[HN Gopher] Fiber optic drone control beats any RF jammer
___________________________________________________________________
Fiber optic drone control beats any RF jammer
Author : walterbell
Score : 145 points
Date : 2024-08-02 22:48 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
| fsagx wrote:
| The anti tank guided missile designers of 50+ years ago would
| find this rather obvious.
| Zamiel_Snawley wrote:
| I was just about to say the same thing, TOW missiles are still
| in service.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I think all the fiber/wire controlled TOWs are retired from
| US service though? The new ones are all wireless AFAIK.
| romwell wrote:
| The more relevant part is that _Ukraine_ is using them
| right now, and that has been specifically mentioned in the
| article.
| rock_artist wrote:
| From my understanding this technology is still actively
| used by Spike [1] based missiles and their counterfeit ones
| by Iran used by its allies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_(missile)
| Muromec wrote:
| That's because US military doesn't optimize for cost and
| can have those things costing in the area of 250 per shot.
| Ukrainian military does optimize for cost and gets 10 of
| fly by wire Stugna's for this money.
| romwell wrote:
| _> The anti tank guided missile designers of 50+ years ago
| would find this rather obvious._
|
| TOW missiles are specifically mentioned in the article as an
| example of this technology being in active use for decades (and
| particularly, right now in Ukraine)
| Muromec wrote:
| Ukrainian Stugna-P is fly by wire and was actively used in
| 2022.
| morkalork wrote:
| Stugna is laser guided, no?
| AmVess wrote:
| TOW missiles are a LOT faster than a drone and fired a LOT
| father away.
| tamimio wrote:
| Yeah, these are called tethered drones. They've been around for
| decades and have their own use cases, especially on moving
| vehicles or boats. There's nothing new about them.
| Cacti wrote:
| These have explosives and a ten mile fiber optic cable. Little
| different.
| tamimio wrote:
| Explosives are just a payload (like any other payload you can
| attach to a drone), either independent from the whole system
| or activated through a simple relay. You can see ArduPilot is
| the ground station, where you can easily customize such
| switches. The distance is only about the wire/fiber;
| obviously, fiber is lighter, hence the longer distance for
| the drone to carry.
| Zamiel_Snawley wrote:
| Ten miles is pretty impressive, but TOW missiles are from the
| 70s.
| mandevil wrote:
| The Ruhrstall X-4 [1] had five and a half kilometers of wire
| 80 years ago, along with a 20kg warhead and an acoustic
| proximity fuse.
|
| 1: Never deployed operationally Luftwaffe wunderwaffen, first
| tested in August 1944, wire-guided air-to-air missile.
| nikolay wrote:
| The tethered are differnet and long in use in America for mass
| surveillance in cities [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.unmannedsas.com/
| jwsteigerwalt wrote:
| I found it interesting there was no mention of submarine torpedo
| control by wire in the article.
| scintill76 wrote:
| I'm amused picturing soldiers following the fiber back to the
| drone operator. But I suppose either their location is no real
| secret, it's easy to defend and/or the other end has a radio
| transceiver far enough away from jamming and giving them a few
| more km of buffer.
| rasz wrote:
| Good luck finding end of the strand after explosion :)
| CMCDragonkai wrote:
| Why not lasers?
| Arrath wrote:
| Like using line of sight laser comms to send commands and
| return video?
|
| Exactly that, line of sight. The horizon strictly limits your
| operational range, and for fpv suicide drones there goes your
| terminal guidance (or the "buzzing around inside a
| maintenance warehouse to blow up vehicles inside")
| capabilities.
|
| Could be useful for high flying surveillance drones, but not
| much beyond that.
| morkalork wrote:
| The problem with following the fiber back is they don't have
| just one explosive drone and they will happily target anyone
| meandering into the grey zone.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Inside The 'Magic Radio' Protecting Russian Drones from Jamming
| (2023)_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735138
| walterbell wrote:
| What's the cost of a 10 mile fiber optic cable, relative to the
| RF drone jammer it defeats, or the $5K drone it defends?
| rasz wrote:
| Hundreds of dollars aka insignificant.
| walterbell wrote:
| That's a good price. Web search found Corning SMF-28e+ single
| mode optical fiber [1], retail price ~$1500 USD [2] for 10
| miles.
|
| [1] https://www.corning.com/optical-
| communications/worldwide/en/...
|
| [2] https://www.fiberinthebox.com/p/21683/corning-
| smf-28e-100kps...
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Multi mode is cheaper and perfectly fine for these low data
| rates
| jandrese wrote:
| Multi-mode would be heavier and bulkier. For the drone
| every gram saved on the spool is another gram you can add
| to the explosive. The article does talk about these
| drones having relatively small payloads due to the weight
| of the spool.
|
| I briefly thought about having the drones spool out a
| pair of thin copper wires instead and having very high
| voltage running through the wires so the drone didn't
| have to carry a battery, but realized this would be
| wildly impractical as the resistance of the wire would
| kill the voltage and they would constantly be touching
| each other in the wind or sagging down to the ground and
| shorting out.
| mey wrote:
| Perun (unsurprisingly) did a video on the drone's evolution in
| Ukraine, including countermeasures and counter counter
| measures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJnuTtUFiWM Drones
| are highly variable.
| lupusreal wrote:
| That's the wrong way of looking at it. At least, you need to
| consider the value of the targets this new system can destroy
| that the old ones wouldn't be able to.
| romwell wrote:
| _> What's the cost of a 10 mile fiber optic cable, relative to
| the RF drone jammer it defeats, or the $5K drone it defends?_
|
| Far less than the cost of the target it destroys, or the life
| of a trained soldier it kills.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Rf jammers don't work, too hard to chase an evasive signal
| zh3 wrote:
| About $1k off the shelf (depending on volume).It likely needs a
| jacket though.
|
| https://www.i-fiberoptics.com/asahi-optical-fiber-detail.php...
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I wonder if you could make a combo with power delivery and signal
| via a wire+fibre spool -- eliminating the battery. Then have
| intermediate drones holding up the strand to extend the range...
| manvillej wrote:
| each extra drone is more power needed to keep the drones and
| wire in the air. More power requirements means bigger wires,
| bigger wires mean more resistance, which means more power
|
| In addition, every drone has dependency on all of the drones
| previously. Failure at any point in the chain will cause
| failure in the entire system.
|
| So in essence, there is a limit to how far you can chain drones
| together and they will be very vulnerable to catastrophic
| failure.
|
| You also have more and more drones to control and send signal
| to.
|
| could it be done? yes. viable/useful? doubtful
| etrautmann wrote:
| cool idea but that seems very hard. Resistance goes up with
| distance, and tiny wires (100 um or so for fiber) would have
| high resistance and low current capacity).
| amelius wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38865518
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Could that be done with a high powered laser, rather than wire,
| I wonder.
| jharohit wrote:
| probably better done with lasercomms
| outworlder wrote:
| What about tracking and constant line of sight requirements?
| 23B1 wrote:
| Could do a 'local' relay drone with LOS on the 'forward'
| drone?
| etrautmann wrote:
| that requires good weather and precision alignment on a moving
| platform. line of sight is possible with a relay drone, but now
| you have to align multiple lines of sight precisely while
| moving, and still can't fly with any smoke, fog, etc.
|
| fiber optic seems like a pretty robust solution here.
| crygin wrote:
| You could even power it, too:
| https://powerlighttech.com/autonomous-vehicles/
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Would an 'explosively pumped flux compression generator' disrupt
| electronics within a drone?
|
| Also do many drones use GPS / dead-reckoning and follow pre-
| guided paths, to avoid need for comms.
|
| Came across - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fgcxDRti5s
| recently which uses an array of IMUs and filtering, to they claim
| get accuracy similar to a fibre optic gyro.
| jerf wrote:
| If someone says they're immune to RF jamming, I naturally
| interpret that from the perspective of blocking communication.
| I don't necessarily expect that they're claiming to be immune
| to EMP blasts straight-up destroying the electronics.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Lamo, what emp blast? You are envisioning a tech that does
| not exist
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You are envisioning a tech that does not exist
|
| Nuclear blasts can cause EMPs [1]. This is honestly the
| thing I am most scared about someone trying in a WW3
| scenario - one high altitude EMP for Europe, one for North
| America, and _everyone_ not in the military is back to the
| digital stone age.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse
| Etheryte wrote:
| EMPs have existed since the 40s, it's just the lucky fact
| that no one wants to start nuclear war that we don't see
| them in use.
| cryptonector wrote:
| You don't need a nuke to create a small EMP. But you do
| need a high power source.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Hahaha field this power source and counter a drone with
| it
| jerf wrote:
| It's not just nuclear bombs. Contra idunnoman1222's
| confidently wrong declaration, what anfractuosity
| referred to is well-established stuff around for decades,
| not some weirdo fringe thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...
|
| A lot of sci fi has "EMP grenades". I don't believe
| they've been declassified but I'd bet something like them
| exist. Whether they're quite down to "grenade" size I
| don't know, though my gut leans "yes". Most people's
| intuitions about what is possible in what volume of space
| are tuned for machines we want to be able to use and
| reuse. If you don't mind destroying the machine in the
| process, which you've already accepted if you're using
| the explosively-pumped flux compression generator, you
| have some options for generating a lot of charge very
| quickly in a small space, and there are people with
| experience using them in other applications out there to
| be hired.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Hahahah how does that counter a drone
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Hahahaha yeah that's how you counter a 50$ drone
| kaibee wrote:
| > Came across - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fgcxDRti5s
| recently which uses an array of IMUs and filtering, to they
| claim get accuracy similar to a fibre optic gyro.
|
| I had this idea a few years ago when I was learning about VR
| position tracking issues stuff. Kinda surprised this wasn't a
| thing immediately after the first MEMS gyro honestly?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The data link for the drones is critical for many of the drones
| functionality.
|
| a) Many drones still are being used for ISR (intelligence
| gathering). Live feed is valuable. Solving the
| navigation/guidance problem with dead reckoning doesn't let you
| solve the intelligence issue.
|
| b) Turning FPV drones back into fire and forget munitions kinda
| robs them of their value proposition. We -already had- smart
| munitions that could be fired more or less unobserved into an
| area, and which could then more or less autonomously select and
| attack its own targets. FPV drones (in some applications) let
| you have part of that functionality (you can launch an attack
| into a general area without knowing precisely what you're
| aiming at, while still getting pretty precise terminal
| guidance) at substantially less cost (though granted the cost
| savings are coming from a variety of factors, not just the
| sensor portion).
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Yeah, they're very good points regarding the live feed.
| slobiwan wrote:
| Using GPS doesn't mean you can't be jammed. GPS is quite low
| power and easy to jam, and feasible to spoof[1].
|
| [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2415318-ukraine-will-
| sp...
| anfractuosity wrote:
| No, that's true, I was under the impression there is an
| encrypted version though. Was thinking that could be combined
| with dead reckoning.
| iamleppert wrote:
| Forbes rediscovers the 1950's Park Flyer. Film at 11.
| zh3 wrote:
| Knowing a little bit about this, a 12km spool of 0.125mm plastic
| fibre costs about $1k [0]. Limits the range still (especially if
| the fibre is jacketed/supported in anyway).
|
| They'll be back to barrage balloons next [1].
|
| [0] https://www.i-fiberoptics.com/fiber-
| detail.php?id=3630&sum=1...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_balloon
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I've seen references to balloons are already being used by both
| sides a camera platforms, decoys, and high altitude mortar
| dropping weapons.
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| .014 g/m or .014 kg/km or 0.14kg for 10km or 0.31 lbs
| samstave wrote:
| Wow. Imagine just having a tether like this [whatever
| altitude] above your property - if you had multiple of these
| fibers, one could use them as guy-wires - to hold a balloon
| with solar powered cam and redundant fiber connections...
| These should be placed over mountains - remote cabins, ski
| resorts.
|
| Whats the tensile strength? So if you do use them as a guy -
| and hit some heavy winds... Put high powered air-plane-
| warning LEDS... a cam, and a HAM-to-fiber transceiver...
|
| EDIT - Also, several strands of these as guys holding a solar
| cambloon in place would pose no substantial threat to Big
| Bird.
| BJones12 wrote:
| > Whats the tensile strength?
|
| About 600 Kpsi. That works out to somewhere around 0.1 lb
| per strand.
| samstave wrote:
| Oh I was thinking that the thing was jacketed like... I
| just assumed wrong - youd still need to wrap it in
| superconductive carbon nanotubes to make it work. :-)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If the target costs a lot more than $1k than this might be a
| good deal.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| There's no target worth less than $1k on a battlefield.
| whatisthiseven wrote:
| Ironically, the drones themselves are targets worth about
| $1k or less. Just fairly difficult to spot/shoot down.
| datameta wrote:
| Fiber is problematic as far as LOS and obstacles are concerned.
| Most launch points are concealed, usually at the edge of a
| treeline. As far as I understand, fiber creates unnecessary
| risk for operators.
| wongarsu wrote:
| That's pretty cheap. An unguided artillery shell is about $3000
| each, plus the logistics of getting it there. Guided munition
| is in the 6 figure range.
|
| In these drone attacks Ukraine seems to now routinely sacrifice
| multiple drones to take out one target. If it's just about
| cost, $1k per drone to make it more likely to succeed is a
| great deal.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Beam riding is also a thing. The missile is guided by a sensor in
| its butt, therefore making it harder to jam.
| jandrese wrote:
| Beyond the limitations mentioned in the article (shortish range,
| reduced payload capacity), these drones also leave behind a trail
| pointing directly at wherever they were launched from.
| xphilter wrote:
| That seems solvable with a payload of a transceiver that is
| dropped outside the range of the jammer. Then you only need a
| spool as long as the radius of the jammer + some margin.
| renerick wrote:
| Unless you get some magically high quality camera on your own
| drones, the only realistic way to follow this trail is on foot.
| You can't just guide artillery or missiles to the other end of
| the wire, and if the Drone was launched over the frontline -
| there is little to do about it. And nothing stops the operator
| from pulling at least a part of the wire back, even if it's
| ripped in the middle - the trail is gone.
| jijijijij wrote:
| They could shine a very bright light into the fiber and see
| which tree lights up on the other end, at night :D
|
| I mean, mostly joking, but maybe an IR beam could actually be
| visible to a night vision equipped drone?
| zh3 wrote:
| It's surprising how hard it is to find low-diameter fibre if it
| drops off the desk, never mind through undergrowth.
|
| Of course, if it was monomolecular wire [0] you'd just encircle
| the opposition and reel in the loop, cutting them in two
| (horizontally).
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomolecular_wire
| chatmasta wrote:
| Who says the base needs to be a ground station? You could have
| a hot air balloon above the drones.
| 42lux wrote:
| Because your opponent will thank you for the nice juicy
| target and you will not only lose your drone but also all the
| others tethered to your carrier.
| chatmasta wrote:
| As opposed to a ground station that costs a lot more and
| can't be moved?
|
| I suppose you could have a mobile ground-based launcher
| though.
| Max-q wrote:
| A normal car or motorcycle
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| This is a consideration, but not a deal breaker. Most weapons
| leave a signature (though to be fair, usually much more
| transient) of the launch location. Artillery has to operate
| under the threat of counterbattery radar and fires. I'm certain
| the Russian operators have figured out acceptable mitigations.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Depending on how you want to count either the Chechens or the
| Soviets invented a sophisticated method called Shoot-and-
| Scoot [1]. I wager this method also works great for drone
| operators.
|
| You're not going to respool that wire anyways, those drones
| either find their way back autonomously or all have to find a
| target. After the attack just cut the wire and leave. You
| just have to be extra careful not to be detected before the
| attack.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot
| geoffmunn wrote:
| Based on their endless meat wave attacks, I'm pretty sure we
| know what their "acceptable mitigations" are.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Why put the spool on the drone? I'd think you'd put it at the
| base station, and maybe have a way to cut the fiber on the drone
| so you can pull all the fiber back to the base station. Ah, but
| maybe that makes it easy to find the base station, but unless the
| drone can be autonomous after some point and take the fiber with
| it far from the base station, I'm not sure the base station's
| location can really be protected.
|
| EDIT: Ah, the real reason the spool has to be on the drone must
| be that the drone can't pull the fiber through snags, and if the
| spool is on the drone then it doesn't have to.
| melevittfl wrote:
| I'm guessing the strain on the spooled end is less and you want
| the end most likely to detach close to the ground where you
| might be able to reattach it, vs in the drone where it would
| fall to the ground and be unfixible.
| bearbin wrote:
| The whole concept is unfixable. Once the fibre comes out,
| it's not going to go back in. It's that deadly combination of
| fragile and cheap. Just unpack a new drone and off you go.
| Don't spend a week (and 10 casualties going into the grey
| zone to collect it) winding it back up only to find it's
| broken in the middle.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, it's a one-time use kamikaze device. The fiber
| intentionally, continuously, invisibly drifts to the ground.
|
| The drone contains explosives. You _really_ do not want it to
| come back to you in one piece.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Cables drones would (and likely do) make better relays than
| as attack drones. A relay drone flies out to the horizon
| and relays the LoS signals to an attack drone flying over
| the horizon from the perspective of the base station.
|
| The relay then gets to spend far more of its power budget
| on the relay-drone segment and has a very low power relay-
| base segment. Relay drones also perform surveillance while
| they're on station. Better bandwidth to the base station
| from a "wired" connection means a higher fidelity feed or
| potentially additional cameras to cover a wider area.
| bearbin wrote:
| The drone moves, the base station doesn't. The spool goes on
| the thing that moves, so it just has to unspool to move
| further. If the spool was on the fixed position, the drone
| would have to drag thousands of meters of fibre behind it,
| needing more powerful motors and creating a risk of
| snagging/snapping.
| renerick wrote:
| Spool on the Drone means a a bulk of gradually decreasing
| weight, depositing the wire as needed. Spool on the station
| means the Drone has to pull the entire ever increasing length
| of the wire, which can get stuck or even ripped by the trees or
| other obstacles
| akira2501 wrote:
| > DARPA's Close Combat Lethal Recon drone was a fiber-optic
| guided loitering munition for urban combat
|
| Forbes just really loves pushing lethal "urban" technology. I
| personally find the habit to be disgusting.
|
| > "I am already asking Ukrainian specialists to test this control
| technology so that we do not end up behind the enemy,"
|
| It's awesome that after 3 years of this nonsense we're just
| happily escalating the conflict and imagining new ways to destroy
| urban areas and the civilian populations that live in them.
|
| Forbes, of course, loves this because in our current economic
| model there's a lot of money to be had in inventing new horrific
| ways to murder people. Well, that's my "1 of 4 free articles"
| this month, I guess.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > It's awesome that after 3 years of this nonsense we're just
| happily escalating the conflict
|
| Agree, it's unusual and satisfying to see the west backing a
| justified war of defense against a country that's a full-blown
| comic book villain.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > a country that's a full-blown comic book villain.
|
| Have you examined the logic of this position? You
| legitimately see an entire country as a "comic book villain?"
| And this seems rational and is a justified reason to send
| conscripted civilians to their deaths? So much so that it
| "satisfies" you?
|
| Wow.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > It's awesome that after 3 years of this nonsense we're just
| happily escalating the conflict and imagining new ways to
| destroy urban areas and the civilian populations that live in
| them.
|
| So the ethical answer is to what, roll over and let the
| Russians win? Wars are awful things. But to paraphrase Trotsky,
| you get to choose whether or not you're interested in war. But
| you don't get to choose whether or not war is interested in
| you.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > roll over and let the Russians win?
|
| Or negotiate for peace. It is known there was a solid
| negotiation process in place and the Ukrainians were
| interested in it. NATO was not and worked to destroy it.
|
| > Wars are awful things.
|
| ...and _Forbes_ acting as a cheerleader of them is
| disgusting.
|
| > But to paraphrase Trotsky
|
| Trotsky was spreading propaganda. In the actual study of war,
| they rarely break out as described, and they often have
| months if not years of time where they could have been
| avoided entirely.
|
| It usually turns out there is someone with vested financial
| interests in war and they always find themselves near the
| people who generate the conflict. Go figure.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is Russian propaganda or just terminal
| naivete. This war is going on because Russia, without
| justifiable provocation, invaded another sovereign nation.
| There is nothing for the Ukrainians to "negotiate" about
| other than Russia leaving their land.
|
| If I hypothetically put a gun to your head and told you to
| give me your wallet and the credentials to your bank
| accounts, no amount of "negotiation" would make your
| property legally mine or what I did any less than armed
| robbery. Same here.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| I think the propagandist was trying to make an analogy
| with the distinguishable outcomes of "dead with no
| wallet" and "unharmed with no wallet".
|
| In the case of Ukraine, Russian state media have often
| claimed their goal is to exterminate Ukrainians and their
| culture so that distinction would not exist.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| Forbes is just a blogging platform nowadays, not sure there's
| any editorial intent behind it.
| rolph wrote:
| fiberoptic drone control and feedback surveillance during initial
| phase of engagement
|
| such ordinance, would provide telemetry and situational
| intelligence resources while transiting the first kilometers of
| range, thus the ordinance is munition and reconaisance device.
| 42lux wrote:
| Is it only control or also power?
| darksaints wrote:
| I'm familiar with a number of methods that are being used in
| Ukraine, and the ones that drone operators seem to be most keen
| on is autonomous targeting. Basically, using computer vision and
| other sensor networks to identify and subsequently target a
| threat (usually in a cordoned off zone). Unfortunately the
| cameras, sensors, and compute hardware is expensive enough that
| they're trying to preserve the drone by using droppable ordnance,
| which is a lot harder to hit accurately. And the prices
| essentially mean they only get used to take out jammers, with
| normal FPV drones being used otherwise.
|
| They do rely on drones being able to switch between autonomous
| modes upon detection of jamming attempts, which seems easy enough
| to do (though I know nothing about the techniques). My thought
| was if the detection of jamming attempts is easy enough,
| shouldn't it be just as easy to use RF direction finding and a
| fairly simple greedy seeker algorithm to find and destroy the
| jammer?
| edaemon wrote:
| There are systems that can target jammers, like an anti-
| radiation missile (ARM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| radiation_missile. Advanced systems like ARMs use complex
| sensors and algorithms to determine the location of the emitter
| before guiding themselves to its location. That allows them to
| hit an inactive radiation source and avoid terrain, but it
| requires sensors that are too expensive to use on quadcopter-
| type drones.
|
| As far as I understand you can't simply follow the emitter
| signal because the jammer can easily take countermeasures. For
| example, putting the jammer inside a building or vegetation
| would prevent any unpiloted drone from causing any harm. Even
| if the jammer was exposed, cycling it on and off every 30s
| would still effectively interfere with flight but prevent a
| signal seeker system from reliably finding the jammer. Plus,
| many drones don't have the range to reach a jammer.
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(page generated 2024-08-05 23:01 UTC)