Interesting Question: What if Iran Develops a Drone Army Like Turkey?

[Zhong Lu + 845]

What exactly are you supposed to do to counter that? Shooting a missile at a drone isn't worth the cost and they fly too fast to be reliably shot down by ballistics.  

[frankfurter + 562]

drone versus drone?   

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Electronic pulse munitions

[George8944 + 128]

The Preditor's air speed is 460 MPH.   Much slower than a fighter jet.   I don't think the problem is speed.  I think the problem is the relatively low cost to produce (compared to fighter).   They could be massed produced to simply overwhelm an area with quantity.  In that case a possible defense is to  "simply" throw up a wall of metal at the incoming flock.   I'm thinking of something like the M134 Minigun.  It fires 6000 rounds per minute.

I'm not a weapon's expert or military strategist.  I'm just pulling this out of my diaper.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm
 

Another idea...

[Zhong Lu + 845]

Yeah but only one needs to get through with explosives.  

[surrept33 + 609]

15 hours ago, frankfurter said:

drone versus drone?   

From the founder of Oculus:

 

 

[Bob D + 562]

That's easy  -  turn Tehran into a glass parking lot!

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

Reportedly, in Tokyo, local gangs have started using drones to transport drugs across the city.

In response, the police are using net-carrying drones to try to capture these packets mid-air.

The gangs are counter-attacking with their own net-drones to try and drop police drones.

In a statement with the Tokyo police, they say they "Haven't had this much fun in years"

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

7 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Yeah but only one needs to get through with explosives.  

Not really, an area weapon.

https://interestingengineering.com/what-are-emps-and-how-are-they-used-in-warfare

[George8944 + 128]

7 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Yeah but only one needs to get through with explosives.  

Yes, but that can be said about any weapon.  Defense is all about damage mitigation.  If you want to assure nothing gets through you go on the offensive and take out the factory building them.  Destroy the factory and let your defenses whittle down what remains.  In World War Two the Germans were on a roll (future pun...keep reading) until the Allies turned their attention to bombing the bearing factories around Stuttgart.   It was a single point of failure.  Everything from cars, to trucks, to planes to ships needed those bearings.

[Guillaume Albasini + 851]

An article about the Turkish drones used in the battle for Idlib.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/battle-idlib-turkey-drones-war-200303170724302.html

[El Nikko + 2,145]

On 3/3/2020 at 2:11 AM, Zhong Lu said:

What exactly are you supposed to do to counter that? Shooting a missile at a drone isn't worth the cost and they fly too fast to be reliably shot down by ballistics.  

Iran already has drones, shooting them down with missiles and other ground fire works very well. Turkey has lost 10 to ground fire in the last few weeks in both Syria and Libya at least 3 of which are similar to the US Predator drone. In fact the US have also lost quite a few over Yemen, Syria and in various parts of Africa.

Smaller drones in a 'swarm' might be what you are refering to? These are modified off the shelf drones as far as I know, I've seem some footage from Yemen of suicide drones and then AQ/ISIS or what ever you want to call them have been using them against the Russian Airbase but haven't had loads of success they also carry much smaller explosive or can drop mortar rounds.

Drones aren't magic and only really effective if the enemy doesn't have surface to air missiles

[El Nikko + 2,145]

On 3/3/2020 at 4:42 AM, George8944 said:

The Preditor's air speed is 460 MPH.   Much slower than a fighter jet.   I don't think the problem is speed.  I think the problem is the relatively low cost to produce (compared to fighter).   They could be massed produced to simply overwhelm an area with quantity.  In that case a possible defense is to  "simply" throw up a wall of metal at the incoming flock.   I'm thinking of something like the M134 Minigun.  It fires 6000 rounds per minute.

I'm not a weapon's expert or military strategist.  I'm just pulling this out of my diaper.

The US Army already has the Phalanx gun for shooting down mortar rounds and rockets and most likely low flying drones, looks pretty expensive but it wouldn't work at something like a Predator which flies at high altitude. Against the cheap off the shelf type drones I imagine they would be very effective.

 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

Could be fake but it's claimed to be real, in Libya.

[Zhong Lu + 845]

2 hours ago, El Nikko said:

Iran already has drones, shooting them down with missiles and other ground fire works very well. Turkey has lost 10 to ground fire in the last few weeks in both Syria and Libya at least 3 of which are similar to the US Predator drone. In fact the US have also lost quite a few over Yemen, Syria and in various parts of Africa.

Smaller drones in a 'swarm' might be what you are refering to? These are modified off the shelf drones as far as I know, I've seem some footage from Yemen of suicide drones and then AQ/ISIS or what ever you want to call them have been using them against the Russian Airbase but haven't had loads of success they also carry much smaller explosive or can drop mortar rounds.

Drones aren't magic and only really effective if the enemy doesn't have surface to air missiles

Each surface to air missile is more expensive then the drone that's shot down.  

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,131]

On 3/2/2020 at 6:11 PM, Zhong Lu said:

What exactly are you supposed to do to counter that? Shooting a missile at a drone isn't worth the cost and they fly too fast to be reliably shot down by ballistics.  

RADAR tracking AA guns with explosive shells are dirt cheap.  Used to be ubiquitous. 

Bigger drones?  Missiles. 

Modern answer: LASER

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

2 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Each surface to air missile is more expensive then the drone that's shot down. 

You think they care about money?  Look at the debt and "defence" budget.

Even a few rounds of a big regular gun can cost as much as a plastic drone.  They can probably 3D print this stuff.

Don't even arm them, just use them as flak, chaff, distractions...   waste their time, munitions, attention.  "Cry wolf" enough times and vigilance falls.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Make them deploy an umbrella made of aluminum foil to make them look bigger on radar - waste an expensive missile on what appears to be a big target.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

2 hours ago, Zhong Lu said:

Each surface to air missile is more expensive then the drone that's shot down.  

The bigger drones like Ba2 and Ankas drones recently shot down cost 5-10 million each, soviet era missiles are a fraction of that cost.

The much smaller 'off the shelf' drones used have pretty small payloads and can't do close to the kind of damage we've just seen from the Turkish Airforce on tank columns, the price they paid for destroying very old tanks was to lose bare minimum 3 expensive drones because they are extremely vulnerable when flying in airspace protected by surface to air missiles.

Even the so called rebels accidentally shot down a high flying Anka drone with a turkish built stinger missile the other day, and they only cost around $38,000...peanuts

Edited March 4, 2020 by El Nikko

[El Nikko + 2,145]

and there goes another one

 

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 3/3/2020 at 2:15 PM, Douglas Buckland said:

Electronic pulse munitions

Bingo!

[Wombat + 1,028]

On 3/3/2020 at 2:42 PM, George8944 said:

The Preditor's air speed is 460 MPH.   Much slower than a fighter jet.   I don't think the problem is speed.  I think the problem is the relatively low cost to produce (compared to fighter).   They could be massed produced to simply overwhelm an area with quantity.  In that case a possible defense is to  "simply" throw up a wall of metal at the incoming flock.   I'm thinking of something like the M134 Minigun.  It fires 6000 rounds per minute.

I'm not a weapon's expert or military strategist.  I'm just pulling this out of my diaper.

Actually George, have you ever heard of "Metal Storm"? The small Australian company that invented the electronic firing pin. In theory, can fire up to 1 million rounds per minute! Only limited by physical rate at which bullets can be loaded. The company was taken over by either US or UK, but our Navies use the technology as "last line of defence".

[Wombat + 1,028]

Just now, Wombat said:

Actually George, have you ever heard of "Metal Storm"? The small Australian company that invented the electronic firing pin. In theory, can fire up to 1 million rounds per minute! Only limited by physical rate at which bullets can be loaded. The company was taken over by either US or UK, but our Navies use the technology as "last line of defence".

PS: Don't under-estimate the speed or agility of US drones, much more capable than manned aircraft for obvious reasons.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

4 minutes ago, Wombat said:

PS: Don't under-estimate the speed or agility of US drones, much more capable than manned aircraft for obvious reasons.

Like which one? Most employed are not particularly fast nor agile and a human piloted aircraft cannot be hacked.

It's one thing to be flying drones over poorly defended countries, a totally different situation if it was versus a modern military power and things got really serious satellites would be destroyed and the drones unable to be remotely operated.

Edited March 4, 2020 by El Nikko