In the limit of large swarms of cheap, small drones, the attacker always has an intrinsic advantage. The attacking drones are trying to hit large, relatively slow moving targets while the defender is trying to “hit a bullet with another bullet”. The only scalable countermeasure in my mind are directed energy weapons; you can’t get faster or smaller than elementary particles. If a laser is fast and accurate enough to shoot down mosquitoes out of the air, it can probably shoot down drones, too.
In the limit of large swarms of cheap, small drones, the attacker always has an intrinsic advantage. The attacking drones are trying to hit large, relatively slow moving targets while the defender is trying to “hit a bullet with another bullet”. The only scalable countermeasure in my mind are directed energy weapons; you can’t get faster or smaller than elementary particles. If a laser is fast and accurate enough to shoot down mosquitoes out of the air, it can probably shoot down drones, too.