Russian Drone-Mounted Rifle C-UAS

Russia, whose forces have faced attacks from irregular groups using drones in Ukraine and Syria, is experimenting with a range of countermeasure approaches. On March 12, Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property posted the registration of a novel counter-drone drone, an unmanned aerial interceptor vehicle built around a rifle.

This still-unmanned interceptor is a tail-sitting drone. With two rotors, it can take off and land vertically, and then level off to fly horizontally, the lifting rotors now working as propellers. It has a wingspan of nearly 10 feet, a total weight of around 51 lbs, and a total flight time of 40 minutes. The flight time is short for vehicles of its size but longer than that of the cheaper commercial quadcopters that are its likely targets.

Once it gets close to those targeted drones, the interceptor is built to fire with the Vepr 12 rifle inside its fuselage.

If the design seems like something dreamed up in a dorm room, that’s not entirely far off. The origins of this interceptor date back to the work of a student design bureau in 2016, which created at least one prototype of the vehicle. The interceptor patent was granted to the Almaz-Antey defense corporation, which has been pursuing the design ever since.

“This CUAS drone is in line with in increasing number of technologies and designs created to combat hostile drones,” says Samuel Bendett, an adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses. “Russians think that it’s important to fight adversary drones not just from the ground via a number of electronic and kinetic countermeasures, but in the air itself. ”

Source: C4ISRNET

3 comments

  1. Why, oh why are people so narrow minded. use a ultra thin net made of spyderwire or some other strong aramid fiber and bring it down without randomly spewing rounds all over hell and gone. You still get to play fighter pilot, chase the drone, but with this method you grab it intact to allow your EOD boys some fun, and your intel wienies to get involved. You could even make the nets deployable with small rockets to fire ahead and deploy a floating tangle in front of it. A simple FPV tri copter with three bobbins of spyderwire defeated a paparazzi flown camera system on at least two occasions. Get close deploy the drags and close in for the kill. total system cost of tricopter and tanglefoot was about $100 US.

  2. My home built drone flys 160 MPH 4 hr flight time 27 lb payload.you can mount what ever. Cost 14 dollars to print frame and arms

    1. Photos and details or your claim of “4 hrs flight time 27 lb payload” is not real 😉

      Assuming you are using a multirotor frame (from the comment “to print frame and arms”) you must have some insanely efficient hardware (or maybe a flight deployable helium balloon to maintain lift?) any chance you can elaborate on your setup?

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