooner or later I guess.
As far as the cheap tactical ISTAR ones go, they’ll be hard to shoot down. Isn’t the answer to accept that and have better ones?
The strike ones, I think, are favoured by the War on Terror context where the target is one bloke and nobody seems to shoot back.
Jed
Irregulars are never gouing to have hundreds of UAVs to deploy, but I dislike planning to fight irregulars.
A regular army could do as I say, and be an absolute PITA to counter.
It takes me less than 30 seconds to take the case off and pop out the drive on my PC when my electric screw driver is charged, cant see why it would be any harder on a UAV.
Does it matter hugely if its an hour delayed?
Its no longer as good, but as I said earlier, I remember reading complaints, I’m sure from Afghanistan, that tornado recce was taking three days to make its way back to the Patrol bases, and as such, was useless.
6 hours, not brilliant, but a vast improvement. And this assumes they are just recce varients, arm a few, and you’ve got problems.
I was unaware of the specifics of “home on jam”, just aware of the concept, be even so, a big arse radio transmitting blanketing our radio frequencies cant be something we dont deal with already.
DomJ
Are we talking cheap easily purchased UAV’s used by terrorists / irregulars (I thought the thread was) or more sophisticated capabilities fielded by neer peers / peers ?
Ref: “Jam a uav, it can land and have its drives pulled in 30 seconds.”
If we are talking about el cheapo systems, how can it do this ? It ‘may’ have the autonomy and the smarts to react to jamming by flying to a pre-set waypoint and land, the bad guys may be able to remove the hard drives to access imagery, but now its been degraded to a non-real time recce asset, not a real-time targetting asset – in effect a “mission kill”.
Same for home on jam – that is usually a reference to a mode of radars, that they can home on a jammer using their radar receiver. I have never actually heard of any weapons system with a “home on jam” capability at radio frequencies, does not mean they don’t exist, but I doubt they will be fielded by the envisaged enemies, and they would probably be expensive too.
It is more usual in land combat to DF the jammer and hit it with artillery (depending on its avaialability and the priority for fires).
So dont discount “soft kill” so quickly :-)
For CIWS on a ship? There is no cheap way of doing that. A Metal storm unit on a vehicle could probably do optical guidance, with a bit of training.
The cheap-ness and simplicity out of the window then?
@ ACC
Obviously you would have to fit the Metal Storm system to some kind of radar and movable mounting!
The point I’m trying to make is that a metal storm system could fire that 4x4ft wall of lead…. and then another one a half second later… and so on and so forth, all the while tracking the missile and adjusting it’s fire.
The way to go
” Modern IFVs mount automatic cannon with powered elevation and traverse, powerful optics, laser rangefinders and airbursting ammunition, so it would be possible to use these vehicles in a counter-UAV role. It might take some additional equipment in some cases”
– laser range-finding might be a bit “rich” if and when it is not there for other reasons
– but thermal sights (cheap!) and lots of MGs (cheap, again) on appropriate mounts, to make the defences pervasive… once you force the drones up, they
– will become more expensive (the sensors need to be better), and
– we already have the systems (though not in numbers) to take them down
These cheap UAVs that may be set to swarm us are going to be limited in their aviation capabilities. In the near future, they will be slow and cumbersome.
Their defence is small size and quantity.
Quantity and cost means that the only cost-effective way of downing them is gunfire or soft-kill systems like lasers or jamming. The limitation of this is range. Blanket coverage jamming either requires large emitters which are no good for electronic warfare, or distributed emitters.
Likewise line of sight systems like guns and laser. The range is limited by dispersion, pointing accuracy and the like, so you need your systems dispersed with your forces to provide adequate coverage. This, in my mind, argues against specialised systems like Marksman, Gepard etc. and for integrating the capability into standard vehicles. Modern IFVs mount automatic cannon with powered elevation and traverse, powerful optics, laser rangefinders and airbursting ammunition, so it would be possible to use these vehicles in a counter-UAV role. It might take some additional equipment in some cases, such as advanced cuing systems, but these could be added to the standard vehicle in a one per platoon or troop arrangement and this could hand-off targets to other vehicles.
i remember a complaint from ghanners to the effect that it took three days for tornado recon to make its way back to the front lines.
Jam a uav, it can land and have its drives pulled in 30 seconds.
Even jamming isnt easy, jammers are noisey, home on jamming, and it leaves you deafer.
Dazzling is fine for one, but hundreds?
How about nets, like chain shot from cannons?
Hi Chris B,
I do like the MS concept, but as for “If you consider that a standard Phalanx CIWS basically fires a single stream of rounds that has to be guided onto to the target, whereas a 20mm CIWS using Metal Storm technology could fire a 4ft by 4ft wall of rounds simultaneously.”
– the terminal manoeuvre of the ASMs left the wall of metal -concept of defence for dead
– Phalanx is well beyond the early concept (ROF was key, in it) as it has the radar. It is not only tracking the target, but its own metal storm and the correcting feedback is in nano-seconds
@ Paul G
Yeah, each round consists of the bullet, primer, charge, a small chip and then a thin skirt wrapped around the charge (to stop gases bleeding forward past the fired round). The firing device (a computer, either in the pistol grip or on a firing station) sends the signal to the round, which then has to fire it’s own primer and charge.
Obviously I’m not privvy to the inner workings of it, but the actual weapon itself will probably be much cheaper (in most applications it’s just a set of barrels held together) and then the money maker will be the preloaded ammunition tubes. A bit like the old Gillette model of business.
The applications though are pretty interesting. If you consider that a standard Phalanx CIWS basically fires a single stream of rounds that has to be guided onto to the target, whereas a 20mm CIWS using Metal Storm technology could fire a 4ft by 4ft wall of rounds simultaneously. It’ll be like taking a shotgun to incoming rounds (I can’t wait to see Metal Storm develop a personal shotgun for home defence!)
There’s obviously problems with it still. Each successive round is further back down the barrel, so the ballistics for a weapon like that would be odd. It’s like firing a shot from a 4 inch barrel, then one from a 4.5 inch, then 5 inches etc, and all problems that entails.
It’s also quite space consuming. Whereas a standard gun can offset the feed system from the barrel, a metal storm type weapon either has to increase the number of barrels, or increase their length. I’m not sure as it’ll ever make it as an aircraft gun for example (They can be reloaded, but it involves removing the tube of old ammo and replacing it with a new full tube).
@ Jed
4. Absolutely agree.
3. Is something I can see hitting off. It reminds me of the Leigh lights used in the Battle of the Atlantic, with the searchlight coupled to the radar. If you had decent enough DF equipment you could link that with the lasers and away you go. I remember reading about a Police helicopter that had to call off a chase once because the little shits in the car were using a jacked laser pointer to shine in the pilots eyes (it was at night, which compounded the problem).
Everyone seems to be talking “hard kill” so don’t forget:
1. DF-ing their downlink – they are no use to their operators if not transmitting live feed, so scan for their frequencies, and either blanket jam, or DF the origin and directionally jam
2. Use LIDAR / IR / Acoustic sensors to locate – yes they will have very small signatures, but I doubt they will be beyond the realm of detection by modern sensors
3. If you can identifly one, get a visual lock on it (with IR / EO) then “dazzle” it with a laser, not use to the bad guy if it cant see anything
4. Maskirovka – best we get back into the art of camouflage and deception !
@chris b,
didn’t realise the chip was in the round thought that was only the airburst one (the anti RPG7 vid on their site is cracking). However with all things tech i would assume the price will eventually fall. i did note the underslung 5 round shotgun has been taken up by colt so mass production will help that price fall.
Small company like that should be encouraged to have a base here in the UK like i suggested with denel get some manufacturing here in the UK, plenty of test areas the UAV zone in west wales and obviously the outer hebs, could be sorted for the price of a couple of schools in some far off land that hates us anyway!!!
Tubby said: “Also had another random thought – could you counter UAV’s and loitering munitions with cheap A2A UAV’s – I am thinking less unmanned Typhoon and more unmanned Spitfire – if you had a smallish gun armed UAV and a control vehicle you could use it to sweep ahead and kill any UAV’s it’s patrol area.”
Given the light nature of the UAVs could you fly past at high speed and let turbulence take them down rather than try and shoot them?