News UK trials 'game changing' drone swarm killing weapon that costs 13 cents a shot — RFDEW uses radio waves to down drones

[Admin]

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has announced successful trials of a 'game-changing weapon that can take down a swarm of drones using radio waves.'

UK trials 'game changing' drone swarm killing weapon that costs 13 cents a shot — RFDEW uses radio waves to down drones : Read more

 

[why_wolf]

It doesn't even need to be a "swarm" the standard deployment of front line drones seems to be 3. 1 spotter and 2 kamikaze drones. So any anti-drone system meant for the battlefield needs to be able to take out at least 3 drones in very quick succession. Otherwise it will simply be destroyed.

 

[bit_user]

I wonder what RF band it uses. If microwave, might they be using a MASER?

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Probably microwaves that fry their circuits.

 

[Flyfisherman]

When fiction meet science.
It´s like the game Tom Clancys Gost Recon Breakpoint from 2019.
Yeah the warfare drones and AI swarm drones acting as a unit, which is developed today by Swedish Saab’s Autonomous Swarm technology .
The war in Ukraine changed the map, literally.

Best regards from Sweden

 

[AkroZ]

It's rather easy to protect electronics from radio waves, originaly PC towers are made of metal to have a mass protecting the electronic from radio waves.

 

[bit_user]

It's rather easy to protect electronics from radio waves, originaly PC towers are made of metal to have a mass protecting the electronic from radio waves.

These are drones, which need to be very light-weight, or else it will significantly compromise their range and/or payload capacity. So, I think it's not easy to add sufficient shielding to them.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I like this YT video about the future of drones.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

 

[USAFRet]

It's rather easy to protect electronics from radio waves, originaly PC towers are made of metal to have a mass protecting the electronic from radio waves.

Regarding an object that needs to fly, no, its not 'rather easy'.

More mass = less payload and/or less range and/or less speed and/or less maneuverability.

 

[Co BIY]

Given an effective range of 1 km x 2,295 km length of the Ukrainian-Russian border that'll take a few units. Equivalent to a lot of meat pies.

Interesting tech, detecting and tracking the drones seems the biggest challenge. The instantaneous effect of an RF beam or burst would help.

Seems like this sort of development should be kept secret so countermeasures will be slower to evolve but maybe it's a ruse.

 

[Co BIY]

Regarding an object that needs to fly, no, its not 'rather easy'.

More mass = less payload and/or less range and/or less speed and/or less maneuverability.

OTOH the vulnerable parts are relatively small (although distributed throughout the drone) and EMP protection is something that I'm sure the Russians have some experience with.

 

[bit_user]

Given an effective range of 1 km x 2,295 km length of the ... border that'll take a few units. Equivalent to a lot of meat pies.

Well, if it has a 180 degree range of action, then it's 2295 / 2, because you can hit up to 1 km in either direction. However, I think it's not meant as a border defense tool, but rather protecting units and locations that are likely targets. For something like a city, you'd either need a ring of them or just locate a couple near each sensitive area.

EMP protection

I think drones require modern SoCs, whereas mil spec parts tend to be made on old process nodes that wouldn't provide the necessary compute performance or energy efficiency.

 

[Co BIY]

I think drones require modern SoCs, whereas mil spec parts tend to be made on old process nodes that wouldn't provide the necessary compute performance or energy efficiency.

I won't pretend to have a clue on the physics involved in either damaging or protecting a semi-conductor. At one time I heard that a major reason that Air Force One is so unreasonably expensive is the retrofitting of the electronics for EMP protection for a tiny fleet. A big old old node chip would not make that big a difference in weight or efficiency if if was protective. The power use has to be predominately in the flight motors and the weight in the warheads.

Backporting a modern SOC into a big older node for military purposes would be hard to do for cheap. But for cost plus contract rates ...

 

[bit_user]

Backporting a modern SOC into a big older node for military purposes would be hard to do for cheap. But for cost plus contract rates ...

I think what enabled drones is the processing speed and efficiency of modern SoCs. If you try to use EMP-resistant manufacturing processes, it might no longer be possible to achieve the necessary processing power or efficiency.

For instance, the Mars Rover (Perseverance) is using a hardened 133 MHz PowerPC, but it only moves at 0.042 meters per second. In contrast, the Ingenuity helicopter uses a Snapdragon 801 off-the-shelf SoC, made on 28 nm and featuring 4x ARMv7-A cores @ 2.45 GHz. It needed that amount of compute power to fly. The reason they used a consumer part is that Ingenuity was a purely opportunistic technology demo and not needed for any of the mission's science objectives.

 

[Co BIY]

I think what enabled drones is the processing speed and efficiency of modern SoCs. If you try to use EMP-resistant manufacturing processes, it might no longer be possible to achieve the necessary processing power or efficiency.

For instance, the Mars Rover (Perseverance) is using a hardened 133 MHz PowerPC, but it only moves at 0.042 meters per second. In contrast, the Ingenuity helicopter uses a Snapdragon 801 off-the-shelf SoC, made on 28 nm and featuring 4x ARMv7-A cores @ 2.45 GHz. It needed that amount of compute power to fly. The reason they used a consumer part is that Ingenuity was a purely opportunistic technology demo and not needed for any of the mission's science objectives.

I think they could fly fine with much increased processing overhead, They are already capable of carrying large objects. It's backporting to the larger node and whether that would be even be effective in protecting the circuits that matters much more.

You also seemed to have overlooked the very important cost-plus development incentive structure.