question "NATO will quickly run out of missiles to shot those drones."

Is there not cheaper auto-shotgun type devices around? To spray the sky. It doesn't take an entire missile or even bullet to damage a drone does it?

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pjc50 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The drones are rather large: https://osmp.ngo/collection/shahed-131-136-uavs-a-visual-gui... and have a flight ceiling of about 4000m. It is probably roughly comparable to WW2 aircraft, given that it's driven by a piston prop engine. That suggests the need for similar technology such as "flak" anti-aircraft shells. However, that requires line of sight and has limited accuracy, while not being all that cheap to deploy. So if these guided interceptors can be built cheaply, with a decent hit rate, they might end up being cheaper than conventional AAA.

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sgt101 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One approach is directed energy, there are laser guns like the UK's dragonfire (there are many others out there too) however these have problems in dusty or foggy conditions for obvious reasons. There are also microwave effectors which are used to fry the electronics on drones. These take advantage of the advances in Gallium Nitride based power electronics (and other even more exotic materials).

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amelius 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

These drones probably have US semiconductors in them. If only there was a backdoor ...

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dboreham 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bullets have short range. So now you have to carpet the land with AA guns.

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lenerdenator 2 days ago | parent [-]

It'd be interesting to see how short that range really is.

A lot of assumptions about range were based on the idea of a soldier shooting at another soldier, more-or-less at a horizontal level. You had to design a bullet to accurately hit a target and disperse kinetic energy into biological tissue.

Now, you're aiming at something made of non-biological materials of varying size, but they're usually lightweight and have little in the way of redundant flight systems. There's a real chance that if you send up enough small arms fire, you could hit a drone at up to a mile in the sky and cause it enough damage to be unable to complete its mission.

Helicopters are known to be vulnerable to small arms fire. I don't see why an even smaller drone would be any different.

	▲	tguvot 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMASH_Handheld#Mechanisms_and_...

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MangoToupe 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Geran-2's are far too large to be taken out with shotguns. Furthermore, you'd have to anticipate where they would want to strike. Drones, missiles, or lasers are likely the only way to stop them.