No-fly zone: Portable CICADA eMissiles take down small drones

Small drones everywhere – beware. Portable CICADA eMissiles, recently unveiled by German weapon manufacturer Diehl Defence, can successfully bring down anything small and unmanned with minimal collateral damage.

Indeed, Diehl Defence unveiled its Sky Sphere drone defense system at the Enforce Tac trade fair that went on in Nuremberg, Germany, from February 24 to 26, highlighting the new CICADA eMissile for the first time in Europe, according to the company’s press release from February 25.

What can CICADA eMissiles do?

Specifically, portable CICADA eMissiles can engage Class 1 and 2 small low-speed drones coming in at under 600 kg (1,320 lb), using two configurations that enable their deployment in both a battlefield environment and civilian areas.

The former is a lethal, non-reusable version with a fragmentation head that is lighter than its non-lethal counterpart and can take out a drone or other targets in a 10-meter (33-foot) sphere. The latter is a reusable non-lethal variant that uses a net to snare and capture the drones intact, with minimal bangs and shrapnel.

As it happens, these new anti-drone interceptors are small themselves, featuring a distinct pyramidal shape courtesy of the four delta wings, a 700-milimeter (27.6-inch) hull with a diameter of 300 mm (11.8 inches). They weigh under 10 kg (22 lbs.) and sit in their container/launcher when not in use.

Notably, the appropriate version (lethal or non-lethal) of the missile deploys on an intercept course after the control vehicles detect and identify possible threats by radar.

Meanwhile, at the front of the vehicle, there is an in-built radar sensor for the final target approach, behind which is a high-speed rotor that accelerates the missile to 200 km/h (124 mph). An onboard battery gives it up to five minutes of flight at a range of up to 5 km (3 miles), which is the maximum that small drones can be detected on radar.

Highway to the danger drone

Elsewhere, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has developed an AI method to accurately assess drone threats in response to the recent proliferation of threats from inexpensive unmanned autonomous systems (UAS).

As a reminder, the U.S. government has earlier decided to deploy high-tech drone detection technology as weeks of at least 3,000 sightings of unidentified drones over New Jersey caused panic in December and lawmakers demanded an investigation.