You could do EMP, but you could also do some sort of point-defense turret. Drones are lightweight and fragile, so it doesn't need to be big - just fast and auto-targeting.
Didn't they try this in Ukraine and it doesn't work? Any point installation is quickly overwhelmed. The only answer to FPV drones so far seems to be more FPV drones. Though they're not using fully-autonomous drones in Ukraine yet, so that might still play out.
“[As of May 2025] Ukraine has developed and successfully tested the Sky Sentinel – an AI-powered, fully automated turret designed to shoot down Russian drones and missiles… the M2 is known to have an effective range of 1.5 kilometers against airborne threats. Each unit costs approximately $150,000. Developers estimate that protecting a city would require 10 to 30 turrets… Given that each Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone used by Russia costs around $100,000, Sky Sentinel offers a scalable and cost-effective solution to a persistent and deadly threat.”
This doesn’t address “Quickly overwhelmed”.
Yes, a wall of $150,000 bushmasters with some servos can take hurl enough lead in the air to protect a city from a single gulf-war era $100,000 lawnmower engine on two meter wings bumbling in a straight line at jogging pace.
We’re currently in the “a shipping container on a semi can could launch dozens of $2000 racing quads with molotov cocktails zip-tied to the bottom with enough agility to thread a needle faster than a turret can swing its own mass”
And the writing is on the wall for some near-future “any nation state could drop sci-fi cluster bombs that shed ten-thousand 250gram racing quads that can overwhelm even the most advanced point defence just by numbers and it’ll be cheaper than a conventional 2000lb bomb”
>with enough agility to thread a needle faster than a turret can swing its own mass
If it has a range of 1.5km, then the drone needs to be moving really fast in order to move a couple of degrees per second.
If it's going like 80mph, then that's 36m/s, which comes out to <1.4 degrees/s at 1500m away. For 1000m, you get ~2 degrees/s. Not to mention that this velocity is at a right angle to the turret, and you have to close the distance.