A Novel Approach to Quantify Counter-Drone System Effectiveness Against UAS Swarms

Kurzfassung

Swarm attacks composed of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) have rapidly evolved into a sophisticated and constantly evolving threat to modern air defense strategies. By exploiting overwhelming numbers, high agility, and a coordinated behavior, drone swarms are able to penetrate and overwhelm traditional, multi-layered, defense architectures. Recent conflicts have highlighted critical vulnerabilities and challenges in maintaining robust defense and deterrence postures against drone swarms. As counter-UAS technologies, systems, and Concepts of Operations (CONOPS) continue to evolve, a method to evaluate their effectiveness and to quantify their relative performance becomes crucial. This paper details the adaptation of an agent-based modeling and simulation environment, developed by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), to assess the operational performance of counter-UAS architectures from a holistic System of Systems (SoS) perspective. To address the computational challenges of large-scale swarm engagements, the approach integrates surrogate models informed by high-fidelity (hi-fi) simulations, into low-fidelity (lo-fi) models to approximate the behavior of counter-UAS systems, thereby enabling scalability and simulation on the the theater scale. Combined with well-defined Measures of Effectiveness (MoEs), this methodology provides a novel approach for comparing counter-UAS solutions. It provides stakeholders and decision-makers with the information needed to evaluate system performance and make informed decisions in shaping future air defense strategies and architectures