The Ukrainian army's 24th Mechanized Brigade had just passed through the village of Zelenopillya at 4 a.m. last July when the sky detonated. Dozens of 122-millimeter rockets fell on the convoy in an area claimed by Russian-backed separatists, each rocket carrying about fifty pounds of explosives in warheads built to fragment into shrapnel. Within moments nineteen soldiers lay dead and scores more wounded. Vehicles were shredded. The rebels likely used a BM-21 Grad, a six-wheeled vehicle with forty launch tubes that can all fire within seconds (grad means hail in Russian).
These attacks haunt Ukrainian troops: A Brookings Institution field report said the bombardments account for 70 percent of their casualties. In fact, multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) are now so common that more than eighty nations, including Syria and Iran, deploy them. So do terrorist and other nonstate Middle Eastern groups. MLRS operators can park and launch within two minutes, then quickly relocate to a bunker, under a camouflage net, or inside a cave—the tactic is called shoot and scoot.
And they don't fire blind. In Ukraine, Russian drones with video cameras provide separatists with valuable information. Ukrainian soldiers have told reporters that they often see the drones overhead before an MLRS bombardment but have no way to shoot them down. The Brookings researchers reported that the Russians deploy UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and artillery in tandem "with devastating effect." In response, the U.S. military is ramping up its own technology to help its ally fight back. Here are four prime examples:
Air-defense lasers
In 2014 the Navy's first laser weapon—a warship turret that can crisp small boats and UAVs—became operational. The hundred-kilowatt system, now deployed in the Persian Gulf, burned a hole through a drone in seconds during target practice. Next the Navy wants more compact, stable, and rugged weapons that can shoot drones from Humvees. The Office of Naval Research announced an industrial contest to create laser weapons that can do the same with just twenty-five kilowatts. Demonstrations are expected in 2016.
Portable air-defense radar
Once it's possible to hit the UAVs with lasers, the military will be able to locate them using mobile warning radar. Active electronically scanned arrays (AESA), which can easily be carried in vehicles and set up on tripods, send out pencil-thin radar beams with jolts of current that scan the sky for drones. Some U.S. versions can detect, classify, and track any kind of airborne object at altitudes ranging from thirty feet to 30,000, and have ranges of up to eighteen miles.
MLRS-Targeting technology
The modern battlefield is blanketed with sensors—mobile ground radar, acoustic surveillance equipment at observation posts, satellite imagery, and infrared camera feeds from drones—that can be used to help find MLRS locations. Last year the Marine Corps began developing software to identify an incoming threat using all data, then plot the exact location for return fire—which could "compress the kill chain timeline," says one military document.
Medium-range UAVs
Drones that can travel beyond an operator's line of sight are ideal tools to pinpoint mobile artillery. The MQ-5B Hunter can fly at 18,000 feet, high enough to avoid most ground fire. It is capable of both scanning the terrain below with an array of cameras (including infrared) and intercepting signals from enemy communications. The MQ-5B can stay in the air for twenty-one hours, beaming back real-time information for counterattacks.
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