The US Army plans to turn individual ground vehicles into drone-destroying machines, as militaries worldwide scramble to protect their troops from small aerial threats. The reason for such urgency can be found in viral social media videos showing small drones bombing armoured vehicles and dropping grenades on individual soldiers across the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
The US Army has put out a formal asking defence contractors for information on upgrading its counter-drone measures. It aims to transform existing US military vehicles into mobile defences capable of destroying or neutralising small drones. Such vehicles would need to carry sensors for tracking small drones and an electronic warfare system capable of jamming the signals used to control and coordinate drones 鈥� the latter providing an invisible umbrella of protection that disables or otherwise prevents drones from operating nearby.
To shoot down drone threats, the vehicles must also carry a remote-controlled turret armed with a cannon, machine guns and twin launchers capable of deploying special drones designed to destroy other drones in mid-air.
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All these sensors and weapons are currently carried by two separate vehicles operating as the US Army鈥檚 Mobile-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense System. The US Army鈥檚 latest proposal would put this counter-drone package on a single vehicle that is easier to operate and maintain, according to the US Army Program Executive Office Missiles and Space.
鈥淭he more mobile a system is, the easier and quicker it can be set up, the better it is for the soldiers at the tactical edge to deal with these threats,鈥� says at the national security think tank Center for New American Security and the nonprofit organisation Center for Naval Analyses.
The US military has been 鈥渄rawing significant lessons鈥� from the unprecedented wholescale battlefield use of small drones since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, according to Bendett. Both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have used crowdfunding campaigns to buy dozens of commercial, off-the-shelf drones or DIY versions that can be weaponised to deploy explosive devices or outfitted with additional sensors to be used as scouts.
Bendett says the Russian military has also been trying to teach 鈥渁nybody in uniform how to spot and shoot down small quadcopter drones with the available weapons at your fingertips鈥�, although it is very challenging to do so.
鈥淚t is difficult to see such a [drone] unless it鈥檚 directly over you at any given point,鈥� says Bendett. 鈥淎nd then by the time it鈥檚 actually directly over your position at any given point, as many Russian military [troops] are finding out, it鈥檚 often too late.鈥�
