
Assuming it was armed...
What would they shoot it down with, exactly? The 20mm vulcan cannon? The 30mm autocannon? The gatling gun? Some poor matelot with the ship's SA80?
An amateur photographer has reportedly landed his £475 drone aboard the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy – without permission and completely unchallenged. The unnamed photographer gave an interview to local paper the Inverness Courier, detailing how he landed his drone aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth in spite of “ …
Guns vs racing drones at a shooting range - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
It's funny watching the law enforcement guys bragging at the beginning about being so sure they're going to shoot down a drone, then they see how small & fast they are...
Best quote of the video is at the briefing from an FPV pilot: "I hope he's clear they have to shoot the drone not the pilot, that would be the easiest way to bring the drone down"
We have an "air freshener" spray at home. I weighed the active bit at about 100gm. A face-full is not much fun. It could be equipped with pepper spray with very little effort.
I don't know how big a drone needs to be to carry a 100g payload, but not very big, anyway. A bunch of drones so equipped could take out the deck watch pretty quick, prior to a boarding party.
If the next James Bond film uses this plot, I want a percentage!
What would they shoot it down with, exactly?
The US army is using Stinger missiles against UAVs. Good job they've got the budget because the cost is ~38k$ per shot.
The US army is using Stinger missiles against UAVs. Good job they've got the budget because the cost is ~38k$ per shot.
Cost aside, would Stinger or other MADPADs even be effective against a small drone? They are typically equipped with an IR or IR/UV seeker head; is the heat emission of a battery-powered motor or even a small internal-combustion engine really hign enough to get a lock?
"A mahoosive fly swat?"
Pictures Wile E. Coyote unpacking an Acme branded one...
It's just occurred to me that it's ages since I did any clay pigeon shooting.
A 12 bore shotgun would surely do the trick, but only at an uncomfortably short range if the drone is indeed armed.
is the heat emission of a battery-powered motor or even a small internal-combustion engine really hign enough to get a lock?
I don't know what a Stinger's fitted with and what its detection algorithm is, but IR cameras can easily discern a human body against cooler backgrounds. Electrical motors, never mind combustion engines, will be noticeably warmer.
I dunno about anyone else, but a quarter-of-a-million drones coming in in swarm would certainly put the shits up me...
The Perdix test swarm was only 103 drones, and the final "orbit" demonstration becomes even more disconcerting if you consider them either armed or programmable for kinetic strike...
> I dunno about anyone else, but a quarter-of-a-million drones coming in in swarm would certainly put the shits up me...
A quarter-million wasp-sized drones, linked to each other with software that knows how to swarm and armed with a 'sting' comprising a syringe of poison/sedative depending upon how nasty/nice you want to be, seems to me to be an inevitable future development in weaponry.
I think Dune was there first with the assassin wasp drone idea?
Try The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem. Originally published in 1964, it contains the idea of microscopic fighting machines controlled by a distributed AI and working in concert to defeat much more capable and nominally more intelligent opponents.
It still reads pretty well despite it age ...
Wasps as weapons (but no central control) is found in Ray Bradbury's story "Ylla" published in 1950. It was one of the Martian Chronicles collection. A Martian woman in a loveless marriage daydreams about the humans coming to explore Mars. When they arrive, her jealous husband kills them with a gun that fires wasps.
"ISIS have a proven track record in Syria of weaponizing DJI's Phantom [drone] and its professional platform the Matrice 100 to drop grenades on troops, so a drone flying over the aircraft carrier without permission, as opposed to alongside, should be considered a potential threat,"
I apologise to Douglas Adams for this, but it has to be said/paraphrased...
Mr Dent, do you know how much damage the Aircraft carrier would suffer if you dropped a grenade on it?...
For the uninitiated, or those that suffered the more recent movie...
Mr Dent, do you know how much damage the Aircraft carrier would suffer if you dropped a grenade on it?...
A fair bit, if this is a hafnium nuclear-isomer hand grenade. Of course, those are even more imaginary than the F-35Bs QE is supposed to eventually host ...
There are a few devices out there that can knock drones out of the sky, but most are in the experimental phase or just coming to commercialisation (my firm is one of those releasing a product). Still a long time before they become ubiquitous though as they are not exactly cheap units at the moment.
There are a few devices out there that can knock drones out of the sky, but most are in the experimental phase or just coming to commercialisation (my firm is one of those releasing a product). Still a long time before they become ubiquitous though as they are not exactly cheap units at the moment.
Only a lack of personnel on deck saved the drone.
I find it hard to believe that the vessel was unequipped with this type of anti-drone weapon. ☺
I expect they're due to be fitted with something a tad more powerful than cream pies.
let's see:
12 bore shotgun (as already stated by others)
largish fly swatter
or if you just INSIST on something techy: directional RF jammer and/or MASER
I see your 12 bore shotgun and raise you the 4 bore. They weren't uncommon when I was a lad and though you need to be a big chap to handle the recoil they do significantly more damage at greater range with a suitable load.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HssPND1gVOw
But if you also yam the GPS they will probably get lost.
Would that be the Dioscorea rotundata, the Dioscorea cayenensis, the Dioscorea alata, the Dioscorea polystachya, the bulbifera, esculenta, dumetorum or the trifida? And would other tubers (like the common potato, radish, rutabaga or turnip) work as well?
Most of these jammers transmit a 30° cone pattern to jam the control and GPS navigation frequencies. The control frequencies are all commercial drone licensed telemetry bands.
Obviously, using alternative frequencies will defeat these latest military toys. Sad!
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When you have your huge armoured ship sitting in the shipyards still being built, it's probably best to just ignore hobbyists flying little drones around.
Just about 0 chance of them causing any damage and it's not like the pictures they will take are of any real use (after all anybody that matters probably already hacked into the design servers & downloaded the blueprints a long time ago).
That's not to say you couldn't use them as free test targets to improve EM jamming and hijacking techniques. Just oops your drone went into the sea... shame...
In actual hostile environments your battleships and aircraft carriers are going to be way out of the reach of small drones, so anything big enough to get to them is probably big enough to be a threat and those would warrant getting dispatched quickly which is not hard to do if you are Tier 1 or 2 and your enemies are Tier 8 and 9
What I could see being a lot more fun is the military using mini "fighter drones" doing drone combat duty for practice and a little sport. Nets, blocks, sticky stuff, ramming speed all fun and good. But probably just Hijack them or EM disrupt them. And of course.... Lasers....
Now that the Armed forces in the USA have the green light to take out any drones they like... fun and games for everyone.
@Jason Hindle
One with London, Paris, New York, Peckham on the side?
That was on a Reliant Regal van...
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/tv/del-boys-tamworth-made-reliant-regal-398230
which despite it's name, not really suitable for royalty.
HRH with one her Scimitars...
http://www.middlebridge-scimitar.co.uk/gallery_images.php?db_id=6&Middlebridge_id=5
see also
Seriously - how hard would it be to put GSM control on these things? If they have a range in the distance of miles, you could plant them on top of roofs (a little solar panel should keep them topped up enough until they're needed), take off, all go to your destination under remote pilot, then do... whatever nasty you wanted.
And then either dump them there, or tell them to drop themselves in a nearby ocean or into the path of a lorry.
Just thinking from what I know of playing about with Ardunio and stuff, a GSM module and a GPS controller could push a drone to any destination you like on remote command, whenever you felt like it.
Is it really that hard to imagine these things being used for lots more nefarious purposes, everything from bombs, but down to papparazzi sneaking a shot through someone's bedroom window while leaving the perpetrator pretty anonymous even if the device is recovered?
More exactly, it's the politicians' and the admirals' new toy.
Any actual sailor - more especially anyone who runs any risk of having to sail in the bloody thing - will be very much aware that it's nothing but an immense floating target with "Sink Me!" written on it in big letters.
Just as the Navy saw through John Fisher's demented schemes to bombard the North Prussian coast with "Courageous" and "Glorious" - immediately christened "Outrageous" and "Uproarious". And just as all the matelots must have realised that sailing on HMS "Hood" was not a safe thing to do.
Can you hear it? Drones are cheap, ever longer ranged, faster and capable of carrying ever more sophisticated electronics. They can be made extremely stealthy, assisted by their small size in the first place. The price of one ineffective POS like an F-35 will buy you thousands of drones—so many that individually they are expendable. The cost of a single ballistic missile sub (e.g. Trident) will get you tens of thousands of neutral-buoyancy surveillance drones capable of riding the currents for potentially years, listening and sending bursts of intel back to base—not to mention even nastier ones, sacrificial drones with active sonar and 50kg of PBX.
My point being that for those who think they know what asymmetrical warfare is: you ain't seen nothing yet.
Just as well our anon photog was an honest man, not a deep-cover GRU agent with a warehouse full of "Buster Crabbe"-class drones capable of dropping RF pickups, microphones, cameras and capsules of botulinus toxin down every vent, orifice and exhaust that HMS QE had to offer.
IMHO there was been a grotesque failure of the imagination in respect of the potential of military/espionage drones, especially their nascent ability to operate as semi-autonomous swarms. (Do you know just how fast a point-defence weapons system like Phalanx runs out of ammo? It's designed for last-ditch defence against the last few vampires getting through layered air pickets to a Nato ship: not to shoot down hosts of gnats. And don't get me started on the difficulty of hiding boomers in the ocean when sea drones, silently riding through the thermocline, can bang out active sonar pulses with impunity, and quickly relay their findings back to base.)
If you thought Windows for Warships was the gravest danger to our navy (well, after Her Majesty's ministers, and our insane defence procurement processes, that is), you were wrong: drone war is going to make some of our big steel investments into big steel targets.
There is, in short, a desperately urgent need for a high level of intelliegence, imagination, competence and leadership in the Uk defence ministry.
Unfortunately, the current incumbent is Michael Fallon (loose-lipped, arrogant luodmouth, no relevant experience or knowledge of defence), who was preceded by Philip Hammond (tight-lipped, moderately intelligent, no relevant experience or knowledge of defence), preceded by Liam Fox (astoundingly stupid, for a trained doctor, no relevant experience or knowledge of defence unless you count a stint as a Civilian Army MO), preceded by Bob Ainsworth, John Hutton, John Reid, Geoff "Buff" Hoon ...not a single one of whom had any knowledge or experience qualifying them to oversee the armed forces defence of the United Kingdom.
That is, of course, the nature of cabinet government, and explains why it isn't just defence that these second-rate mouths-on-sticks manage to fuck up with such dreary predictability.
AS she is sailing alongside the USS something or other, there is a NOTAM out banning flight, any flight, in the vicinity as she enters port ... not for the UK ship, but for the American vessel ... which may (in theory) launch it's aircraft at any time, hence the no fly zone. Check the NOTAMs for more details, there was one promulagted as she anchored off Portsmouth recently, I suspect there will be another as she heads south again.
It is rather heartwarming, in a way, to know that The Register is one of the media which has been invited by the MoD to the carrier's arrival in Portsmouth. I don't know whether you should be pleased, or somewhat alarmed, that you are, as it were, on their radar. Hopefully it's just that they are aware you are fellow technology buffs, but I suspect they are watching you anyway (keep up the good work)...
Landlubbers get accosted now and then for lawfully taking photographs, usually by over-eager officers unfamiliar with the law. Some are also trigger happy with their tasers - A lethal combination to deploy against unwelcome drones! The MOD Police should recruit a few of them.
This should bring down a drone. Accurate home made machine gun. Twenty million hits! No wait a minute...
http://goo.gl/2b2UPg
I'd plump for employing one of our world class clay pigeon shots. Short range but likely a bit less collateral damage than say the million shot a minute Metal Storm,
https://youtu.be/wKlnMwuCZso
Drones are really hard to shoot down, but they are really easy to take control over or bring down using technology if you know where to find it, which the military does.
Also the QE has no defensive systems fitted at present so a big stick or battered Mars bar would do the trick.
In a fit of untrammeled pity for the British Navy, a concerned citizen attempted to donate his UAV. Although unarmed, it would have at least given the carrier the start of an air wing, and provided some much-needed recon ability to detect possible threats to run away from.
Then he realized, "Why am I giving a perfectly good drone to those wankers?" changed his mind, and flew it home again.
kind of dumb as they all presuppose that 'rogue' drone manufacturers comply with international frequency plans! Sad!
The company I work for manufactures equipment for the non-aligned military market and our devices are designed for land, sea and air.
Recently we 'observed a demonstration of a Blighter, that allegedly can briefly inhibit a drone to the user appear it is malfunctioning or 'lock' the target drone until the batteries drain and it crashes. Their latest system uses a quad-band radio frequency (RF) inhibitor/jammer that disrupts all commercial drone licensed telemetry bands, and they claim effective against UAVs at up to 2 km and longer ranges.
Our craft don't use "licensed telemetry bands" (nor do the military), in fact RF is only one methodology of control we employ.
We attend as many of these demonstrations as possible so we can monitor the demonstration and take any adjustments needed to minimise interference. One aspect of these systems is the length of time they take to deploy, quite impracticable for military field use.
One of our most popular manufactures is our version of the Spiro (see http://www.sphero.com/sprk-plus) only it doesn't glow, and is coloured to match the water it is usually deployed in but it sure makes an impressive bang when charged (by the customer) with C4! They are land (so they can be deployed in shallow water/beach conditions) and water mobile.
Fixed-wing drones are also very effective at outrunning all these multi-million Shekel, Pound and Dollar systems and when the cameras are reduced in weight and size (we use SJCAM) our flight duration, along with the amount of terrain surveilled, can be considerable.