Russia Develops Counter-Drone ‘Umbrella’ System After FPV Losses
Russia has developed an electronic warfare system capable of disabling a first person view drone (FPV) within a radius of 500 meters (1,640 feet).
The Zont (umbrella in Russian) creates an anti-drone bubble around a platform it is protecting, disabling the aerial threat either by disrupting its communication links or its live video recording, Russian state-backed Izvestia claimed, citing the developer Eliars.
It weighs around 20 kilograms (44 pounds) and operates in frequency ranges between 0.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz.
Russian military personnel deployed in Ukraine requested such a capability after registering significant losses of combat vehicles through FPV drones.
“Many vehicles come to the front lines, but according to military personnel, without protection from drones, they crash within a week,” Izvestia quoted a company representative as saying.
Serial Production Approved
Meanwhile, the system’s serial production has been launched after it cleared combat trials in Ukraine in April.
It was also tested against unarmed drones in the occupied Donetsk region, preventing all of them from penetrating its protective canopy, the Russian developer’s chief designer claimed.
“When a tank goes on the attack, our soldiers need to extinguish as many UAVs approaching it as possible. And there is no time to choose a direction, as is necessary with narrow-beam EW systems,” Izvestia quoted military expert Yuri Lyamin as saying.
“A dome-type electronic warfare system extinguishes all signals in its range, and a narrow-beam type selectively hits a particular direction. Sometimes the military puts a dome-type product on a separate vehicle that accompanies a tank or other armored vehicle in an attack.”
