From recent news (5) Repel unmanned aerial vehicles with unmanned aerial vehicles-Behind the technology and mechanism of aircraft (291) | TECH + Mynavi News Mynavi

The show using the drone of the Tokyo Olympics was done with the cooperation of Intel.The photo above shows a private performance at the US Air Force Academy using Intel's drone. Photo: Intel

Various means of C-UAS

Originally, small unmanned aerial vehicles are small in size and slow in speed, so they have the drawback of being difficult to detect by radar. Moreover, if it is only one or several, it will be difficult to deal with it as the number increases. Various ideas are being tried on how to repel.

Therefore, let us consider C-UAS from the viewpoint of "aircraft mechanism".

The first thing that comes to mind is "physical destruction," which could be missiles, cannons, or lasers. With lasers, you don't have to worry about "running out" as long as the power supply continues, but with missiles and cannons, that's not the case. Then, anxiety remains as a coping method when the number of opponents increases. Besides, missiles are expensive.

A slightly more elegant (?) Method is to physically destroy the electronic devices built into the drone with high-power microwaves.

However, I can't read how the drone behaves after the battle, whether it's shot down or destroyed. If you do it in the city, an unmanned aerial vehicle may fall from overhead where people are walking. Then it is a source of incidental damage.

There is also the idea that "it should be possible to incapacitate anyway" in a quieter place. An easy-to-understand example is jamming. If the aircraft is flying by remote control, there must be wireless communication between the operator and the aircraft, so it interferes with it. The advantage of this method is that if you emit jamming radio waves so as to cover a certain range, you can dispose of multiple aircraft within that range at once.

And due to the interference of wireless communication, it becomes impossible to operate the aircraft at least at the operator's will. An aircraft that behaves like "If you can't use wireless communication, land on the spot anyway" will land normally, so it will not cause more injuries than it will fall out of control.

However, jamming is ineffective when dealing with an autonomously flying aircraft. When flying autonomously, the position of the aircraft is known by GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) such as GPS (Global Positioning System), and the aircraft is directed to a pre-programmed location or a location determined by the judgment on the spot. To skip. In that case, if you interfere with the positioning by GNSS, you can expect that the aircraft will get lost.

However, since GNSS is used all over the world, if you try to obstruct the detour, the incidental damage will be great. For example, the location information of smartphones and car navigation systems near the jamming device will all go crazy. There is also the risk that the behavior of the lost aircraft will become unreadable.

As you can see, there are various ways to deal with it, but each has its advantages and disadvantages. You may have to prepare various hand pieces and select the most suitable method based on the data such as whether it is in the city or the suburbs and how the opponent's aircraft works.

However, there is another problem. For example, if a microwave transmitter or a jamming device is installed on the ground, the range that can be covered is limited. If it's okay to protect important facilities, that's okay, but maybe more agile measures are needed?

Repel unmanned aerial vehicles with unmanned aerial vehicles

That's where the story comes to the release of Raytheon Missile & Defense, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, on July 21st. The company has been working on a tube-launching unmanned aerial vehicle called Coyote for some time, but the latest model, Coyote Block 3, has been tested by incorporating the functions of C-UAS.

The location was the Yuma Experiment Station in Arizona, where he successfully repelled 10 small unmanned aerial vehicles of different sizes and functions by flying a Coyote Block 3 with "non-kinetic" countermeasures. That is the outline of the announcement.

“Non-kinetic” is not a means of physical destruction. It seems that the specific content has not been made public, but it may be either a jammer or a high-power microwave. Kimo loaded it on an unmanned aerial vehicle and flew it, which enabled agile deployment. In addition, since the Coyote Block 3 can be collected and reused, the cost of the aircraft is lower than that of disposable products.

However, from the perspective of "aircraft mechanism," issues also emerge. Is it okay to load a jammer, but is the capacity and duration of the power supply okay to activate it? Then, there may be no choice but to prepare a large number of aircraft and take turns flying. It could be a story of a contradiction, "flying a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles to repel a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles."

Author profile

A technical writer who is developing writing activities centered on the technical field in various transportation and military fields such as railways and aviation. After working at Microsoft Corporation, became independent in the spring of 1999. In addition to developing information and communication technology as a starting point, such as "Fighting Computer (V) 3" (Ushioshobokojinsha), he works on articles in various fields. In addition to Mynavi News, he has contributed to "Military Research," "Maru," "Jwings," "Koku-Fan," "Ships of the World," and "Shinkansen EX."