Soldiers from the British Army’s 1st Battalion The Rifles have trialled a new approach to countering drone threats, combining acoustic and radio frequency sensors, section weapons and shotguns to detect, track and neutralise hostile drones.
The exercise in Sennybridge, Wales, tested the full range of the identification, tracking and jamming of attacking drones, as well as precision shooting against intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) drones at range. There was also close-range engagement of FPV drones using the Mossberg 590M shotgun on targets at 25-metre distances.
“This was the first whole package approach of its kind, testing a layered system with a view to devising an annual test for counter-uncrewed aerial system (C-UAS) marksmanship,” the Army said on 14 September.
Major Alex Aitken, Officer Commanding B Company, explained the layered approach. “We have some acoustic centres that come from the Defence School of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, which have been homemade by the team there and which are doing some really good work in developing new technologies. We’re then using the drone shield, the drone gun and then the Mossberg shotgun, as well as our normal section suite of weapons.”
Corporal Luke O’Neill, serving with B Company 1 Rifles, was recently named Soldier of the Year and was one of the troops firing the Mossberg 590M shotgun. “We had to do a whole progression of initially firing at static targets, then moving onto clays and now drones,” he explained. “The speed and rapid directional changes of a drone can be quite hard to follow with a weapon system, but that’s how we’ve developed the training in terms of the hard kill, beyond the cyber, soft kill approach.”
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Image: British Army, Crown Copyright
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