After the attack on Saudi oil installations, in what seems to be warning to Tun not to try anything funny (Morocco Mole, Secret Squirrel’s side kick tells me that his second cousin removed working in Tun’s office tells him that arms dealers have promised him Iranian drones that hit the Saudi installations.)
Singapore ‘quite confident’ of detecting and neutralising drones used in Saudi attacks: Ng Eng Hen
Headline from constructive, nation-building CNA
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-confident-detect-neutralise-drones-saudi-arabia-uav-11976108
Is he talking cock?
Because remember the drone intrusion at Chamgi Int’l? Why isn’t Changi Int’l not protected against drone intrusions?/ Paper weapons?
and
But let’s be serious
But it would be a mistake to confuse the use of drones or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) in this attack with other incidents where off-the-shelf drones have disrupted airports, football matches or political rallies, says Douglas Barrie, an air power fellow at think tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
He says this attack was carried out, in part, by sophisticated UAVs – small, pilotless, winged aircraft – nothing like the quadcopter drones flown in suburban parks.
Instead, they can cover hundreds of kilometres and be pre-programmed to fly around navigation points on the ground, allowing them to approach a target from an unexpected direction.
“The level of complexity in this attack is above anything we’ve seen before. Using a mix of cruise missiles and unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that arrived all at the same time calls for a serious level of planning and proficiency,” says Mr Barrie.
The attack has raised a question-mark over the quality of the protection available against UAV assaults.
Criticism of Saudi Arabian air defences is wide of the mark, says Mr Barrie. The fact is that complex networks of air defence radars linked to guided missiles and squadrons of advanced fighter jets are not designed to counter this relatively cheap and disposable technology.
“Digital technology has made a huge difference to what smaller UAVs can do. Suddenly you can pack a lot into a UAV, you can almost turn it into a precision guided weapon.”
By programming a UAV to fly around numerous points before arriving at its target it can avoid the obvious directions from which an attack is expected. This may explain why existing radars failed to spot the drone formation which attacked Abqaiq.
Which is why this got rushed into the area
The US Air Force has just taken delivery of Phaser, a microwave-based weapon from defence giant Raytheon. Firing from a disc resembling a giant satellite dish atop a sand-coloured container it wipes out the digital elements inside a drone.
Raytheon cannot say where the rapidly purchased Phaser has been sent, but the Pentagon has stated that it is being deployed overseas.
Perhaps Phaser’s biggest strength is it operates at the speed of light. That is the rate at which it fires out bursts of microwave radiation. And that can bring an approaching UAV down in a split second.
The beam emitted by Phaser is 100 metres broad at a distance of one kilometre. That translates into a lot of dangerous space for an attacking UAV. Targets are tracked by an electro-optical sensor converting images into electronic signals and working in tandem with the microwave beam.
