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You'd need to pick a scalable solution; where we have one drone today, we could have 20 in the same place for half the cost in the future.

In my opinion, the best solutions I can think of are:

1) EMP. May not shut off the motors, but should shut off the brains.

2) Base station with targeting system. Laser would be too slow, too dangerous. Maybe a high-powered water jet. Knock them right out of the sky. Break their wings.

3) A swarm of predator drones. Good ones would not be self-sacrificial.



I think a laser would scale much better than a water jet. Not to mention, isn't it hard to justify spraying water at every bird that flies by when you're stationed in a desert?

I think in the end, the cheapest thing will be something like a small gun mounted on turnable mount, with a camera attached. If it sees small something flying overhead, it shoots - normal airplanes will be too far up to hit, and if you have a lot of low-flying traffic, you could replace the bullets with rubber. Make certain - by physical means, not software - that the gun can't swivel below a certain angle to avoid shooting basketball players in the head.


Lasers aren't magic. They take time to cut through things, unless you have a massively, massively powerful beam.


EMP? Come on, that's vaporware. Right up there with "dirty bombs".

I've yet to see any military deploy an EMP or dirty bomb in their arsenal. Conventional wisdom suggests this is due to one of two reasons.

1) The theory works, but weaponising isn't feasible (EMP).

2) The theory is incorrect and is security theater (dirty bomb).




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