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 ...

Comments

Hang on

[liqu1d]

Can't they just use a shotgun?

Re:Hang on

[Mikkeles]

That would be a shotgun based 'Portable Anti Drone Defense' system

Re:Hang on

[ShaunC]

Come on, man. You can't funnel 10 million dollars to one of your preferred bidders if you just go buy three shotguns.

Re:Hang on

[MobSwatter]

Can't they just use a shotgun?

I absolutely agree with you, is a very sporting idea for both drone owner and shooter but because that would not go along with the obvious agenda of the attack on the 2nd Amendment courtesy of the banksters that have enslaved the Queen of England who since 1864 has held the US as a corporation. Panzi Jew/Brit banksters afraid of guns when it's themselves they should fear and at this stage of the game should hold the same fear of cement trucks, ISIS and pretty much everyone they have screwed. Pretty soon they'll probably try and outlaw cement trucks and even fire as well, when they have outlawed everything they fear they will turn inward and on each other. Pretty standard corporate paranoia.

Nope, just nope...

[Frosty Piss]

Delivery 30 days after awarding of contract...

Good luck with that.

Re:Nope, just nope...

[Opportunist]

Well, considering that the design specs asks for a glorified, overpriced shotgun, I think the deadline is doable.

Re:Nope, just nope...

[pepty]

If they have already decided which contractor they wanted for the job, it's probably their way to make certain that contractor gets the job instead of having to compete for it.

Re:Nope, just nope...

[Bartles]

Having worked in the firearms industry, that is exactly what this solicitation smells of. Someone already has the guns built, they've been demonstrated, and this is the way to purchase them without really allowing any other bids. Some smart enterprising individual should build something cool and snipe the contract.

Tough luck FCC

[NewtonsLaw]

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?

Re:Tough luck FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an expert on this, but the answer is probably not what you expect.

Military use of radio is NOT regulated by the FCC, but by NTIA.

So that just because FCC regs mean that civilian users could not lawfully jam 2.4 ISM band, that does not answer the question of whether the military can.

Re:Tough luck FCC

[ShanghaiBill]

So the military wants a device that violates the conditions and implied license associated with the 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz ISM bands eh?

The problem with drones is not the frequency that they transmit, but that they fly where they aren't supposed to be. My cellphone's WiFi also uses 2.4GHz. That doesn't mean I can legally rob a bank while carrying it.

Re:Tough luck FCC

[wonkey_monkey]

That doesn't mean I can legally rob a bank while carrying it.

But you can legally carry it while robbing a bank.

Re:Tough luck FCC

[VernonNemitz]

Imagine something like a parabolic microphone, except that at the focus of the parabola they put an EMP device, instead of a microphone. The frequencies produced only need to be whatever are able to fry the drone's electronics, and the parabola could cause the pulse to be beam-shaped, so as not to affect things you didn't aim the gun at.

Re:Tough luck FCC

[shutdown -p now]

I very much doubt USAF wants this for use on US soil against amateur drone operators, in any case. It's far more likely that they've noticed the heavy use of civilian drones for recon in many recent conflicts - e.g. both sides have used it that way in Ukraine, and there have also been reports from Syria along these lines.

Do they want the drone intact?

[Todd Knarr]

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.

Re:Do they want the drone intact?

[AHuxley]

The main issue is the the emerging consumer drone range. The way the US mil combats that local issue is to buy up huge amounts of public or private land around a still in use mil site.
No getting hi res consumer drone look down thats better than carrying a telescope like device up an open to the public hill or mountain range.
Any still accessible tracks, paths end under a camera, have detection systems. Contractors and mercenaries are then used to patrol areas up to fence lines, point to trespass signs. Local law enforcement offers a direct chat down, drone ID demand, "suggests" a photo ID request to make it all ok and enjoy rights again.
Signal detection when a drone is powered on is the key, then telco blocking to ensure no file is sent out, consumer frequency found to be in use locally gets swamped with a new powerful signal.
The aspects the US mil has to get is a consumer protection no launch error, no file phone home, no sending a file out, induce a fly home error.
The main aspect will be to surround a site with anti drone like jamming a bit like with pressure sensors. Too near and the advanced drone just returns to its start point if it even gets a signal thats its safe to be launched.

Re:Do they want the drone intact?

[Todd Knarr]

That wouldn't slow down even the current generation of autonomous drones, which is what anyone serious about getting pictures inside a secured military base would be using. No sense in making yourself a target by broadcasting a nice traceable control signal after all. Drone's launched by the operator so no way to make it refuse to launch. Drone follows prescribed flight path using dead-reckoning off it's internal gyros, updated by GPS fixes (using commercially-available AGPS data to reduce reliance on the parts of the GPS signal that're easiest to jam) whenever it can get a solid GPS lock-on. The drone doesn't transmit anything in flight, everything's recorded on a flash drive for retrieval when it lands. It doesn't receive any signals either except for GPS so it's underside can be designed as an RF shield which would also shield the GPS antennas from ground-generated interference. Facet the RF shield and you've even got first-generation stealth design going for you (see the design of the F-117). All of which can be done with a well-stocked home workshop plus a laptop (or even a modern smartphone with the right software and an externally-accessible micro-SD slot).

Physical destruction, OTOH, tends to stop just about anything regardless of control mechanism or programming.

Re: Do they want the drone intact?

[guruevi]

Until you crack the Li battery after which your disabled recon vehicle becomes an active bomb.

Re:Do they want the drone intact?

[fluffernutter]

It sounds like you just need to wait until the military's new weapon comes out and then find some rich drone operators to carry on this cat and mousery.

Re:Do they want the drone intact?

[AHuxley]

Infra red, sound like systems could track the set up of an autonomous drone. The real trick is if the "autonomous drone" part still needs landing and launch radio connections that can be detected.
Sure the flight will be long range and autonomous but that consumer drone signal chatter to the owner might still be trackable at some point during the average flight.
The only way around that would be a passive drone with zero communications as launched.
The magic of the autonomous drones use is the police chat down on public land before, during or after drone use. A loud approach about all rights been invalid near the 'site" and that photo id must be produced and drone id often works well even with no stop and identify laws.
The need for a federal drone id now will be the perfect way around the lack of clear stop and identify laws in many states :)
The drone induces law enforcement contact on public land :)
Mil or contractors might even drive out and try and do a public property "near" the site chat down hoping the person is confused about been on public land, their rights and the lack of any enforcement powers away from a mil site.
Tracking drone use is as easy as tracking any human approach to/from a site on public land. In the past walking, staying on public land, constitutional rights and been in a state with fews stop and identify laws could allow drone use from public land. Federal drone id laws are the big change.
ie drone tracking is just fancy new legal cover for decades of human tracking near any site :)

Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[KingAlanI]

I've heard shotguns suggested for avoiding collateral damage in general, because shot doesn't have the range or ricochet of a regular bullet.

Re: Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[Anonymous Coward]

No, arrogant ignoramus, most shotguns fire whatever is put in them.

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[AmiMoJo]

Tokyo police are deploying their own drones with nets. The target drone gets trapped in the net instead of exploding and raining parts down on the people below.

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[ls671]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[drinkypoo]

I've heard shotguns suggested for avoiding collateral damage in general, because shot doesn't have the range or ricochet of a regular bullet.

If you fire bird shot at or beyond approximately a 45 degree angle, you are correct. It will come down like hail, which is pretty minor. If you fire it substantially below that angle, you risk hitting something before it sheds its velocity. And there's lots of kinds of shot, so no guarantees eh? Regardless, there's no good excuse for firing shot into the air in populated locations. At best you're risking taking someone's eye out.

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[budgenator]

Lead shot has been off the market for decades, I've got a few old boxes with lead bird shot in them, but i wouldn't trust them to go off when expected. Now Fowlers use steel shot.

Re: Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[DaHat]

And most used these days use lead shot as its cheaper and doesn't damage the barrel of the shotgun the way steel does.

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[DaHat]

alternatives to lead shot are mandated for use by hunters in certain locations

Note it says 'certain' not 'all'.

A quick drive to buy 12 gauge shot is going to turn up far more lead options than 'alternatives'... and for far less money... and this is common across most states.

Re:Shotguns for avoiding collateral damage

[DaHat]

Lead shot has been off the market for decades

Did you forget to add "where I live" ... maybe?

Otherwise what I purchased just last week would either be illegal or worth it's weight in gold as they are stilt widely available in many a store, including online with the worlds foremost outfitters"

Shouldn't be hard, actually

[kheldan]

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.

Re:Shouldn't be hard, actually

[kheldan]

Here's a suggestion for you: Instead of just saying 'hey man you're totally wrong', how about you post a link to the relevant information about the RC protocol being used?

Now, for what it's worth: I used to work for a defense contractor that did quite a bit of ECM (electronic countermeasures) work, so I know that pretty much any radio signal can be jammed, and one of the ways to do that is to spoof the actual signal itself with an off-kilter copy of the actual signal. It's not far-fetched at all that a device could be built that would commandeer a toy drone (we are talking about consumer drones here, not military drones). Less likely but possible, and it's completely within reason to be able to totally jam the signal.

Now, if you have something to add to the conversation, then great, love to hear it, but if you're just going to insult me and be rude, then don't bother, OK? It's bloody Christmas and I'm down with a cold that's trying to turn into bronchitis, and I'm just not in the mood.

Re:Shouldn't be hard, actually

[sumdumass]

Consumer level drones doesn't really mean just off the shelf ready to fly. Hobby drones can have thier entire flight plan loaded before taking off, fly the route, and return without even transmitting or receiving radio signals in flight. The control computer can also encrypt its communication and take updates in flight encrypted so jamming a signal or broadcasting a stronger one will not be enough in all cases.

You will basically need to jam a signal so powerful that it floods the circuitry and interrupts the control signals in the drone itself. And it will also need to defeat shielding in the process too.

Re:Shouldn't be hard, actually

[CaptQuark]

The new RC transmitters are specifically designed to resist interference in a dense EM environment. They use Spread Spectrum technology to prevent inadvertent interference between multiple RC transmitters. (They have tested up to 100 simultaneous users without conflicts.) Each air vehicle is also "bound" to a single transmitter and will ignore any control signal that doesn't have the bound transmitter's unique serial number. The transmitters will randomly switch channels within the frequency so it is hard to take over the signal.

Some brands will also hop frequencies while continuing to switch channels in order to reduce interference. Other brands transmit on two simultaneous frequencies while channel hopping. http://www.rcmodelreviews.com/...

Saturation jamming is possible but most of the newer receivers have a "lost signal" mode that can be programmed. Some maintain altitude while starting a slowly expanding spiral, with the thought that the aircraft will come back closer to the transmitter to regain control. With the addition of programmable micro-controllers in the aircraft, almost any lost signal behavior is available.

If I knew my aircraft was in an area where active countermeasures might be used, I might program a rapid climb to max altitude, a random three-leg return path to near the point of launch, then... Well, you get the idea.

--

Re:Shouldn't be hard, actually

[budgenator]

Yes indeed, it's not like that with Cell Phones either, that's why those stingrays don't work. You might not be able to take over someone's account with a stronger WiFi, but you can keep them out of it.
The MP's used to sit at the bottom of the hill at one of our HAWK missile Tac sites with their 100mW DC input Xband traffic radar giving out tickets for going 5 over. When the lads had enough of that they said "hello" with their 1KW DC input Xband target illuminating radar, the MP's put out the fire and never came back, too much "interference".

Re:Shouldn't be hard, actually

[kheldan]

OK, all the above, completely understood -- but there's a big difference between unintentional interference, and intentional interference. I worked for a defense contractor for about 7 years, 10 years ago, that had a lot of ECM contracts with the Army and the Marines. I wish I could go into detail about the technology we were using even back then (honestly, if I did, I'd be in a lot of trouble if it was traced back to me, no joke) but I know that even then, a purpose-built device could have definitely been created to at least confuse the control signal enough to effectively jam control of the drone. With today's technology it's not even a matter of 'if it can be done', it's just a matter of 'how long will it take', and the answer to that question is 'not as long as you'd think', and depending on the strategy and techniques used, usurping control could theoretically be possible, and apparently the military has a high enough confidence in the idea to fund development of it.

For fighting drones en masse?

[KingAlanI]

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.

Re:RPG

[turkeydance]

kinda/sorta like this? http://www.firequest.com/G12-0...

Re:So all actual drone threats have to do is...

[BlueStrat]

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?

The missile equivalent's acronym is "HARM" - High speed Anti-Radiation Missile.

Replacing the missile component with a drone makes it a "HARD".

When in operation it would be a HARD-on.

Thanks, I'll be here all week!

Please remember to tip the burgers and try the waitresses!

Strat

Re:RPG

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Works best if you point it at the drone operators.

Re:So all actual drone threats have to do is...

[alba]

"Track on Jam"

Triangulate the source of the jamming (not difficult), lock in a course using the onboard IMU, accelerate to maximum speed possible with motors/controllers even if beyond normal safe parameters. Do not abort run under any circumstance.

One USAF jammer operator having a bad day.

Next jammer solicitation has an autonomous CIWS mount in it.

Next set of firmware has IR communication with a swarm of like minded drones who will continue the retribution run at all costs.

USAF ends up having to spec up a drone jammer that has better air defence capabilities than an Aegis cruiser because even Aegis probably can't engage several hundred targets at once.

I can't see this being a sensible tool to use given the trivial marginal cost of its target - it does look like they're assuming that their buy cost for a drone (Reaper/Globalhawk) is the baseline for everybody else, whereas the *real* cost is probably comparable to or a little more than a Katusha rocket, and in any arena where the USAF will be engaging (Posse Comitatus applies to the USAF, yes?) they could be looking at hundreds or thousands of the things.

Let's rebrand this from "Drone Jammer" to "Intelligent Flak Magnet" as that's the way it's going to go.

Browsing through the deliverables ...

[Rob Lister]

This is a GSA sources sought so there's no money on the table. And yes, they have a vendor with a product in mind. The synopsis is describing that product. FAR mandates they seek other sources over a certain dollar amount. There's really nothing untoward going on here ... well, other than the GSA in general. And interesting tidbit from the FBO text: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=op...

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.

On a computer!

[tlambert]

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"

[tlambert]

"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.

Link to the source, please...

[Bearhouse]

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...

Posse Comitatus

[Tokolosh]

Two year's jail for the USAF.

Ha ha, I crack myself up!