DARPA has wrapped work on a system designed to tear down small drones operating on places where an explosive countermeasure would not be acceptable. In short, this system involves launching a device in the air that, once it detects a drone, throwing giant serpentines in the air, not unlike the type you can see by shooting a small cannon on one side.
The drones operating in restricted airspace can be neutralized using many different methods, but the task is more complicated when the demolition must occur over a populated area as a city. An explosive anti-drone tool is not suitable for these locations, so the agency has a different solution: launch streamers in drones, which are entangled in tapes.
DARPA refers to this as Air-Innematar’s multilayer defense architecture (C-UA) (C-UAS), pointing out that it is intended for use when a drone or multiple small drones is operated without authorization on military operations and installations . The system is described as reusable and low cost, with four years of work that has become the system.
The reusable system is able to automatically identify drones in the vicinity, while a variety of systems guide the product to intercept drones, this can be done with both and without operators. The key to the system is the durable ‘String streamers’ that expels the atecers to the drone, which is entangled in the threads.
The system is designed to deal with a swarm of unmanned small drones instead of only a single UAV Wava that is trained in the military airspace. Darpa demonstrated the technology completed in a new video, showing what seems very similar to the serpentines that you can see outings of novelty toys and fireworks.
