1:35 Drone Hunters

Hunting drones as a new battlefield

Defense against small unmanned aircraft has turned into a discipline of its own over the last few years. It does not pay to send expensive guided missiles against machines that fly low and slow and carry only a few kilograms; mobile patrols come into play instead, with a rapid-fire weapon, a jammer and a crew that works more by eye and ear than by radar. Out of this have come improvised but exceptionally photogenic groupings of equipment and people, which differ strikingly from classic combat scenes.

A line of sets for a whole scene

Besides its individual kits the manufacturer also offers a line in which it puts several of its molds into one box so that a complete scene can be built from them. The buyer thereby gets elements that fit one another and, above all, a subject that holds together by itself.

While building, it works well to lay the scene out before gluing anything: where the barrel will point, where the crew stands, from which direction the threat comes. The base need not be large; on the contrary, this subject suits a narrow slice of a field road or the edge of a wood. In color terms the scene is served by subdued greens and browns with a dusty cast on the lower parts and sharp accents on the personal equipment.

Before you start gluing, go through the whole of the enclosed instructions. With multi-part sets the order of assembly tends to differ from that of individual kits, and some parts are completed across sprues.

The figures in such a scene carry most of the storytelling, so give them more time than the equipment: the turn of a head and the position of the hands will tell a viewer where the crew is looking.