On the night of 5 January and into the early hours of the next day, Russian forces in Syria came under attack by a 鈥溾��, says the Russian Ministry of Defence. It is the first announced use of a swarm of drones in a military action, but is unlikely to be the last.
According to reports, 13 small drones descended on Russian forces, but none did significant damage. Seven were destroyed by anti-aircraft defences and the others were brought down using electronic countermeasures to hijack or jam the drone鈥檚 controls and land them intact.
The captured aircraft seem crudely made, with a wooden undercarriage and plastic sheeting, powered by a small liquid-fuel engine. Under their wings, the drones carried several locally made bombs fitted with 3D printed plastic fins.
Advertisement
Many drones carry a video camera and are then piloted remotely from just a few kilometres away. But Russia says this attack was launched from more than 50 kilometres away and the drones were guided by GPS. This would require the coordinates of the target to be known in advance.
The source of the attack isn鈥檛 known. Because the drones are home-made, they can鈥檛 readily be traced like missiles or other weapons.
Flying in concert
ISIS has used such bombs before in drone-bombing campaign, and other insurgent groups in Syria and Iraq have used similar drones. But ISIS seem unlikely to be responsible because it has no bases in the area. Israeli military intelligence website Debka.com quotes a Syrian source as blaming , a group linked to al-Qaida and a Twitter image from 1 January with a similar drone.
DIY drones have been used in concert before, but only in small groups of three to five. For example, in Mosul, Iraqi forces reported . This is the first known instance of a significant swarm used in a military conflict.
The US has several drone swarm programmes, including the air-launched , the ship-launched me, the programme to take out air defences, and a US Army plan for missile-launched anti-tank swarms.
However, the largest military swarm to date has been a flown in a test by the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation last June.
Project overwhelm
The idea behind such projects is that large numbers of small, cheap drones could overwhelm defences that depend on single large jets or a small group of missiles. Experience in Iraq and Syria has shown that small drones are .
Most missiles can鈥檛 lock on to drones because of their small radar and heat signature. There is no single effective way to combat swarms, but there are many projects developing jammers and other devices to detect, track and bring them down.
Flying large numbers of drones together requires sophisticated software to keep them in formation and to avoid collisions. Swarming software is likely to become available commercially soon, because swarms are increasingly used for light shows. Crowds at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas were , while the Chinese company Ehang have shown off to make images and characters in the sky.
