[HN Gopher] High-power microwave defeats drone swarm
___________________________________________________________________
High-power microwave defeats drone swarm
Author : nis0s
Score : 201 points
Date : 2025-09-27 22:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.epirusinc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.epirusinc.com)
| miketery wrote:
| This article is sparse on details.
|
| How much energy, how long is the pulse, how close were the
| drones?
|
| Regardless I think the primary challenge with these systems will
| be energy on site and a surge of it during waves of attacks.
| Charged up capacitors can only handle so many waves.
| WastedCucumber wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing, but haven't found much. Sounds
| like it's only ever been a mobile installation - on a trailer,
| stryker, and a ship. Except for the ship, that probably means a
| relatively limited power supply. And its limited range probably
| means that stationary installations don't make much sense.
|
| Sure seems like NATO would love to get a hold of some of these.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Potentially collateral damage too. You zapped some drones 100
| yards away, but what about that airplane a couple miles out?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what about that airplane a couple miles out?_
|
| Are these Masars? If not, square cubed to the rescue.
| hwillis wrote:
| Lasers and masers are not inherently collimated or straight
| lines. The _only_ thing specific to lasers /masers is that
| all the light is the same wavelength. Beam, parabolic and
| phased antennas are all very capable of making much tighter
| beams than your average laser.
|
| In fact at the limits of performance lasers (and
| particularly masers) are quite _bad_ at generating straight
| beams, because they are quite small sources of light and
| divergence is inversely proportional to the width of the
| emitter. It is a misconception that they are low-etendue.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Lasers are coherent emitters, which means that they
| behave like a perfect point source and the beam forming
| is limited only by diffraction. The collimation is
| limited only by the lens diameter and quality.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I assumed they would be masers or at least something with
| high directional gain. Otherwise your zapping a bunch of
| other stuff. Someone else said it's only a 2km range.
| hwillis wrote:
| Cruising altitude is ~40k feet or 12 km and the range of the
| weapon is 2km. The system only works because of all the
| exposed wiring on quadcopters; everything in a plane is
| enclosed in a highly conductive aluminum shell and is very
| well protected. The windows are large enough to let in
| microwaves, but not very well. Some antennas might be in
| danger but in general planes are built to survive _lighting._
| It would be a real freak accident for something to break.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd be more concerned about small planes or other drones.
| But if a little shielding fixes it, then this will quickly
| be obsolete as it's trivial to dd shielding if you're a
| malicious actor.
| bigiain wrote:
| And also - what about the payload that drone was delivering,
| aimed at the target and doing 150kmh or more when your
| microwaves zapped it and killed off all the electronics.
| It'll only take it 2 unpowered/unguided seconds to cover that
| last 100m, so it'll have dropped 20m on a ballistic
| trajectory. It won't have hit your tank right in the crew
| hatch, but it's still delivered its explosive way too close
| for comfort. Perhaps not a problem if the target is an
| armored vehicle, but it'll probably still set your ammunition
| store or fuel dump on fire.
| hwillis wrote:
| > How much energy, how long is the pulse, how close were the
| drones?
|
| 1 millisecond pulses and 70 kW continuous usage[1] which is
| roughly equivalent to the AN/TPQ-53[2]. 2 km range.
|
| > Regardless I think the primary challenge with these systems
| will be energy on site and a surge of it during waves of
| attacks. Charged up capacitors can only handle so many waves.
|
| That is not how this kind of thing works. Capacitors are a
| terrible energy source. Their voltage drops off exponentially
| as they discharge and almost all electronic are very particular
| about the voltage they require. A railgun wants current and
| does not care about voltage. Radio transmitters care a _lot_
| about voltage.
|
| Regardless, a 70 kW generator fits on a small trailer. Smaller
| than the weapon itself. It will run for days on a good sized
| tank of diesel.
|
| [1] https://www.twz.com/land/army-puts-50m-bet-on-next-gen-
| leoni...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPQ-53_Quick_Reaction_Capab...
| bigiain wrote:
| > Capacitors are a terrible energy source.
|
| They're a pretty good way of storing energy in a way you can
| deliver it _really really_ fast. Sure, not in a way your
| carefully designed electronic circuits can make use of it,
| but if you need a really really big ZAP! capacitors are a
| reasonable option. After all, clouds and dirt are not the
| most efficient choice for capacitor plates, and air is not an
| ideal dielectric, but lightning goes ZAP! quite satisfyingly.
|
| As I posted elsewhere here,you might enjoy Lightning On
| Demand's Lorentz Cannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lix-
| vr_AF38
| topspin wrote:
| > Regardless, a 70 kW generator fits on a small trailer.
| Smaller than the weapon itself. It will run for days on a
| good sized tank of diesel.
|
| At full load and a thermodynamic efficiency of about ~31% a
| 70kW generator is about 300hp mechanical. Those fit on a
| trailer. Not a "small" trailer. A dual axle type trailer with
| ~1.3 tons of capacity (Cummings C70D2RE.) Military generators
| tend to be heavier than commercial units. It will burn about
| ~175 gal/day of diesel, so yes a "good sized" tank about:
| about ~3.2 55 gal drums every day.
|
| Now, they're imagining "625 element" systems for adequate
| coverage of a high value site, like an air base. About 2000
| bbl/day. That's a little more than 10 large tanker trucks of
| fuel.
|
| Logistically non-trivial. The Russian's have learned that
| large fuel trucks are short-lived in drone-dense
| environments.
|
| Of course, that all for 100% 24/7 operation. I suspect that
| any real system will quickly become adept at running far less
| than 100%.
| aurizon wrote:
| A faraday foil layer will save electronics and shielded cable
| runs will block air induced pulses. Wired motor coils will
| tolerate, and fiber optic are immune. You can even control via IR
| data using a bidirectional LED with a faraday copper window
| screen protecting the electronics. The police use a microwave car
| stopper that uses pulsed EMI. Just new armor = new chinks = the
| race continues.
| nomel wrote:
| They make conductive spray paint for this sort of thing [1], so
| it can be applied to the inside cover of electronics. Usual use
| is targeted application for EMI suppression.
|
| You'll sometimes find a squirt this on the inside of consumer
| electronics, for a quick radiated emissions compliance fix.
|
| [1]
| https://www.amazon.com/stores/MGChemicals/page/0ADAC495-496D...
| Terr_ wrote:
| This feels like a weird counterpart to the can of plasti-dip
| spray in my garage.
|
| Combine those with the more-common juxtaposition of WD-40
| versus duct-tape, and one can probably summon something
| eldritch.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _You can even control via IR data using_
|
| You can... once.
|
| But that IR transmitter will be easily detected and destroyed.
| startupsfail wrote:
| There was a nice video, I've seen at some point where a "DJI
| Phantom 3 drone gets hit with an electrical impulse of 1.4MV -
| basically, a lightning strike."
|
| And at the end, they were able to protect the drone, with a tiny
| bit of shielding...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3iJjrQmEho
| password4321 wrote:
| > _they were able to protect the drone, with a tiny bit of
| shielding_
|
| That's not what happened in the video! Per the comments:
|
| "I was really hoping the conductive tape lightning rod was
| going to work, but no."
| bigiain wrote:
| A gutted microwave oven and a satellite tv dish have been
| demonstrated to disable DJI drones at ranges exceeding 500m -
| either having them fall out of he sky or trigger return to
| home. That's broadband jamming on the 2.4GHz radio frequencies
| though, not sending enough energy to screw with electronic
| (apart from the sensitive radio receiver frontends).
|
| (This was original DJI Phantom era, so maybe 10 years or so
| back. I'm not aware of results of similar testing against newer
| DJI gear, but I doubt it'd be much different, at least for
| consumer DJI stuff.)
| decker wrote:
| The starting cost for a drone show is around $20k USD, so it
| wouldn't be hard to fake what they are doing. It's hard to say if
| this a functioning system that can take down drone swarms, or
| someone is testing the market for a system that can.
| g-mork wrote:
| That seems a lot more complicated than simply using cheap
| unshielded drones against an ineffective weapon, but I guess
| it's possible
| sheepscreek wrote:
| They're selling defence equipment to countries, it wouldn't
| help their cause if this is just smoke and mirrors. It either
| works or it doesn't.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Hasn't stopped Boeing
| leoh wrote:
| I'm intrigued. Elaborate?
| sheepscreek wrote:
| If you read the entire article, you'll find a mention of an
| audience member pointing at a drone. Remarkably, the
| device/weapon was able to precisely bring that drone down
| without affecting any of the nearby drones. Clearly, they
| have something working for them. I can only imagine that it
| would be significantly more challenging than simply
| throwing a very wide EMP. Controlling an EMP is the
| seemingly impossible task, and they managed to succeed.
| stavros wrote:
| To be fair, they'd be able to do that even more easily
| with a drone show (ie remotely controlled drones).
| adrian_b wrote:
| This is not EMP.
|
| It is just a high-power microwave transmitter, made with
| gallium nitride field-effect transistors.
|
| Like any microwave transmitter, it can use a directional
| antenna. If the antenna is big enough, it can have a
| narrow enough transmitted microwave beacon to intercept
| only a single drone.
|
| The GaN FETs enable a higher transmitter power at
| whatever high frequency they are using. At lower
| frequencies, a 70-kW power was already easily achievable
| in the past. The higher frequency allows a precise aiming
| of the microwave beacon with an antenna of reasonable
| size.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Really. A British fraudster managed to sell $20 golf ball
| finders as bomb detectors for thousands of dollars each to
| various militarys. He got away with it for quite a while.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29459896
| siliconc0w wrote:
| It's a cool demo but I'm pretty sure if this become widely
| deployed, enemies would just start to wrap drones in copper tape
| or something to make this far less effective.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It's the real deal, lots of challenges with high emf. Not
| surprisingly a very common failure mode is that if you induce
| currents in the coils of the brushless motors their controllers
| which are using back emf to set their waveform phase get it wrong
| and the motors stop spinning, spin backwards, and sometimes just
| go back and forth like tiny washing machine motors.
|
| Shielding helps of course, adds expense and adds weight, the two
| things that cut into how many you can make for $X and how far
| they can fly.
|
| Counter drone systems in battle are going to be a thing, things
| like the Danish 'bird' RADAR sees them easily enough[1],
| targeting them with EMF just needs an antenna, generator, and
| some clever electronics.
|
| This becomes more important as the drones become more autonomous
| because if there is no operator to 'jam', electronic counter
| measures are not as effective.
|
| [1] https://www.weibelradars.com/drone-detection/
| hwillis wrote:
| > Not surprisingly a very common failure mode is that if you
| induce currents in the coils of the brushless motors
|
| No, that doesn't happen. Currents can be induced in the wires
| _to_ the motors, but not in the motors themselves. For one
| thing, the outside surface of the motors is the aluminum rotor
| which is an _extremely_ effective faraday cage. For another,
| coils don 't act like antennas. Loops of wire in an electric
| field have the exact same voltage difference as a straight
| wire.
|
| > Shielding helps of course, adds expense and adds weight, the
| two things that cut into how many you can make for $X and how
| far they can fly.
|
| Shielding adds virtually zero weight; carrying a spool of fiber
| optic cable adds a lot of weight. All the drones in Ukraine
| right now are fiber optic but most of them are unshielded...
| the reason why is not that shielding is heavy, it's just that
| there are lots of jammers but very few truck-sized weapons
| intended to totally disable drones.
|
| That's also assuming it would even _work_ on a drone without an
| antenna. If these weapons are not relatively broad-spectrum
| then they will be very sensitive to the particulars of the
| circuitry, and they won 't always work.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _For another, coils don 't act like antennas_
|
| Coiled antennas are fairly common and have been around since
| at least the 1960s...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| But typically with a much smaller number of turns. A motor
| coil should have a decently high inductance and thus act as
| an antenna only for pretty low frequencies.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Coil antennas can have thousands of turns.
|
| It is not the number of turns that matters to distinguish
| coil antennas from motors, though indeed a high number of
| turns in both motors and antennas leads to a high
| inductance, which ensures that any resonance frequencies
| will be low, so a received radio signal of high frequency
| will not be amplified by a resonance.
|
| The magnetic circuit of a coil antenna has a very big air
| gap, because its ferromagnetic core usually has the form
| of a cylinder or of a prism and the magnetic circuit
| closes through the air between the opposite ends of the
| core.
|
| The magnetic circuit of a motor has only small air gaps
| between stator and rotor, which are required to allow the
| rotor movements. Because of the small air gaps, the
| inductance of a motor winding is much higher than the
| inductance of a coil antenna with the same number of
| turns and using a ferromagnetic core made of the same
| material.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Currents can be perfectly well induced in the motors
| themselves, by the variable magnetic field of an
| electromagnetic wave.
|
| Any electromagnetic wave has both an electric field _and_ a
| magnetic field, hence its name.
|
| An antenna can be made from either a straight wire sensitive
| to the electric field _or_ from a loop of wire sensitive to
| the magnetic field.
|
| The only reasons why a motor is usually a bad antenna is that
| it should have a case with good shielding properties (i.e.
| the magnetic circuits have only small gaps) and the high
| inductances of its windings act as low-pass filters for high-
| frequency induced currents, like those of a microwave
| transmitter.
|
| There exist electric motors with very low inertia of the
| moving parts (to enable high accelerations), where the rotor
| does not have any ferromagnetic material and the stator has
| large gaps for the rotor. Such motors can be much more
| efficient antennas than standard motors, but such motors are
| not used in drones.
|
| All the cheap radios for under 30 MHz signals used antennas
| made of a ferrite bar with a coil on it, very similar to a
| motor winding, except that the magnetic circuit had a much
| greater gap than in a motor, because they were more sensitive
| at small sizes than antennas sensitive to the electric field.
|
| Moreover, brushless motors do not have an aluminum rotor. You
| are thinking about AC induction motors. Induction motors do
| not have brushes, but nobody calls them brushless, because
| they never had brushes. Only DC motors are called brushless,
| because their classic variant had brushes, which are replaced
| by power transistors in brushless motors.
|
| The aluminum rotor of induction motors is normally inside,
| not outside. The inverted construction is rare.
|
| Both induction motors and brushless motors have windings only
| on the stator, which is the external part in the normal motor
| structure, and those are equally susceptible to variable
| magnetic fields, except that they are usually bad antennas
| for the reasons mentioned above, especially at microwave
| frequencies.
|
| In an ideal motor, the stator is not an electrical conductor
| (which is actually the case for ferrite stators), so it has
| no shielding properties for electric fields, but it has
| shielding properties for the magnetic field, if the gaps in
| its magnetic circuit are small.
| bri3d wrote:
| Almost all quadcopter brushless motors are constructed as
| "outrunners," with a fairly thick, sturdy aluminum motor
| bell (rotor!) with strong permanent magnets glued inside of
| it and the stator in the center. I agree that they are not
| immune to RF but at high frequencies it will require a
| really comical amount of power to do anything to one.
| varjag wrote:
| Oh it will absolutely work on a drone without antenna: in
| microwave range every PCB trace becomes an antenna. If the
| field is strong enough it'll just blow the gates on IC
| inputs. If it's far away it can still do soft upset of any
| periodic signal, e.g. one of the numerous clocks on digital
| circuits.
| checker659 wrote:
| So, we could do the same with robots? Like autonomous killer
| humanoids?
| MountDoom wrote:
| Electronics is electronics. But the weight trade-offs for
| anything that walks or drives on the ground aren't as severe
| as for drones, so you could presumably provide EM shielding
| and light armor more easily.
|
| At the same time, terrain is just harder and slower to
| navigate, it's easier to erect barriers, and humans are
| better at spotting eye-level threats. There's a reason why
| murder-drones are common on the battlefield, and murder-
| humanoids aren't.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Murder Turtles, however...
|
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1056602.1056608
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/TurtlesAndDefense.pdf
|
| >TURTLES AND DEFENSE
|
| >Introduction
|
| >At Terrapin, we feel that our two main products, the
| Terrapin Turtle (r), and the Terrapin Logo Language for the
| Apple II, bring together the fields of robotics and AI to
| provide hours of entertainment for the whole family. We are
| sure that an enlightened application of our products can
| uniquely impact the electronic battlefield of the future.
| [...]
|
| >Guidance
|
| >The Terrapin Turtle (r), like many missile systems in use
| today, is wire-guided. It has the wire-guided missile's
| robustness with respect to ECM, and, unlike beam-riding
| missiles, or most active-homing systems, it has no radar
| signature to invite enemy missiles to home in on it or its
| launch platform. However, the Turtle does not suffer from
| that bugaboo of wire-guided missiles, i.e., the lack of a
| fire-and-forget capability.
|
| >Often ground troops are reluctant to use wire-guided
| antitank weapons because of the need for line-of-sight
| contact with the target until interception is accomplished.
| The Turtle requires no such human guidance; once the
| computer controlling it has been programmed, the Turtle
| performs its mission without the need of human
| intervention. Ground troops are left free to scramble for
| cover. [...]
|
| >Because the Terrapin Turtle (r) is computer-controlled,
| military data processing technicians can write arbitrarily
| baroque programs that will cause it to do pretty much
| unpredictable things. Even if an enemy had access to the
| programs that guided a Turtle Task Team (r) , it is quite
| likely that they would find them impossible to understand,
| especially if they were written in ADA. In addition, with
| judicious use of the Turtle's touch sensors, one could,
| theoretically, program a large group of turtles to simulate
| Brownian motion. The enemy would hardly attempt to predict
| the paths of some 10,000 turtles bumping into each other
| more or less randomly on their way to performing their
| mission. Furthermore, we believe that the spectacle would
| have a demoralizing effect on enemy ground troops. [...]
|
| >Munitions
|
| >The Terrapin Turtle (r) does not currently incorporate any
| munitions, but even civilian versions have a downward-
| defense capability. The Turtle can be programmed to attempt
| to run over enemy forces on recognizing them, and by
| raising and lowering its pen at about 10 cycles per second,
| puncture them to death.
|
| >Turtles can easily be programmed to push objects in a
| preferred direction. Given this capability, one can easily
| envision a Turtle discreetly nudging a hand grenade into an
| enemy camp, and then accelerating quickly away. With the
| development of ever smaller fission devices, it does not
| seem unlikely that the Turtle could be used for delivery of
| tactical nuclear weapons. [...]
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| And with the right shape, the turtles would bin pack when
| falling into a ditch and with enough turtles they would
| make their own bridge for the turtles that came behind
| :-)
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's turtles all the way down!
|
| Or all the way up. Yertle the Turtle represented Hitler,
| and now Trump and Putin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other
| _St...
|
| >Seuss has stated that the titular character Yertle
| represented Adolf Hitler, with Yertle's despotic rule of
| the pond and takeover of the surrounding area parallel to
| Hitler's regime in Germany and invasion of various parts
| of Europe.[3][4] Though Seuss made a point of not
| beginning the writing of his stories with a moral in
| mind, stating that "kids can see a moral coming a mile
| off", he was not against writing about issues; he said
| "there's an inherent moral in any story" and remarked
| that he was "subversive as hell".[5][6] "Yertle the
| Turtle" has variously been described as "autocratic rule
| overturned",[7] "a reaction against the fascism of World
| War II",[8] and "subversive of authoritarian rule".[9]
|
| When Dr. Seuss Made Hitler Into a Turtle: A reading of
| Dr. Seuss's "Yertle the Turtle" with a bit of history in
| mind.
|
| https://benkageyama.medium.com/when-dr-seuss-made-hitler-
| int...
| bob1029 wrote:
| Shielding only takes you so far. Somewhere around 10kV/m field
| strength the energy _will_ find a weakness no matter how well
| designed the protection is.
|
| The longer pulses the in this platform seem to be a big part of
| delivering effect on target. Area under the curve is where the
| damage happens.
| varjag wrote:
| IIRC NEMP is assumed to be at 50kV/m for milspec
| certification purposes. However most exposed devices are much
| simpler than quadcopters. There are some class exemptions
| too, e.g. electronic sights are allowed a fraction of second
| blackout after upset. Not something that would work for an
| attack drone though.
|
| What I think makes Leonidas more efficient is they likely
| operate in continuous wave bursts rather than pulses.
| Probably with a broad comb rather than one specific value
| too.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| I don't think a fraction of a second interruption would be
| overly problematic. These drones are somewhat heavy and
| thus bring relevant amounts of momentum. But the start up
| process is probably far too long
| varjag wrote:
| Yes the reboot takes too long, even before you account
| the time to re-negotiate comms (even over fiber it is not
| instant). However in a terminal approach on target say a
| 1/4 second disrupt will likely be unrecoverable.
| Quadcopter drones are not ballistic or aerodynamic, and
| stability recovery once it gets tumbling is challenging.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I wonder if this will work with fibre-optic drones.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| Anything with a power supply and a radio receiver has some
| susceptibility.
| schiffern wrote:
| No radio on fiber drones, but anything electronic is
| effected. Truly effective shielding gets heavy, and cuts the
| payload and range significantly.
| ra wrote:
| yes because it attacks the coils in the motors.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Probably would work once or twice, and then some kid will
| notice copper foil tape makes great Faraday shields. Hams
| already do this cage technique all the time to help lower the
| noise floor on cheap equipment.
|
| Probably better off with #12 or #9 bird shot shells, or a cool
| pet falcon named Xavier. =3
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| Drone defence (detection and neutralisation) has to move fast
| because it's quite asymmetric warfare (i.e drone worth $4K and
| take out a tank worth $30m) - over the last week for many nights
| Denmark's airports and military installations has had drones
| disrupt air traffic and cause a lot of angst in the population
| and they were completely not prepared, haven't wanted to shoot
| them down, and they don't know where they're coming from or where
| they're going - scary that they're caught so much on the back
| foot
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-25/denmark-defence-minis...
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Why don't they want to shoot them down?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Shooting at flying things in densely populated areas is
| generally a bad idea because when you miss, whatever
| ammunition you used falls on somebody on the ground. And if
| you hit, the debris falls on someone on the ground.
| drysine wrote:
| >when you miss, whatever ammunition you used falls on
| somebody on the ground
|
| No problem, you just say that Russians deliberately target
| civilians.
| animuchan wrote:
| This poses a fun dilemma: the belief that Russia
| deliberately targets civilians (which is likely correct)
| almost requires us to also believe that the Russian army
| fields precision weaponry allowing deliberately targeting
| things (of which the evidence is scarce).
| drysine wrote:
| >which is likely correct
|
| Why do you think that?
|
| >almost requires us to also believe
|
| That's easy. Russia deliberately targets civilians, but
| being totally inept, misses and hits different civilians.
|
| >of which the evidence is scarce
|
| Is it?
|
| Have a look at this one, where Russia hit Ukrainian
| MLRSes in a night strike.[0] Western media reported that
| as inhuman and savage Russians destroying a shopping
| mall.[1] The mall indeed suffered but only because the
| Ukrainians parked MLRSes next to it. Ironically the
| Ukraine itself provided the evidence of that by
| distributing video where they talk about the mall but
| incidentally show destroyed MLRS (the other one got
| evaporated).[2]
|
| [0] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/3150
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/world/europe/russia-
| ukrai...
|
| [2] https://t.me/ASupersharij/28133
| animuchan wrote:
| Point taken, thanks!
|
| Re: Russia deliberately targets civilians, but being
| totally inept, misses and hits different civilians. --
| Yep, absolutely, but this is unfalsifiable I guess. I
| mean, maybe they're targeting hostile aliens from space,
| but being inept, [...]
|
| Re: Why do you think that? -- I extrapolate from Putin's
| allies really. Hamas specifically (and very vocally /
| proudly) targets civilians, Hezbollah targets civilians,
| Iran and Houthis routinely fire ballistic missiles at
| residential areas. (I'm only listing things I've actually
| witnessed, as a noncombatant.)
|
| So intuitively they're all in the same bucket. I'll be
| happy to be completely wrong about Russia in this regard.
| tim333 wrote:
| There's this, though with a drone
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/17/russia-uses-drones-
| to-ta...
| drysine wrote:
| Here is one of the top Ukrainian propagandists posting in
| his personal channel a video from Belgorod (Russia) that
| shows wounded Russian women screaming and thrashing in
| agony (the text reads "Happy New Year, bitches") after
| Ukrainian MLRS strike at the city:
| https://t.me/dmytrogordon_official/39688
|
| Here is the Ukraine targeting the same high-rise
| apartment building in Kazan with multiple drones:
| https://t.me/readovkanews/91042
|
| Here is the Ukraine blowing a bridge in Russia exactly
| when a passenger train was passing under it leading to
| deaths of civilians including children:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/01/deaths-as-
| russ...
|
| Here are a paramedic and an ambulance driver murdered by
| Ukrainian drone near Sudzha (Kurskaya oblast):
| https://t.me/readovkanews/85353
|
| I could go on and on.
|
| Which conclusions do you draw from that about the current
| Ukrainian regime or Ukrainian nationalists?
| tim333 wrote:
| I'd say it's a fine example of whataboutism in an
| argument. The fact that other people in history have
| committed atrocities does not mean it's hunky dory to
| Russia to murder people.
| drysine wrote:
| >that other people in history
|
| What? It's atrocities that are being committed right now
| by the Ukraine. Do they mean that "Ukraine deliberately
| targets Russian civilians"?
| drysine wrote:
| >I extrapolate from Putin's allies really. ... they're
| all in the same bucket
|
| Hamas, Hezbolla or Houthis are hardly Russian allies.
| Iran isn't fighting on the Russian side like North Korea
| did, but I guess you can call them an ally of sorts.
|
| Here is a bit about Israel, which supports the Ukraine:
| Two of the sources told the outlets that in the first few
| weeks of the war, the IDF allowed up to 15 or 20 civilian
| deaths for every low-ranking Hamas militant assassinated.
| That number could increase to up to more than 100
| civilians if the IDF were targeting a single senior Hamas
| official, the sources said. "There was a
| completely permissive policy regarding the casualties of
| operations," one source said, according to the report. "A
| policy so permissive that in my opinion it had an element
| of revenge." [0]
|
| Assuming that's true, should we extrapolate that too?
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-military-
| idf-civili...
| beeflet wrote:
| does it apply to birdshot? The solution is many small
| projectiles with great drag to mass ratio
| doikor wrote:
| If you fly the drone 100m up in the air it will block
| commercial flying due to risk of collision but birdshot
| can't reach it.
|
| Even if you manage to hit it at that range there just
| isn't enough kinetic power left to really do any damage.
|
| For example here is a Finnish journalist being shot at
| 70m with birdshot. https://youtu.be/WJgzzrcSmNM?t=124
| note that the shot did hit them but none managed to go
| trough the cardboard and normal civilian clothes were
| enough protection for other parts of the body.
|
| Basically outside of drones that are trying to hit you
| (suicide fpv drones) birdshot is kinda useless as there
| isn't really any reason to fly them so close that they
| would be in effective range.
| XorNot wrote:
| The other thing is even if birdshot works...the drone is
| likely to fall down relatively intact where again - it
| might hit someone.
| nick49488171 wrote:
| Lest anyone misinterpret your statement, shotguns are
| still dangerous at long range: No. 7 1/2 shot carries,
| and is dangerous to humans, for 125 yards; No. 6 shot is
| dangerous for 250 yards; 3 and 4 shot are dangerous for
| 300 yards and BB shot is dangerous for 450 yards. The
| heavy shot used for geese is dangerous for 1,400 yards --
| almost a mile.
|
| The spread will mean you likely won't hit what you are
| aiming at, but it is still dangerous.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Bullets are spin-stabilized: if you shoot at something in the
| air and miss, the bullet will generally still be lethal when
| it eventually returns to the ground. That's a no-no in
| densely populated areas.
| Beijinger wrote:
| ?
|
| You would not be able to hit a drone with a bullet.
| Statistics are against you.
|
| You use fancy AHEAD ammunition that disintegrates, and
| hopefully the drone with it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHEAD_ammunition
|
| Yet, the bursts fired are expensive as fuck. Much more
| expensive than the drone.
|
| Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Can't some kind of shot shell get used that just throws
| pellets in the direction? Shorter effective range but way
| better chance of hitting the drone. Also, comparatively
| cheap.
|
| What you linked seems like it would only be needed for an
| armored drone?
| Beijinger wrote:
| This system has a range up to 5 km. Shotguns shells are
| sometimes effective, often not. There are enough videos
| of, mostly Russians, trying to shoot them down with a
| shotgun.
|
| This AHDEA ammunition, while expensive, will bring down
| not only a drone, airplane or chopper, but also artillery
| grenades.
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm fairly certain clay pigeon shooting type ammunition
| and aiming skills stand reasonable chances of hitting
| even small drones and doing sufficient damage to knock
| then out of the sky, but only at maybe 50m or so range. A
| typical attack drone like the types used in Ukraine right
| now are probably capable doing well over 30m/s on final
| approach, so it'd be a tough interception still, only
| about a one second window to get your shot off before
| it's likely to deliver it's payload ballistically even if
| you have scored a direct hit.
|
| I suspect the same sort of skills displayed in Ukraine
| building home made Ardupilot based drones with optical
| final stage guidance could also be turned to building
| multi barrel "Phalanx-style" shotgun setups on manual
| plus computer-optical assisted aiming, in a form factor
| compact enough to be installed in the back of a Hilux.
| And that'd be very much the sort of mostly Commercial Off
| The Shelf approach that seems to do so well tipping the
| asymmetric warfare in Ukraine's favour in this war.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| No, the range is far too short. Hitting a moving target
| with normal bullets is not particularly difficult but you
| have to consider where those bullets land. Hence why many
| guns designed for this purpose use larger ammo capable of
| self-destructing if they don't hit the target.
| foota wrote:
| I'm fairly certain they're shotting down drones with
| bullets in Ukraine. See for instance:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkkdWu7Xt7o
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Sure, and for those reasons of probability of a
| successful hit, hunters don't tend to shoot birds on the
| wing with rifles either. I mean it's doable, but it's a
| very hard shot to land with a MK-1 Eyeball.
|
| But we've seen infantry effectively using shotguns in
| Ukraine as a defensive weapon against drones for the same
| reason hunters use shotguns to shoot birds on the wing,
| within your weapon's range the odds of a disabling hit
| are pretty high if you're trained.
|
| So not sure why it has to be either a rifle bullet _or_ a
| massively overengineered defense contractor's very
| expensive super-duper-shotgun round.
|
| Haha, wait, it's flak guns again, just redone for the
| 21st century. Ah bless.
|
| If the choice is restricted by stand-off range, that is a
| different kettle of fish, maybe do bring back the, once
| considered entirely obsoleted by high altitude aircraft
| and missiles flak.
|
| But in the here and now, regular shotguns are being used
| defensively, with a certain level of success, by infantry
| against drones in Ukraine.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Based on random videos I have seen, it seems pretty
| difficult to shot down a drone with a shotgun. Sure,
| better than nothing, probably your best bet at that
| point.
| baxuz wrote:
| Rheinmetall's Skynex system costs an estimate of 4k EUR
| per engagement.
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| Does the spin-stabilized part have any relevance here? It
| doesn't have anything to do with the lethality of a falling
| bullet.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Spin-stabilized bullets bleed their speed at a far slower
| rate, greatly increasing average terminal velocity and
| therefore lethality.
| apt-apt-apt-apt wrote:
| You're right- spin-stabilized bullets would have
| significantly less drag, thus would travel much higher,
| and thus come down with way more lethality. Honestly
| though, unless someone's trying to shoot the drone with a
| musket, all bullets are going to be stabilized somehow.
| lstodd wrote:
| Nope. Maybe the idea was that an unstabilized slug will
| tumble and lose velocity quickly, after which it's just
| some junk falling from above, mostly harmless.
| nakamoto_damacy wrote:
| Claims show it disabling many small, largely unhardened drones;
| they do not prove it can defeat a properly shielded electronics
| bay.
| sleepyguy wrote:
| This type of weapon reflects the West's approach to drone warfare
| --multi-million-dollar pieces of equipment that will need to be
| right on the front line to defend troops and positions. I'll tell
| you right now, it would last about 10 minutes on the front lines
| in Ukraine. What many people don't realize is the sheer volume of
| drones being used in some of the battles along the front--it's
| not hundreds, but thousands. Trenches are being abandoned, and
| everyone is going underground. Ground drones can't even be sent
| in to support front line troops anymore, as vehicles are taken
| out within minutes. This is a weapon of last resort, to take out
| what gets through to the rear. We need front line solutions which
| don't exist yet.
|
| Here is a quote from a piece a front line defender in the
| Ukrainian Arm Forces wrote. His name is Maksym Zhorin
|
| >Equally dangerous is the technological obsolescence of NATO
| countries and their inability to counter modern threats. Adequacy
| of response, means of combat, even simply understanding what real
| war looks like today -- all of this is missing. Therefore, even a
| few drones have become a problem for them.
|
| I don't know what the solution to drones are because everything
| is evolving in real time.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Hit their cheap drone with your cheap drone? Seems like mg
| bullets are cheaper as well. Hook up an mg to a webcam with
| motion tracking and stick it in a bush. Might not even need
| sophisticated tracking with sufficient volume of fire.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Technologies are obsoleted at ridiculous rates during the war.
| Anyone still remember how HIMARS was supposed to win the war?
| Indeed it was absolutely fantastic at first, but everyone sort
| of stopped talking about it. It turns out Russians zoomed in on
| the weakest spot of these types of weapons - reliance on GPS.
| As soon as they started jamming that, the effectiveness of a
| whole slew of those types of weapons went way down. So now
| there is a whole rush to create anti-jammable GPS technology.
|
| Same thing with drones. They are a game changer but then
| Russians figured out they can use drones too. Moreover, they
| were the first ones to field fiber optic drones. Those things
| are bonkers. As in, if someone told me "this defense company is
| creating fiber optic drones" I could have bet it's a corruption
| scheme as the idea just seems to implausible yet here it is,
| now both sides use them.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| In fairness, Ukraine received nerfed versions of most of that
| tech from the US, increasing its susceptibility to things
| like GPS jamming. A lot of it was downgraded to circa
| 1980-1990s capability levels, which is still adequate for a
| lot of the Soviet era tech Russia is using.
|
| It would likely be a mistake to overfit what is happening in
| the Ukraine to US capabilities.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| NATO needs to start working on more low-tech high volume
| solutions.
|
| The Netherlands and Germany used to have old anti-air systems
| that were basically a tank undercarriage with a radar and two
| rapid fire machine guns. It was a system from the 1960s.
| Ineffective against fighter jets since those fly higher than
| the range of the guns, but a modern version of this would be
| cost effective against low tech drones.
|
| You could build something like it using an existing armoured
| personnel carrier, fast movable gun and a modern radar sensor.
| It would be helpless against jets or tanks, but I think the way
| to use it would be to have high-tech air defense systems shoot
| the jets (with very expensive missiles) at long range and use
| these glorified air guns to shoot the drones at much closer
| range.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| There is a reason why you won't find nor Shilka nor Tunguska
| there.
| imglorp wrote:
| This seems like an ideal application of the electrolaser. This
| was an ultraviolet laser that would ionize a channel through air
| and then a high voltage pulse could be sent over that channel to
| a target. Originally they were talking about this being like a
| long range taser as a non-lethal stun weapon, but maybe more
| suited for anti-drone technology.
|
| I don't know why this didn't get realized in its original form.
| Maybe there was a practical impediment.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser
| bigiain wrote:
| You might enjoy Lightning On Demand's Lorentz Cannon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lix-vr_AF38
|
| I does seem like a lot of stuff is needed. He's got 2 tons of
| capacitors in a stack 20 feet tall to get around 35 feet of
| range. He although he says:
|
| "I was surprised at just how fast the plasma cannon range
| scaled with increasing drive voltage and how much explosive
| force the shock wave can deliver to target the data suggests
| that a plasma cannon with just a 30t high Marx Tower could
| achieve 1/4 mile range"
|
| I know military contractors will have 3 or more orders of
| magnitude more money to throw at their technology demos, but I
| suspect there's some cold hard physics which shows it's totally
| impractical to defend anything more then very small high value
| targets with a system like that.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| They used a filament to guide their charge.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Won't this be pretty easy to defend against with some shielding
| and optocouplers? Doubly so for fiber optic drones.
| henearkr wrote:
| Would this be safe for e.g. birds?
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm pretty sure people with hostile drones inbound on a
| battlefield aren't too worried about whether it's safe for
| birds.
|
| I'm not even sure that the people responsible for keeping
| airports safe and open care too much either. But no doubt
| there'll be pushback ranging from genuinely concerned anuimal
| rights people, through to completely unhinged conspiracy
| theorists. who make it difficult to build/test/deploy this sort
| of thing in civilian contexts.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| "people with hostile drones inbound"
|
| People under treat will justify all sorts of things. It's up
| to everyone else to to balance whether their response is
| reasonable.
| beeflet wrote:
| The microwaved birds should be completely safe to eat
| lstodd wrote:
| This looks like a repurposed AESA radar. What took them so long
| then?
| varenc wrote:
| This fictionalized demo video from the company is entertaining:
| https://vimeo.com/942125659/223b79c285
|
| It's an over the top promotional video that feels like it's out
| of movie. Must have cost them plenty to make it. It's like porn
| for military gear.
|
| Fascinating to me that making content like that presumably helps
| them sell.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Shit you can do when your target audience isn't "people in
| general", which is #1 reason why modern ads are so bland and
| boring. Also, I assume they're not trying to sell a specific
| product here, but rather an idea that someone can later invest
| in.
| trcf22 wrote:
| Not so different from matrix isn't? I've got no idea how it
| works but does it also destroys all forms of electronics in the
| area?
| torginus wrote:
| Because this is all what they have - a fictional dramatization
| meant to impress layman decision makers into buying a
| tremendously expensive system that'll never be viable.
|
| This would've worked in a world with no major conflict where
| the main enemy was a fictional one dreamed up by them to be
| especially vulnerable to the sort of system they make but we
| don't live in that world.
| imtringued wrote:
| You have to consider that they assume that the enemy uses the
| standard online forum strategy of swarming the drones.
|
| If you have enough drones for a swarm, you'd realize that
| losing some of them to figure out the enemies' anti air defense
| range would be a viable strategy, which means you'll stop
| swarming them.
| michelb wrote:
| Also, will these swarms even be picked up by radar?
| CommenterPerson wrote:
| And the OP link reads like a PR news release.
| nirui wrote:
| Speak of microwave anti-drone weapons, YouTube channel Tech
| Ingredients made one with microwave oven parts:
| https://youtu.be/V6XdcWToy2c?t=1298
|
| At 21:38 of the video (link above is timestampped), as the drone
| got hit by the microwave, one side of it's motors
| stopped/malfunctioned, which lead to asymmetric thrust, causing
| the drone to flip and fall. But the drone itself seemed still
| functional after the fall.
|
| Not sure how much damage Epirus' Leonidas could cause. My opinion
| is, if you want to anti-drone, you need to kill it fast, faraway
| and complete. If the vehicle is not agile enough, the drones will
| just go behind you. And if a drone can total a tank with ease,
| that armored carrier vehicle will not survive much hits.
| stavros wrote:
| Generally, if a motor desyncs, you need to reboot the ESC. It's
| very hard for the drone to take off again, though, as stuff on
| the ground tends to tangle up in the motors.
| imtringued wrote:
| Actually, if you can capture the enemies' drones intact and
| reprogram them, the enemy is fucked.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Epirus has improved on previous iterations by using Gallium
| Nitride (GaN) semiconductors to generate microwaves instead of
| fragile, power-hungry magnetron vacuum tubes"_
|
| Presumably this technology could also be used to make more
| efficient and powerful microwave ovens. Have any consumer
| appliance makers started using GaN semiconductors in their
| microwaves?
| nico_h wrote:
| Probably not enough margin in microwaves ovens to justify
| putting GaN stuff in it yet. Maybe for premium products. Bigger
| volume! Silent operation! More efficient!
| nick49488171 wrote:
| Would it be silent? A lot of the noise sounds like
| transformer noise which you would still get
| snops wrote:
| It would be operating off rectified DC (like an induction
| hob) or using a SMPS operating at ultrasonic frequencies to
| deliver a lower DC voltage, you wouldn't get the 50Hz buzz
| even if there was a transformer.
| WithinReason wrote:
| It's in development:
| https://www.digikey.com/Site/Global/Layouts/DownloadPdf.ashx...
|
| _Varying the phase between multiple antennae can enable the
| field distribution inside the oven to be intelligently
| controlled to achieve homogeneous cooking results. Furthermore,
| by modifying the frequency and phase to match the food in the
| oven, very high RF energy delivery efficiency can be attained -
| above 90% even for small loads._
|
| _It has been demonstrated how a steak can be cooked on the
| same plate as ice cream without it melting, showing the
| precision of the directed RF energy. In practice, one gets
| outstanding control over internal meat temperature, with a
| tight tolerance of just one degree Celsius. Therefore, food can
| be cooked automatically, and one simply specifies the steak
| "doneness" level, for example, medium rare; and the oven will
| measure the food's properties and calculate the required
| settings. Without having to manually enter the power levels,
| cooking is more predictable, and the interface more user-
| friendly_
|
| A consumer version is e.g. the Miele Dialog oven, costing $10K
| Animats wrote:
| Here we have the latest Ukrainian drones resistant to Russian
| countermeasures.[1] There are Japanese drones able to not only
| survive lightning strikes, but guide them.[2]
|
| Because the Russia-Ukraine war is so active, drones that can
| survive RF weapons can be expected essentially immediately.
| Ukraine fields a new generation of drones every three months.
| They have to.
|
| [1] https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-tests-new-kamikaze-
| drone...
|
| [2] https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/04/japan-has-successfully-
| used-...
| varjag wrote:
| You're talking about comms jamming, which has been mostly
| useless in Ukraine for some time now. Leonidas appears to use
| directed EMI upset of digital circuits as a mechanism. No
| existing quadcopter design is immune. And while designing an
| immune drone is possible, it will be an entirely different cost
| proposition.
| devttyeu wrote:
| Put sensitive electronics in a metal box, comms over a fiber
| (already common), and you're good to go.
|
| Only tricky thing is if currents induced in motors are too
| hard to reject in driver circuitry, tho even at the extreme
| this should be possible to insulate with capacitors (or
| worse/heavier with transformers)
| varjag wrote:
| Sounds like a great plan if you don't need a camera,
| positioning and magnetic compass. You also want your cage
| grounded or very thick, otherwise with sufficiently strong
| field it will become preemable.
| pulse7 wrote:
| You can put camera in transparent Faraday cage. With
| camera and gyro one can do basic positioning...
| XorNot wrote:
| Basic yes, but drones are precision strike weapons by
| necessity: they can't carry enough payload to kill
| everything in a 50m radius for example. They depend on
| generally nailing a single target with cm-level
| precision.
|
| And all that stuff is a new supply chain and more weight
| which isn't payload.
|
| That a countermeasure can be built doesn't mean it's
| necessarily effective to do so - your drones get less
| cheap, less numerous, you have to incorporate such
| systems into tactical and strategic planning.
| imtringued wrote:
| Also you can't buy the drones off AliExpress anymore.
| This shouldn't be underestimated, because all the drone
| swarm wet dreams were built on this.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >payload to kill everything in a 50m radius for example.
|
| cluster heads solve this beautifully because 1kg of high
| explosive kills everything good enough in 5 meters
| radius.
| XorNot wrote:
| Which is still _nothing_ in terms of area lethality
| terms.
|
| For comparison, the Excalibur GPS guided artillery shell
| was considered precision because it would hit within 5m
| reliably.
|
| Compare to the lethal range of a 155mm, where the kill
| radius is 50m and casualty at 100m.
| themgt wrote:
| You're talking about a counterdrone system that's at
| technology demonstrator stage. I don't think they even
| have any contract or timeline for delivering production
| systems. Meanwhile tech used in the Ukraine war is
| adapting by the month.
|
| "That a countermeasure can be built doesn't mean it's
| necessarily effective to do so" applies especially to
| reading a corporate press release about a system doesn't
| even have a timeline for being on the battlefield.
| Animats wrote:
| More than basic. DJI offers full GPS-less camera and
| accelerometer based nav technology on their drones.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| A compass is not blocked by a Faraday cage as low
| frequency magnetic fields still get through.
| varjag wrote:
| I was thinking a ferrous shield would warp magnetic flux
| lines but I could be wrong. And guess you could mill the
| enclosure from brass, tho it's still not clear how would
| you get an RF ground up there.
| cyberax wrote:
| Or you can put motors inside the cage, with purely
| mechanical linkage to the propellers.
| varjag wrote:
| You'd have to make sure the linkages are not conductive
| and there is not even a 1mm clearance on their ports in
| the enclosure. Non-metal axles are possible but it's hard
| to find material that would withstand the torque.
|
| You also need to think through your cooling solution.
| Enclosed batteries, converters and motors will generate a
| lot of heat over typical mission, and you don't have the
| benefit of direct air cooling anymore.
| amluto wrote:
| How about using a metal axle that penetrates the cage
| using an intentionally conductive bearing, i.e. a slip
| ring? It would need very low RF impedance, but it would
| only need to last for the expected lifespan of the drone.
|
| At just a few GHz, metal mesh ought to be adequate for
| the cage material, so cooling isn't necessarily a huge
| problem.
| topspin wrote:
| > Only tricky thing is if currents induced in motors
|
| Many of the drones in the Russia-Ukraine war are powered by
| ICEs. I'm thinking of Ukraine's long range drones presently
| deleting Russia's refinery distillation towers, fixed radar
| installations, parked aircraft, ammo dumps, etc.
|
| Those engines are not purely mechanical, but purely
| mechanical engines have been widespread and are still
| commonplace today. A 2-stroke diesel being one example, but
| even gas turbines can be purely mechanical. So one can
| imagine such an adaptation in response to microwave
| countermeasures.
| Animats wrote:
| The motor drive side probably isn't that vulnerable, since
| that's the output side of large power transistors, but the
| Hall-effect sensors and current sensing in brushless DC
| motors might be a problem. But you don't have to use
| brushless motors. They last longer, but drones are ammo,
| not assets, today.
| russfink wrote:
| Pika-CHUUUUU! Wow. Now only if they could weaponize lightning
| strikes.
| animuchan wrote:
| Taping a grenade to it (instead of the lightning guidance
| thing) will be probably as efficient or more, as a weapon.
|
| If they could weaponize earthquakes instead, now that'd be
| brilliant.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Yes, that has already been achieved by dropping a fine spool
| of thin "aluminum" wire over the target enemy's position and
| then climbing up to 1,500' altitude during a thunderstorm.
| theearling wrote:
| I'm wondering if this would work for cars in car chases, maybe
| too much shielding...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Send it to Denmark, please.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Makes a big assumption that they're synchronously remote
| controlled over RF.
|
| Fiber lasers can direct 10's-100's of kW of power almost
| continuously and with a range of several km with proper optics:
|
| https://youtu.be/BkbVeA4Lejc
|
| https://youtu.be/lFMvesTUjAA
|
| https://youtu.be/eFiDYFnlp7s
| dsq wrote:
| Maybe off topic, but I was wondering if the EM countermeasures
| harm the bird life.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| What happened to the thesis of yesteryears of Nuclear Deterrence?
| At these point, I feel like countries actually want wars to
| continue.
| XorNot wrote:
| It doesn't work if you don't have nuclear weapons.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| Russia has nukes and it doesn't use them. Why is it behaving
| responsibly in this regard? Is Russia thoughtful that Ukraine
| doesn't have nukes so it shouldn't use them. It seems that
| both sides want the war to continue.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| As an armchair Internet commentator, my theory is that the
| deliberately provoked proxy war is designed to drain
| Russian resources, gauge their capabilities and potentially
| destabilize without direct engagement. I would agree that
| neither side is interested in stopping the war at this
| stage.
| cantor_S_drug wrote:
| There could be multiple reasons. You can't hurt russia
| too much because they have the nukes. Russia can't lose
| and Ukraine can't win. The deterrence if it existed
| should have worked for Russia because America showed to
| the world that wars can be stopped prematurely and on
| your terms. This is a moral way to test more weapons on
| both sides. This war will let all parties know who stands
| where. This is more like bickering between superpowers
| and to establish a new equilibrium.
| XorNot wrote:
| As an armchair internet commentator it's so weird how you
| managed to cook up verbatim wordage to Russian propaganda
| and chose to state the origin of the conflict as if a
| sovereign people being invaded deserved it.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| If Russia nukes Ukraine (or anyone else) NATO would declare
| war on Russia, that's the only reason Russia is not using
| them
| rkomorn wrote:
| The longer this war goes on the more skeptical I am that
| NATO wouldn't just wag a finger angrily and then impose
| more sanctions.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I presume they evaluated the global response to dropping
| nukes and decided it's not worth it.
|
| A nuclear first strike is a red line for pretty much every
| major country. Russia would likely face extremely severe
| sanctions even from their remaining trading partners.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if someone will embed microwave sinks to recharge
| batteries
| torginus wrote:
| Laughable garbage. Notice the article fails to state at what
| range the system engaged the drones or the size of the system
| itself. I suspect this is a container sized system that costs
| tens of millions of dollars, and has an engagement range of maybe
| a couple miles against non-hardened targets.
|
| Drone swarms also only exist as a flight of fancy not a real
| threat. We know how drones are actually utilized, and the 'swarm'
| you are talking about constists of a dozen drones spread out
| maybe over 10 square miles.
|
| If you're so confident in your system, then send it to Ukraine
| (or considering the current admin, Russia might be more your
| speed).
|
| I wish the day would come when Americans would look at R&D as a
| valuable and meaningful activity in of itself, not as some sort
| of long con designed to allow investors and VCs to magic money
| out of nowhere.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Epirus makes some good stuff from what I hear. Its use cases are
| limited though. Its another exquisite system. This means it will
| be high cost and low volume.
|
| Sure bases and high value assets will have great protection. They
| already do. Stinger missiles (1 example) have been able to hit
| quads since the day quads took to the air. The cost asymmetry
| (150k+ vs 1k) means they are rarely used so you have to let most
| drone threats go.
|
| The opening days of the Ukraine war showed that all you need to
| do to stop an army is tale out its undefended logistics tail.
| Fuel trucks, water, ammo, food, etc. These need to be protected
| also, and exquisite system like Epirus wont be part of these
| convoys.
|
| Another take away from Ukraine is the lay-in-wait tactic where
| drones sit near the road hidden and wait for you to come by. The
| Epirus system (and most of the other cUAS systems) are not able
| to help. You are probably over a slight hill, hidden by trees, or
| too close to the danger zone where a bigger system would also
| destroy you.
|
| Basically everything and everyone has to have a means of engaging
| these threats. It must be cheap (cost per kill including the
| initial system purchase), easy to use, and widely available.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Why do I feel like this is going to be defeated by some household
| item that costs $2
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