‘Weapons of Last Resort’ Search for Effective Small Arms Counter to FPV Drones

Unmanned military drones have evolved exponentially as tools for surveillance, reconnaissance, logistical, and various other military applications since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

First Person View (FPV) kamikaze drones have represented the greatest area of technical development and pilot skills that, despite more effective electronic warfare (EW) and jamming systems, are still able to get through to kill and destroy personnel and equipment.

Infantry soldiers from both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries have identified a need to provide a means to defend themselves with a weapon of last resort. The first approach was to use shotguns but, unless every soldier was issued with one, the only way to ensure all were protected was to provide ammunition that could be fired from a soldier’s personal weapon.

One obstacle is that unlike the relatively fragile, largely plastic commercial drones that are used for reconnaissance or dropping munitions, the latest military spec FPVs use much more flexible and tougher materials. These drones, unlike brittle plastic which shotgun pellets or a direct hit from normal small arms ammunition would shatter, can take a hit that would “just put a hole in the propeller” allowing the drone to carry out its attack.

Paul Bradley a ballistics expert working on the issue with Sweden’s Norma, part of the Beretta weapons group, to develop “Anti-Drone Long Effective Range (AD-LER)” ammunition. He summarized the main requirement as being the ability to transfer the maximum amount of kinetic energy from a projectile hard enough to penetrate that drone’s structure and destroy it.

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Bradley said that during testing of the “AD-LER” round fired from a shotgun it was able to “catastrophically bring down” more than 80 percent of drones deployed within 50 meters (80 feet) from the shooter.

The proof that some form of purpose designed ammunition was needed was amply demonstrated in a video released by Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade at the beginning of December of trials they had carried out using various types of “standard” ammunition and a variety of weapons against simulated FPV drone attacks.

In most cases, even when a direct hit was scored not only weren’t the drones brought down but neither was their course substantially altered, and they carried on flying. In at least one case, the drone caught fire and crashed within a couple of meters of the shooter.

According to the German military-news website Hartpunkt, the Russian solution seems to be to issue 12-gauge shotguns with modified cartridges to each unit that would allow a dedicated anti-drone shooter in every squad or in every frontline military vehicle to try to hit any FPV drone that EW, jamming and other countermeasures failed to stop.

Hartpunkt also reported that a Ukrainian Special Forces Command assessment suggested that Russian forces were trialing a system that would allow them to identify the departure point of Ukrainian drones and attempt to ambush them using a team made up of several anti-drone shooters.

The bottom line is there is no hard and fast way of defending against FPV drones. As a solution, Ukraine has relied on EW attack, protecting vehicles with additional armor or so-called cope cages, and for troops to hide behind prepared defenses. For soldiers on foot and vehicles in attack, FPVs are being made that use systems such as artificial intelligence (AI), fiber-optic cable combined with specialist explosive payloads that increase their vulnerability.

Lasers may be under development that will protect vehicles with sufficient power to use them, but the infantryman’s only option is to dive for cover when a drone approaches, unless he is armed with a weapon and the skills of a “skeet shooter” as the last line of defense. New cartridges like the “AD-LER” may offer a relatively short term, low risk solution to increase troops survivability.