Small drones a difficult challenge facing armies

October 23, 2022

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Small drones a difficult challenge facing armies Between the attempt to assassinate the President of Venezuela and the Prime Minister of Iraq, and the flight over London airports and oil platforms in Norway, the small drones pose an increasing risk that makes prevention a difficult challenge, according to a report by Agence France-Presse. How can a slow, low-lying machine above a crowd be spotted and neutralized without causing harm? The challenge is up to the authorities in France, which will host the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, with hundreds of thousands of people expected along the Seine during the opening. The heavy use of small suicide swarms, sometimes of which entire swarms were launched, in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 2020, and the use of commercial rallies in Ukraine for reconnaissance or targeting purposes is a new weakness for the army as well. Preventing small rallies, which rose from 400,000 to 2.5 million in France in five years, is a "(near) impossible task", parliamentarians said in a report published last year. In an indication of the urgency of the issue, the French Ministry of Defense is scheduled to receive the first 6 anti-aircraft interceptor systems at the beginning of the year, 9 months after signing an 11-year contract worth 350 million euros. The Thales and CS groups have developed the Parad system, which is "improved to detect and neutralize small and micro-drones (from 100 grams to 25 kilograms) but can do much more," explains Thierry Boone, a Thales anti-drone officer. During a demonstration of this system at the former Bretagne Air Force Base in Paris. Parad combines radar data on a tripod capable of detecting paths up to 5 kilometers away, directional observatories that determine the location of the drone through the radio waves it emits, optical and infrared cameras, into a single operator-managed interface. Once the drone is detected and automatically followed through the cameras, the operator activates a jamming device two kilometers from the drone 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 combat drones at CS Group. To cover larger areas, a number of Parad systems can be connected. One of the difficulties that was solved according to the group is to avoid false alarms, because "for the radar, the similarity between a drone and a bird is very large," notes CS Officer Tony Fallin. But he acknowledges that the technological challenges remain formidable. Almost all commercial drones are remotely piloted and therefore emit waves that can be jammed. But the increased independence of the drones, whose path is predetermined, and their failure to emit electromagnetic waves, is frustrated by interference. Therefore, the Parad system is designed to be open and capable of integrating other interception methods. The Helma-B laser from Silas, which is capable of destroying a drone in less than 10 seconds at an altitude of up to 1,000 meters, is expected to be available in 2024. The Thales group works on an "electromagnetic transponder", a type of large ball that emits a powerful wave of several hundred meters that targets the drone and disables it within a second. Another potential defensive tool would be the development of interceptor drones that would hit enemy and jamming drones. Also, studies are being conducted on the acoustic detection of drones. "The need for a multi-sensing approach, as there is no magic system," Egidio-Ko stresses. As for the Iranian drones used in Ukraine, which are much larger and carry tens of kilograms of explosives, “they fly at an altitude of 3,000 meters and then descend quickly, and they cannot be stopped.”

Between the attempt to assassinate the President of Venezuela and the Prime Minister of Iraq, and the flight over London airports and oil platforms in Norway, the small drones pose an increasing risk that makes prevention a difficult challenge, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

How can a slow, low-lying machine above a crowd be spotted and neutralized without causing harm? The challenge is up to the authorities in France, which will host the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024, with hundreds of thousands of people expected along the Seine during the opening.

The heavy use of small suicide swarms, sometimes of which entire swarms were launched, in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 2020, and the use of commercial rallies in Ukraine for reconnaissance or targeting purposes is a new weakness for the army as well.

Preventing small rallies, which rose from 400,000 to 2.5 million in France in five years, is a "(near) impossible task", parliamentarians said in a report published last year.

In an indication of the urgency of the issue, the French Ministry of Defense is scheduled to receive the first 6 anti-aircraft interceptor systems at the beginning of the year, 9 months after signing an 11-year contract worth 350 million euros.

The Thales and CS groups have developed the Parad system, which is "improved to detect and neutralize small and micro-drones (from 100 grams to 25 kilograms) but can do much more," explains Thierry Boone, a Thales anti-drone officer. During a demonstration of this system at the former Bretagne Air Force Base in Paris.

Parad combines radar data on a tripod capable of detecting paths up to 5 kilometers away, directional observatories that determine the location of the drone through the radio waves it emits, optical and infrared cameras, into a single operator-managed interface.

Once the drone is detected and automatically followed through the cameras, the operator activates a jamming device two kilometers from the drone 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 combat drones at CS Group. To cover larger areas, a number of Parad systems can be connected.

One of the difficulties that was solved according to the group is to avoid false alarms, because "for the radar, the similarity between a drone and a bird is very large," notes CS Officer Tony Fallin.

But he acknowledges that the technological challenges remain formidable. Almost all commercial drones are remotely piloted and therefore emit waves that can be jammed.

But the increased independence of the drones, whose path is predetermined, and their failure to emit electromagnetic waves, is frustrated by interference.

Therefore, the Parad system is designed to be open and capable of integrating other interception methods.

The Helma-B laser from Silas, which is capable of destroying a drone in less than 10 seconds at an altitude of up to 1,000 meters, is expected to be available in 2024.

The Thales group works on an "electromagnetic transponder", a type of large ball that emits a powerful wave of several hundred meters that targets the drone and disables it within a second.

Another potential defensive tool would be the development of interceptor drones that would hit enemy and jamming drones. Also, studies are being conducted on the acoustic detection of drones.

"The need for a multi-sensing approach, as there is no magic system," Egidio-Ko stresses.

As for the Iranian drones used in Ukraine, which are much larger and carry tens of kilograms of explosives, “they fly at an altitude of 3,000 meters and then descend quickly, and they cannot be stopped.”