Drones have proven to be useful tools for military organizations for many years now.  During World War I, the US military first started experimenting with combat drones.  Since as early as 2002, the United States Army began using drones as a major part of their operations.  Drones of varying sizes and capabilities have done everything from transport supplies, to carrying out attacks, and gathering intelligence.  The US obviously is not the only nation to be embracing the military aspects of drone technology.  Unfortunately, so have many enemy forces.

Drones are relatively easy and inexpensive to get.  This makes them a perfect weapon for some terrorist and rebel organizations.  Drones are frequently being used throughout areas of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel as weapons.  Russia in particular has been facing a lot of issues from enemy Syrian drones.  Whether they are finding commercially produced drones or stolen military drones, in the wrong hands these drones can have dire consequences.  Enemy forces use these drones to crash into structures, drop explosives, or even spy on others.  Which is why one of the biggest issues governments are facing now is creating anti-drone measures.

There have been many anti-drone tactics tested, though a fully reliable one has yet to be found.  Some of these tactics include drones that can attack other drones, stationary mounted devices that can lock on and shoot down drones, deploy a net to capture drones, or using jamming software to disable drones.  One method that has been researched a lot is to mount a gun on a drone that can shoot down enemy drones.  For the most part these prototypes have been unsuccessful because of how the kickback associated with firing a gun can make keeping a drone steady unrealistic.

In 2016 a group of students from the Moscow Aviation Institute decided to take on this challenge.  And based on a video they recently released, they may have found a solution.  They designed a drone with two fixed wings, two rotors, a stabilizing mechanism, and a Vepr-12 shotgun mounted atop of it.  On one side, the drone has two aerodynamic feet attached to it’s wings, on the other side of the wings are the rotor blades.  The drone is placed on the ground standing upright on it’s feet.  The rotors engage to get liftoff, and once airborne the drone levels out to fly horizontally.  To land, the rotors slow down as the drone returns to a vertical position, gently touching down on it’s feet.  But it is the stabilizer on this drone that makes it unique.

Rather than having to create a weapon without a kickback that would throw a drone off course, this team of Russian engineers created a stabilizer that eliminates the kickback force.  The stabilizer is able to absorb any recoil from the firing of the shotgun.  The drone is flown by an operator on the ground who wears a visor.  This visor shows the operator exactly what the drone sees so that they can focus in on it’s target and remotely fire on it.  Almaz-Antey, a Russian arms manufacturer, has since been granted a patent for the design of this anti-drone device.

Whether this will be an answer to the need for anti-drone devices is still yet to be seen.  The questions arise as to what happens when the drone misfires?  Could those bullets come in contact with civilians?  What happens when an enemy force gets their hand on such a weapon as well?  The fact is, that with the continued rise in drone technology, all military organizations will be competing for the upper hand.

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