USAF Wants Extra Cash to Cease Drone Swarms
DAYTON, Ohio—Whereas the Pentagon continues to experiment with applied sciences that might disable or destroy swarms of small drones, the Air Pressure’s lead on counter-drone acquisition stated extra funding is required to counter the menace—and to show promising efforts into applications of file.
The counter-small unmanned aerial programs mission, or C-sUAS, is one which Steven Wert, program govt officer for the digital directorate, has been monitoring for a number of years now.
The Pentagon began ramping up spending on counter-drone weaponry round fiscal 2018, spending a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} on the trouble. Across the similar time, consultants started warning that small, comparatively low cost armed drones might bombard bases and wreak outsized havoc—making them enticing to an entire vary of adversaries from China and Russia to Iran and even non-state actors, akin to violent extremist teams.
“In response to pressing operational want, we fielded gear at a lot of our most important bases,” Wert stated on the Life Cycle Trade Days convention July 31. “However we by no means received developmental funding to modernize that gear, which is now 5 or 6 years outdated, in all probability seven- or eight-year-old expertise.” Nor did the Air Pressure totally “discover completely different phenomenologies within the counter-UAS house.”
In the meantime, the specter of small drones has solely grown, highlighted by their use in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine’s subsequent response.
“I’ve repeatedly stated I’m involved concerning the lack of funding there given the rising variety of incursions that we see all over the world,” Wert stated. “That state of affairs has probably not modified. [Today] it’s on the level the place labs are growing completely different capabilities, however we don’t have the power to catch these right into a manufacturing program.”
For the Air Pressure, the Tactical Excessive-power Operational Responder, or THOR—a short-range directed power weapon developed by the Air Pressure Analysis Laboratory—is essentially the most high-profile instance this sort of functionality. THORE makes use of microwaves to intervene with drones’ electronics, dropping them from the sky. First unveiled in 2019, the system has had an extended path to improvement. Earlier this 12 months THORE efficiently disabled a swarm of drones, the primary take a look at on such a scale.
AFRL stated it was growing a follow-on system in 2021, calling it “Mjolnir” for the hammer wielded by the Norse god Thor. In 2022, the lab chosen Leidos to construct the system, saying it could make use of the identical expertise as THOR “however will add essential advances in functionality, reliability, and manufacturing readiness.” AFRL stated it hoped to have a prototype by 2023, however has provided no updates since.
In the meantime, different applied sciences have been explored—AFRL examined each microwave and laser weapons in abroad demonstrations however has provided few particulars on their effectiveness.
The Military can also be growing options. The Pentagon established an Military-led Joint C-sUAS workplace in 2020, and it has since held 4 demonstrations, most not too long ago in July. It has labored on each directed power and kinetic weapons to tackle single-drone assaults in addition to swarms.
The joint C-sUAS workplace issued a request for white papers on Aug. 4, searching for “potential materiel options which have promising applied sciences or approaches” for detecting, monitoring, figuring out, and/or defeating small drone swarms. Essentially the most promising responses can be chosen for additional evaluation, the request stated, and a few could also be invited to take part within the workplace’s subsequent demonstration, deliberate for June 2024.
In a separate request for info, the joint workplace stated the demonstration will encompass “at least 20 however as much as 50 particular person plane (Group 1 and Group 2) at one time and at least six Group 3 plane at one time.” Group 1 and a couple of plane confer with drones that weigh 55 kilos or much less and usually solely fly a couple of thousand toes above the bottom. Group 3 consists of drones that weigh lower than 1,320 kilos and fly no greater than 18,000 toes.
The joint workplace’s request for white papers notes that after the demonstration, some corporations could also be chosen for a prototyping program and even follow-on manufacturing with out competitors.
