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posted by martyb on Monday February 13 2017, @01:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the drones-with-shotguns dept.

This year, the world saw a long-theorized weapon in action: a commercial drone, like a person might find at Best Buy, dropping a bomb on a target in Iraq. These drone bombers, used by the ultra-violent quasi-state ISIS in Iraq and Syria, are the flashiest combination of modern technologies with the modern battlefield. Cheap, camera-carrying robots, put to nefarious ends by a group that could never otherwise dream of fielding an air force. Dropping grenades isn't the deadliest thing an insurgent group can do with a small flying robot, but it leads to a very important question: What, exactly, is the answer to such a drone?

[...] Here is just a short sample of the more out-there anti-drone tools: net guns, drones carrying nets, squads of drones with nets, drones with net guns, and a smart anti-drone bazooka that fires, you guessed it, a net at a drone (we liked that last one). There was a vaporware drone concept that ensnared the propellers of other drones with wire. A Russian firm floated the concept of a microwave gun, to fry the electronics of hostile drones. And most famously, there are the Dutch police eagles, trained to snag a drone from the sky.

Part of the problem for law enforcement, the Pentagon, and other entities trying to protect against drones is that they're cheap. Workable quadcopters cost as little as a couple hundred dollars. Is there a way to knock drones out of the sky that's just as cheap as the drone itself?

Source

http://www.popsci.com/how-to-stop-a-drone


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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday February 13 2017, @04:24PM

    by Arik (4543) on Monday February 13 2017, @04:24PM (#466637) Journal
    "I got the distinct impression that most birds are brought down with the shotgun much closer to horizontal than vertical - although maybe that's down to the type of bird"

    It is, and firing at a 45 degree or even greater is fairly common.

    "If you allow for just a three second timer delay then for a near-surface detontation that's an altitude of 60m, and with a five second delay that's up to 150m - not really all that low, and the window of opportunity for a non-specialist weapon like a shotgun is going to be only seconds."

    Obviously you'd like to have more range and accuracy anytime you can, but those are not crazy ranges for a shotgun. Most people figure extreme range for bird hunting reaches out to about 300m.

    As a cheap and practical reaction it seems quite sensible. Certainly it's not a Magical Shield of Invulnerability(r) - those are incredibly expensive and often fail to deliver on their promises anyway. But it wouldn't cost much money to put a bunch of shotguns in the hands of men already in the field, and they could definitely be effective.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @06:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13 2017, @06:28PM (#466694)

    #8 shot has an effective range of 30-35 yards, not 300. Not a single pellet will make it more than half way to that 300 meter target (and be ineffective for the last 115 meters) as they will all literally drop to the ground at about 150. If you use duck loads (#4 size range) you can extend that a couple yards. 00 buckshot will get you to 50 yards or so effective. That assumes you have a barrel and load that will pattern well at range, not all will. A slug could get you out to 100 meters, but good luck hitting that drone.

      No sane person thinks shotguns have 300 meter range. Try searching "max range of #8 shot" on your favorite search engine, or go see how it works at a trap/skeet/sporting clays range.

    • (Score: 1) by Arik on Monday February 13 2017, @10:12PM

      by Arik (4543) on Monday February 13 2017, @10:12PM (#466756) Journal
      "No sane person thinks shotguns have 300 meter range."

      To the contrary, people that shoot trap think they have a 300 meter range, that's considered minimum distance for safety. Of course you'd find it difficult to hit anything at that range - but birdshot can and does travel that far and retain enough energy to do damage.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 1) by Arik on Monday February 13 2017, @10:20PM

      by Arik (4543) on Monday February 13 2017, @10:20PM (#466759) Journal
      Ballistics

      http://www.njskeet.com/files/shotgun_statistics.pdf

      Bottom left.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:48PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:48PM (#466972) Journal

        Yes - bottom left. #12 shot is very small, and it's extreme range is about 40 or 50 yards. Defining "extreme range" to mean, the shot has so little energy left, that it isn't going to penetrate the bird's feathers, let alone his skin. #1 shot extreme range is about 225 yards. Extreme range isn't the bottom of the arc, but rather, the end of the (more or less) straight line, and the beginning of the downward arc. Ought or double ought buckshot will get closer to 300 yards, but as I stated above, it probably won't reach 300 fired from a standard 12 guage shotgun.

        I can't find "ballistics" for ten guage shot or slugs, but a couple near-misses suggested this site for more info on 10 guage loads. It seems you have to pay for their manuals in order to get the info. http://www.ballisticproducts.com/default.asp [ballisticproducts.com]

        Anyway - to reiterate my earlier point, no one is knocking birds or drones out of the air at 300 yards or meters with a standard 12 guage shotgun, or with a standard 12 guage load.

        • (Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday February 14 2017, @04:26PM

          by Arik (4543) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @04:26PM (#466983) Journal
          "#12 shot is very small, and it's extreme range is about 40 or 50 yards."

          Sure #12 is shorter range but I wasn't talking about #12 I was talking about birdshot. Everything on that scale is included, with the most typical probably being the 7 1/2 about the middle of the chart and both extremes included. You can cherry pick #12 I can do the same with #1, are you trying to have a conversation or win an argument?

          With 7 1/2 or 6 it will definitely still do damage if it hits at near to 300 yards, and it can definitely get there, especially if you use a 40deg muzzle instead of the 30 shown in that chart.

          "Anyway - to reiterate my earlier point, no one is knocking birds or drones out of the air at 300 yards or meters with a standard 12 guage shotgun, or with a standard 12 guage load."

          Way to completely miss the point. I made it perfectly clear I was talking about ballistic range, not accurate range. You're not likely to hit a bird at 300yards because the pellets are spread out so far the bird has a good chance of flying right between the pellets, but they'll still kill if you get lucky and hit, they can still break windows and injure people badly at that range if they hit.

          So when the prior poster was saying that it was unrealistic to think they'd be effective at *half* that range, in a military situation (which means that unlike bird hunting no one is going to stop you from getting a dozen guys or more all firing at the same object at long range in order to get a good chance that one hits) I had to call bullshit. And it's still bullshit. The ballistics absolutely work out that far, you just need several shots to get enough pellet density that hits start to become reasonably likely.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:29PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:29PM (#467011) Journal
            • (Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:42PM

              by Arik (4543) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:42PM (#467022) Journal
              At the point you link he's firing at near horizontal at 50 yards with buckshot and evaluating whether it would kill a (possibly armored) human or larger animal. Doesn't seem real relevant but I kept watching. We're out to 200 yards and it still doesn't look surprising or particularly relevant, but it is moderately interesting, I might finish it.

              You could save me a lot of time by saying what you mean instead of pointing me to a video perhaps?
              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:22PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:22PM (#466965) Journal

    Extreme range for bird hunting, out to 300 meters? Hmm. I'm kinda scratching my head on that one. You're probably right, or near enough to it, except, we don't see many goose guns these days. Big 10 guage guns, with 30 inch barrels, full choked - I suppose you can probably still find one if you look, but I've not seen one in decades.

    Hmmmm - quick search for "goose gun", and I find all sorts of hits for 12 guage guns, and no especially long barrels. Wikipedia has an entry on the Marlin Model 55 - but only one of the 6 guns mentioned is a 10 guage.

    Let's face it, 300 meters (328 yards) is a terribly long shot for any standard shotgun.