a bunch of shotguns or service rifles is not going to help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136

This is what people talk about when they say 'drones' in this context - basically a remote-guided 100 lb bomb flying in a 400lb chassis at 115 mph thousands of meters up.

▲

lenerdenator 2 days ago | parent [-]

In that case, yeah, I could see aerial drones being a response.

It's not an altogether different concept from the V1 Buzz Bomb. Those were easy enough to blow out of the sky if you were in a WWII prop fighter.

I wonder how effective heavy machine guns would be against one. What's its service ceiling? It's running on a gasoline motor so it can't be that high.

▲

tim333 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think they go up to like 5000 feet so within anti aircraft gun range but you'd need a lot of such guns to cover the long Ukraine border and they are not cheap. Drones may be more practical.

>the Skyranger, a twin radar-guided 30mm gun turret made by Rheinmetall, making this the natural choice for the German Army. The gun system costs around $12 million https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/09/10/why-so...

and ammo is about $600/round apparently.

EDIT:

They used to go 5000 ft or so. Now " fly between 2,000 to 5,000 meters to evade small arms fire, while the high-altitude reconnaissance drone Shahed 147 can reach 18,288 meters (60,000 feet). "

	▲	lenerdenator 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Eh, yeah, that's pretty far up to hit with small arms fire, at least until it begins to drop for terminal descent.

▲

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

The answer is simple, but not easy - you own the ground they launch from. Range is limited, so you need to add more of it between you and them. Otherwise the problem is inherently an asymmetric one - drones cost 100k. Solutions cost much more than that. You can't win on a cost basis. You have to win on a strategic basis.

▲

lupusreal 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Radar directed anti-aircraft artillery with analogue computers for trajectory prediction, firing proximity fused shells, were extremely effective against V-1 bombs. Far more so than interceptor aircraft.

	▲	fpoling 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They were effective because Germans targeted mostly London where one could have dense defenses and V-1 flew relatively low. With drones few kilometers up this is simply not effective.