Drone shotgun

[Simon Tan]

Detection is a non issue. The crims are so bold as to buzz the coppers. They cant do shit with their sidearms. The drone zappers are just too damn heavy and expensive. AND the area is drone no fly so you can shoot them down. The solution looks a lot like a 3 gun shottie.

[Ivanhoe]

How about the tradeoff between range and pellet size/count? Is it a case of optimizing for the 5-25 yard shot and letting go of longer engagements?

I'm not a shottie guy, but maybe #7 Hevi-Shot in 3in 12 gauge turkey loads. Should flatten a drone with 2 or 3 pellets, but not cave anyone's head in on landfall.

Of course, current shell prices in the US would have you think the shot are cast from 14k gold...

 

[Ssnake]

I think the perfect anti-drone round would be birdshot-sized or slightly bigger pellets from a nearby airburst KETF round in the 20...30mm caliber range. Less power in favor of higher fragment density, and ideally you disperse the frags only in close proximity to the target to conserve their kinetic energy.

Shotguns are terribly inefficient. Very powerful at short range, not so much at ranges that would be most helpful.

But would I advocate for the introduction of a new AAA vehicle specialized in nothing but the LSS drone spectrum? No.

[Burncycle360]

As a drone buzzes you go from needing the tightest choke you can get to basically cylinder then back to the tightest choke.

A proficient skeet shooter with an over and under and different chokes will probably outdo an average officer with the fanciest shotgun

My bet is you down one or two and they'll figure it out and keep their distance to beyond shotgun range and still get their surveillance footage.
 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Burncycle360

[Simon Tan]

Its gotta be affordable and man portable. With limited training demand. We dont have turkey loads in this country but we can probably import them as a stop gap. We do have birdshot. The shotty will be a return to the past, where it was very common for pointmen to have chopped Auto5s. 

[rmgill]

17 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

How about the tradeoff between range and pellet size/count? Is it a case of optimizing for the 5-25 yard shot and letting go of longer engagements?

I'm not a shottie guy, but maybe #7 Hevi-Shot in 3in 12 gauge turkey loads. Should flatten a drone with 2 or 3 pellets, but not cave anyone's head in on landfall.

Of course, current shell prices in the US would have you think the shot are cast from 14k gold...

 

I'm only passingly aware of choke sizes, effects, shot sizes, down range pattens, etc...

... but looking around it looks like you can get 50 yard choke patterns with #5ish loads that are effective for the size of a turkey head. The key thing is that with a very tight choke you MUST be sure that private Murphy doesn't try to fire double ought buck or slugs through that gun. 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by rmgill

[rmgill]

4 hours ago, Simon Tan said:

Its gotta be affordable and man portable. With limited training demand. We dont have turkey loads in this country but we can probably import them as a stop gap. We do have birdshot. The shotty will be a return to the past, where it was very common for pointmen to have chopped Auto5s. 

It would make clay shooting a plus for skills development, which generally transfer to shooting on the move targets with regular weapons too. The advantage with clay shooting is you don't need much of a backstop and terminal effects beyond a certain range are decidedly easy to deal with. So practice ranges CAN be easily sited without much concern for backstops.  

[Simon Tan]

Proficiency is something that takes much too much time and money to build up. You can see this very obviously in the military where really only a small percentage of individuals actually reach anything like a high degree of proficiency. Technical aids like optics and muzzle devices help to reduce the variance.

Most management and leadership think in absolute results. Yes or no. Life is not digital, it is analog. There is always degradation. Forcing the other side to keep distance means requiring better payloads, or more capable drones. That reduces availability. All this adds to the friction on smugglers and coyotes. 

I apologize if none of this makes any sense to USians, who voted to put Kids in KOVID bubbles.

[rmgill]

Well, I'm thinking across a range of solutions both harsh and not so harsh. If you're in a permissive environment, by all means fire 20mm fragmenting rounds into the air over your battle space (CRAM). However, if you're in a less permissive environment, you might need to work with electronic methods or things firing shot shells vs things that might fall and hit people's heads. 

I'm suspect a shotgun based approach would work in an automatic format that was computer controlled. You could upscale it to 10 gauge, a tighter choke and a belt feed of high brass shells. Or go a step further and look at the Mk19 Grenade launcher with a longer barrel, a choke and shot shells in that format. Control it with a computer and a person in the loop. 

 

[Ssnake]

The best concept I've seen so far is, in theory, a radar-equipped 40mm grenade launcher with RF signal fuzed proximity airburst. The only problem is, in practice it doesn't work. Yet. Maybe one day.

[Simon Tan]

The Military Industrial Complex would be proud.

[rmgill]

We need more Ernest Kings.

[sunday]

If punt guns were good enough to extinguish the Passenger Pigeon, some canister loads for 57-76mm autocannon should do the job against drone swarms at competitive prices. No need for fancy fuzing.

Edited April 6, 2021 by sunday

[Simon Tan]

A bit much to lug around for consumer grade drones. These are not Bayrakta.

[sunday]

Could one make a shotgun shell of a 50mm SuperShot telescoped round?

[Simon Tan]

You could but the poor police constable might have trouble lugging that cannon up to his OP. The whole idea is to create enough friction that the smugglers are vary about using their drones brazenly. It is also a morale boosting measure as they currently have no recourse. Opening up with their small arms is verboten because of gravity.

[sunday]

I am sorry, thought we were on the other thread about AFVs defending from drones.

There are those Benelli-made inertia semiauto shotguns, quite handy.

[Simon Tan]

Apart from the fact that they are snappy, especially with hotter loads. Our biggest problem is that there are no turkeys in Malaysia and thus no turkey Magnum loads so there is no easy way to gauge the impact on the shooter.

[sunday]

Perhaps duck or turkey loads are not necessary to deal with that kind of drones, I wonder.

[bojan]

KS-23?

On more realistic note, birdshot with some of the "flight control" wads/cups is probably way too go. Anything bigger than birdshot will be a hazard to a people on ground (especially since it will not always be fired straight upward). "Flight control" wads/cups to extend effective range.

Birdshot is more than enough vs commercial drones at any distance average policeman will be expected to be able hit it. It's propellers are extremely vulnerable to just about anything hitting them (ask me how I know...).

[sunday]

Well, this looks expensive enough to be attractive to the mil-industrial complex:

[bojan]

There is a 4g "hunting" version of it, TOZ-123:

Just saying

[Simon Tan]

Yeah, 23mm shotgun. Sure, with guys 120lbs.

[bojan]

I was joking about KS-23. 12g birdshot is only really viable answer for use in built up areas.

[Ivanhoe]

Why screw around with low standard designs?

Note that Kel-Lite flashlights (https://kellite.com/) weren't an "off-brand Maglite" flashlight. They were the top shelf flashlight for LEOs back in the 1960s. Stout enough to use as an impact weapon on numerous craniums. Supposedly the knurling was sharp enough to collect tissue and blood from a perp if the barrel was whacked against said perp's jaw, thus providing a bit of evidence should perp get away.