“I enjoy talking with you.
Your mind appeals to me.
It resembles my own, except that you’re insane.”
George Orwell, from “1984″
Unanticipated Threats:
We spend much time, when engaged in live-fire training for “serious purposes,” shooting at life-sized paper targets that are designed to look like real people. This is disapproved in some quarters, yet I’m not sure how we’re otherwise supposed to learn how to use guns effectively for legitimate self-defense when we never shoot at targets that look like people (even though we all know it’s just a piece of paper)!
Now, we learn of a new personal threat, and one not necessarily confined to war zones:
Drones!
Small drones are now common on the world’s battlefields. Ever-more downsized, they are used mostly for intelligence-gathering, but also carry weapons, including explosives, and the technology is advancing by the day!
And, like erratic flies they resemble, they’re hard to neutralize.
Shooting at them with semi-auto rifles is about as successful as using rifles for hunting airborne birds!
Rotary-cannons, even missiles, can be efficacious, but consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive, sophisticated ordinance to bring-down a single drone, worth less than $1K, rapidly gets us into “diminishing returns.”
On an individual level, the pistols and modern rifles we love, and that are eminently suitable for domestic self-defense (against people), are simultaneously pretty useless against hostile (maybe harmful) drones.
As individuals, we haven’t had to worry about all this, until recently!
For personal “drone-defense,” we may have to start looking at shotguns and #4 buckshot!
In fact, Beretta/Benelli is now actively marketing this idea, claiming that their autoloading shotguns, with #4 buckshot, are effective against airborne drones out to 50m, maybe even 100m (although I think 100m is mostly fantasy).
Drones are light and maneuverable, but they’re not armored, which makes them vulnerable to hits from #4 buckshot pellets. One of more strikes from #4 buckshot pellets will bring-down most drones, or at least render them impotent as they limp away.
Bigger sizes of buckshot (00Bk for example) will not be nearly as effective, as the pattern is not dense enough at the distances drones are likely to be engaged. Smaller shot (like #2 Birdshot), lacks range and penetration.
Until the Ukraine Invasion, I didn’t think I needed to worry about any of the foregoing.
Now, we may well have to practice shooting at drones (maybe a mock-up, being towed at distance by another drone) as part of our regular training!
“The liquid state of modernity is corrosive to continuity.”
Samuel Wilson
/John
