Military unveils £60m hunt for new weapons system to guard against ISIS drone attacks
Jihadi fighters are mounting bombs on off-the-shelf drones to target troops in Iraq
THE US military is investing tens of millions in a new defence system to combat ISIS drone attacks on the battlefront.
The government's defence research agency is looking for customised weapons systems to defend convoys against attacks by drone swarms.
The news comes after US-backed forces in Iraq were targeted by a string of virtually unstoppable ISIS 'toy' drone attacks in Iraq.
Jihadi fighters have mounted weapons on cheap, off-the-shelf drones on several occasions over the past few months, using them against Iraqi troops pushing towards Mosul.
Although there have been no reports of a drone attack on a convoy of land vehicles yet, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is clearly fearing the worst.
Today DARPA announced it is looking for bids for what it calls the 'Mobile Force Protection' (MFP) programme, a project that could be worth up to £50million, reports .
The drone defence system needs to serve “military or civilian” needs in both “homeland or abroad”.
The project (DARPA-PS-17-01) seeks to develop a system that can defeat an attack by a multitude of “self-guided, small unmanned aerial systems (UAS)” on a moving target.
These targets would include a convoy of vehicles of patrol boats.
Specifically, the system needs to be able to deal with fixed-wing or rotor drones that weigh less than 200 pounds (90 kilos) apiece.
The weapons system must be capable of defeating the drones while staying small enough to be mounted on “tactical vehicles and vessels”.
DARPA said it does not plan to consider lasers – “high-power direct energy systems” – or high-calibre guns “with uncontrolled projectile trajectories that result in high-energy fragments."
It has also ruled out the use of live animals like birds of prey which are sued by some air forces to protect their fighters.
Anything too big, too heavy or too power-demanding to fit onto a Humvee or a 25-foot Coast Guard boat will also be ruled out.