The development trend of anti-drone technology and equipment

The development trend of UAV technology and equipment is moving towards counter-UAV technology and equipment.

Currently, UAV technology is developing in the direction of miniaturization, clustering, stealth and intelligence. In particular, the cooperation of a group of multiple drones or a formation of drones and manned drones has become the focus of research and development in major countries in the world. Against this background, the development of UAV jammer technology has also shown trends such as mobility, flexibility, both software and hardware, system integration, and high intelligence.

Future anti-drone operations will inevitably require miniaturization of equipment.

(1) Miniaturized equipment will become a necessity for future anti-drone operations.

(2) Miniaturized equipment must be used in future anti-drone operations.

(3) Equipment miniaturization is a necessary condition for future anti-drone operations.

Although large-scale anti-UAV systems have the advantages of strong transmitting power and long range, their equipment is complex and difficult to maintain, making them inconvenient for rapid deployment and real-time protection. Once deployed, the combat position is relatively fixed, making mobile detection difficult; and it is easy to Being attacked and causing collateral damage, it is not suitable for use in complex environments such as cities. Therefore, on the one hand, we focus on combining anti-drone systems with small combat platforms to achieve flexible deployment in multiple fields; on the other hand, we actively develop portable anti-drone equipment to meet the needs of ground air defense and urban combat.

Navigation signal interference will become a "soft kill" issue that focuses on technology.

At present, most "soft kill" systems focus on interfering with the remote control signals of drones, and are powerless against drones that are preset to fly autonomously and whose remote control data links are turned off. In contrast, there is a great risk for drones to continuously receive positioning and navigation data during flight. By interfering with the drone's navigation signal and resetting its coordinates and flight path, it can be guided to land at a designated location. According to media reports, Iran successfully trapped a US military ScanEagle drone in 2012 and used this technology.

Directed energy weapons will become the main method of "hard destruction".

Directed energy weapons, such as lasers, microwaves and electromagnetic pulses, have many advantages, such as high speed, good interception effect and high cost-effectiveness. Therefore, these weapons have become the mainstream of anti-drone equipment development. In particular, laser weapons are loved by countries around the world because of their low cost, flexible deployment, and excellent damage effects. In order to expand its drone interception capabilities, in addition to developing more powerful laser transmitters, it is also trying to combine laser weapons with traditional aircraft, artillery and missiles to form a rapid response capability.

Stealth drone technology will become the focus of the future.

Future drones will have stronger stealth capabilities, and their long-range air defense and battlefield survivability will be greatly improved. For example, the U.S. X-47B UAV has completed a series of aircraft carrier-based tests, and its follow-up model, the MQ-25A, has excellent stealth performance and can independently carry out aerial refueling, reconnaissance and surveillance tasks. Lockheed Martin's Sentinel drone and Boeing's Phantom Ray drone also have stealth capabilities. Therefore, actively developing new generation air defense radar and other detection methods to improve the detection capabilities of stealth targets will become a necessary requirement for future anti-drone operations.

Establishing a multi-layered anti-UAV system is an important choice.

​Given the wide variety of drones, small and micro drones are difficult to detect and discover. The integrated surveillance and attack drones pose a serious threat to the anti-drone system. In addition, various anti-drone technical equipment have certain limitations. In order to ensure airspace security, especially the survivability of important targets, it is necessary to comprehensively use a variety of anti-UAV equipment technologies and establish a multi-layered anti-UAV system from far to near, with clear layers and complementary advantages. Improve the effectiveness of countering drones.

"Unmanned versus unmanned" will become the mainstream of anti-drone operations

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology and its widespread application in the field of drones, unmanned combat platforms with truly autonomous capabilities will appear on the future battlefield, accelerating the evolution of war into an unmanned and intelligent direction. By then, traditional anti-drone technology and related combat will be unable to meet combat needs. It is necessary to develop and use unmanned intelligent weapon platforms to deal with autonomous drone threats in an "unmanned versus unmanned" and "intelligent versus intelligent" manner.