Thursday, April 14, 2016

Which Branch Will Shoot Down Drones?

Politico has a piece on a US Army analysis of Russian military capabilities as demonstrated in Ukraine.  One paragraph:
Karber says the lethality of new Russian munitions has been striking, including the use of scatterable mines, which the U.S. States no longer possesses. And he counts at least 14 different types of drones used in the conflict and reports that one Ukrainian unit he was embedded with witnessed up to eight drone flights in a single day. “How do you attack an adversary’s UAV?” asks Clark. “Can we blind, disrupt or shoot down these systems? The U.S. military hasn’t suffered any significant air attacks since 1943.”
 Knowing the military bureaucracy, it's safe to predict that the Navy, the Marines, the Army, and the Air Force, not to mention the Secret Service and other bureaucracies will all invest in anti-drone research, set up anti-drone units, and lobby Congress to be the lead agency.

Speculation: I'd guess the easiest way to go with drones is to jam their communications, but we'll see.

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