• Contramuffin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    3 days ago

    What a slow and ineffective way of taking down a drone. Faster is to just say to it, “Down boy! Heel! Who’s a good boy?” and the drone will automatically switch sides

  • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
    26·
    3 days ago

    Actual question, what’s the credible advice if your small group is caught in the open by a drone?

    Obviously “don’t be” or “have EW coverage of your operational zone”. But beyond that what is the prevailing wisdom western soldiers are taught assuming countermeasures don’t work and you have to risk exposure?

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      I don’t know what actual doctrine is right now.

      I’d suggest that it should include something like:

      1. Announce the presence of the drone and direction so that everyone else is immediately aware of it, some sort of standardized wording ordered so that the most-important information comes first. Something like “drone, 3’o’clock”. Same sort of thing doctrine specifies doing if an ambush is detected; need to get everyone on the same page immediately.

      2. If on an unarmored vehicle, stop the vehicle and dismount.

      3. Get away from other members of your squad to some minimum “safe” distance. This immediately reduces the effectiveness of the drone’s weapons by a significant amount.

      4. Get near the ground to minimize vulnerability to shrapnel.

      5. Shoot at the drone with any practical weapons you have, as long as you have a clear shot without squad members in the background.

      6. Don’t run away from the drone. It can outpace you.

      7. When and as possible, notify higher command. That’ll let it help analyze and respond to the threat in general (I.e. it’s known that a drone operator had a drone active at time and place X, we’re aware of damage to ourselves as soon as possible, etc).

      A bigger complication is how to deal with combined arms threats, like a drone and being under fire from small arms. As with other combined arms threats, the counters to one to some degree are going to conflict with those to another.

      Also, some of these tactics and counter-tactics are going to evolve. Like, this might work well against a lone FPV drone. But what if that drone just lands and goes into a lower-power mode, keeping the squad pinned until more FPV drones can show up? I don’t know how coordinated drone operators are on each side…yet. But if coordination will help, it’s a good bet that it will eventually be used.