Drones are now a fact in everyday life wherein it does harmless chores such as taking videos of what's happening below and ferrying goods. It can also do some life saving tasks such as helping first responders assess a life-and-death situation quickly with their aerial footages. Or it can do deadly things such as giving intelligence to troops or doing missions by being directed to fire missiles at enemy concentrations and vehicles.

The last part is what concerns the U.S. Military as drones are now effectively being used in the battlefield and they want to deny the enemy the use of drones when war erupts. From the 26th of July to the 7th of August 2015, the Department of Defense (DoD) conducted a joint exercise of various military branches called Black Dart in Point Mogu, California wherein they test countermeasures and defenses against unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Black Dart is is DoD's largest live-fly, live-fire joint counter-UAS technology.

Various defense companies also participate in this annual exercise where they showcased their latest UAV and counter-UAV technologies. While the military UAVs we know of are the Reaper or Global Hawk, for this year, the concern of the military cover the smaller drones. In recent months, small  or micro drones are turning out to be dangerous threats to civilians and even the government due to increasing use of commercial drones by private individuals. A drone crashed recently near the White House and a drone being piloted by a teacher crashed during an ongoing tennis match of the U.S. Open 2015. Airline and helicopter pilots have been complaining about near collisions with such drones.

It is just a matter of time that someone with a more nefarious motive to arm a small aerial drone and unleash it to the unsuspecting public below or have a camera drone to harass or do surveillance on sensitive government and military installations. In 2011, a former Northeastern University student, Rezwan Ferdaus, was arrested and convicted the next year for plotting to pack C-4 plastic explosives into RC models of F-4 and F-86 fighter planes and to crash them into the Pentagon and Washington D.C. He is now serving 17 years in prison.

Some of the defenses were straightforward and low-cost ---- just to shoot them with guns of snipers or machine gunners in choppers. In one instance a U.S. Marine sniper was able to hit a drone UH-1Y Huey, making it the first recorded instance of a drone being a shot down by a sniper while airborne in a chopper. According to Breaking Defense, the poor drone was a FireFlight UAVS Flanker though it wasn't revealed how it was able to bring it down. The Flanker drone looks big enough that it might take a .50 caliber bullet fired from Barrett  Sniper Rifle to bring it down.

Photo: Fireflight UAVS Flanker Drone

A video from the Black Dart Exercise 2015 below shows a chopper gunner firing at a Flanker drone and also bringing it down:

No further details on what happened during exercise as the most was kept secret since Black Dart was started in 2002. Most have remained secret to prevent other nations, especially the hostile ones, from learning the countermeasures developed against drones.