The painful experience of the Russian Aerospace Forces being repeatedly attacked by Ukrainian drones has also frightened their American counterparts. According to a report on the U.S. website "Power" on June 29, the U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command is discussing adding new defense systems to U.S. military transport aircraft, tankers and other executive aircraft to resist the pervasive drone attacks.

The U.S. military is discussing adding new defense systems to its transport, tanker and other executive aircraft

Of course, the US media is most worried about China, which has the world's largest drone production capacity and may use this trick in the future...

According to reports, various drones have become one of the important means of attack on modern battlefields and pose a special threat to fighter jets parked at airports. Earlier in June, a Ukrainian drone launched a long-range raid on the Akhtubinsk Airport in Russia, causing damage to the Russian army's most advanced Su-57 stealth fighter.

The Pentagon has realized that it should not just laugh at Russia. Even the well-protected US Air Force bases lack adequate defenses to resist drone threats. For example, last year, the US Langley Air Force Base suffered several drone intrusions. The base is one of the most important air force bases on the east coast of the United States and is equipped with advanced F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.

Considering the increasingly realistic threat of drones, the Air Mobility Command of the U.S. Air Force took the lead and issued a request for proposals to the industry for the purchase of airborne anti-small drone systems to protect fixed-wing aircraft parked on the ground or flying below about 4,900 meters. The command is responsible for managing the vast majority of the U.S. Air Force's transport aircraft, tankers and executive aircraft, including the two "Air Force One" presidential aircraft. Most of these aircraft are large aircraft with slow flight speeds and low maneuverability. They often need to take off and land at military airports, international airports, simple airports and even field runways around the world, making them more vulnerable to drone attacks.

Last year, the U.S. Langley Air Force Base was hit by several drone intrusions.

According to the Air Mobility Command of the U.S. Air Force, aircraft are slow, less flexible, and fly at a lower altitude during takeoff and landing. Previously, the U.S. military was mainly worried that aircraft would be attacked by portable air defense missiles during this stage. Therefore, aircraft under the jurisdiction of the Air Mobility Command have taken different degrees of protection measures, including warning sensors bound to infrared decoys and radar jamming chaff, and directional infrared countermeasure systems that use lasers to counter infrared guided missiles. However, these airborne equipment are difficult to cope with various emerging drone threats.

According to the new requirements of the US military, in the future, airborne anti-small drone systems will need to use different methods to flexibly respond to nearby drone threats - first of all, they need to identify enemy and friendly drones and make accurate judgments in complex environments. For example, when performing humanitarian rescue missions, not all nearby drones may be enemy drones, and there may also be friendly drones providing assistance; at a busy international airport, if the airborne anti-drone system indiscriminately interferes with nearby GPS navigation signals or rashly shoots down suspicious targets, it will cause serious consequences.

Therefore, the U.S. military requires that the airborne drone detection system automatically alerts the crew and provides the location and number of drones when it detects drones around, which can intuitively display the location of nearby drones and allow the crew to avoid threats. At the same time, the crew has heavy tasks during the flight, so the airborne anti-drone system only needs minimal operation to detect and defeat drone threats.

Of course, the U.S. military will not forget to involve China in these new measures. The report mentioned that in addition to the flight phases such as takeoff and landing, in actual conflict situations, "especially high-end conflicts with China in the Pacific," these large U.S. military aircraft will be dispersed to remote and harsh island airports to perform missions, including temporary field airports. The defense measures that these remote airports can provide are very limited or even non-existent, which further highlights the importance of airborne anti-small drone systems. The request for proposals specifically requires that the system can be quickly installed and disassembled to provide additional ground anti-drone defense capabilities at the deployment site, and even requires that only a few people are needed to quickly deploy and operate when necessary.