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Analyzing the US Air Force's New "Portable Hobby Drone Disruptors" Solicitation (vortex.com)
Lauren Weinstein writes: The U.S. Air Force has just issued a solicitation for a radio-based 'Portable Anti Drone Defense' system — essentially a remote drone disruption device that can be easily used by someone familiar with — well — shooting guns. The Air Force wants three units to start with. Delivery required 30 days after awarding of the contract. It does indeed make for interesting reading, and I thought it might be instructive to dig into the technical details a bit ...
Can't they just use a shotgun?
Delivery 30 days after awarding of contract...
Good luck with that.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So the military wants a device that violates the conditions and implied license associated with the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz ISM bands eh?
Does the US military have the authority to defy other government agencies such as the FCC and the FAA?
Something like a shoulder mounted PRG. Projectile - a casing of 00 buck steel balls linked with 1m steel cable (aka bolas). Maybe powered by a existing casing charge. Done.
$1k each. Military testing $100k each.
OF course a special charge means razor blade kinda money. Put some fancy electronics on there, $10 million. Cha-ching.
Do they want the drone intact afterwards, and what kind of range are they looking at? Up to about 50-60 meters a 12-gauge shotgun with #9-10 shot should pretty thoroughly disrupt any imaginable control and return-to-launch functions a drone could have, along with doing a pretty good job disrupting it's structural integrity. For longer ranges I'd use a custom round based on a rifled slug, tapered to a point like a rifle round for aerodynamics and filled with the same #9-10 shot around a timed dispersal charge made to throw the shot in a cone directed forward. Get range to drone, subtract about 10 yards to give the shot room to spread out so you don't need dead-on accuracy, set timer for the time needed for the round to travel that far, aim, fire. As a bonus, the squads get in skeet practice.
I've heard shotguns suggested for avoiding collateral damage in general, because shot doesn't have the range or ricochet of a regular bullet.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
All these consumer-grade drones are going to use one or a short list of control signal types, should be easy to jam, and only a little more difficult to override with a stronger signal and flat-out take control of the drone in question, and just slam it straight into the ground. With any luck someone will publish an article on how to construct such a device, 'for educational purposes', of course. Then the whole question of invasive drone use will become moot.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Do they mean to shoot down lots of drones at once? One threat to expensive military technology is being overwhelmed by a lot of cheap attacks.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Moo?
Wait for their control signal to be jammed then home in on the triangulated source of the disruption and use whatever 'tamper deterrence' measures have been built into them to neutralize the threat?
I agree with the guy above about the shotgun. If a civilian drone needs to be disabled by the military, they probably shouldn't be using non-destructive means to do so.
http://nutsaboutnets.com/airhorn-signal-generator/
There. Where is my money?
Option 1: It's just a variant of the Bluetooth rifle (range 1.2 miles for transmitting/receiving Bluetooth signals) that's needed. You scan the two target wavelengths. All receivers are also transmitters, you don't care if there's any actual information present, all you want - and will be guaranteed to get - is something not background.
You could use airport and Wireshark to interpret the transmissions, then transmit on a loop a signal to flip hardware between extremes of state, a-la the headbanger virus or the New York pilot who broke the tail off his own plane.
Option 2: UV laser plus Van de Graaf generator.
The former opens a narrow channel of semi-ionised air between you and the drone. The latter sends a decent-sized spark down that channel, probably enough to trigger a hardware reset or screw with memory. It would take a decent-sized backpack, not just a rifle, but it would take out UAVs as well as drones.
Option 3: Microwave
Not too different from the Bluetooth Rifle in concept, but you're using a highly directional microwave transmitter instead of a Bluetooth transceiver. You want the microwave element tuned to a chemical bond in the plastic polymers. Basically, you're going to soften/deform a rotor or a wing. Burning a hole would be interesting but might require the soldier to wear more tin foil than the army can afford.
Option 4: Nuclear warhead
An EMP should deal with the drone and its user.
Must be able to disrupt communications on 2.4 and 5.8 GHz ISM bands, Stop autonomous waypoint flights
Why are these two clauses ganged in one line item? Why does the second clause start with a capital. This indicates they were two separate line items and were edited to be a a single. Why? Nothing wrong with it other than being oddly written.
Disrupt ISM. Check.
Stop autonomous waypoint flights. ?. To do that you have to disrupt GPS. Why not just say that? Well, they do in the very next line item.
Disrupt satellite navigation on GPS L1 and GLONAS L1
I don't think a lot of thought went into this RFI.
That would be a shotgun based 'Portable Anti Drone Defense' system
On a computer!
I'll take my patent now, please...
"Don't shoot it, you'll only piss it off"
Unless it's physical system (and the RFP makes it pretty clear that's not what they are asking for here), all you have to do is optically couple EMP shielded brains with an external radio system, and you can pretty much have it go after the source, lock on coordinates, and even if it's a momentary attack, the firing position goes "boom!".
I guess the military spends so much on their drones that they really can't conceive of using them in a Kamikaze attack; but if you are going to lose the drone anyway, might as well take out a target that would prevent the next one from taking out the programmed target.
Which is here:
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=op...
Used to be that folks had the courtesy to do that, even though of course we understand that you want to drive traffic to your blog.
Re: other comments on shotgunning the things, (sounds like fun, but might do more harm than good if they fall in the wrong place), what they actually want is to disable the active control of the buggers:
"The Air Force Global Strike Command is requesting three (3) systems to counter unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), also commonly known as personal drones. There are three main areas in counter UAS (cUAS): detect, identify and defeat. This system should address the defeat portion. This portion needs to disrupt the control link between a commercial UAS and the pilot causing the UAS to fall into its preprogrammed "lost link" protocol. The system should provide the additional ability to disrupt the UAS's ability to receive and use satellite navigation signals (GPS and GLONASS) for navigation purposes."
Urm, maybe the latter might cause some hilarity if you're using it around an (air)port...
Also, loved this part:
"The system must have the below attributes:
Low complexity: no software, no firmware"
So they want this hard-wired from transistors, or better-still valves?
HAM radio boys everywhere, fire up your breadboards!
A happy and peaceful Christmas to all...
Two year's jail for the USAF.
Ha ha, I crack myself up!
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