Drones also "hitch a ride" - new drones carry missiles

It is already a "routine operation" for drones to carry a large number of missiles, but it is a new thing for missiles to transport a large number of drones. Recently, a design called "a new type of drone carrying missiles" has attracted attention online.

The scientific name of this plan is "missile-carrying swarm drone combat system", which means that 80 small low-cost drones are loaded in the missile, striving to quickly deploy a "swarm" of drones and release them in the airspace near the target area, so as to obtain stronger tactical flexibility, increase the combat radius of drones and mission success rate, and at the same time hope to reduce the overall cost and mission risk.

Why do we need to use missiles to transport drones? This starts with the rise of drone "swarms".

Traditionally, combat systems are centered around high-value integrated platforms, with complex technologies, long R&D and production cycles, and high procurement, deployment, and upgrade costs. Therefore, with the advancement of microelectronics and artificial intelligence technologies, in an increasingly complex and highly confrontational combat environment, the UAV "swarm" collaborative combat mode has emerged, which is expected to improve combat effectiveness and system reliability through close coordination of a large number of small, low-cost UAVs. The militaries of many countries believe that in the future collaborative combat system network, UAV "swarms" will become one of the most important roles of air combat forces.

However, the drone "swarm" limits the performance level of a single drone, with weak penetration capability and small combat radius. Therefore, researchers took a different approach and proposed a "new type of drone carrying missiles" solution.

According to public information, this missile is designed to be 7 meters long, 1 meter in diameter, and weigh 2.5 tons. It can accommodate 80 small drones that are 0.6 meters long and weigh 5 kilograms. Each drone can be equipped with modular payloads such as reconnaissance, electronic countermeasures, and ammunition in the front of the fuselage according to different tasks, and flight control, sensors, antennas, power supplies and other equipment in the middle of the fuselage, and motors and propellers in the tail.

Since the missile adopts a stealth shape design, it can theoretically sneak into the depth of the enemy's controlled area and release a large number of drones in time to attack multiple enemy targets at the same time, or continuously attack the same target with high density. Drones can also be used as bait or interference sources to weaken the combat effectiveness of enemy radars and air defense missiles.

However, this operational concept seems to face some difficult problems. For example, how to accurately control the drone "swarm" in an enemy-controlled area far away from one's own side? Perhaps the drone can be equipped with a satellite communication antenna as the best transitional solution at this stage. The fundamental solution should be to equip the drone with a more advanced artificial intelligence system so that the "swarm" can autonomously search, select and attack targets after being released by the missile. Another way to deal with it is to use the missile as a relay platform, hovering in the air in the enemy-controlled area, providing tactical information to the drone, and even issuing attack orders.

However, the current artificial intelligence system is relatively expensive and is not suitable for large-scale use in expendable drone "swarms". Missiles will inevitably be shot down by enemy air defense systems during long-term hovering.

In addition, small drones are difficult to accommodate large payloads, which means that the reconnaissance, electronic warfare, ammunition and other modules of the drone "swarm" are difficult to play a more prominent role. Moreover, the small batteries equipped with drones are also difficult to fully and continuously power the reconnaissance and electronic warfare payloads, which will obviously restrict their battlefield effectiveness. In this way, drone "swarms" are still looking forward to breakthroughs in equipment miniaturization research. (Author: Lin Yinzhi)

This article was first published in China Aerospace News Feitian Science Weekly