{"id":176159,"date":"2025-11-11T07:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=176159"},"modified":"2025-11-10T13:39:35","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T18:39:35","slug":"new-gee-whiz-toys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=176159","title":{"rendered":"New Gee-Whiz toys"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Let’s open with a Happy Veteran’s Day to all! I am officially encouraging you all to ensure some lucky person has carnal knowledge of your closest vet today. Which, being you, should work out well. On to business.<\/p>\n

It’s a drone world after all. Who would have forecast\u00a0 few years ago that drones would develop into such an important part of modern war? Reconnaissance, explosives-laden, even kamikaze suicide drones – pick something you want to do that you don’t actually be THERE doing, and someone has a drone for it. The Army believes in them so much they are ordering a MILLION drones. (h\/t to Jeff).<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 80% of casualties in modern war now come from drones, yet we still have no capacity to build them at scale.- Rep. Pat Harrigan,\u00a0Defense News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Drones, of course, can be shot down. Big ones like Predators fall to missiles relatively easily if\/when they are spotted and there is ADA in the vicinity (a crucial “if”, that). But then we hit that ugly spot where the enemy has launched a bunch of relatively cheap drones, and your defense is a bunch of kazillion dollar missiles. You, my friend, have been had – at least financially – as you are on the wrong end of spending\u00a0 five million dollars on a missile to shoot down a $25,000 drone. So how to take down the drones with appropriate sized cheap weapons?<\/p>\n

There are a couple of alternatives in the works.<\/p>\n

Sierra Nevada Corp. is introducing the Battery Revolving Adaptive Weapons Launcher\u2014Reconfigurable (BRAWLR).<\/p>\n

The BRAWLR stands seven feet tall and consists of four independent weapons systems and associated sensors. It uses these to identify airborne threats, engage them, and shoot them out of the sky. What’s impressive about BRAWLR isn’t necessarily its ability to engage enemy airborne targets. Instead, it’s relatively inexpensive, uses preexisting hardware, and can be built fairly quickly.<\/p>\n

The BRAWLR can accommodate a variety of weapons, including legendary AIM-9M Sidewinder air-to-air missiles (AAM), AIM-132 advanced short-range AAMs, and more. While its ordnance primarily consists of AAMs, these can be fired from the ground.<\/p>\n

When configured for Beast Mode, the BRAWLR can be outfitted with 46 AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) rockets. One of the most impressive features of the BRAWLR isn’t its lethality; it’s how easy it is to use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How easy? How about set up and operated by one person in only 10 minutes?\u00a0 Or it can be part of a larger system.<\/p>\n

BRAWLR is only one element of what SNC has been producing, as it’s the centerpiece of a truck-mounted air defense system called the Mobile Anti-Air Weapons Launcher-Reconfigurable (MAAWLR). When utilizing the more robust system, two people and 20 minutes are needed to set it up, use it, and then tear it down. More components allow for additional targeting via added sensors and radar equipment. In terms of the types of threats SNC’s systems can take out of the sky, these include aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones.\u00a0SlashGear<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So off-the-shelf proven ordnance in a launcher a fraction the size of a Patriot or similar.<\/p>\n

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And then there is the old “throw a rock at it” – new version.<\/p>\n

Electromagnetic railguns are significantly cheaper to operate than traditional air defense systems, making them an ideal means of shooting down drones and missiles alike.<\/p>\n

General Atomics’ next-gen system is designed to do just that, and it’s one of the most effective new systems to employ the technology. Previously, railguns were installed on ships, as they require a great deal of energy to operate and aren’t man-portable by any means. General Atomics’ railgun system is designed to function on the ground off a flat-bed truck, is scalable, and requires fewer logistics considerations to operate.\u00a0\u00a0SlashGear II<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A railgun launches its projectile with a magnetic pulse. Takes a lot of juice to tow a projectile down a barrel, so till now ships were the preferred test bed (we mentioned that the Japanese are testing one currently.) But if you have the juice to generate the current… try a no-explosive propelled projectile traveling at Mach 6 from the muzzle. Call it almost three times as fast as a typical rifle bullet, or almost double the top speed of an SR-71. LOTS of kinetic energy there. And if you can adjust the launch pulse, which GA says they can, you can vary the launch speed to fit your target. And reduce the power footprint from a full sized ship to a truck trailer? That’s a winner.<\/p>\n

Some neat new stuff on the horizon. Hopefully if DoD follows Hegseth’s directive to shorten the acquisition pipeline length\u00a0AP<\/a>\u00a0 we could actually live to see these.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s open with a Happy Veteran’s Day to all! I am officially encouraging you all to … New Gee-Whiz toys<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}