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The Pentagon recently held one of the most powerful drone demonstrations for a mass sUAS attack scenario to date.
The Joint C-sUAS Office (counter small-unmanned aircraft system) has hosted industry demonstrations of the latest C-sUAS technology for the past three years. This most recent event took place in June and was touted by the US Military as the most ambitious yet.
The recent event focused on systems that detect and defeat swarms of sUAS. The JCO’s test integration manager, Hi-Sing Silen, explained: “We have up to 50 targets in the air simultaneously… Those include rotary-wing, fixed-wing, fast-mover jet engines and propeller-driven group threes, all coming at you from almost 360 degrees. It is as hard as it can be for a system trying to defend itself.”
According to Interesting Engineering, there are many different ways to detect, track, and identify threats, as well as defeat their mechanisms. The various methods include machine guns and rockets, high-powered microwave, and electronic warfare systems, drone-on-drone kinetic interceptors, or combined aspects of other mechanisms.
This is the first time the DoD has flown this many threat targets in the air at one time. Silen explains that in many other swarm demonstrations, there are either waves of incoming threats or the threats come one after another. “In our scenario, you have 50 threats converging on your position at almost the same time.”
Experts explain that there is no one “silver bullet” to defend against UAS, moreover against swarms- the way to defend against such threats is by layering defenses.
These demonstrations attracted an audience from counter-UAS programs hoping to gain insights into other aspects of advancing technology to defend against the sUAS threat.
