Why it matters: Drone defense with shotguns has become a live topic for militaries and ammunition makers. This video from a major suppressor maker shows the practical limit civilian gun media runs into when it tries to film the same idea: federal aviation law.
SilencerCo, the Utah suppressor maker, posted a six-minute video to its YouTube channel on September 29 titled "Drone Destoyers: DON'T LET THEM TAKE OVER." The premise is a timed shotgun drill meant to simulate engaging an incoming drone. The target is not a drone. Instead, the company strung a 150-foot zipline and sent two-liter bottles of soda down it for shooters to hit.
That substitution was not the original plan. "We wanted to do a drone simulation video of shooting drones with shotguns," the narrator says at the top of the video. "Per our legal counsel, we were advised to do so with something else." The video's description goes further, stating that "the FAA frowns upon shooting drones out of the sky even if you're on your own property and they are your drones." It adds that the channel is disappointed in its elected representatives and will vote accordingly.
How the SilencerCo zipline drone simulation works
The rules are laid out in the opening minute. Each shooter starts with their back to the zipline, shotgun in hand. On the start signal, the shooter turns, finds the bottle and engages it as quickly as possible. If any part of the bottle lands inside the shooter's marked circle, the run counts as a "death," standing in for a drone that reached its target.
The footage shows several participants taking turns, with mixed results. Some bottles burst well down the line; other runs end with the shooter wearing the soda. One participant, reacting to a hit, jokes that the bottle carried "two or three pounds of C4." Another explains a plan to engage as far out as possible "because I really just don't want to get hit with soda," while acknowledging that with birdshot, "this is going to get messy regardless." One shooter remarks that the spray "smells pineapple-y."
Adding a loading drill to the drone shoot
One participant raises the difficulty for a later run. The shooter starts facing away with an open breach and a shell in hand, and after a tap from a teammate named Will must load the gun, bring it up on target and try, in the shooter's words, not to get their head "taken off by 2-liter bottle."
“For civilian shooters and the channels that film them, the constraint the SilencerCo video names in its first minute still applies: in the eyes of federal regulators, a drone is an aircraft.”
Tess Marlowe, The ReticleAt the close, one participant puts the group's "drone survivability" at about 65 percent. Another gives a participant called "RO" a zero percent chance, and Will is credited with taking "all the C4 for everybody." The group's verdict on the format is favorable: "If you have the ability to do this, this is a great Saturday afternoon activity." The video ends by naming the event "the first annual shotgun shooting drone simulator 12-gauge Fanta tournament and ATV ride."
SilencerCo drone videos and the counter-drone shotgun market
This is not SilencerCo's first drone-themed shotgun production. In 2014 the company released "Johnny Dronehunter: Defender of Privacy," a fictional trailer in which a character shoots down quadcopters with a shotgun wearing the company's then-new Salvo 12 suppressor. That piece was staged as a film trailer. The new video is framed as an unscripted range competition, and its narration does not name the shotguns or loads used beyond birdshot. The frame used for this story shows a suppressed shotgun.
The video arrives as shotguns and shot-based ammunition draw attention as counter-drone tools. Drone Round Defense showed multi-projectile anti-drone rifle ammunition at SHOT Show 2026 and has since supplied the Marine Corps, and Sweden's Norma has developed AD-LER, a 12-gauge shell aimed at small FPV drones. For civilian shooters and the channels that film them, the constraint the SilencerCo video names in its first minute still applies: in the eyes of federal regulators, a drone is an aircraft.
For context
- The FAA classifies unmanned aircraft as aircraft, and 18 U.S.C. § 32 makes it a federal felony to damage, destroy or disable an aircraft, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
- Owning the land beneath a drone does not confer control of the airspace above it; the FAA regulates the national airspace.
- SilencerCo introduced the Salvo 12 in 2014 and promoted it with the fictional "Johnny Dronehunter" trailer.
- Military use of small FPV drones has pushed ammunition makers to develop shot and multi-projectile loads designed to bring them down at close range.
