small autonomous drone..a difficult challenge facing armies 2022
Between the attempted assassination, of the president of Venezuela and the Prime Minister of Iraq and flying over London airports and oil platforms in Norway.
small drones pose increasing risks that make prevention a difficult challenge, according to a report by AFP.
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How can a slow machine flying low over a crowd of people be spotted and neutralized without causing harm This is a challenge for the authorities in France.
which is hosting the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, especially with hundreds of thousands of people expected to be present along the Seine River during the opening.
The intensive use of small suicide parades, from which whole squadrons were sometimes launched in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020.
and the use of commercial parades in Ukraine for reconnaissance or targeting purposes is also a new weakness for the military.
The Prevention of small marches, the number of which has increased from 400 thousand to 2,5 million in France in 5 years, is "an (almost) impossible task," according to parliamentarians in a report published last year.
What challenges do drones face?
In a sign of the urgency of the issue, the French Ministry of defense is scheduled to acquire the first 6 anti-drone interceptor systems at the beginning of the Year, 9 months after signing a contract worth 350 million euros spanning 11 years.
The Thales and CS groups have developed the parade system, which" has been improved to detect and neutralize small and ultra-small drones (from 100 grams to 25 kilograms), but it can do more, "explains Thierry Bon, Thales anti-drone officer during a review of this system at the former bretinier air base in Paris.
"Parade" integrates the data of a radar mounted on a tripod stand capable of detecting parades at a distance of up to 5 kilometers, directional observatories that determine the location of the drone by the radio waves it emits, optical and infrared cameras, into a single interface operated by an operator.
As soon as the drone is detected and automatically followed by cameras, the operator activates a jammer two kilometers from the March as it enters the exclusion zone, forcing it to land or reach a predetermined point.
There is no magic system
"Between the moment the drone is spotted and it reaches its target, the soldier has about 30 seconds to stop it," says Egidio Ko, deputy director of anti-drone in the CS group. To cover larger areas, a number of "parade"systems can be connected.
One of the difficulties solved according to the group is the avoidance of false alarms, because "for the radar the similarity between a drone and a bird is very large," as the official at CS Tony Fallin points out.
But he acknowledges that the technological challenges remain enormous. Almost all commercial drones are remotely piloted and therefore emit waves that can be jammed.
But the increased autonomy of drones, whose trajectory is determined in advance and which do not emit electromagnetic waves, is protected by jamming.
Therefore, the "parade" system is designed to be open and capable of integrating other interception methods.
The laser "Helma-B" from the manufacture of the company "Silas", capable of destroying a drone in less than 10 seconds at an altitude of up to a thousand meters, is expected to be available in 2024.
The Thales Group is working on an" electromagnetic transponder", a kind of large ball that emits a powerful wave up to several hundred meters that targets the drone and disables it within a second.
Another potential defensive tool is the development of interceptor drones that would hit enemy parades and jamming parades. Furthermore, research is being done on the acoustic detection of drones.
"There is a need for a multi-sensor approach, as there is no magic system,"emphasizes Egidio ko.
Regarding the much larger and heavier Iranian drones used in Ukraine, which are also equipped with tens of kg of explosives, land quickly, they cannot be stopped".