The Raven wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Regardless of the accuracy of this particular account, it is true that
UAVs pose a new problem for navies and armies, especially in the
smaller versions.

Smaller versions typically have no or little combat capability. Great
survellaince platforms etc but not big enough for any serious work. Make it
big enough to do offensive stuff and it's just as detectable as any other
aircraft.
There are useful offensive things that even small aircraft can do -
like damaging radars. A small uav capable of delivering (slowly) 200kg
of payload is much less detectable then your normal fighter. Although
it might be easier to detect/respond to then an antiship missile, it
might also be orders of magnitude cheaper - and therefore employed in
swarm attacks.

Defensive systems are generally designed to detect
and destroy much bigger and more obvious targets, and even if they
manage to spot a small UAV, what would be used to shoot it down?

The current crop of UAVs are still heavily dependant on comms and few have
any serious autonomous combat capability.
How long is that going to last? The rest of the world is not dumb, and
India/China have enough good & cheap programmers and scientists...

Hence, jamming is the most likely defense. Jam the comms the UAV goes into
autonomous mode. Now you hava a relatively dumb target to attack.
Relatively dumb might still be too smart. Especially if it is in
daylight and in good weather - sea is mostly empty and image
recognition is making a lot of progress.

This is the subject of much debate at the moment. Ordinary homing
missiles may not be able to lock-on to a stealthy little UAV (and even
if they could, there's not much logic in using a very expensive missile
to shoot down a very cheap plane).

The smaller UAVs have limited offensive weapons, if any. Those UAVs that do
are much larger, not overly cheaper than a manned fighter/bomber, and just
as easy to detect (particularly if you can detect all the comms traffic).
You think USA style super-duper all-weather fail proof UAVs.

A radar-directed gun system like
Phalanx might also not lock-on to such a target.

The idea is to take them out long before your last line of defense.
Taking them out early means missiles and/or aircraft. Both will have
problems locking on low signature slow flying targets. And both can be
overwhelmed/depleted by swarm attacks..