1/🧵How do you shootdown a Shahed-136? #Ukraine has a lot of options, but none of them are a silver bullet for this problem by themselves. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-632805…
2/ Firstly, you need to detect them with enough warning to prepare your Air Defense. This is most efficiently done with Radar. Contrary to popular belief, you can detect drones with Radar, even if they fly low and slow, see @Mauro_Gilli and others direct.mit.edu/isec/article/4…
3/ Once you have detected the Shahed(s), you need to actually shoot them down. Ukraine has a bunch of systems that can do this, each with their own tradeoffs.
4/ The first is your long and medium range-AA, in Ukraine this means systems like the S-300 and incoming NASAMs and IRIS-T. They will reliably down a drone but are the most expensive ways to do so. We're talking $100k+ to shoot down a drone that costs $30k reuters.com/world/us-worki…
5/ There are cheaper missiles like MANPADS and incoming systems like the L3 VAMPIRE. These are more economical but also shorter range. If there are many shaheds, you'd need to concentrate these along their avenue of approach to reliably down them greydynamics.com/vampires-in-uk…
6/ You also have your Anti-Aircraft Artillery. These are capable, available, and cheap, but lack range and work best with a radar (like the Gepard) forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
7/ But what about jammers? Since these drones seem to work with satnav and inertial navigation, radio jamming will not work, and GPS jamming will only reduce accuracy so long as the drone is jammed all the way to the target thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/…
8/ Another option is striking the drones "left-of-boom," such as staging areas or storage sites. This would be ideal if they can be located, but it can be tricky if Russia moves the staging areas back, or operates them from "neutral" Belarus.
9/ The WORST solution is firing small arms into the air. Not only is it unclear that this would work, but firing rifles into the air in a city could injure people
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1581930609273806852
10/ What are the best solutions? The first is layering air defenses and detection methods to triage attacks. This is expensive and would require LOTS of NATO donations, but less costly than allowing drones to hit civilians and military targets.
11/ The other (and only guaranteed) way to end the attacks is Ukrainian victory. Any end to this conflict that leaves the door open for Russia to restart fighting at a whim risks the resumption of attacks like these.
12/ I forgot to mention, you can also use Ukrainian aircraft to down drones. This is cheap if the plane is already in the air and using its gun, but expensive if they have to scramble it and it uses an air-to-air missile, or if the plane goes down. thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u…
13/ Cultured and sophisticated people who want to know more about Drones and Air Defense around the would ought to be following @VleckieHond @ZKallenborn @SamBendett @MIL_STD @faineg @David_Hambling
14/ coincidentally, I have an article with @thedailybeast out this morning talking about these issues in addition to the recent news that Iran is sending SRBM to the #ukrainewar thedailybeast.com/theres-one-cou…
15/ Myself and a bunch of people smarter than me are going to be live chatting about these issues and taking your questions in just a few hours:
https://twitter.com/DougKlain/status/1582145711327485953
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
