It seems that if the quadcopters are hovering close enough to friendly troops it shouldn’t be too difficult to intercept a missile in theory. If you have a 10 sec lead time (~3 km at mach 1) and the drone can do 20 m/s that’s 200 meters. With more comprehensive radar coverage you might be able to do much better.
I wonder how large the drone needs to be to deflect a missile however. Would it need to carry a small explosive to send it off course? A missile is a large metal rod—in space with super high velocity even a tiny drone would whack a missile off course/ destroy it but in terrestial environments with a missile <=1 mach I wonder what happens.
If the drone has a gun with inflammatory bullets you might be able to blow-up the very flammable fuel of a missile. ( I don’t know how realistic this is but doesn’t seem crazy- I think there are existing missile defense systems with inflammatory bullets?).
Against a juking missile things change again. With airfins you can plausibly make a very swift & nimble juking missile.
It seems that if the quadcopters are hovering close enough to friendly troops it shouldn’t be too difficult to intercept a missile in theory. If you have a 10 sec lead time (~3 km at mach 1) and the drone can do 20 m/s that’s 200 meters. With more comprehensive radar coverage you might be able to do much better.
I wonder how large the drone needs to be to deflect a missile however. Would it need to carry a small explosive to send it off course? A missile is a large metal rod—in space with super high velocity even a tiny drone would whack a missile off course/ destroy it but in terrestial environments with a missile <=1 mach I wonder what happens.
If the drone has a gun with inflammatory bullets you might be able to blow-up the very flammable fuel of a missile. ( I don’t know how realistic this is but doesn’t seem crazy- I think there are existing missile defense systems with inflammatory bullets?).
Against a juking missile things change again. With airfins you can plausibly make a very swift & nimble juking missile.