How effective are CIWS?

marauder2048 · by **marauder2048** » 26 May 2019, 03:05

botsing wrote:Changes in adaptive dispersion rates and timed offset charges might negate your ideas.

And proximity fuzes for medium caliber rounds. And guided medium caliber rounds.

But getting body-to-body contact on small UAVs is hard even for MANPADS which
is why you are seeing a proximity fuze added to Stinger.

sferrin · by **sferrin** » 26 May 2019, 12:51

Put a small shaped charge on one of these, disperse a swarm of several hundred, and have them trained to look for things like gun barrels, airplanes, people. . . You'd never get body-to-body contact, and proximity fusing probably wouldn't even help you. DEW, be they laser or microwave, would be the only way to deal with them.

popcorn · by **popcorn** » 26 May 2019, 13:15

The power of the swarm will overwhelm any CIWS.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32334186

sferrin · by **sferrin** » 26 May 2019, 13:56

popcorn wrote:The power of the swarm will overwhelm any CIWS.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32334186

There's this one as well:

count_to_10 · by **count_to_10** » 26 May 2019, 16:19

sferrin wrote:Put a small shaped charge on one of these, disperse a swarm of several hundred, and have them trained to look for things like gun barrels, airplanes, people. . . You'd never get body-to-body contact, and proximity fusing probably wouldn't even help you. DEW, be they laser or microwave, would be the only way to deal with them.

Well, one other possible counter is bird netting. Also consider how slow those drones fly — they might need a delivery device to make their time to target reasonable.

sferrin · by **sferrin** » 26 May 2019, 20:37

count_to_10 wrote:Well, one other possible counter is bird netting. Also consider how slow those drones fly — they might need a delivery device to make their time to target reasonable.

They're a lot faster than your standard DJI. Not sure how effective bird netting would be. I don't imagine it would go over too well with soldiers. "Here, we want you to walk around in this portable bird cage."

SpudmanWP · by **SpudmanWP** » 27 May 2019, 04:32

popcorn wrote:The power of the swarm will overwhelm any CIWS.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32334186

That's what EM and DEWs are for.

madrat · by **madrat** » 27 May 2019, 13:41

The early antiship weapons were gigantic and required large missiles to stop them. Then they got smaller and flew just above the waves. Defensive missiles then had to pick targets out of clutter, which required sensors that operated at much shorter ranges and we're faster reacting. And then the threat became massed attacks so they designed multiple layers of ripple fired defensive systems. And now the threat is literally a cloud of drones. There is absolutely no single weapon to counter this. They will be forced to use multiple layers with more finesse.

Rapid fire buckshot in a 360° coverage with rapid generation of shrapnel splinter clouds is pretty low tech. I'm not so sure you couldn't repurpose the larger guns with some kind of smart fusing to thin out the cloud at a distance.

sferrin · by **sferrin** » 28 May 2019, 22:24

madrat wrote:Rapid fire buckshot in a 360° coverage with rapid generation of shrapnel splinter clouds is pretty low tech. I'm not so sure you couldn't repurpose the larger guns with some kind of smart fusing to thin out the cloud at a distance.

Attempting skin-to-skin contact with a projectile I'd think would be a losing proposition. A trainable weapon can only cover so much at a time. (A laser, while in a turret, should be able to scan much faster than the entire turret moves. Think of laser printing.)

(That last one is pretty frickin' amazing. The first pass is relatively boring. Not so after that.)

popcorn · by **popcorn** » 29 May 2019, 00:01

Would a microwave weapon be worth the effort? Or would drones simply be shielded for protection.

madrat · by **madrat** » 29 May 2019, 00:55

So the drones thwart your laser defense by being utilized when lasers are a horrible expenditure of energy. Best to have low tech backup solutions.

SpudmanWP · by **SpudmanWP** » 29 May 2019, 03:07

So the drones thwart your laser defense by being utilized when lasers are a horrible expenditure of energy.

That needs a better explanation.

madrat · by **madrat** » 29 May 2019, 12:51

Laser technology isn't exactly a 24/7/365 solution.

sferrin · by **sferrin** » 29 May 2019, 13:00

madrat wrote:Laser technology isn't exactly a 24/7/365 solution.

Those tiny drones won't likely fair well in poor weather either.

marauder2048 · by **marauder2048** » 30 May 2019, 04:50

popcorn wrote:Would a microwave weapon be worth the effort? Or would drones simply be shielded for protection.

There are some extremely lightweight and cheap wraps that can be used for structure.

But ultimately, those wraps will be overcome at short range so you'll need
to come up with circuit designs/architectures that are protected as well.

It's unclear to me that the latter is that affordable for swarms of cheap UAVs.