[Popular Science of Chinese Military Technology] How difficult is it to prevent drone swarms? How to break through the drone counterattack?

In modern warfare, drones are mainly responsible for important tasks such as intelligence gathering, communication relay and low-altitude strikes. Judging from the most recent war (Russia-Ukraine conflict), drones have become a hot combat equipment and are highly valued by various countries.

Figure Note: Schematic diagram of the anti-drone system (Source: Expert data map)

Drone combat usually adopts "swarm" combat. That is, dozens or even hundreds of drones are gathered to carry out "swarm" attacks on targets. This is a new combat method. At present, countries around the world are actively studying the combat methods and means of anti-drone "swarm" and have developed a variety of effective combat systems and supporting weapon systems, but there are still major technical bottlenecks that have not been broken through.

Reconnaissance and detection technology

Reconnaissance and detection are the first challenges faced by anti-drone "swarms". If the "swarm" cannot be detected or tracked, all anti-drone measures are out of the question. Judging from the current research progress of various countries, breakthroughs need to be sought in the following three aspects: First, focus on exploring the optimal configuration between radar, optoelectronic and other detectors, break through key technologies such as detection resource saturation, multi-dimensional collaborative reconnaissance and multi-dimensional information fusion processing, and achieve global perception in complex battlefield environments; second, obtain multi-dimensional characteristics of targets through the study of radar, optoelectronic and other multi-sensors, and follow up on identification and classification to expand the number of detectable and trackable targets; third, use the echo energy of each dimension of the system to implement multi-level positioning and tracking of targets, and estimate the enemy's "swarm" behavior through comprehensive analysis of the combat environment and target information, and provide information support for anti-"swarm" decision-making.

Artificial Intelligence Technology

Artificial intelligence's ability to make decisions quickly and accurately plays a vital role in the battlefield command system's assessment of "swarm" threats and dynamic planning tasks, and directly affects the effectiveness of anti-"swarm" operations. In the next step, it is necessary to break through key technologies such as cluster identification and evaluation and intelligent game mechanisms, study target identification and evaluation methods, and collaborative multi-task dynamic intelligent planning methods, to provide a strong theoretical basis for artificial intelligence to achieve collaborative decision-making; it is also necessary to study centralized and distributed decision-making architectures and their application scenarios, and build an intelligent decision-making and command platform suitable for anti-"swarm" operations while considering system stability; it is also necessary to study the intelligent game confrontation mechanism, in an environment with multiple uncertain factors, to ensure that the task is completed, and to preserve our manpower as much as possible, to provide strong support for improving combat effectiveness.

The UK purchased killer drones from Israel (Image source: NetEase)

Autonomous strike technology

Striking is the most direct combat link of the anti-"swarm" system. Rapidly and accurately attacking enemy targets autonomously plays a vital role in combat. In future research, it is necessary to focus on the research of anti-UAV kinetic and directed energy weapons, break through key technologies such as autonomous interception and attack, establish an anti-unmanned cluster autonomous strike system based on the battlefield environment, and realize the autonomous strike capability of anti-UAV "swarm"; develop a cluster of drones equipped with micro-missiles, which can automatically track the target through a precision guidance system after locking the target, and can quickly strike the target without human intervention, ensuring the killing effect in different battlefield environments; explore the method of carrying transmitters and physical armor that can emit high-power microwaves in a directional manner on drone swarms, as a new weapon that combines soft and hard killing, to enhance the diversity of anti-"swarm" means and improve the adaptability of operations against different types of enemy drones.

Expert profile: Weng Zongbo is a military equipment science popularization expert. He is mainly engaged in research on domestic and foreign high-tech equipment, main combat equipment of various arms, joint combat strategies and tactics, etc. He has published more than 200 articles in military newspapers and magazines such as the "People's Liberation Army Daily", "China National Defense News", and "Weapons" magazine, and has been awarded the third-class merit once.

Produced by: Popular Science of Chinese Military Technology

Author: Weng Zongbo (military science writer)

Planning: Jin He

Scientific review: Fei Boyu (senior military editor)

Producer: Guangming Online Science Department