Under a cloudy sky above Pula, Croatia, on April 21, drones took flight like high-tech clay pigeons. The quadcopters, launched against a coastal backdrop, were testing tools for US soldiers, hobbyist types of the kind that soldiers can now expect to encounter on battlefields. Learning to defeat these drones, and using specific tools for the task, was one goal of Exercise Shield, an air defense and electronic warfare exercise that ran from April 19 through April 21. As the drones flew, soldiers pointed blocky gun-shaped tools into the air, and sent the quadcopters back to the ground.
The tool used at Exercise Shield is the Dronebuster 3B, made by Flex Force. It comes in a tan-beige plastic reminiscent of computers from the early 1990s, with the pistol grip transforming it from an electronic novelty to an especially curious weapon.
“The Dronebuster Block 3, and Dronebuster Block 3B were designed to interrupt the control of the drone by overwhelming the control frequency,” reads the description from Flex Force. “This causes the drone to either stop and hover, or return to the operator, depending on the model of drone. The drone operator has no control of the drone while the command link is being overwhelmed with RF [Radio Frequency] energy.”
In other words, the gun can jam the drone to uselessness over radio frequency channels. Also, Dronebusters can overwhelm Global Navigation Satellite Systems, like GPS, though there are several others. That is important, as one of the main ways hobbyist drones can mitigate loss of control is by navigating to known home coordinates by GPS.
A paratrooper directs the Dronebuster 3B against a drone. A familiar rifle sight is mounted on top, letting the soldier use familiar skills for targeting to aim the jammer. Mariah Y. Gonzalez / US Army
Hand-held drone jammers are relatively new for militaries, with many developed over the 2010s and the 2020s. They are one of the more straightforward attempts to meet the evolving threats on modern battlefields brought about by the abundance of cheap commercial drones in the hands of everyone from professional militaries to insurgent forces. Scouting and bombing aircraft used to at least be large enough to contain a pilot, making them a big target for missiles or guns, but small drones are orders of magnitude cheaper. Finding and stopping them means using everything from high powered microwaves to lasers to, like the Dronebusters, handheld jammers.
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