The rise of small airborne drone applications, to the benefit of society, is remarkable. Unfortunately, it pairs with a concerning rise in malicious uses that may lead to harmful consequences. Given this concern, countermeasures have been and are being investigated and built. After a contextualisation of the study, the investigation concentrates on a portion of the available countermeasures. In particular, unguided kinetic effectors are studied. Two instances of unguided kinetic effectors are treated in the study, namely small caliber projectiles and medium caliber fragmentation projectiles. This study proposes a methodology based on theoretical concepts and fed with a limited amount of available experimental data to evaluate their use against the threat posed by small airborne drones. The methodology combines concepts from ballistics, trajectory models, fragmentation, uncertainty and survivability to propose an aggregated tool. The purpose of the tool is to allow operators to assess and analyse situations and how to structure the engagement if need be. The methodology is applied to simplified scenarios (scenario abstractions) for both small caliber and medium caliber fragmentation projectiles. The scenario abstractions aim to represent indirect observation and direct attack scenarios. Both rotary wing and fixed wing target abstractions are proposed and evaluated. The results indicate that small caliber projectiles appear to be promising when tens of rounds are fired. The findings on medium caliber fragmentation projectiles present a nuanced picture, with several scenario evaluations demonstrating encouraging potential as a countermeasure against the threat. While not all outcomes meet expectations, the mixed results underscore the importance of continued research to fully explore and refine their effectiveness. In any case, the study outcome highlights relevant research directions and lays a primary foundation to enable the use of Unguided Kinetic Effectors as countermeasures against the threat posed by small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
| Date of Award | 16 Oct 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - Royal Military Academy
- Université Libre de Bruxelles
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| Supervisor | Patrick Hendrick (Supervisor) & Alexandre Papy (Supervisor) |
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