Re: Mind that big gaping hole in the middle
The nifty little UA antidrone drones don’t defend their launchers they defend passage corridors, so they need more range.
They need all the physics, range, speed, endurance, payload. The more corridor they're expected to patrol, the harder that becomes. Both sides have been using loitering drones that park up to conserve battery and wait for targets. If they're flying, they drain the batteries. Bigger the drone, faster the drain.
I’m curious what UA will cook up in the ABM space.
Probably very little given much UA tech is actually Western tech, and Russia has been actively hunting actual & potential drone and missile assembly facilities. And with Ukraine being out of interceptors, that situation is getting worse.
Think about it: a ballistic missile needs to be big enough to fly 500-1000+ km with a heavy payload. That’s not small or cheap. Meanwhile an interceptor missile defending a high value location could theoretically fly up 2km, hit an insufficiently-evasive IRBM and do its job by destroying its explosives and fuses. Shorter range => could be a lot smaller and cheaper.
Ballistic missiles don't have to be that large or have that long a range, ie they just have to outrange the defenders ability to strike launchers on the ground. So systems like 300mm Tornado-S have a range of 1-200km and fly faster than this gun can engage. So do the Geran-4 jet variants. Quadcopter-style drones can't really fly fast enough to intercept those either. Then it's a gamble that IRBMs could be destroyed by small missiles given they're essentially armored by their fragmenting casings, and fuzing might be top & tail. Might hit a fuze in the nose, probably won't penetrate through to the tail. They might damage guidance systems, but if it's a ballistic missile, it'll follow a ballistic path and land somewhere near the intended target anyway.
It's a rather wicked problem.
So I think best use of systems like this is protecting forward bases or convoy escorts, so rather like Russia's Pantsir or own version of this system with aim-assist on trucks to deal with Ukraine's small drones. Or just use it as an anti-infantry system to automagically defend sectors against DRG infiltrators. Shades of Skynet, but lots of money to be made.
