I Have Seen the Future of Anti-Drone Warfare, and It's Dirt-Cheap (Really!)

As fascinating as drone warfare can be — particularly the seemingly sci-fi drone-vs-drone variety — keeping up with all the developments is a fool's errand. Yesterday's hot new thing is practically outdated today, and today's hot new thing may look obsolete tomorrow.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but some days it doesn't seem like much of one.

That's why today's news about Ukraine's Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward.

I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that they're both dirt-cheap and extremely effective — mostly at shooting down Russia's Geran-2 one-way attack drones, which are licensed copies of Iran's Shahed that have caused us considerable trouble in Operation Epic Fury.

Ukraine needs tons of these things, because Geran is essentially a terror weapon aimed in large numbers — currently 100 to 200 per attack — at Ukraine's cities and infrastructure. Larger attack waves include anything from 300 up to just over 800 Geran-2s in one night.

So the concept behind Sting is simply enough: Make something cheap and fast to build, easy to use, yet still capable of knocking a Geran-2 out of the sky far enough out from its target for some degree of safety.

A typical quadcopter design and just over a foot tall, Stings are made mostly from 3D-printed parts and can be assembled in about two minutes. Unlike some drones that must be launched into the air via catapult (really), Sting takes off vertically like a helicopter before tipping over and using its stubby wings to fly like a plane, with an intercept range of 15 miles or so.

We do - basically it’s a high power radar burst. But, it is limited by weather conditions and focus issues, plus, it broadcasts it’s own location like Melania walking down a runway back in her modeling days. It’s not compact, either. All that adds up to vulnerability to, among other things, Iran’s cluster munitions.

Everything has it’s advantages and disadvantages...

A side note: Many moons ago, my electronics mentor was, among other things, the head RF tech / engineer at a local (regional) airport. They got in a new radar unit, and wanted to test it’s operation (does this thing come on?) before mounting it in its elevated configuration. So they set it up out on a runway and fired it up. Some bright guy had thought to put a cardboard box 10(?) feet out in front of it: The box quickly burst into flame.

“Why don’t we have a directed EMP that would fry the electronics in anything inbound? Aah.. No big money for MIC projectiles...I get it.”

EMP is not some magic force field. There are ways to harden tour electronics to any level of EMP hardness including nuclear which no handheld or vehicle/ground mounted hardware can get the teravolt levels a nuke hits. It’s how much do you want to spend to harden your tech. Fiber optics are immune to all EMP as well. Optical processors and computers are not affected either.

You can also lock your controls on terminal dive so even if the ECU is fried the drone flies it’s last velocity vector. Such as straight down from above and outside the EMW effective range of 3000 or less meters. Manual impact fuse wouldn’t even notice an EMP.

Lasers are hard kill they burn,melt and break things this is what you need or gun based frag shells or hit to kill anti drone drones. EMW work as long as your.enemy don’t harden theirs to above what your EMW can put out. It’s an arms race comes down to who will spend the most in the one upmanship.

Turkey gets it they are doing hit to kill by making 50bmg into giant shotguns with radar and AI optical targeting.

https://www.savunmasanayist.com/mke-tolganin-olcekli-sahid-136yi-dusurdugu-anlar/

Imagine a Mini gun on a helo spitting 100 of these per second in 7.62 or better yet on the ground with a turret and AI guided EO/IR tracking and a small radar.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/nswc-cranes-new-drone-killer-cartridge-dkc-technology-44826493

Basically machine gun shotguns at 500-10000 rounds per min. The 50 cal version looks nasty and good for 300-500+ meters.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/1p4z1ga/m2_browning_with_50_cal_anti_drone_munitions/#lightbox

Beretta is making ammo that uses polymer bullets and mini guns to down drones also with AI turrets. These only fly for 300-500 yards then harmlessly fall out being light weight 3-5 grams their terminal velocity in air is non lethal outside that range they start out at 5000+ fps and fall well subsonic.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/new-belt-fed-anti-drone-ammo-from-beretta-and-norma-iwa-2025-44819953

Mounted on turrets like this. The DOW needs to up their game.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/_qChKT9pR3w

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