FAMILY OF MODULAR ACTIVE COUNTERMEASURE SYSTEMS AGAINST FPV DRONES FOR GROUND-BASED PLATFORMS OF DIFFERENT CLASSES AND COSTS

Abstract

The paper presents a conceptual approach to developing a family of modular active protection systems (APS) against FPV drones for integration with ground-based platforms of different classes and cost levels. The relevance of the study is determined by the increasing use of FPV drones as a means of attack, the growing intensity of group and mass attacks, and the need to provide a differentiated and economically justified level of protection for platforms with different levels of criticality and cost. The proposed approach establishes a quantitative relationship between the characteristics of the FPV threat, the functional capabilities and resource limitations of the APS, the acceptable risk of platform loss, and the required protection level. A modular APS architecture is formulated that includes sensing, data-processing, non-kinetic (soft-kill), kinetic (hard-kill), and command-and-control modules. A four-level scalable configuration structure, L1–L4, is introduced to adapt the functionality and complexity of the APS to the platform class, threat intensity, acceptable risk of platform loss, and available system resources. The FPV threat is parameterized by a vector including maneuverability, velocity, altitude, effective detectability, attack direction, threat-energy characteristics, and expected arrival time. Mathematical models are developed to describe individual and group FPV threats, threat detection and neutralization, response and processing time, interception conditions, and the resource-time limitations of kinetic and non-kinetic channels. For group and mass attacks, a resource-time model is developed to establish the relationship between the number and intensity of attacking drones, attack duration, APS processing throughput, and the available hard-kill and soft-kill resources. The model makes it possible to determine the conditions of resource-time saturation of the kinetic interception channel and to estimate the minimum required fraction of attacking targets that should be neutralized by non-kinetic means. It is shown that, with increasing attack intensity and a limited kinetic resource, the required contribution of soft-kill means to overall threat neutralization increases. This provides a quantitative basis for the distribution of countermeasures between non-kinetic and kinetic channels under resource and time constraints. A universal dimensionless APS effectiveness criterion is proposed that combines the probability of threat neutralization, the kinematic feasibility of timely interception, resource-time capability, and the relative cost of the system. On this basis, a risk-oriented principle for selecting the minimum sufficient APS configuration for platform classes C1–C4 and protection levels L1–L4 is formulated. The selection is performed subject to simultaneous constraints on the acceptable probability of penetration and the minimum required integral effectiveness of the APS. The obtained results provide an engineering and analytical basis for the conceptual design of scalable APS configurations, substantiation of tactical and technical requirements, comparative evaluation of alternative system configurations, and protection of ground-based military and other mission-critical platforms against group and mass FPV-drone attacks.