The United States, Israel and the UK have developed laser weapons specifically to repel drones and artillery shells. The laser system was chosen because it costs as little as a cup of coffee for each laser “burst”. While these three countries are using the latest digital technology, Russia has found an answer to the problem of drone attacks using analog technology that has been proven to be effective.
In a video shared by the Russian Ministry of Forestry last week, two new weapon systems have been developed to shoot down Ukrainian drones. One of them consists of 24 shotgun barrels equipped with cluster bombs. Meanwhile, the other system consists of 7 AK-47 rifle barrels. Both are mounted on a Lada Niva car used by Russian infantry forces in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian conflict has exposed the weaknesses of Russia’s aging weapons systems that are not designed to face modern drone systems that are difficult to detect using radar. Their small size means they can only be seen at the last moment before dropping bombs or carrying out suicide kamikaze attacks.
An artificial intelligence (AI) system is being developed by Ukraine, trained on 228 years of drone strike footage collected since the conflict began. It is hoped that drones could one day be used to detect enemy presence and launch their own attacks.