.
/2017/08/very-low-level-air-defence-against.html
/2018/05/summary-modern-air-defences-for-europe.html
One might increase the rate of fire of a MG3 back to about 1,500 rpm and use a duplex cartridge (two bullets in one cartridge) for 3,000 bullets per minute rate of fire, 50 per second.*
All kinds of drones and most missiles would be hit very quickly and be stopped by such a volume of fire even from a single RCWS. The detection of drones might depend on a quickly rotating (~100 revolutions per minute) AESA radar with such lower power and (by radio band) such a high atmospheric attenuation that it senses drones out to no more than 400 m and cannot be triangulated from more than two kilometres away.
S O
* 20 mm autocannons with simple HE-PD rounds would be an option for tanks, I dislike the specialised and expensive 30 mm autocannon with HE-PROX rounds solution. One might also stick with the duplex round MG3 approach as long as the tank has a coax gun of more powerful calibre, ideally a .338 chaingun.
.
I've thought before that a canistershot solution might be really effective against fpv drones. 20mm Shotgunshell with Tungsten shot, should be able to make a right mess and with many cannons like rh202 having a firerate of 1000/min that would be even more effective and also comparatively cheap.
ReplyDeleteAdd a dualbelt feed, one with HEI rounds or something and it's also very useful in fire support against ground targets.
That's basically AHEAD, also available in 30 mm. It's what the Puma IFV uses, but it's rather specialised. You cannot 'eat away' at a wall, dragon's tooth or log and you don't penetrate bulletproof armour with it.
DeleteThe huge challenge is to get the C-UAS solution produced by the ten thousands, in order to make it affordable through economies of scale. This means autocannon solutions in general are troublesome. They're acceptable for tanks and SPAAGs, but we need something machinegun-based for all the support vehicles; cars, trucks. Ideally, that would even be installed on combat AFVs for economy of scale.
An ordinary RCWS without C-UAS sensor can cost half a million at times, we need a solution for less than 50k € that has partial bullet proofing and at least 360°x220° capability.
I'm aware of AHEAD but thats really expensive with every single round fired being really complex, I meant just genuinely an automatic 20mm shotgun, your basic buckshot (though tungsten shot rather than lead), no sophistication other than the targeting. Won't be effective past a few hundred meters, but since your proposed sensors wouldn't be able to detect past that it wouldn't matter.
Delete"An ordinary RCWS without C-UAS sensor can cost half a million at times, we need a solution for less than 50k € that has partial bullet proofing and at least 360°x220° capability."
I don't think 20mm cannons which have been around for decades (using existing mature systems is a must of course) would be that much more expensive compared to the machinegun variant if you factor in radar and tracking systems. Those electronics will be the expensive part, whether you use it to direct a machinegun or autocannon makes no difference. Sure, a 20mm would be more expensive overall but probably only increase the cost of the whole system by a few percent which would be offset by the vastly greater probability of hitting the targets with giant shotgun rounds.
I'd initially leaned towards .50 cal machineguns since thats the exact diameter of a 12 gauge shotgun shell, but being rimmed those suck in automatic weapons which would therefore have to be new and purpose designed as such which increases cost dramatically. Rh-202, GIAT M621 or the american M39 have been around for decades and are proven designs and canister shot is probably the single simplest round you could manufacture en masse.
I'm sure your proposal would work too, I'm just a bit sceptical of the hit probability on a fastmoving drone with common rifle caliber bullets (or even duplexrounds, which would also necessitate new production lines anyway).
I'm looking forward to finding out what ultimately wins out, since lasers, microwave emitters and ew will drop off once purposebuilt minidrones for military applications arrive en masse and those systems stop working. As usual we will ultimately return to throwing rocks, figuratively speaking.
10...100 kW lasers aren't going to be mounted on cars and trucks.
DeleteMicrowave can be defeated by simple, cheap, lightweight-enough hardening measures.
The best truly cheap 20 mm autocannon would be the MG 151/20, for it was already developed and its copyright was voided by the allies in 1945. All other autocannon designs are proprietary to some company.
Oh I know that those hightech systems won't do it, that was my point. Doubling the power output of a laser weapon will be a lot more complicated and expensive than doubling the protection of a drone against lasers, with kinetic weapons it's the other way around. Same with microwaves, theres a reason we can stand in front of a kitchen microwave oven and not get fried. Microwave emitters will render civilian built systems useless (might be good to start looking into laws about civilian drones not allowed to protect aginst that) and force the opponent to purposebuild military drones which can withstand microwaves. But it will add mass and slow them down. Fibreoptic cables and soon autonomy will render EW incapable of stopping drones.
ReplyDeleteAll these systems should still be developed of course, simply to force an adversary to react and make their drones more expensive to produce and potentially slow them down making them easier targets for the winner of this competition: big gun firing lots of rounds very quickly.
I hadn't thought of MG 151, guess we sometimes forget that just because it's old doesn't mean it doesn't work. It also doesn't have the highest muzzlevelocity nor an insane firerate so it also keeps recoil comparatively low which should make the rws cheaper. Only problem is the caliber only being used by South Africa and India apparently (according to wikipedia) so maybe redesign for NATOs 20x102mm round, shouldn't be too difficult.
All we'd need then is to get the european militaries to all adopt the identical system, with the same gun, same mount and same sensors. Whether we can achieve economies of scale will in my opinion be more important than the details of the system itself.
The South African gun is literally a MG 151/20 copy.
DeleteThey also offered it in other calibres, such as 12.7 and 14.5 mm - makes sense, for MG151 was originally a 15 mm gun.
The hit chances of 20 mm with point detonation against a small drone or missile aren't good enough past maybe 500 m. 20 mm HE-PD blasts are effective regardless the muzzle velocity.
I don't think the muzzle velocity is a downside.
And I stopped giving a s**t about NATO standard calibres. Everyone seems to s**t on that concept (and NATO is dying anyway). The Americans with 6.8 mm small arms, the whole .338 story, the Brits use rifled 120 mm tank guns, the French use and export 120 mm rifled mortars (though they are compatible with 120 mm smoothbore munitions), the Brits used 2" mortars for a long time, Germany uses 4.6 mm PDW calibre, autocannons are in use in 20x102/20x110/23/25/27/30x113/30x173/35/40 mm calibres in NATO, lots of different rocket calibres are in use...
Well just because it's not working properly doesn't mean you give up on trying to standardize somewhat. Your list also didn't mention the 20x139mm, making the mess even more ridiculous. However, no one in europe uses 20x82mm Mauser, so switching to a version of 20mm that is in use (and which version doesn't really matter) is better, all it takes is a bit of fiddeling with the original weapon design and then you can use existing ammostocks (though canistershot would have to be new development, not aware of such a thing existing) and productionlines. We are trying to keep costs down of course.
DeleteYour point about the mess of calibres is however well taken. It suggests that we won't see this done in an affordable way any time soon, everyone will be off doing their own thing, with their own arms industries thus losing economies of scale.
There are 20x82 sellers at least in Switzerland and Bulgaria, though. And there's no IP on the munition, anyone can produce it at will.
DeleteGuess we have our winner then. Only problem left is european politicians getting their knickers in a twist because it's a "Nazi-weapon". Wouldn't make sense (still remember using an MG3 with the 42 on the reciever stenciled over) but you never know.
DeleteSome German soldiers got into trouble for having a MP38/40 submachinegun decoration on the wall - a Nazi weapon.
DeleteThe Wachbataillon greets foreign dignitaries with Karabiner 98k - a much more widely-used Nazi weapon.
Still, 20x82 is just representative of a low recoil 20 mm autocannon with a HE punch that's good-enough on direct hits and a decent rate of fire and decent muzzle velocity for ground combat and air targets within much less than 1 km distance.
Its weak spot is its marginal penetration, though an APDS version might suffice vs. BMP and certainly suffice vs. BTR & BMD.
Well primary use would be to defend against drones, but yes, with dual belt feed you could add an APDS to deal with light armoured vehicles, better to have and not need than need and not have.
DeleteThe whole fixation with seeing everything through the lens of Naziism is very annoying, I remember when they introduced the Mozambique drill (two rounds in the chest, one in the head), calling it the Neues Schießausbildungskonzept or NSAK. Can't read out those 4 letters though, that includes NS, so we had to call it Ensak (one word). Not a joke, those were real orders that someone wrote.
I do jsut remember a Rhodesian infantry contact drill about every man in the section shoots three shots into all concealments (bushes) in his arc of responsibility.
DeleteFor small caliber point-defense, is there a threshold for how # of rounds per engagement before it becomes impractical from a logistics standpoint?
ReplyDeleteTanks can carry thousands of small arms rounds easily. The issue is rather how much ready cartridges are there before somebody needs to get a belt from inside and reload.
Delete500 rds is a realistic quantity unless there's a munition feed directly from inside the AFV.
That would be 1,000 bullets with my approach. I suppose that's plentiful for 10 FPV drone kills, but that's something for computer simulations.
A 180 kph fast drone would get from 300 to 50 m in minimum 5 seconds. Four 0.5 sec bursts per kill would fit with enough automation.
The War Quants substack has figures for a point defense RWS like the American Bullfrog. A GPMG is physically viable until the drones start cooperating or maneuvering - getting the initial sensor detection is the hard part.
ReplyDeleteThere's the analogy of naval guns trying to shoot down anti-ship missiles regardless of their evasive manoeuvres.
DeleteEvasive manoeuvres help a lot at distance, but more close the guns get a huge increase to hit chance.
The problems in that scenario are supersonic missiles and fragments of hit missiles still slamming into fragile parts of the warship.
Similarly, FPV drones don't need to impact. They can do much damage (from above) with an EFP warhead, even from 50 m distance, maybe more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_qFyh4VOxw
So IMO it's important to complete the intercept at around 100 m. This means effective sensor ranges don't need to be very long. 400 m should be fine (and the radars could double as soldier motion detectors and would also detect classic ATGMs and RPGs, feeding data into an APS weapon like Iron Fist LD).
Do you think that the dispersion of the particular MG is important, in this case? I'm thinking of longer range (800-1 000m) engagements
ReplyDeleteI'd like to read a proper study on the effectiveness of kinetic defense against AI coordinated drone attack A quadrocopter, light and extremely agile, can reach speed up to 150m/s and accelerate from 0 to 50m/s in 1 second.
ReplyDeleteGrenade 40mm : 40-60 rounds/min, speed 80 (low velocity) to 240m/s (high velocity), "mortal" radius # 10m ie. blast & shrapnels / flechettes speed > 1.000m/s.
MG 7,52mm : 900 rounds/min, speed 800m/s
40 mm doesn't even come close to a 10 m effective frag radius against drones (or humans), not even with fuze in centre with PFF front and aft.
DeleteAnd quadcopters are so far not all that agile.
The big problem will be fibreoptic FPVs that lurk in the grass close to a route and pop up for close-up attack.
That's what you need APS like Iron Fist LD for. Upside is that such lurking drones cannot use top attack with EFP without flying 50...100 m distance.
Worst of all are FO FPV that lurk in the trees or on top of buildings.