So a Shahed 136 uses rear props. It is 11 ft by 8.2 ft wide with a 110 lb (2,500 kg) warhead.
Range is 1,600 miles. Speed is 115 MPH.
Cost is $20,000.
It does not say what altitude. But low altitude.
These are not the quad-copter drones that the Uks are using.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
The germans employed V1 rockets. They were 27.3 ft long and 17.6 foot wide. Their warhead was 1,870 lbs (850 kg).
- so about the new drones are smaller with a bomb 1/10th the size (excuse typo in prior post. 110 lb/50kg 2500 km was the range)
About 1/4 of the speed.
So how do we economically take down such drones.
Cost of each take down needs to be 1/10 to 1/100 the cost of the enemy drone ($20,000 => $200 to $2,000)
The way modern attacks work is you fire your long-range missile first. You coordinate with closer allies like Hezbollah to fire a saturation assault of lesser drones and missiles, so they all arrive at the same time. I haven’t followed it closely but apparently Hezbollah wasn’t involved. Either they said they’d sit this one out or Iran wanted to act alone to shield their proxies from retaliation.
The Iron Dome missiles are used against everything that appears to be headed for a vital target.
BTW, I’ve seen photos of an alleged Ukrainian version of the Iranian drone, and it has a small jet engine.
I studied the drone interception problem extensively after I retired and got with my old company, and they financed a trip to visit a startup that had the technology we needed to defeat drone swarms. Turns out the startup was funded by CCP princelings, so I had to drop it. But here’s the short part. It’s very, very hard to intercept a swarm attack with any of the current technology. The Iron Dome missiles work great, but they are pricey.