Drones
Ukraine: The Latest Home-Grown Drone Technology
On the ground and out of the air, here are two pieces of equipment in play — or almost
Drone rifles
Most anti-drone rifles do not fire bullets. They are more like ‘ray guns’. If you are of a certain age you will recognise the term. These go back way beyond ‘Call of Duty’ weapons for Zombies and are now collectors items.
The one in the picture was listed with an auction guide price of £700 (#US$1000).
Mettoy Dan Dare Rare Tinplate Ray Gun Rifle: With crank action sparking mechanism in near mint condition 52cm complete with flint and illustrated box
But that’s not for today’s wars.
Today’s anti-drone rifles certainly do not all look like rifles.
Maybe more like Stinger manpads.
They come in a lot of weird shapes and sizes — some even looking like TV aerials. And that’s because, as I said, they don’t fire bullets.
Now a Ukraine company, Kvertus, is manufacturing them.
It looks compact, but the antennae are folded in. Think umbrella and you will not be far wrong. As Will Smith said in ‘Men in Black’ — ‘You call that a gun’?
It uses just 80 watts of power, with a battery life of 30 minutes.
But what does it do?
DRONE JAMMER “KVS ANTIDRON G-6” is an effective item in fighting drones approaching the protected area by suppressing drone controlled and navigation channels, which leads to neutralization and landing of the intruder. — kvertus.com
And how?
By emitting ‘rays’ — radio signals actually — using 3 different antennae in the frequency ranges :
- Remote control and video transmission 2.4G: 2400–2500 MHz 20W
- Navigation GPS L2: 1227 MHz 10W
- Remote radio control: 868–912 MHz (860–920 MHz) 10W
- Remote radio control: 433–434 MHz 10W
- Navigation GPS L1 + GLONASS L1: 1575–1620 MHz 20W
- Remote control and video transmission 2.4G: 5.5–5.9 MHz 10W
GPS is the US-run satellite constellation, Glonass the Russian equivalent. There is no mention of China’s Beidou, India’s 7 satellite Navik/IRNSS and Japan’s QZSS/Michibiki (which rides on the back of the US GPS). I guess there’s not enough war demand yet…But where is Galileo, the EU system? There’s no mention of that either.
So Kvertus is focused on the home market and who can blame them?
Ground based fighting drone
This remote-controlled mobile drone is equipped with a 7.62mm Nato calibre machines gun.
The GNOM is designed and built by Temerland, a company based in Zaporizhzhia. It will be having a baptism of fire this month when it begins field trials in its home city.
It’s physically compact at 57cm L х 60cm W x 38cm H and weighs about 50 kg (although it’s not clear whether that includes a full ammunition load).
It’s not really stealthy, but it can carry a TV camera on a mast as an alternative payload for surveillance as well as a few other tasks. Those of you with sharp eyes will have noticed a drum. That’s for 2 km of optical control cable for use when enemy radio jamming is effective. It also has an RTB function (return to base) for when the optical cable gets broken or wifi comms fail. Its also comes with IR illumination so that its remote controller has night vision.
According to the company website:
The new unmanned design GNOM is a multifunctional robotic platform for solving the following tasks:
- robot for surveillance and reconnaissance
- delivery of ammunition, food and evacuation of the wounded
- repeater for increasing the range of radio communication and control
- robot — satellite for larger robotic platforms
GNOM can receive a radio signal, amplify and transmit further, performing the function of a repeater.
With the use of several GNOMEs, this function is extremely useful, allowing, in combat conditions, to deploy its own network for coordination the actions of units and the operation of unmanned systems.
Depending how you read it, this latter point is important because it touches on swarm technology.
The makers claim an operational range of up to 5 km, but just like aircraft you have to consider ‘loiter time’. With a declared lithium battery capacity of 60 Ah and 4 x 1 kW drive motors at a voltage of 42 Volts (according to the specs), that’s limited to a drive time of about 1/2 hour by my calculations, neglecting instrument power requirements. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but maybe my calculations are astray.
With a range of control methods (and 5 km wifi) it looks interesting:
- locally (line of sight): gestures, voice, leash
- remotely: from an operator station, from a tablet, from a smartphone
That word ‘gestures’ caught my. What happens if its controller gets killed wounded? Would it understand a two finger salute from an enemy soldier?
There’s a lot of bad stuff happening in Ukraine. Maybe these weapons will help deliver some good news.
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