Armies tormented by drones innovate ways to spot, jam and zap on the cheap

Mint

7 days ago

BEMOWO PISKIE, Poland—When U.S. Army Sgt. Sebastian Zouzoulas became an electronic-warfare specialist, his main focus was detecting remote-control roadside explosives. That was four years ago—a whole generation back on the battlefield.
Today, his work is all about countering drones.
Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and across Africa are rewriting the rules of combat, with small, expendable and deadly drones increasingly critical. Militaries are sprinting to mass-produce the weapons and understand how best to fit them into fighting plans.
As with every new weapon, a parallel race is on to thwart the new killers. Tacticians are grappling with how to defend against attacks massing dozens or hundreds of drones—without spending a fortune.
'Whatever weapon system or munition you shoot at another adversary's capability, it should be cheaper than what you're shooting down," Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. land forces in Europe and Africa, recently told a gathering in Germany.
Days after setting that challenge, Donahue was at an Army base in the Polish countryside, watching forces try to accomplish it at an exercise dubbed Project Flytrap 4.0.
The fourth in a series of learn-by-doing events, the U.S.-British maneuvers brought together top brass, tech developers and soldiers like Zouzoulas. While troops staged engagements under drenching rain across the training grounds' woods and fields, officers and officials filled a base auditorium to absorb lessons from drone combat in Ukraine and hear about the efforts of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to apply those lessons. Outside, soldiers and technicians exhibited some of the gear being tested.
Stryker combat vehicles of the U.S. Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment during the exercise in Poland.U.S. Army Sgt. Sebastian Zouzoulas with a Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack.
NATO, which recently agreed to a spending increase, must ensure 'that we are strong enough that we don't have to fight because no one wants to take us on—because we've deterred them," said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, who attended Flytrap.
The base where Poland hosted the exercise sits about 50 miles from both the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the Polish city of Suwalki, which NATO fears that Russia considers a target because of its location between Kaliningrad and Moscow's ally Belarus.
Project Flytrap began in March with initial research and testing. It has grown in scale and ambition, with 4.0 the first time troops integrated counterdrone systems into battalion-level fighting. The engagement scenario involved several dozen troops attacking roughly 180 defenders in traditional land battles augmented with hundreds of drones, employed in the most realistic ways possible short of lethality, said organizers.
To crank up intensity, they packed into the four-day exercise a relentless series of attacks, engagements and threats modeled on fighting in Ukraine and other conflicts.
'It's terrifying, watching the drones counter each other," said Zouzoulas of the scenes on Ukraine's front lines.
Adapting to that reality is Flytrap's focus. Troops from the Army's 2nd Cavalry Regiment, based in Germany, and the U.K.'s Royal Yorkshire Regiment used new devices—some developed in-house and some from private companies—to track, jam and shoot down drones sent at them by other U.S. forces.
'It's very much a cat-and-mouse game," said Army Lt. Col. Jeremy Medaris, a leader of the exercise. Drones keep adapting, 'so then you have to have an adaptation as well" to counter them. Instead of seeking a single solution, he said, the emphasis is on developing a flexible and layered approach with a range of tools.
Zouzoulas's Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team Manpack tackles the first stage in drone-fighting: spotting attackers. A sort of antenna, known as a Beast+, resembles a cactus growing out of a backpack, connected by wire to a screen the size of a smartphone. Designed for foot soldiers on the move, it scans for nearby drones' radio signals and jams them.
An even smaller wearable system resembles two big walkie-talkies. Dubbed Wingman and Pitbull, they also seek and jam drones' radio signals.
Using radio signals to spot air attacks began during World War II and until recently mostly focused on using radar to pinpoint large, fast objects. Engineers deliberately built systems to ignore small, low and slow objects to avoid alerts triggered by birds. Now engineers must be able to detect bird-size craft and ensure they are machines.
Zouzoulas's unit moves on Stryker fighting vehicles, on which technicians at Bemowo Piskie mounted for test use a variety of drone-detection gear able to scan 360 degrees over a wide radius. Engineers are experimenting with precision radar and optical or infrared sensors, starting with upgrades to existing systems.
Specialists from the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Analysis Center have spent almost seven years creating software to boost the accuracy and range of widely used radar. It is used to target big guns deployed across the military, under the Common Remotely Operated Weapons System. Now it can detect drones at distances far greater than they might be targeted, said developers.
Troops inside a Stryker can activate the system to shoot drones automatically with the vehicle's roof-mounted M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun. The system's radar tracks the rounds it fires and adapts its targeting.
To secure fixed positions like field headquarters, the Pentagon is also using acoustic sensors. Highly sensitive listening devices, trained to detect the sonic signatures of drone motors, don't hunt for radio waves or visual contact. That is critical at night and against autonomous or fiber-optic guided drones, which don't communicate with base by radio transceiver.
One acoustic drone-warning system deployed during the Flytrap exercise creates what its developers at Norway's Squarehead Technology call a safety bubble around troops, in which they can be nearly certain they will know when drones are approaching. A full array, about the size of a campfire, addresses one of the drone attacks' most insidious features: dread. Ukrainian soldiers and civilians now live in almost constant fear of Russian drones, and Kyiv is working to inflict the same anxiety on Russian troops.
'Knowing there are no drones around you allows you to be a human," said Squarehead's vice president of defense, Knut Torbjørn Moe. 'You can do the things you need to do, like go to the bathroom or sleep or do other soldier work."
Once drones are detected, neutralizing them at low cost is the next hurdle. A natural response for soldiers is to shoot at them with their personal rifles, but hitting a drone is much harder than hitting a bird. Troops at Flytrap improved their odds with computerized targeting equipment from the Israeli technology company Smart Shooter mounted on U.S. Army standard-issue M4 rifles.
The fire-control system consists of a high-tech sight that is slightly larger than a big telescopic scope and a replacement trigger. The shooter aims at a drone and pulls the trigger, but bullets only fire when the system has calculated that a hit is likely.
Soldiers at Flytrap also tested an array of point-and-shoot jammers that resemble oversize laser guns from a science-fiction movie. Most emit strong radio signals that disrupt a drone's operation.
Bigger threats, such as drone swarms or attacks on armored vehicles, need a bigger response. That is what the San Francisco startup Mara aims to tackle with what it calls 'ubiquitous antiswarm" technology, which detects incoming drones and autonomously launches compact interceptors. The company is a finalist in a continuing Army competition seeking innovative tech solutions to a range of battlefield problems.
Chief Executive Daniel Kofman, adjusting an antenna array on a Stryker, said he aims for 'one-to-one cost with the drone coming at us" using inexpensive hardware and what he called 'novel AI." A full system, with 48 interceptors, costs 'less than a new truck," he said, without specifying what kind of truck.
Once troops in an equipped vehicle activate their system, it seeks and shoots down attacks without human input, Kofman said. The equipment is designed to withstand jamming and guard against fully autonomous drones, like fiber-guided ones, freeing troops to focus on their mission—not drones.
'That's the whole point of our system," Kofman said.
Write to Daniel Michaels at [e-mail]