[HN Gopher] US Air Force shoots down drone swarm with THOR micro...
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US Air Force shoots down drone swarm with THOR microwave weapon
Author : MR4D
Score : 108 points
Date : 2023-05-19 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedefensepost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedefensepost.com)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Anyone know what this would do to a more traditional airborne
| threat (e.g. cruise missile or fighter)?
| rohan_ wrote:
| Defense engineers have more fun!
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't know, I was offered to design and implement military
| cockpits UI and tracking systems for the biggest weapon
| exporter in Italy for a very good salary, a 60% raise of what I
| earned at the time and I was like "no thanks, I want to go
| sleep without thinking I'm helping writing software to kill
| people".
|
| Since then I have a very clear clause in my contracts that I
| don't work in projects involving law enforcement, military and
| some other business.
| AHOHA wrote:
| Interesting point, I too have a similar moral, but I don't
| mind to do something for defense, no?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Much like how one mans terrorist is another's freedom
| fighter.
|
| One mans defense is another mans offense.
|
| Surely this microwave can be moved to the frontlines and as
| the frontline moves forward.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems hard to guess based on the technology if something
| will be defensive or aggressive. I mean, silly example, but
| if you invent a suit of armor somebody will say "nice, now
| I can use my sword two handed, no need for a shield!"
|
| Maybe nukes.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I'd like to know more, like the power of the beam, and what it
| does to the drones. I'm not wow'ed to learn that an electronic
| circuit can be influenced by microwaves, nor that a HF radio beam
| can be jammed. I note the article didn't claim this thing can be
| used to disable an autonomous cruise missile using inertial/map-
| based guidance, and having no radio receiver.
| smaili wrote:
| Do they decide on an acronym first then work backwards to try and
| come up with what each letter stands for or is it just a
| coincidence that they landed on THOR? :)
| Taek wrote:
| It's called a backronym :)
| falcolas wrote:
| As they say, "Someone really wanted our initials to spell out
| 'SHIELD'."
| hammock wrote:
| Chatgpt makes this fun and rewarding. How about: Mobile
| Integrated Countermeasure Radiating Overwhelming Waves Against
| Virtual Enemies (MICROWAVE)
| jstarfish wrote:
| The last time they _didn 't_ do this, they ended up carrying
| MANPADS into battle.
| AHOHA wrote:
| Both way, I did some projects with military and they care much
| about these acronyms for some reason.
| macintux wrote:
| I imagine when you're dealing with so many weapons systems
| it's helpful to have memorable names. Beats the heck out of
| X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6 (not to pick on BMW, but to pick on
| BMW).
|
| (Update: not to mention the need to appeal to Congress to
| keep funding these systems.)
| AHOHA wrote:
| Yep, it's mainly for catchy names for funding.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| If you want to pick on a company for strange naming, Sony
| is a great choice. WH-1000XM3, WF-1000XM3, Xperia 1 III,
| etc.
| dmbche wrote:
| I wonder if these devices could ever become powerful enough to be
| mounted on missiles and thrown at helicopters or planes and have
| them drop out of the sky - or mounting them on Growlers! Could be
| interesting as an alternative to explosives
| hendersoon wrote:
| They say it's a wide beam. Is that a misinterpretation of the
| spectrum used or did they mean physically a wide beam, as opposed
| to a thin maser? That would be extremely inefficient compared to
| a pinpoint accurate defense, wouldn't it? I assume military
| drones are difficult to spot, so maybe they need a shotgun pellet
| approach.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Judging from the size of the dish, I assume it's a physically
| wide beam. That also means you don't have to aim as well, and
| you can - like they demonstrated in the video - point and sweep
| to take out a large swath at once without having to acquire
| each target individually.
| epolanski wrote:
| Serious question, what if instead of pointing it to drones it was
| pointed to organic flesh? Wouldn't that microwave burst the water
| contained in someone's body?
| ilovecurl wrote:
| There is a non-lethal version of this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
| jiveturkey wrote:
| that already is a weapon. as an example, they believe a low
| power version is what was used in havana.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Came to say this. It's not a big mystery like the news keeps
| saying it is. How can one defend against this?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Tinfoil hat lining
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Please make a tinfoil hat and cook it in your microwave
| and let us know how it goes.
| verdverm wrote:
| The latest I heard about Havana is they believe that to not
| be the case any more. There are however crowd control
| versions for anti-riot purposes. They induce a burning
| feeling on the skin without permanent damage, supposedly.
| smegger001 wrote:
| I wonder who is doing the studies to prove no long term
| harm.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is lower frequency than visible light, so, of course
| burning things is harmful but we're not talking about
| ionizing radiation.
| smegger001 wrote:
| well if is actually heating the skin it could denature
| proteins? that can happen at a little 105 degree F. your
| body operates in the mid 90s naturally if its hot out it
| wouldn't take much added energy to push you over the
| limit.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| How would non-ionizing radiation that doesn't cause an
| acute injury result in long term harm? I would assume
| that you would need to propose a mechanism for it to
| happen, rather than try and prove a negative.
| smegger001 wrote:
| heat induced denaturing of proteins?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Water has a pretty high heat capacity. Takes a lot more energy
| to kill a person this way than a drone swarm. For instance,
| assuming it's about 20,000Watts effectively focused on one
| person, it'd take about an entire minute before you manage to
| increase body temperature by 3 degrees. Versus like a second to
| knock a drone out of the sky.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| The question is, how much can you focus it? It would be
| enough to boil one vessel in the brain, to kill someone.
| smegger001 wrote:
| contrary to popular belief microwaves don't cook from the
| inside out. if you are getting a vessel in the brain to
| boil you have just fried their face like a egg
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Not at all easily. Blood pumps quickly through the brain
| and back through the torso, quickly distributing heat. And
| probably the first thing a target would do when feeling
| heat would be to protect their head.
|
| Bullets are more effective against flesh.
| cephei wrote:
| It's hard to know exactly how much energy this is pumping out
| and how focused the beam is, but suffice to say anyone in the
| way might start to boil.
| option wrote:
| there is an opportunity to test this right now in real world
| battles and save a lot of lives. Just saying...
| hiatus wrote:
| One has to wonder what incentive there is in publicising
| something like this. Indicating capabilities to potential
| adversaries seems to have utility in limited circumstances.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Seems to have pretty clear dissuasive capability.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Hard to say what's already _known to be known_ by foreign
| intelligence. Doesn 't hurt to publicize it if you already know
| that major potential adversaries know about it.
|
| Also hard to say exactly how cutting-edge anything we get to
| see is.
| cheschire wrote:
| First of all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_of_force
|
| Also capabilities have to be made public to show what tax
| dollars are being spent on.
| skyyler wrote:
| Understating capabilities could have utility, no?
| binarymax wrote:
| Maybe not, since the Star Wars program taught us that
| propaganda of capability is a good enough deterrent.
| [deleted]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
| ultra_nick wrote:
| It changes the whole game. We were almost defenseless from
| swarms of flying grenades before. Now, the military can handle
| that threat.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Most military missions are posturing, there many incentives.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Same reason for knowing the U.S. defense budgets, number of
| aircraft carriers, fighter jets, etc.
|
| What's better than winning a war? Not having to fight one.
| regentbowerbird wrote:
| And also accountability to the citizens who are financing all
| this. A 773$B black hole in the budget would be undemocratic
| and rife for embezzlement.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion in
| assets.
|
| https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-sessions-open-
| prob....
| codyb wrote:
| I think they've been working on that. The size of our
| military and the amount of logistics that occurs requires
| a tremendous amount of supply chain infrastructure that
| is not all wired up in to some centralized system.
|
| You can imagine the complexity of auditing the work of
| tens of thousands of different individuals annually with
| 100% coverage in a system distributed all over the world
| that has just tons and tons of constant hard real world
| material needs day after day, year after year.
|
| My understanding of the situation is that these early
| year audits were never expected to be a full audit of the
| entire DoD but the results of the path towards a more
| auditable system and that we'll see that number of
| unaccounted for assets continue to shrink over time.
|
| It's only in the last decade or so a system that'd be
| auditable would be possible without it divesting huge
| amounts of manual resources at the accounting department
| as far as I can tell.
| nvy wrote:
| >The DOD is unable to account for 61% of its 3.5 trillion
| in assets.
|
| I bet most of the circumstances behind this stat are
| mundane. I used to be in military SAR and we had a
| mule[0] randomly go missing. We were mystified because
| it's not like a work-issued Blackberry you could forget
| at a Subway or something. It's hard to lose track of a
| 20-ton piece of GSE, or at least you'd think so. It later
| turned up in Kandahar at the coalition base.
|
| These things happen; it's not malicious so much as the
| fact that mission success sometimes mean you take the
| wrong tow mule and "oh well".
|
| [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=sellick+aircraft+tug
| paulddraper wrote:
| Reassuring
| nvy wrote:
| It's the nature of the beast, in the same way that
| sometimes developers need access to prod.
| krapp wrote:
| We're letting the aliens know the next time they try to invade
| our airspace disguised as Chinese weather balloons, we'll be
| ready for them. It'll be like the Battle of Los Angeles for
| real this time.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| If a relatively small research project is going to mean
| adversaries have to spend twice as much on drones which have
| heavy metal mesh shielding, that's pretty great return on
| investment even if the capability is totally negated by that
| countermeasure.
| MR4D wrote:
| Also, nothing was said about the maximum _design_ power of
| this device. For all we know, they could ramp it up to 10x
| the power with a different power unit.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I think it was Truman who said "Speak softly but carry a big
| stick". They have to see the stick for it to have any
| diplomatic effect.
|
| Then there was Reagan who collapsed the Soviet Union with a
| mostly bullshit space defense initiative called "Strategic
| Defense Initiaitive", aka Star Wars and SDI. That proved if the
| enemy believes the stick exists you don't need to actually have
| the stick.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > I think it was Truman who said "Speak softly but carry a
| big stick".
|
| Theodore Roosevelt, actually.
| MR4D wrote:
| Reagan (or , at least his advisors) was essentially following
| Moore's Law in the SDI effort. He knew that computers were
| getting faster at an increasing rate and the Soviets couldn't
| catch up.
|
| Same thing happened in the space race in the 1960's where the
| Russians had to build huge rockets because they didn't have
| the miniaturization capabilities of the US.
| nvy wrote:
| Over the last few years there was a lot of hay being made about
| how drone swarms have obsoleted $military_technology_du_jour
| and how there's no real way to defend against "drone zerg",
| etc.
|
| The USAF is probably publicizing this for two reasons:
|
| 1. To reassure domestic audiences that the USAF can counter
| these things to some extent and is working on it, and also
| probably to demonstrate return on investment for Congressional
| oversight reasons
|
| 2. As a form of soft deterrence; a reminder to unfriendly
| powers that "hey, we have this technology, imagine what else we
| have that we're not telling you about"
| jameshart wrote:
| "non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses"
|
| Presumably the version that uses kinetic faster-than-light
| microwave pulses is still classified.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| The kinetic slower-than-light microwave pulse is just a guy
| throwing microwave ovens at drones with a catapult
| lazide wrote:
| Add a targeting computer on the catapult and it might be
| pretty effective!
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| actually the pulses went back in time and killed the systems
| inventor. So it no longer exists.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Shhhh. Don't want to be on THEIR naughty list.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| It isn't like they are generating plasma conduits with the
| microwaves and then using a hyper velocity gas gun to propel
| a slug of plasma down the conduit!
| Retric wrote:
| I recall reading about some microwave or laser weapon which was
| pulsed to _in theory_ increase effectiveness. Part of the
| design was using kinetic effects and the sub light speed
| propagation of pressure waves through the material.
|
| Basically rather than trying to vaporize armor you heat or
| blast chunks off in rapid succession which can do all sorts of
| things including creating strong magnetic fields. Which was
| then possibly more efficient in defeating armor etc.
|
| I can't find the exact source but this seems related:
| https://www.nre.navy.mil/organization/departments/aviation-f...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Did they also trial it against a drone swarm that knew about THOR
| (which an assailant would) and had put the drones in "not even
| Faraday mesh" but just a fairly open wire sphere because
| microwaves are trivially neutralized with a "mesh" that has
| several inches of space between the wires?
|
| (E.g. wired cages that are already commonly used by drone-
| operators in the ducting/smoke stack/container/etc inspection
| business to prevent their $50k industrial drones from crashing
| into walls/ceilings)
|
| Because a test that doesn't test "what happens when the enemy
| knows the weaknesses" is not a test.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _put the drones in "not even Faraday mesh" but just a fairly
| open wire sphere because microwaves are trivially neutralized
| with a "mesh" that has several inches of space between the
| wires?_
|
| My physics is getting a little rusty, but I wonder - are
| microwaves going to "flow around" this mesh, or "flow _through_
| " (following a path along the surface and not leaking inside,
| ofc.)? Because if it's the latter, then I'd guess that enough
| energy pumped into microwaves will _melt_ the Faraday cage.
| badrabbit wrote:
| The drones would fly in a faraday cage? Really? Even if so,
| that's more cost and less weight they can carry. I am sure the
| US mil would also be concerned its own drones can be shot down
| like that.
|
| A faraday cage protects against interference but does it shield
| against energy? Are they using microwaves to excite components
| in the drone or is it more like a MASER where microwave is used
| to deliver energy?
|
| If this was light for example, I would equate what you are
| saying to coating the drones with a mirror, but if it is
| something like a LASER it would still damage the drone.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Conductive paints/coatings exist.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| You've clearly never heard of building inspection drones. The
| drones fly in a sperical cage, which you can trivially run
| wires through, or over, to create a Faraday cage after
| programming the drones to fly whatever pattern you need them
| to. Hell, buy some copper tape, off you go.
|
| Just because you didn't know about this thing, doesn't mean
| drone operators in military positions don't know about this
| either.
| badrabbit wrote:
| I did not know, I did not presume what military folks know
| either.
| vosper wrote:
| > You've clearly never heard of building inspection drones.
|
| Maybe they haven't (also, you're being kind of aggressive
| here - why?) but I think most likely the people building
| these weapons have. Just because the article doesn't
| mention drones-in-Faraday-cages doesn't mean that the
| military are dummies who haven't thought about it / don't
| know anything about what kind of drones exist.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Eh, just responded in kind. The "Really?" to make it
| sound like I was talking out of my ass wasn't necessary.
| binarymax wrote:
| > THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using
| its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses.
|
| Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light. Did they mean line
| of sight?
|
| Edit - well guess I was wrong!
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? They are just EM waves. "Light" is used
| colloquially for the visible spectrum but microwaves could be
| considered light waves
| krapp wrote:
| Microwaves do travel at the speed of light, all electromagnetic
| radiation does.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > Microwaves dont travel at the speed of light
|
| Yes, they do, microwaves are just a wavelength of light.
| [deleted]
| ared38 wrote:
| You are actually correct. The speed of light you always hear
| about is the speed of EM radiation in a perfect vacuum. In a
| medium such as the atmosphere, the pulse doesn't travel as
| fast. The slowdown depends on the refractive index, which
| itself depends on the frequency of the wave -- longer
| wavelengths have lower indices. This means that microwaves will
| move the tiniest bit faster than light through the atmosphere.
| tasseff wrote:
| You might have been colloquially correct. Microwaves travel at
| the speed of light, but my microwave that heats up a Hot Pocket
| can't. :-)
| jakeinspace wrote:
| They'll work in a pinch against a drone idling below your
| kitchen window.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > THOR engaged the targets and knocked them out of the sky using
| its non-kinetic, speed-of-light microwave pulses.
|
| Maybe that's military jargon but in Physics photons definitely
| carry and deliver kinetic energy.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Yes, I do think the military usage is different than the
| physicist's usage. I don't think (or at least cannot find) a
| consistent, hard-and-fast definition, but it seems like they
| are using kinetic in this sense to mean something that goes
| boom, and looks cool, and is hard to deny when shown on
| television. One thing I'm fairly sure about is that they aren't
| thinking about physics when they use that phrase!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_military_action
| jameshart wrote:
| Military usage of the words 'force', 'momentum', and 'charge'
| also don't follow their classical physics definitions.
|
| Likewise military specialists look confused when
| mathematicians ask them whether 'military operations' are
| commutative.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I remember describing something as hyperbolic (meaning
| ridiculously overstated) to a guy with a degree in some
| sort of fluid mechanics related thing, and he was like "I'm
| impressed you know that word, but that's a very specific
| term that doesn't mean what you think it means...", because
| it is a term he only knew from work. I had to show him a
| dictionary to prove that sometimes the same word can have
| different meanings. I'm sure this is an example of that.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > photons definitely carry and deliver kinetic energy
|
| Technically correct, practically irrelevant.
|
| Full direct sunlight exerts 1 ounce per 20 aces.
|
| ---
|
| Kinetic weapons are bullets, bombs, etc.
|
| As contrasted with chemical weapons, or electromagnetic
| weapons.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| A kinetic weapon is one that damages the target by smashing
| into it. Blunt projectiles like rocks, arrows, bullets, etc.
|
| This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage the
| target through kinetic force.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > This is a non-kinetic weapon, because it does not damage
| the target through kinetic force.
|
| It is literally the kinetic energy of the photons and nothing
| else that is disabling the drones. The photon kinetic energy
| is transferred to electrons that either overheat components
| or destroy control electronics with excessive voltage (the
| article did not specify which).
| nostrademons wrote:
| Intended audience: not physicists.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's the kinetic energy of a HEAT round that damages a tank
| too, but that's not classified as a KEW either, since a KEW
| is where the sole damage done is by the energy of a
| projectile (and a HEAT round it's the chemical energy in
| the round that produces most of the damage, after being
| converted to thermal and kinetic energy).
|
| I will propose that (generally speaking) a projectile has
| mass, which would exclude photons from the definition.
| zactato wrote:
| Unnecessary pedantry. You know what the title meant.
| spokeonawheel wrote:
| so classification of non-kinetic weapon versus "non-kinectic
| light wave pulses"
|
| seems like grammatical confusion to me...
| jameshart wrote:
| It's energy, but is it _kinetic_ energy? The photon's massless,
| but it has momentum... so it can transfer kinetic energy, but
| does it do so kinetically?
|
| More to the point, 'kinetic energy' is 'movement energy' -
| energy you possess by virtue of the fact you are moving.
|
| Show me a stationary photon and we can talk about its 'kinetic'
| energy vs. some other kind of energy.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| I don't understand that, given that momentum is mass times
| velocity. Can you explain?
| jameshart wrote:
| For a photon, momentum is (edit) the inverse of its
| wavelength, times the Planck constant.
|
| I appreciate that this is not really an 'explanation'.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Momentum is proportional to _frequency_. Inversely
| proportional to wavelength.
| jameshart wrote:
| Thanks - corrected
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Non-relativistic momentum is (simplified to) mass times
| velocity.
|
| Photons have zero mass, but still have momentum, p=h/l.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| microWaves [?] photons. It just has to mess with the target's
| waves with precision chaos.
| gpm wrote:
| Microwaves are literally photons. They're waves because of ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality#...
| baxtr wrote:
| Well... aren't microwaves electromagnetic waves and as such
| photons?!
| SEJeff wrote:
| Let's also not forget LEONIDAS, which is a bit more mobile but
| smaller.
|
| https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/01/24/epirus-counter-dro...
| otoburb wrote:
| >> _[the] weapon proved effective in neutralizing multiple
| targets even though it had never before been tested against the
| types of drones used in the trial._
|
| Presumably THOR was tested against American and/or foreign-made
| retail drones, and not foreign military-grade drones. Hardened
| electronics aren't a new concept.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is so snarky I cant tell if its genuine or mocking.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Hardening against really high energy pulses adds weight, and
| quite a lot of it. And flying things don't like weight.
|
| It'll be arms race, as always.
| paganel wrote:
| > It'll be arms race, as always.
|
| Example: You send 10-15 cheap drones against a side that
| employs THOR. When the drones get close to the target THOR
| will activate itself and bring down those 10-15 cheap drones,
| and thus revealing its position. You then target THOR
| directly either with artillery or with a slightly more
| expensive missile. Once THOR is out you can then send 100 to
| 200 cheap drones. Rinse and repeat.
| CPLX wrote:
| > thus revealing its position
|
| Takes a pretty serious piece of tech to do that part though
| codyb wrote:
| Yea, would it make a lot of noise, you wouldn't really
| see it right? Would the energy be detectable by some sort
| of equipment that you could visualize on the screen?
| edot wrote:
| Your artillery fires on my THOR but its projectiles are
| taken out by my C-RAM. Your artillery's position is noted
| by my ISR overhead. Your artillery is destroyed by my
| longer-range artillery. Your 200 cheap drones attempt to
| attack but are taken out by my still-extant THOR. I now hit
| your launching point with my artillery again.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| All of you do realize war is never as clean and
| predictable as you are all making it out to be right?
|
| You "just" get THOR to fire and take them out?
|
| You "just" take out inbound artillery?
|
| I haven't paid attention to them since the First Gulf
| War, but the abilities and competence of the 101st
| Chairbourne continue to be renoun and without equal.
| paganel wrote:
| Yes, it will be all a matter of execution. And as this is
| supposed to be used either against the Russians or
| against the Chinese it will all depend on how the
| Americans' execution will compare to that of the Russians
| and/or of the Chinese.
|
| Can't speak about the Chinese, but because of this war in
| Ukraine the Russians definitely have a very big head-
| start when it comes to the execution of anything
| artillery-related, as in I don't think the Americans have
| had to fight a real counter-artillery fire since at least
| the Battle of Hue. Maybe the Ukrainians (also pretty
| experienced by now) will teach them, if they (meaning the
| Americans) will be open to learn.
| ianferrel wrote:
| Yep. But the picture shows it mounted on a trailer, so its
| position doesn't have to be static.
| paganel wrote:
| In theory, yes, in practice, it's more complicated.
|
| Supposedly a similar thing happened with the recent
| attack on the Patriot system in Kiev, i.e. the Russians
| first sent some cheep Geran drones, the Ukrainians shot
| them down activating the radars around the Patriot system
| (or part of the Patriot system? not that clear), then the
| Russians sent some anti-radar missiles that took those
| Ukrainian radars out and in the third and last stage they
| sent some more advanced missiles that directly targeted
| and damaged the Patriot (which was by then without radar
| protection). Almost all images of radar systems that I
| saw from this war in Ukraine involved mobile units, both
| on the Ukrainians' and on the Russians' side.
| bitcurious wrote:
| > Presumably THOR was tested against American and/or foreign-
| made retail drones, and not foreign military-grade drones.
| Hardened electronics aren't a new concept.
|
| So your assumption is that the airforce can't source a military
| grade drone to test with?
| tracker1 wrote:
| I would assume any such drones would be larger/heavier and in
| fewer relative numbers. As such, able to be dealt with by
| conventional means (surface to air missile defense).
| awestroke wrote:
| Still a good thing that they can stop massively asymmetric
| attacks (huge number of cheap drones with cheap explosives)
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| I presume that the Defense Department's experts are well aware
| of these things. The article is sparse in details. Maybe they
| did test this new capability on "military-grade" drones,
| whatever "military-grade" means. Military technology isn't
| always superior to civilian, commercial technology, as anyone
| with even a passive familiarity with government acquisitions
| could attest. Both Ukraine and Russia have resorted to modified
| commercial drones in the Ukraine war. A North Korean drone was
| once recovered that was nothing more than a piece of crap with
| a cheap camera mounted[1]. Really, the only serious and
| adversarial competitor in the drone space is China.
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suspected-north-korean-
| drones-l...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > While the capture of the two surveillance drones appears to
| offer a rare glimpse into the North's technology, analysts
| stress they do not necessarily represent the best unmanned
| aerial vehicles the North can field.
|
| Always be skeptical of aggressive mimicry. A "piece of crap
| with a cheap camera" is cheap and disposable-- and misleads
| those quick to jump to conclusions. It's what you
| deliberately throw over the fence when you want adversaries
| to think you're underequipped.
|
| They have nukes for fuck's sake. They can afford real drones.
| sorokod wrote:
| May be true, but a lot of the stuff flying over Ukraine is
| retail. Future conflicts may be similar.
|
| DJIs seem to be popular
|
| https://gagadget.com/en/153538-ukrainian-intelligence-servic...
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That promo video has "suck it Iran" written all over it. Right
| down to the truck launches and drone shapes.
|
| I do admit I wonder about single point of failure with this, so
| hopefully it's part of some layered strategy. Maybe with some
| flingy nets, those matrix-barrel guns with like 100 barrels in a
| grid, eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props, etc.
| etc.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Training an eagle is expensive and time consuming compared with
| the swarm. A few explodey drones and an expensive eagle fleet
| is toast. We're talking months to years to gain a single
| eagle's trust
|
| [edit] Disclaimer: I volunteer at a raptor conservancy. Please
| don't propagate the belief that eagles or other birds of prey
| are an effective counter-drone strategy at scale
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I've always been curious about eagles as drone deterrents:
| wouldn't the birds' feet be potentially damaged by the
| propellers on the drone? Admittedly I don't know what kind of
| propellers a fancy airport-menacing drone or shahed drone is
| using, maybe they're just some kind of plastic.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| A shahed drone is, compared with an eagle, a small light
| aircraft with a piston-engine pusher prop and an 8 foot
| wingspan. An eagle couldn't take one down any more than it
| could a Cessna, essentially
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > I wonder about single point of failure with this
|
| Myself as well although I think this is already one of the last
| lines of defense. These drone swarms don't have a great range
| so the launchers need to get lucky to get close enough in the
| first place (I'd hope).
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The new, terrible 'bat bomb'!
| uhtred wrote:
| > eagles trained to swoop down and pick apart the props
|
| I assume the eagle dies or gets a horrific injury in this
| scenario?
| zdw wrote:
| Generally not: https://www.michigan.gov/egle/Newsroom/MI-
| Environment/2020/0...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| They tried that, in The Netherlands, I think.
|
| They stopped the initiative. Not sure why, but they didn't
| think it was effective.
| SimonPStevens wrote:
| Surprisingly they seem very capable of taking down drones
| uninjured. They have very strong legs, and with a flexible
| attack from below they can avoid the props.
|
| Here's a video of some french trained eagles showing how easy
| it is.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b8kZupqPbJs
| prawn wrote:
| I had a wedge tailed eagle take down one of my drones while
| filming. Drone ended up dropping to the ground damaged while
| the eagle wasn't too bothered. It just perched nearby and
| watched me picking up pieces, not preening or appearing at
| all injured.
| Marlon1788 wrote:
| I wonder how effective this is against a microwave resistant
| design. microwaves are incredibly easy to deflect, 1mm sheet
| steel at the right angles would be interesting to see. 1M USD
| start up drone company inquire here.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| If you can fully shield the electronics with steel then you're
| probably good to go. The problem is any small gap in the
| shielding (such as for venting heat from the rotor motors).
| giantrobot wrote:
| If you could build a drone perfectly shielded with sheet steel
| it would be the size of a Cessna and have the radar cross
| section of a B-52. The perfectly shielded drone would no longer
| be fit for purpose. It couldn't sneakily fly over enemy lines
| to spy or drop bombs or whatever. A steel sheet covered drones
| would just get blasted by traditional AAA.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Even aluminum foil can do wonders here.
| Marlon1788 wrote:
| tin foil hat drones incoming
| version_five wrote:
| The drones are going to be vulnerable because they need to have
| some kind of antenna to communicate externally, that presumably
| would be pretty broadband. It would be interesting to think
| about how one could harden them but still allow communication
| ... I think it's probably possible. Something like an nmr
| receiver that has diodes that short it out for high power
| input... I have no idea if that translates practically.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| Birds can navigate in large groups just based on several
| birds around them. If you had a swarm that was semi-
| autonomous after being launched, it could avoid comms
| altogether.
| ChikkaChiChi wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder if there is a design that could be
| fully autonomous, requiring no outside connectivity.
| giantrobot wrote:
| They're called cruise missiles and have existed for
| decades. Putting the same avionics in a drone is just
| building a smaller slower cruise missile.
| lazide wrote:
| Also dramatically cheaper, and well within hobbiest
| abilities.
| gpm wrote:
| > because they need to have some kind of antenna to
| communicate externally
|
| I mean, that's true until it isn't. Autonomous drones
| (otherwise known as weird looking missiles?) being used to
| attack a base with a fancy microwave air-defence system isn't
| really science fiction anymore.
|
| I suppose cameras might be hard to shield too?
| version_five wrote:
| It would probably also need GPS. I think it should be
| possible to harden a camera. Light can go e.g. though an
| arbitrarily small honeycomb mesh, while microwave cant. But
| it might be limiting in terms of what a ln autonomous drone
| would need to see. Lidar might be harder
| gpm wrote:
| GPS is jammable, I'd assume that the base with the fancy
| microwave anti-air system is capable of denying it and
| you'd want to be capable without it anyways.
|
| Guidance via camera has been a thing for a long time: htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERCOM#DSMAC,_Digital_Scene_Ma
| ... I don't know if it's available open source (or
| commercially), but I don't imagine it would take me (or
| any other reasonably skilled programmer) long to develop
| it these days. Satellite imagery is freely available from
| google maps if you have nothing better.
|
| Near(ish) peer adversaries (the kind that can afford
| drone swarms) are definitely capable of the guidance
| part.
| AHOHA wrote:
| Drones can fly safely with gnss denied environments, a
| system we tested it was in a mine with a very narrow
| areas, and at a relatively high speed too, being open in
| the sky would be easier.
| AHOHA wrote:
| I build drones that fly over 5G, the link os also encrypted,
| and use the same medium that other UEs (cellphones) use in
| the area, it is hard to impossible to detect even with DPI,
| or at least by the time you detect it, the drone would be far
| gone. The only vulnerable point though is the GNSS, it's
| weak, prune to interference and jamming, however, there are
| fail safe mechanisms that if that happens then it returns or
| land.
| version_five wrote:
| Aren't we talking about physically damaging the drones with
| high power microwaves?
| AHOHA wrote:
| OP mentioned using a steel sheet, and how vulnerable the
| signal can be, while it might work for RC ones, if you
| use a cellular network, it won't be much of an impact.
| Now of you can detect and destroy the drone on time, then
| yeah that works, but you will have to solve the challenge
| of isolating the cellular drone first from all the UEs in
| the area.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| How much do the direction/location of the antenna and
| incoming pulse matter?
|
| The antenna could point up and communicate with satellites.
| Meanwhile the pulse will be coming from underneath. Maybe it
| could be diffused off to the side?
| giantrobot wrote:
| A high power microwave beam will pass right through
| plastics and composites. Unless you add a lot of shielding,
| that microwave pulse can and will induct a charge in wires
| and electrical components. Shielding is heavy and makes a
| drone easier to detect.
| [deleted]
| Marlon1788 wrote:
| something like a small hole or slit in the deflecting body
| would allow different wavelengths through. The microwave
| region extends from 1,000 to 300,000 MHz (or 30 cm to 1 mm
| wavelength).
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Or you could use some kind of fiber optic system, worst
| case.
| amelius wrote:
| Anyone have a formula for E(x,t) and H(x,t) for the actual wave?
| barbegal wrote:
| Lots of words but not much detail. What I'm interstates to know:
|
| - The effective range of the system, if the range is only 100m or
| so then you might need a lot of these to protect a larger
| strategic area.
|
| - How it neutralises the drones, does it overheat certain
| components or just inject sufficient noise into the system that
| the flight controller stops working or just disrupt any command
| signals.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Now we need steam-powered drones?
| wayeq wrote:
| Thor is he-yah!
| AHOHA wrote:
| While I'm working mainly on drones/robotics, counter drones is
| also becoming a big talk with a lot of interest from investors,
| however, countring drones isn't that easy, even with latest
| sensors (sound/visual/Lidar/radar sensors), there's a lot of
| false positives when deployed in real scenarios, one trial we
| tried near an airport, the system we tested caught a lot of birds
| as drones, you tune it not to detect it, then drones goes
| undetected. Some systems tries to us AI to study the fly path and
| find some anomalies and trigger based on that, but so far I
| didn't see personally an acurate system that can reliably detect
| and neutralize. Swarm on the other hand, might be easier given
| how easy to detect them.
| runtime_blues wrote:
| Airport is probably a very different environment, though? I
| imagine that if you have a military installation, you don't
| mind blasting some birds with RF every now and then (and the
| birds probably don't mind either).
| excalibur wrote:
| As a passenger on commercial aircraft, I don't mind reducing
| the bird population near an airport.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think that if a drone is threatening civilian airline
| traffic you don't mind blasting some birds, either.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Unfortunately I do mind. Here's where I live, there's a
| bunch of endangered birds that live near the airport and
| don't live literally anywhere else. Can't really just go
| shooting them with death rays.
| vikramkr wrote:
| If any birds are in that situation near a military base
| or war zone I hope we got some if them in a zoo or dna as
| a backup for if we invent really good cloning since
| otherwise those birds are extinct
| version_five wrote:
| A bird is small and largely non-conducting. I'd guess it
| could plausibly survive a burst of microwave that could
| disable a drone, at any practical distance from the weapon.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Microwave tends to "cook" you.
| notum wrote:
| The best way to detect UAVs remains the EM they emit
| themselves, be it telemetry or electromotive hum.
| AHOHA wrote:
| The footprint for small drones is almost negligible, and
| flying at lower altitudes make it even harder to detect.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| How about trying your tech in Ukraine.
|
| > _Russian electronic warfare (EW) remains potent, with an
| approximate distribution of at least one major system covering
| each 10 km of front. These systems are heavily weighted towards
| the defeat of UAVs and tend not to try and deconflict their
| effects. Ukrainian UAV losses remain at approximately 10,000
| per month._
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Silly question but is it possible that the army would not care
| about birds triggering false positives if the weapon can do the
| work fast enough?
| stevedewald wrote:
| Yes. You give away information about your position and
| capabilities if your defensive system triggers inadvertently.
| hk1337 wrote:
| aka Point Break
| rdtsc wrote:
| Very neat. Wonder if drones could fly lower and swarm around it
| in an almost full circle. There could be anti-THOR suicide drones
| attacking first before the rest fly in. Then, would any shielding
| work or even some kind of a microwave energy reflector, like an
| inverted cone, to concentrate the energy back at the THOR system
| to use its energy against itself.
| notatoad wrote:
| given the number of actual incidents involving shooting down
| drones in recent months, it might have been nice to include right
| in the title that this was a demonstration, and not an actual
| deployment against an enemy.
| falcolas wrote:
| FWIW, it was a practical test, so while it does not presage war
| for the US, it does prove that this is a real weapon outside of
| computer simulations.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| This thing is easily defeated with a small amount of software and
| tactics.
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