“[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.