Anne Ominous
Yeah... and it took a vehicle about as big as a standard tank to do it.
Unless it's blowing Predator drones out of the sky, pass on that.
Ralf Biernacki
what it boils down to is (total cost per projectile) * (projectiles per drone). If the resulting figure is significantly higher than the price of a drone, then a simple countermeasure would be to flood the sky with cheap decoy drones. . .

But they're at least aware of that problem. That's why they're trying to cut costs by using artillery rather than antimissiles, and ground-based computing.

Unfortunately, this means that the projectile itself has effectively become a drone. It has actuator surfaces and is ground-controlled. The only thing missing is a drive---the gun is supplying that. But is the cost of that vehicle, amortized on a per-shot basis, less than the cost of a drone engine and controller?

Now what if the drone has ECCM, jamming the projectile's control channel? The drone's transmitter is closer to the projectile, but has limited power. . . Is the cost of that ECCM worth putting it in?

This is an exercise in economics, more than in engineering and tactics.
michael_dowling
What happened to taking out drones with lasers? That would be ultra cheap per shot,and could likely handle multiple drones.
Jeff Goldstein
Sounds like the military has too much money to spend. They want to fire a burst of 10 exploding projectiles that are roughly 2.5 inches in diameter at one drone that is about 2/3 of a mile away. Where do all the misses and fragments go? They fall from the sky onto the troops they are protecting. Use a laser or just a radar aimed .50 caliber machine gun.
Firehawk70
The Outlaw class is a 275 lb plane with ~8 ft wingspan and a terribly obvious radar signature. What about a 16 inch, 2lb, 4/6 prop hovering UAV with a skeletal frame? If I were the enemy, as noted by Freederick, I'd just fill the sky with these $500 consumer grade devices -- far less $ when produced by hand, in bulk, by guys with a cause working for free. You can buy the parts and microcontrollers and build them for not much money. They could easily be programmed to follow GPS, and/or to just automatically do all kinds of maneuvers that would confound a simple tech like this.
There's no way that a steerable projectile costs anything less than about $5-10k each from a scamming defense contractor. Cheaper than a missile maybe, but not cheaper than dozens of consumer grade UAVs.
Perhaps a bigger question - Are we trying to get rid of surveillance UAVs or enemy weaponized drones? If the latter, then I guess my write-up is moot.
JustinRoney
Looks like someone at the U.S. Army has something against Piper Cubs.
aviatrix
With poor reputation our military has, the Piper Cub or Taylorcraft civilian aircraft shown above and being shot down probably wasn't the best example of a drone. Of course, our military will shoot at anything.
Bob Flint
2.5 inch diameter projectile at more than three per second to take on small rotor aircraft. Isn't that like shooting at flies with a cannon?
Maybe a wide spreading concussion device to take out hundreds at a time...
JDS
Oh great, something for our enemies to get hold of which will render all of OUR drones subject to being shot down! How many 'drones' do our enemies have? I haven't heard of any being used against us. Why fund this boondoggle at this time?
Frosted Flake
Isn't that CUTE!!!! Army thinks it can buy a new GUN!!!!