Research / Urban Aerial Defence
Urban Aerial Defence
What does it take to defend a site in a city against small drones that fly at the limit of what their airframes can do?
Why it is hard
Counter drone defence has so far been reactive: each defence is designed for the attacker of the day, and is behind by the time it is fielded. The next attacker is already visible. Autonomous racing drones have beaten world class human pilots, and the same autonomy will fly attack drones low, fast and evasive through city streets, where buildings hide them until they are close.
Our angle
Start from physics rather than from today's attacker. Assume autonomy flies every aircraft at its physical limit, model the candidate interceptors from first principles at equal mass and power, and fly them against the same attacks over a city, so that sensing, airframe and the speed of the autonomy are weighed as one problem.
Where it stands
The first paper flies six interceptor airframes against the same hundred attacks for every case. Sensing sets the ceiling: with only the site's own sensor, no number of interceptors catches much more than half the drones. Once the site can see, the airframe sets the count: four helicopters defend the site in almost every attack, where it takes ten fixed pitch quadrotors. Next, the attackers fly at their limit too.