Its a similar problem in the cold war aircraft. They fly low, so the time for detection, identification, targeting and shooting is quite short. The gun can shoot out to a few km, but can only see low flying targets out to a few hundred meters.

Gun systems only really work if you are defending a position targeting by the drone. Even then, you need a very large number of guns as each gun system only has an effective bubble of a few hundred meters against low flying drones.

Ukraine has been doing very well with audio based detection to give advanced warning and using man portable weapons to shoot down drones. Russian drones have since started flying higher, which then opens then up radar detection, bigger gun systems and interceptor drones.

Ukraine has been doing very well with audio based detection to give advanced warning and using man portable weapons to shoot down drones.

I wonder what would be required to detect the smaller targets at further ranges. Audio networks with large distribution might work…

From what I understand Ukraine is using thousands of cellphones on a stick with a solar panel and external mic.

www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2024/…/398204/….