Drone in the skyMOSCOW, Jan 31Specialists of the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation have invented a new way to deal with a swarm of small drones — spraying a field of fragments over a protected object from a quadrocopter, follows from a document published on the website of Rospatent. According to the abstract of the invention, the proposed drone is a miniature aircraft equipped with a multi-barreled combat module and four telescopic guides facing horizontally to the sides and interconnected by a network that “sprays” the ammunition into small fragments flying in different directions, as well as a control unit. Military scientists explain the feasibility of this invention by the growing threat of attacks by swarms of drones on important military and civilian infrastructure. In the document it is explained that swarm «intelligence» provides for the coordinated actions of a large number of «agent» drones that locally interact with themselves and the environment. Despite the simplicity of this technique, in aggregate, these drones demonstrate «exceptionally complex» behavior, acting as a single large organism. Due to its low visibility, such a swarm can have a great impact on the course of hostilities, conducting reconnaissance and delivering air strikes on combat vehicles, control points , clusters of equipment and people, even in the face of counteraction to air defense systems and electronic warfare. According to the experts of the Military University, the existing means of counteracting swarms of drones (air defense, electronic warfare, barrage systems, fighter and army aviation, small arms) are not able to adequately cope with this task, moreover, their operation requires significant funds. The system described in the document will be able to cover protected objects with a fragmentation field. In a combat position, this drone hangs in the air above an object with a net open on the rails. Network sensors read the movement of the attacking «swarm» and send a signal to the electric capsules of the charges of the multi-barrel combat module. After that, all its barrels fire simultaneously, and the fragmentation field created in this way destroys the enemy drones.
