While I agree with the idea, there are practical issues to reporting “drone resistance”. Mostly that drones are used to deliver anything from small hand grenades, which even the side-armour of a light APC should handle with ease, to dropping stacks of AT mines or a heavy HEAT round, both of which should defeat an MBT if hit on the roof.
There’s also the point that you have both bomber-drones, which target the roof, and FPV drones, which typically target the sides, optics, or engine.
Basically, the most reasonable “drone resistance” metrics you can report are probably whether the vehicle can withstand standard RPG rounds, and (importantly) whether it has any form of proximity defence (like TROPHY). If anything, I’m actually a bit surprised that some form of mounted shotgun that automatically targets FPV drones hasn’t become widely used yet. TROPHY is developed to target AT rockets moving at several hundred meters per second, which is complete overkill for shooting down FPV drones coming in at < 30 m/s.
There’s been a lot of talk about how effective drones are against armour, and how cheap they are vs. what is used to target them. I’ve seen surprisingly little talk about the fact that drones should be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to shoot down than rockets. Basically all you need is a shotgun and a targeting system that is much, much more rudimentary than what modern AA uses.
While I agree with the idea, there are practical issues to reporting “drone resistance”. Mostly that drones are used to deliver anything from small hand grenades, which even the side-armour of a light APC should handle with ease, to dropping stacks of AT mines or a heavy HEAT round, both of which should defeat an MBT if hit on the roof.
There’s also the point that you have both bomber-drones, which target the roof, and FPV drones, which typically target the sides, optics, or engine.
Basically, the most reasonable “drone resistance” metrics you can report are probably whether the vehicle can withstand standard RPG rounds, and (importantly) whether it has any form of proximity defence (like TROPHY). If anything, I’m actually a bit surprised that some form of mounted shotgun that automatically targets FPV drones hasn’t become widely used yet. TROPHY is developed to target AT rockets moving at several hundred meters per second, which is complete overkill for shooting down FPV drones coming in at < 30 m/s.
There’s been a lot of talk about how effective drones are against armour, and how cheap they are vs. what is used to target them. I’ve seen surprisingly little talk about the fact that drones should be orders of magnitude easier and cheaper to shoot down than rockets. Basically all you need is a shotgun and a targeting system that is much, much more rudimentary than what modern AA uses.