Defending Against Drones

theodp writes "The US has not had to truly think about its air defense since the Cold War. But as America embraces the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Newsweek says it's time to consider how our greatest new weapon may come back to bite us. Smaller UAVs' cool, battery-powered engines make them difficult to hit with conventional heat-seeking missiles. And while Patriot missiles can take out UAVs, at $3 million apiece such protection carries a steep price tag, especially if we have to deal with $500 DIY drones."

Comments

Wrong cost comparison

[sunking2]

It's not about the cost of what you have to shoot down but what you have to defend.

Re:Wrong cost comparison

[FrozenGeek]

Not entirely true. Say you're protecting a billion-dollar asset. You have 10 million dollars for defense. I have 100 thousand dollars for offense. For 1000 dollars, I can mount an attack that costs you 1,000,000 to defend. You will have to beg, borrow, or steal, 90 million dollars to defend every attack that I can mount. Now you have a real problem.

Even worse, Suppose I can easily obtain and assemble the parts I need for an attack. But your, for instance, Patriot missiles take rather longer to assemble (as they are much more complex). If you have 50 missiles at hand, I only need to launch 51 attacks before you get your next shipment of missiles.

Clearly you are correct inasmuch as you won't spend 1,000,000,000 dollars to defend 200,000,000 dollars of assets. But the relative costs of defense and offense do matter.

Re:It's all about the tech

[JanneM]

Even high school students are dabbling in autonomous drones nowadays, and most research on autonomous vehicles is open and readily downloadable. Your jammer is not going to help too much if the drone knows what it's supposed to do without radio contact.

And you need to know there's a drone to jam a kilometer overhead in the first place.

Re:It's all about the tech

[hyades1]

Good luck with that. If I were designing one of those and my objective was to kill innocent people and/or disrupt a country's manufacturing/distribution infrastructure, all I need is a chip that will get it where it's going, run through a series of shape templates (a bus, train or transport truck or specific building, for example), then dive into it.

Easy, cheap, and no external control needed. Another plus: hardening such throw-away devices is usually easy and cheap. Example: Inertial navigation to target, flip on the video for a quick look-see, then hit whatever's closest. And you build lots and lots of 'em.

I'll probably regret this.... but...

[GuyFawkes]

A 500 buck drone, capable of carrying 250g of c4, with a range of 5 km and an endurance of 30 minutes, could bring a country to its knees.

Targets?

Satellite dish LNBs, High Tension cable insulators, refinery pipework, radar dishes on weaponry, etc etc etc.

use two, the first the blow an access into a window, and EVERY important computer is a target, bank computers, traffic control computers, air traffic control, industrial process, etc etc etc.

Use 5, meshed together, and the fifth could be flown inside a rabbit warren, SCRAM control sensors in a reactor plant, you name it.

Re:They have *already* crossed an ocean

[TheLink]

If you send just one small drone (which will cost more than USD500 if you include a payload that will actually cause significant damage) across an ocean to the USA, they may not figure out where its from. If you actually hit something of value with that tiny drone it's not going to do much really except maybe cause a few more oppressive/stupid laws to be passed.

If you send thousands or more you can do far more damage, but then the USA will more easily figure out where they are coming from and bomb your country to bits. If they feel like it (e.g. the drones aren't coming from Russia or China or their allies), they might even get permission from the UN first.

If you're a terrorist that has already got into the USA, such drones aren't really necessary if you want to cause a lot of damage, especially if you can already somehow get quantities of high explosives that a drone can use (if you can't, your drones aren't going to do much damage - just kill a few people). Might as well just put the bomb in a shopping mall, or cinema, or bus, or subway. Not too difficult to walk into such places and get out (you might even be able to disguise yourself or plant it on another person/vehicle).

What small cheap drones might be good for is trying to harass the USA out of your country. e.g. they are already in your country and possibly have already bombed it. In these scenarios it's not so simple to just walk in to a US military site, plant the bomb and leave to do it again another day. So that's where a drone might be useful.

Then the US Military will need to defend itself against such drones.