By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
The Pentagon and US military services are seeking to counter the fast-emerging and increasingly serious drone swarm attack threat presented by both sophisticated great power rivals and low-tech adversaries, with an urgency and fervor that cannot be underestimated.
The reasons for this are both clear and self-evident; the US Navy has not only been tracking and destroying groups of Houthi and Iranian-backed drones and cruise missiles in the Red Sea, but also preparing to counter larger and more sophisticated drone swarm attacks.
The intent with drone attacks is also clear, as low-tech, inexpensive “masses” of drone swarms can descend upon a ship, convoy, military installation or forward operating force to overwhelm countermeasures and simply present too many targets for even the most advanced interceptors or defenses to stop.
Weapons like CRAM (Counter Rocket, Artillery & Mortar) and ship-integrated CWIS (Close-In-Weapons-Systems on ship deck with radar and Phalanx), for example, have proven effective as “area” weapons able to blanket areas with defensive fire to “knock out” groups of drones. Also, ship-deck or ground fired weapons might be able to counter drone swarms to some degree with things like “proximity” fuses and other kinds of pointed “area” defenses. The other area of promise for drone swarm defense is likely EW, as advanced electronic “jammers” could potentially interfere with or destroy the electronic systems needed to guide groups of individual small drones. Electromagnetic signals could potentially cover an “area” or wide aperture to jam the guidance systems of large numbers of drones.
AI & Counter Drone
Perhaps the greatest promise for drone swarm defense comes in the area of AI, as many US military and industry innovators are experimenting with AI-enabled systems able to “identify” targets in milliseconds, help deconflict the spectrum to assure accurate guidance and “pair” sensors with effectors to more quickly find and take out groups of drones. This is done by bouncing gathered sensor data against a vast database to make discernments and verify targets for the purpose of essentially “recommending” the optimal countermeasure for a specific attack. Perhaps some drone swarms can best be countered by lasers, yet others need to be stopped with non-kinetic effectors such as EW to decrease fragmentation and prevent unwanted casualties should drones be attacking from civilian areas. There may also be a pressing need for kinetic interceptors such as small missiles like Coyote, a small, high-speed, precision drone defense interceptor weapon now being massively acquired in large numbers by the US military services.
The margin of difference with all of this, however, relies upon an ability to “see” and “target” incoming threats in sufficient volume and at the safest possible stand-off ranges. Essentially, drone defenses will almost entirely rely upon radar and surveillance systems to “detect” and “verify” drone swarms before they get close enough to cause damage. The challenge with this kind of operational intent, however, presents a number of complicated threat variables. What if there are simply too many small drones for even the most advanced radar to track? Perhaps a track loop or “lock” can’t counter dozens or even hundreds of small drone explosives?
Cutting edge advances with things like AESA (Advanced Electronically Scanned Array) radar are making progress tracking larger groups and, in some cases, emitting large numbers of smaller “pencil-beam” types of emissions designed to track groups of smaller targets. However, there are likely certain numbers of enemy drones, especially if explosives or “guided” in some way, which could overwhelm or threaten the most advanced radar. The other challenge with this is aperture or field of regard. It is possible that a group of small drone threats could quickly transit from one radar field of view to another, making it difficult for defensive systems to maintain a continuous “track” on one or many small incoming targets.
Given this, industry and the services are working both quickly and intensely to address this through ongoing testing, experimentation and close coordination with industry innovators. One Navy experiment, for example, is called “silent swarm,” a drone attack threat scenario in which tracking systems, radar and countermeasures are assessed against advanced drone swarm threats.
MATR-X Radar
One technology involved in the Navy’s Silent Swarm was Elbit Systems of America’s Multi-Mission AESA Tactical Radar – X Band (MATR-X) radar, a next-generation tracking system engineered to literally track thousands of threat vectors at one time simultaneously. Elbit America is one of a group of innovators seeking to solve these new and increasingly problematic threat scenarios presented by drone threats.
“Traditionally AESA radar will emit energy and point on threats with multiple pencil beams. This can miss other threats that are out there. These radars can see all these threats at the same time while it is still searching,” Brad Reeves, Radar & C-UAS business lead, Elbit Systems of America, told Warrior in an interview.
Calling the MATR-X a “revolutionary breakthrough in radar,” Reeves explained how the system achieves a next-generation tracking ability by moving to an all-digital system which, he said, “allows the radar to operate with the horsepower to track up to 10,000 targets while searching.”
The form factor is about the size of a carry-on suitcase, and while MATR-X may not be optimal for 5th-generation aircraft, it can protect forward operating bases, ships, ground convoys and ground-stationed weapons such as “parked” F-35s potentially vulnerable to an incoming salvo of missiles or an attack drone swarm. The MATR-X has been specifically engineered to track massive drone swarms and maintain a continuous “track” as incoming threats transit from one field of regard to another.
“We have 360-degree capability. We use four separate radar faces – one pointing in each direction that gives us 360-degree coverage. This coverage is seamless, so inside the radar it does all the tracking to hand over from radar panel to radar panel …so if a threat is crossing it does not drop the lock,” Reeves told Warrior.
Reeves further explained that the MATR-X system avoids the potential error of identifying two-tracks that are actually one and does not “overwhelm” a command-and-control system.
“It does not come on to the command-and-control system and show you two tracks that are actually one. All of this built inside the radar which makes this much better for traditional command and control systems. If they are having to do that math and these calculations it can overwhelm the C2 system – in our case the radar takes care of that and does all the work for them,” Reeves said.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
