[HN Gopher] To protect against weaponized drones, we must unders...
___________________________________________________________________
To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key
strengths
Author : jonbaer
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-06-08 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| dkarl wrote:
| > The potential of consumer or commercial drones harming world
| leaders became immediately evident when a protester hovered one
| close to German chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign rally in
| 2013
|
| Pretty arbitrary incident to choose, but I suppose the writer
| would have felt silly mentioning the flying dildos that buzzed
| Gary Kasparov at a political event in 2008.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Someone literally did that the other day (flying a drone with a
| dildo attached) to a person running for mayor in New Mexico,
| and then punched the candidate when an event staffer was able
| to grab the drone.
|
| https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/new-mexico-sheriff-running...
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I'm more interested in the potential of world leaders' drones
| harming regular people.
| dkarl wrote:
| I have no idea who was responsible for the flying dildos, but
| Kasparov was an outspoken critic of Putin, so I imagine the
| incident made him even more conscious of how easily Putin
| could reach him if he wanted. He continued his political
| activities, but he left Russia a few years later and
| announced that he couldn't go back in the near future because
| if he did he wouldn't be allowed to leave again. He has still
| not been back, to my knowledge.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I can already imagine ships being outfitted with hundreds of anti
| aircraft autocannons just for shooting down drone swarms, kind of
| like the USN ships of WWII. An old solution for a new problem
| jessaustin wrote:
| Could someone get something like that for her house? Asking for
| a friend...
| capeterson wrote:
| If you've got the budget for it, the company I work for may
| be of use: https://www.whitefoxdefense.com/
|
| I'm not sure if I would recommend jammers or kinetic weapons,
| haha.
| korse wrote:
| If you really wanted to, I'd recommend a microwave 'cannon'.
| You can build one yourself for cheap-ish based off a
| directional antenna and some recycled microwave-link
| components.
|
| Then you just need to target it. Probably need some sort of
| weather proof retractable cover so that the neighbors don't
| freak out. Gimbal under the cover to aim the thing, and then
| a means of target acquisition. People have tried to use
| audible input to pick up the propellers, but I don't really
| know how well that would work in practice and what kind of /
| how many microphones you would need to get a fix.
|
| The generally idea would be, system detects and gets a fix on
| probable drone, notifies you and allows you to do a visual
| check and give the fire signal. Microwave directional targets
| and roasts the target microelectronics.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| How hard is it to shield electronics from a microwave
| blast? What impact would surrounding them in alfoil have?
| K0balt wrote:
| Pretty easy to protect electronics from rf energy.
| kova12 wrote:
| Shielding might end up warming up and frying device with
| heat
| korse wrote:
| Yes it is, but most consumer drone hardware doesn't do a
| very good job of it. Also, most drones require a a couple
| of RF/EM sensors for position and heading which can't
| exactly be Faraday caged.
|
| I was being somewhat facetious about mounting a microwave
| auto-turret on your house, but the technology has been
| toyed with for years as a man-portable solution to
| consumer drone intrusion.
| K0balt wrote:
| Yeah, it would need to be customized for sure. Antennas
| can be filtered pretty effectively even in high rf
| environments, but they might be jammed. The Magnetometer
| will work in a box.
|
| Straight consumer drones should be easy to disable
| though.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Not if it also needs to have an antenna to listen with.
| That's always going to be an easy way in.
| K0balt wrote:
| Still, can clamp it as long as the attacking frequency is
| out of band. Also, no real need for telemetry in most
| cases anyway.
| capeterson wrote:
| > audible input to pick up the propellers
|
| Does not really work that well, as far as I've seen. One is
| probably best off using an SDR to pick up the
| communications between the drone and the remote. It's a
| rather inexpensive solution, as well.
|
| Microdoppler is promising for this as well, but that is
| likely astronomically out of the range of purchasing power
| for the average person.
| rolph wrote:
| submersible drones could be a problem, especialy if engineered
| for water travel and aerial travel
| stickfigure wrote:
| ...otherwise known as "torpedoes".
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/orca-extra-
| lar...
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| They are going with lasers instead.
| https://news.usni.org/2020/05/22/video-uss-portland-fires-la...
| jayGlow wrote:
| multi turreted tanks fell out of favor early in world War 2. I
| wonder if there could be a resurgence as a counter to drones.
| Animats wrote:
| The article has a good intro, and then never goes on to discuss
| the "key strengths". It's just clickbait. They're also late to
| the party on this. The US professional military has been
| discussing this for over a decade.
|
| There have already been more than a half dozen articles on drones
| in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's journal. "The coercive
| logic of militant drone use" [1] is worth reading. This covers
| how non-state groups have used drones, what worked and what
| didn't. The US Army is unused to fighting under a hostile sky,
| and now, a few times, they've had to. _" In 2017, then commander
| of US Special Operations Command General Raymond A. Thomas noted,
| "[the] most daunting problem [of 2016] was an adaptive enemy who,
| for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority in the airspace under
| our conventional air superiority in the form of commercially
| available drones and fuel-expedient (?) weapons systems, and our
| only available response was small arms fire."_ They also mention
| a drone disabling an Israeli naval vessel in 2006.
|
| There's been a lot more military use of drones than is generally
| realized. Much of it is for recon. Commercial hobbyist drones are
| more than good enough for finding out what the enemy is up to,
| and most drone use by militant groups is for that.
|
| So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield
| a decisive advantage in any conflict. At least to militant
| groups.
|
| Not many people read Parameters. That paper has only 65
| downloads. More should.
|
| [1]
| https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
| coderintherye wrote:
| >So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to
| yield a decisive advantage in any conflict
|
| Drones gave Azerbaijan a decisive advantage in the recent
| conflict with Armenia: https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-
| missile-war-nagorno-ka...
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone
| attacks will be suitably defended against. The fact is the
| "killer bot" scenario is just a one time thing. After it
| happens, all cities or armies or whatever, will have very
| solid defences installed against swarming or even just
| loitering bots. Flying drones are incredibly fragile and
| exposed. They are slow and easy to kill.
| trhway wrote:
| >Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone
| attacks will be suitably defended against.
|
| no. Azerbajan/Turkey went into it only after verifying that
| it works, to the devastating effect, against the Russian
| made air-defenses in Syria and Libya. Now Ukraine has
| bought these drones and is starting their production. In
| the next year or two we'll see them being used to the same
| great effect in Donbass. So far Russia hasn't managed to
| come up with any meaningful defense. If anything the
| recognition of the issue has only started to dawn on them,
| and by the time they manage something the Turkish/Ukranian
| (they discuss collaborative development) drones will
| improve another level up - drone capabilities at the
| current stage (beginning of the hockey stick) are much
| faster to improve - add speed, a bit of stealth, [partial]
| autonomy, coordinated swarming. It is a new paradigm
| shifting generation of warfare like iron navy ships,
| machine guns, planes, missiles, etc. were in their
| respective times.
| petre wrote:
| Rafael Systems sells Drone Dome anti drone mobile
| defense.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I think they even proved themselves in the recent Gaza
| campaign.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks
| will be suitably defended against
|
| How? They fly just few hundred meters above the ground,
| launch from field runways, and for the price of a single
| B-2, a country can buy 2000 of them.
|
| Jamming? Even a country like Turkey was able to devise a
| passable inertial navigation, and and programming for
| autonomous operation way exceeding an easy to trick "attack
| anything that moves" mode.
|
| To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force
| fitted with best radars possible to track them down
| individually, and strafe with a cannon (since no missile
| currently can lock onto something so small, slow, cold, and
| low flying.)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air
| force fitted with best radars possible to track them down
| individually, and strafe with a cannon_
|
| Or, you know, currently fielded SHORAD systems and CIWS?
| baybal2 wrote:
| What are their range, and height of radar horizon?
|
| Even if that wouldn't be a problem, you will still need
| really a lot of that.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| What about their speed and range? If they fly fast
| they're not going far. If they go far they're slow moving
| targets. And if they go fast and far they have expensive
| rockets attached and you're being hit with missiles
| instead.
| baybal2 wrote:
| The biggest threat today are tactical drones from just
| below a ton to a few tons.
|
| 100-300km - way outside of range of artillery. And they
| are all field runway launchable, so you don't really get
| anything from bombing the airfield.
|
| And most of them are made to fly below heights at which
| any air defence is effective.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The primary defense for the time being is 'hide.' US Marine
| tacticians, for example, are shifting priority from
| hardening an impromptu position (ie a foxhole) to
| concealing it.
| sliken wrote:
| Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and
| with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would
| the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at?
|
| Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an
| adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo
| randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against
| substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones
| really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided
| rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has
| been working on means of defending against those for
| decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an
| anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do
| with detection than firing.
| mlyle wrote:
| Deploying point defense technologies over a city/civilian
| targets has some obvious problems, though.
|
| Lasers, electronic countermeasures, tangly stuff, etc,
| are much more attractive than systems that fire thousands
| of cannon rounds per minute or that launch explosive
| missiles.
| sliken wrote:
| From the phalanx wiki:
|
| Whereas naval Phalanx systems fire tungsten armor-
| piercing rounds, the C-RAM uses the 20-mm HEIT-SD (High-
| Explosive Incendiary Tracer, Self-Destruct) ammunition,
| originally developed for the M163 Vulcan Air Defense
| System.[26][34] These rounds explode on impact with the
| target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing
| the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to
| hit their target.
|
| Not that the risk is zero, but at least it's "greatly
| reduced".
| mlyle wrote:
| You wouldn't generally let a C-RAM fire at a low angle
| over a city. And even if you did, the problem of how many
| of these you need for decent coverage becomes large,
| because there's no ideal placement that doesn't involve
| shooting straight at friendly things from some approach
| vectors.
|
| A CIWS is not a reasonable way to stop drone attacks on
| civilian targets.
| sliken wrote:
| Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple
| preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack
| from above)?
|
| Not sure a CIWS system that can hit a mach 2 missile that
| doesn't dodge would necessarily handle the same $$$ spent
| on a N cheaper drones. How many minutes of firing do
| modern CIWS systems typically have?
|
| Loitering at max engagement range and dodging might well
| end up using ammo at a rate that the CIWS can not
| sustain.
|
| Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about any
| part of a missile, where drones often have very small
| kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and
| control) that might well be just a few % of the size of
| the drone.
|
| I googled the phalanx, looks like it typically has a drum
| of ammo that lasts for about 3 seconds. Is that 3 drones
| worth? 10? 100?
| mlyle wrote:
| > Also I suspect any CIWS can get a kill on just about
| any part of a missile, where drones often have very small
| kill zones (often battery or gas, payload, motor(s), and
| control) that might well be just a few % of the size of
| the drone.
|
| I guarantee you that just grazing a drone with a 20mm
| round will still kill it, even if you don't "hit"
| anything critical. :P
| sliken wrote:
| Really? Say you blow a 1" hole in a wing that's got some
| balsa struts and some thin fabric? Or a wing just made
| out of a sheet of foam? Both are common on cheap drones.
|
| Sure the 20mm round represents an amazing amount of
| kinetic energy, but the drone doesn't offer any
| resistance, and I wouldn't expect the round to even
| notice. Sure the disturbance in the air might throw the
| drone for a few loops, but any decent software will
| recover.
|
| Sure hitting more substantial targets the target itself
| becomes of the shrapnel that causes an ever increasing
| zone of damage. Not clear to me that a piece of paper or
| thin fabric would exhibit the same behavior.
| mlyle wrote:
| Speaking as someone who's built and destroyed lots of
| homebuilt aircraft, and shot lots of things with guns of
| various sizes...
|
| 1. I think you're conflating "cheap agile drone" with
| "foam or balsa+durakote fixed wing aircraft".
|
| 2. Probable engagement aspect for a drone is not
| "straight up", as would be necessary for your scenario.
|
| 3. A little itty bitty hole in a wing does a whole lot
| more than you'd think.
|
| 4. Expecting a high velocity cannon round to just punch a
| clean hole in the wing is a little much.
|
| Foam's a bit more robust, but a small pebble at a few
| miles per hour has wrecked my whole durakote day before.
|
| And yes, there's degenerate cases, like you could have a
| whole sheet of dollar tree foam board maybe take a hit or
| two.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In the C-RAM role, Phalanx uses 20mm M940 MPT-SD rounds.
|
| Explosive (self-destructing) and incendiary
|
| https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/medium-caliber-
| ammunition/2...
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _Dunno, do agile rockets dodge? Or just follow a simple
| preprogrammed patterns (like low, then pop up to attack
| from above)?_
|
| Modern antiship missiles have complex programs. Some are
| capable of flying in formation with each other, with one
| missile flying high for visibility and communicating with
| the other missiles in the formation that are flying very
| low. If/when the missile on top is destroyed, another
| missile in the formation can be automatically selected to
| take its place.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against
| substantially faster and more agile rockets.
|
| The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and
| low.
|
| Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know
| to be poor.
|
| And that on dielectric, flat sea surface.
|
| Even military drones weighting few tons can fly
| autonomously under 100m.
|
| Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which
| will provide more air defence since they will force
| terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at
| oblique angles.
|
| Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow
| cruise missiles, except worse.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Does it at all change the equation that you could
| trivially fly the drone 2 feet above the ground?
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style
| defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic
| doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM
| can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.
| lazide wrote:
| And even drone races are slow and predictable compared to
| what is possible with an applied military mind and decent
| tools. I suspect (or hope) we already have some decent
| options in the top secret space.
|
| Nothing we have now (publicly) is going to do a damn
| against a shipping container full of 2-5 lb drones each
| carrying 1 lb of C4 in a swarm with cheap off the shelf
| sensors going 100 mph nap of the earth in a distributed
| pattern. And that is currently entirely doable with off
| the shelf drones using existing software and published
| techniques for peanuts. Add in some decent programming
| and logistics talent, and that is a huge problem.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| This made me realize something like a TAS drone race
| would be interesting to watch.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| I'm sort of surprised we haven't seen this already. It's
| not even that hard or expensive to build.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Here's a line of cops shooting at race drones. They
| would've had plenty of time to escape if they weren't
| sticking around to find out how long it takes to get shot
| down. These were race drones from 5 years ago and modern
| ones can be around twice as fast. Not to mention you
| don't want to dump a magazine upwards in your own
| territory.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _Not to mention you don 't want to dump a magazine
| upwards in your own territory._
|
| That is what birdshot is for. Birdshot, e.g. "No. 9 or
| 10" shot, are tiny lead BBs about 2mm diameter. Because
| they are small, they have a large surface area to mass
| ratio, and consequently, they fall back down to earth at
| a low, safe speed. When they land on dry leaves, they
| bounce off and sound a bit like rain. When it is shot
| into the air and falls back down onto you, it won't even
| bruise you, let alone injure you. (However it _can_ kill
| if fired _directly_ at somebody.)
| baybal2 wrote:
| > They are slow and easy to kill.
|
| The drones flying slow, and low makes them harder to kill,
| not easier.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/25/reaper-
| drone-m...
|
| Not all drones are AI, there are remote drones that are
| very fast and very hard to kill, pulling Gforces that would
| make normal pilots pass out. With the US declaration that
| drones are "munitions", we have effectively stated that we
| can launch them into the airspace of countries that we
| aren't technically at war with, and claim it was "border
| fire", like we did with Afghanistan.
| m0llusk wrote:
| The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is interesting in a
| couple of ways. Most have focused on how it was possible to win a
| conflict that has historically been extremely difficult, but also
| interesting is what happened afterward. As soon as the aggressive
| drone campaign was dialed back irregular asymmetric warfare
| flared back up. So it seems that it is possible to accomplish
| amazing things with drones, but those victories are only as
| robust as ongoing drone mobilization allows.
| narrator wrote:
| Are we entering an age kind of like the 18th century when most
| people could own a musket and the government didn't have better
| weapons or effective defenses from these weapons?
| philsnow wrote:
| Daniel Suarez has a 2012 near-future novel that features this
| kind of thing [0]. In the book there are drones swarms armed with
| single-use tube guns, essentially, Saturday Night Specials [1].
|
| I shill for his books regularly on HN. They're a guilty pleasure
| for me: snappy, easy to blow through in a single sitting, and are
| each begging for a movie adaptation (think "The Martian"). Start
| with Daemon.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Decision [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special
| tarruda wrote:
| I wonder how long until DIY weaponized drones are available to
| common criminals.
|
| It doesn't seem like we are prepared to deal with something like
| this.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Strap a knife on a fpv rc airplane and you have something as
| deadly as a sniper
| abz10 wrote:
| Unlike a bullet you could hear an RC airplane coming.
| korse wrote:
| Actually this isn't a big problem. Quads or RC planes at a
| reasonable height aren't audible. Add in night and lack of
| running lights and no one is going to notice.
|
| If you are using a wing, then you just program your robot
| to come in high, cut it's engine and continue on a glide
| trajectory to the target. The flap servos make nearly no
| noise.
|
| If you've got a quad, come in fast and basically huck the
| vehicle at the target.
|
| Ardupilot + ROS make this all relatively straightforward to
| implement and provide an easy way to interface with
| necessary sub-systems.
| abz10 wrote:
| Ardupilot will not hit a human size target. People can
| barely do it. You're not going to lob a tumbling quad at
| a target with any accuracy that's a joke.
|
| To do this with any reliability you need custom software
| and probably hardware. It'll look more like a smart
| munition. But it'll also be more difficult than strapping
| a knife to a RC plane.
| korse wrote:
| First, we aren't talking knives.
|
| Second, who said the quad was tumbling? Significantly
| cutting engine speed and removing significant lift forces
| on a quad in order to kill the buzz doesn't mean it will
| start wildly gyrating.
|
| Third, Ardupilot will get you within a few feet of a
| specified point with a good enough vector and speed.
| Luckily you can use a subroutine (secondary control
| program) to handle the final approach from the 'point' to
| the target.
| abz10 wrote:
| We literally are talking knives on RC planes; see the
| comment I originally replied to. You are moving the goal
| posts.
|
| A quad will tumble with the motors off, the whole thing
| is a significant lift force. It was a big problem in
| early controller software where throttle dead zone would
| turn off the props. A problem I personally experienced.
| Maintaining any semblance of stability requires active
| adjustment.
|
| And no, Ardupilot will not get anything going at high
| speed to within a few feet in 3d space.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Not when it is diving down vertically, from high above.
| abz10 wrote:
| Off the shelf RC airplanes have terrible unpowered
| terminal velocity. You'd have to custom build to get
| anything decent. Which is more difficult than strapping a
| knife to a RC plane.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| 3D-printer to the rescue!
| mLuby wrote:
| Like this RC airplane (drone) modeled after a WW2 dive
| bomber. https://youtu.be/ogxKvQeVqqc?t=583
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Lol, yes! But the Stuka (Sturzkampfbomber) wasn't what I
| had in mind. In reality they were (retro)fitted with
| gadgets that made them whine/screech loudly when doin'
| the dive...
| rolph wrote:
| if you can make a unabomber type of device you can construct a
| weaponized quadrocopter
|
| thinking further, even just the manner, or tactics used when
| flying could be weapon like, such as chaff drones
| lurquer wrote:
| > if you can make a unabomber type of device you can
| construct a weaponized quadrocopter
|
| It's trivial, cheap, and simple to do massive harm to massive
| numbers of people.
|
| Fortunately, humans don't usually do this unless part of the
| government/military.
|
| In a country of 300 million, the only non-state mass death
| events are a handful of terrorist attacks and deranged
| teenagers determined to shoot up their schools. The annual
| deaths caused by these non-state actors is, on average, less
| than the annual fatalities on a given stretch of a run-of-
| the-mill interstate.
| boplicity wrote:
| In 2020, 24 people died in car crashes in all of Seattle.
| [1]
|
| In 2020, 446 people died in mass shootings in the US. [2]
|
| 1. https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-traffic-deaths-
| remai...
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_
| the_...
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I read somewhere that commercial drones with bombs were used
| in, I believe, Afghanistan against the US forces.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| ..or the general public? Imagine a web site where you give your
| credit card and name a victim.
| pmastela wrote:
| > I wonder how long until DIY weaponized drones are available
| to common criminals.
|
| Common criminals are using commodity drones for reconnaissance
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.techradar.com/news/criminal-intent-fbi-
| details-h...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Drones are the new aircraft carriers. That is, pre-WWII, the
| dominant naval ship was the battleship. Heavily armored, with
| enormous guns, military planners expected that the battle for the
| Atlantic and Pacific would be carried out by these monsters
| slugging it out. Though there were hints that planes could be
| quite effective against ships, few admirals realized that the
| longer range of an aircraft carrier would make the battleships
| effectively obsolete in ship-ship battles. And after all, they'd
| spent a ton of money producing those battleships, and developing
| doctrine. Would you really want to throw that all away on some
| newfangled novelty?
|
| After Pearl Harbor, it became clear that the answer should have
| been Yes.
|
| Drones offer overwhelming advantages -- they're cheap and
| disposable. A drone generally costs less than the US missile used
| to shoot it down. You can lose 100 of them, and there will be no
| lives lost on your side.
|
| During WWII, by 1943 the European theater was essentially
| decided, except for a lot of killing. The US was producing tanks
| and planes so quickly that it was simply mathematically
| impossible for the Germans to counter them. Will the same thing
| happen when China decides to throw its manufacturing capacity
| into war drones?
| dtwest wrote:
| When battleships and tanks are the weapon, manufacturing
| capacity powers the war machine. Perhaps drones usher in a new
| dynamic in that regard too. Maybe it's not how many drones you
| produce but how well programmed they are, what sensor or
| communication technology they use, etc.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Drones are the new infantry and land mines. For sea battles
| missiles still dominate, since all you need to do is destroy
| the ship with the drones.
|
| Drones fly around and autonomously eliminate targets while
| maintaining perimeters, which replaces infantry doing the same
| thing. Drones are easy to launch from land-based bases and due
| to their limited range are best suited to land-based
| operations.
|
| Aerial drones are easily countered by autonomous weapons
| systems that fire on drones quickly and accurately. Drones are
| able to be disabled with a single large bullet, which makes
| their cost exceptional once countered. I expect that land based
| drones will become a pretty big thing, since they can take
| advantage of cover and camouflage.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| The line between drone and missile is fuzzy at best. Most of
| the distinguishing characteristics often cited in these
| conversations are wrong. For instance, missiles are usually
| powered by rockets, but many missiles are powered by jet
| engines instead. Drones are usually meant to be reusable, but
| the first drones ever made were specifically expendable
| (which is why they are named after drone bees, which fly once
| before dying.) Loiter munitions are sometimes considered
| drones instead of missiles, but nobody doubts that a tomahawk
| cruise missile is a missile, and yet, a modern tomahawk is
| also a loiter munition that can cruise in a circle for
| _hours_.
|
| Sometimes autonomy is cited as a key characteristic of
| drones. But the first drones were pure-RC with no autonomy at
| all, while there are a myriad of autonomous missiles and non-
| autonomous human-guided missiles. So autonomy is not a
| distinguishing characteristic either.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| It feels like most of the recent fascination with drones is
| due to overlap with civilian off-the-shelf technology and
| the fantasy of being able to buy something that could
| potentially go toe to toe with advanced militaries. When in
| fact, militaries have always had "aerial munitions with
| varying degrees of intelligence and maneuverability and
| propulsion methods selected based on
| speed/maneuverability/range tradeoffs." An off the shelf
| quadcoptor is as far from military weaponry as a hand
| calculator is from a supercomputer even if they're both
| calculating machines.
|
| It's weird seeing this fascination with drones yet not
| seeing an analogous fascination for Toyota trucks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Plausible.
|
| One thing that makes China today different to the US of WW2 is
| that China's export oriented economy would collapse in a war
| with the West and their industrial production capabilities
| would be hurt significantly along with that.
| jude- wrote:
| Doubtful. The CCP runs a command economy. It doesn't need to
| sell its goods to finance a war when the state can simply
| force the economy to produce the means of war.
|
| Want to stop China from waging war? Knock out its means of
| production -- target its imports.
| godtoldmetodoit wrote:
| Agreed - in this awful scenario where the US is fighting
| China, their economy would absolutely crater as the US
| shoots any ship heading towards Chinese ports after the
| embargo was declared.
|
| China can't feed itself.
|
| China only produces a third of the oil it consumes.
|
| If your people begin to starve as soon as war starts and
| you all of a sudden have 1/3rd the oil you used to....
| well, that's not exactly a recipe for success.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| China has a mixed economy, not a command economy.
|
| My point is that the analogy of US in WW2 doesn't really
| hold up because the US had an excellent economy throughout
| WW2 relative to others which fueled their excess industrial
| production. China would be in the opposite situation -
| economic collapse.
|
| Would China be able to maintain industrial production by
| forcing workers and firms to produce equipment despite
| economic collapse? Perhaps. But the US in WW2 shouldn't be
| considered historical precedent, due to the above
| distinction.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| A drone with the same range as a missile would be
| indistinguishable from a missile. A drone without the same
| range as a missile would likely have its carrier detected and
| destroyed before it can get in range to release it's drones.
| Drones are great for irregular forces that can hide among
| civilian populations or in dense terrain to have short ranged
| air strike capabilities cheaply, but they are not substitute
| for long range naval strikes.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| The drone swarm can have a carrier vehicle, like a (perhaps
| autonomous) big plane or sub to get it within range
| magicsmoke wrote:
| And I suppose the carrier vehicle is somehow invulnerable
| to missiles? In fact, why wouldn't it just carry missiles
| in the first place?
| ericd wrote:
| Or perhaps a missile full of drones, similar to those bombs
| with lots of guided submunitions.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Tomahawk TLAM/D carries 166 submunitions in 24 canisters.
| There's no reason those submunitions need to be dumb --
| or stationary for that matter.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Indeed, cheap and available in massive amounts also makes
| very dangerous.
|
| Funny that we see this in various computer games, ships
| with drone bays. What you mention would be a drone
| missile perhaps?
| sklearncowboy wrote:
| China was already way past this by the late 90s.
|
| This is old thinking. Same battlefield with different
| technology.
|
| The war that changed everything was the 1st Gulf War.
|
| 20 years ago they could see how stupid it was to use weapons to
| blow things up that cost more than what you were blowing up.
|
| Our military has already been lapped. We only don't think so
| because we waste so much money on outdated expensive weapon
| systems and then use the amount spent as proof we have the
| better military.
| aaron695 wrote:
| FYI 'swarms' is a magic word.
|
| It's meaningless and is introduced to conflate the fact what is
| talked about is not currently possible or stupid. These words are
| used a lot in tech.
|
| > using autonomous drone swarms against a soft target like a
| stadium full of people
|
| This can be done with a signal crop dusting drone, but if you say
| that it's easier to understand it's just the Black Sunday movie -
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075765/ or a normal crop dusting
| plane or one automatic weapon where every bullet is a mini
| suicide drone.
|
| "six drones engaged in complex maneuvers in low visibility
| conditions, buzzing the destroyer" is not possible. If it was
| 'one' drone it's obvious there's no way it can get to that
| location.
|
| It is true Slaughterbots has scared the unwashed masses.
| Currently a glass window stops a drone, they are currently not
| far off the Dalek's inability to go up stairs.
|
| Is it good to keep the public scared about drones? Drones
| greatest ability in war and terrorism atm is the fear.
| charlescearl wrote:
| Is there a comprehensive analysis of the use of drones in
| policing. Further, are there analyses of the way in which private
| security companies (G4S) are employing drones in their
| operations?
| [deleted]
| samuelizdat wrote:
| Wouldn't the solution be jamming or EMP related? Of course,
| because the technological system must propagate itself at any
| cost this idea is counter-intuitive. Technological progress is
| seen as bending towards an inherent good. People never stop to
| think if it will be bad. Now people are to live in fear of drone
| swarms because nobody has autonomy in the technological system.
| People think they control technology, but it is really technology
| that controls us.
|
| -sent from my iPhone
| swiley wrote:
| At least in the US we're already surrounded by people with
| firearms. The situation isn't really very new IMO. People have
| already started committing crimes using quadcoptors and
| _everyone_ knows about them now. You don 't hear about them
| shooting people because that's _already_ illegal and we have
| social structures in place to deal with it.
|
| TL;DR if anything this is an improvement because it makes the
| 2A thing make more sense (almost no one is building guided
| missiles in their backyard except that one youtuber who's
| trying to make his model rockets land on their own.)
| dogman144 wrote:
| I'd back up and say it might be even more simple from a
| cybersec perspective, holding off the military drone
| capabilities and related hardening.
|
| Embedded consumer electronics/IoT generally have awful security
| configs and an internet connection. Consumer-grade, and I bet a
| fair bit of the more high powered drones, are vulnerable to
| this same risk.
|
| I'd love an educated opinion on this, but to the extent I've
| thought about this as well - many of these drones must be vuln
| to some form of remote code exploitation and shutdowns, if you
| can get a targeted signal to hit their admin "beacon" or w/e.
|
| As consumer drones do show up in warfare a fair bit, this feels
| like a possible counter-drone route to explore.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I suspect that jamming would push people to make drones fully
| autonomous, so that they're capable of carrying out their
| mission even is comms are down.
| greedo wrote:
| Jamming would address inter-swarm communications, but then
| they'd revert to solo operations. EMP isn't realistic, but
| microwave systems have already been tested:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlmf032NmHU
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Birds and insects are able to swarm without telepathy, and
| the dynamics of this are fairly well understood. I don't
| think this is going to be such a big issue for drones; if
| anything, you'll get swarms of ultra-cheap tiny drones whose
| job is to swoop around chirping to each other until they get
| jammed, then take note of where the jamming signal seems to
| originate, GTFO, and convey that geographical information
| back to base at the earliest opportunity. The more
| enthusiastically you jam, the sooner you become the target of
| a ballistic mortar or guided missile that's fatally attracted
| to your jamming device.
| jude- wrote:
| Jamming wouldn't break line-of-sight or optical
| communication. Imagine drones that can simply _see_ one
| another, and communicate by changing color (e.g. with LEDs).
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Lasers are already used for inter-satellite communications,
| so there's no need to just use gross color shifting (though
| perhaps the BOM impact would be less).
|
| Related side story: my resume had something about PKI in it
| so I kept getting calls from Boeing recruiters trying to
| fit me into a job doing said satellite laser comms
| (presumably using PKI). I kept telling them I knew nothing
| optics-related aside from basic Newtonian stuff, and they
| kept calling me back. I hope they finally found someone.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no practical way to use EMP as a defense against small
| drones. That's something that only works in movies, not real
| life. Generating enough power to disrupt electronics at a
| useful range requires a powerful explosion.
|
| The military uses a mix of jammers, small missiles, guns, and
| (soon) lasers.
| Animats wrote:
| There are some jammers, but they're not too useful if the
| drone is programmed to head out of jammer range if jammed.
| Currently, the most useful weapons against small drones are
| compressed air guns that fire nets.[1]
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/M6tT1GapCe4
| mLuby wrote:
| If we're talking a commercial quadcopter drone, is it
| feasible to auto-target it via microphones and then shoot
| some CIWS at it? Something like this
| https://youtu.be/LThD0FMvTFU?t=42 but drones and bullets
| instead of mortars and lasers.
|
| It's be nice if you could slap an anti-drone turret onto
| your vehicle to protect the airspace for a hundred meters.
|
| Maybe jamming exceeds commercial drones' flight ceiling,
| but if not, dropping stuff from high up always does damage.
| Animats wrote:
| There are a number of bulky systems intended for larger
| targets which will work against drones, but most are not
| very portable. Ship-mounted systems such as CWIS do
| work.[1] But all those shells that don't hit the target
| land someplace.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/3UVuV5WvraQ
| nradov wrote:
| The land based CIWS uses self destructing shells so any
| that didn't hit the target explode into small, relatively
| safe fragments. But it's still risky to use in populated
| areas
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36412/centurions-
| roari...
| mLuby wrote:
| > But all those shells that don't hit the target land
| someplace.
|
| Just don't miss! It's only a few hundred meters out.
|
| Oh CWIS are only ship-mounted? I thought it was a general
| term. I like PDC better anyway. #TheExpanse
|
| Nice video--are those all tracers though?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| The land-based version of CIWS is called Centurion:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#Centurion_C-
| RAM
|
| C-RAM shells are _supposed_ to self-destruct, but EOD
| guys will tell you that fuzes do not have a 100%
| operational rate. Another problem is cost and magazine
| size:
|
| >The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts
| fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a
| 1,550-round magazine.
|
| >Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the
| gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a
| target.[14]
|
| So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get
| 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo
| into the turret. That would make it vulnerable to a
| saturation attack. A hundred drones carrying grenades
| that home in on the CIWS radar would be tough to counter.
| ericd wrote:
| > Nice video--are those all tracers though?
|
| Well, it's video game footage (ARMA 3, according to the
| title).
| [deleted]
| blutack wrote:
| Military drones also remove part of the political calculation
| otherwise involved in attacking somewhere.
|
| When soldiers are put in situations where they are being killed,
| in a fairly free society someone is generally going to ask the
| question of why they are there and whether they should continue
| to be.
|
| Loss of military drones is only reported in specialised press if
| at all.
| FredPret wrote:
| With human soldiers, voters and family of voters get killed.
|
| With drones, it's just some robots that were broken by the
| enemy.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _In 2018, an unidentified nonstate actor used two explosive-
| bearing commercial drones in the attempted assassination of
| Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro._
|
| It's funny to see the phrase "nonstate actor" here, when we're
| assured that ransomware script kiddies who use Coinbase are all
| "state actors". Maduro knows who sent the drones. [0] Why is even
| IEEE Spectrum in ideological thrall to the military-industrial
| complex?
|
| [0] https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/06/interview-venezuelan-
| pres...
| splithalf wrote:
| In theory it could all be a vast conspiracy of the news media
| to misinform people, sure, but that would be a conspiracy
| theory.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Why would think that the IEEE has been enabled by something
| else than the military-industrial complex?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Indeed. 1989:
|
| > For computer scientists, the role federal funding plays in
| shaping research in their field presents both good news and
| bad news, according to the preliminary report on a study by
| the Association for Computing Machinery's Science Policy
| Committee of the Special Interest Group on Automata and
| Compatability Theory. The good news is the fact that no
| abatement is in sight for the dramatic rise in federal
| support of computer science research
|
| https://www.the-scientist.com/profession/does-dod-funding-
| sk...
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