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An eagle like in this case is orders of magnitude more powerful than the kind of drone being talked about, though. Not armed military drones, obviously, but the

by seszett 10y ago

An eagle like in this case is orders of magnitude more powerful than the kind of drone being talked about, though. Not armed military drones, obviously, but these are not the target. A mass of 4 kilograms or so diving at several hundred km/h will do a lot of damage, keep in mind these birds kill adult deers. They're also used to avoiding the dangerous parts of the animals they attack and fast bird vision gives them a better view of rotors than the indistinct blur humans see. At 10000 rpm or so, birds of prey should actually be able to follow the movement of blades. They also have more lifting power than most drones, which means they are absolutely able to wrestle them to the ground if the initial impact doesn't knock them off (especially since they will have a far better understanding of what's going on than the drone's operator). I am as tempted as anyone to think that I am smarter than professionals I read about in the news, but I'm pretty sure these guys have thought their experiment through.

owenversteeg 10y ago
Ehh. Orders of magnitude, plural? Several hundred km/h? That's a stretch. These are golden eagles, my favorite kind of bird. Their diving speed is around 220-250 km/hr, and their horizontal speed is around 40 km/hr. They will speed up horizontally to catch prey, but this is typically only up to about 90 km/hr. I've seen UAVs kill birds before though, and it's always a horrifying scene, reminiscent of the plucky character in a dystopian sci-fi movie meeting the all-powerful violent crusher of doom. Moderately powerful UAVs can easily resist birds. Even an off the shelf DJI Phantom 4 can - with stock everything - go 72 km/hr horizontally. I'd bet the eagle could catch up to it, however: the problem comes when the bird meets drone. Every bird-drone incident I've seen is usually an instant kill (or comes close) for the drone, simply because most of the surface area of the drone is covered by four spinning propellers. The tips of these blades are going several hundred miles per hour, and the area of the top not covered by blades is only a few square centimeters covered in smooth, hard to grip plastic. Now you're telling me that a huge bird (that has a wingspan longer than most humans are tall) can grab onto this tiny place without becoming mincemeat? If the blades are carbon fiber, there's a good chance they won't break upon cutting the bird in half. I've worked with drones enough to know what will and won't stop them. A bird won't: it'll brush the blades and fall to the ground in a bloody mess. A bullet will. Bullets are tried and true technology, we know how to use them, they're not ridiculously expensive, and they will certainly take down any drone of reasonable size. This is PR, plain and simple. There's no other explanation for it, unless France's air force is hilariously incompetent, which I would doubt.
- kriro 10y ago
  Here's a bird vs a slow cruising drone. The attack style seems decent enough to avoid the rotors depending on size. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-xBtVU4lg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-xBtVU4lg
  - y4mi 10y ago
    this is a hobbyist drone, not a militarized one. you can see that the blades got damaged because they're cheap plastic, perfectly fine if you just want to shoot some videos from an aerial pov. if you want to use your drone offensively you'd use a) a swarm of drones, b) a significantly stronger one or c) a swarm of hardened drones. as the parent mentioned: the rotors become brutal weapons if you make them from carbon fiber or cheaper but still durable material
    - Retric 10y ago
      At that point why build a drone, a missile is cheaper. The terrorist > drone link is all about off the shelf components. Military drones like the predator weigh more than a car, and we have plenty of weapons built for that. Small off the shelf drones are not something you can really hit with a missile, but you can shoot them down fairly easily with a gun. However, you don't really want to fire up into the air in the middle of a domestic city, making birds a more interesting option. PS: They don't need to disable the drone, simply adding 8lb of weight will take most of them down easily.
      - voidlogic 10y ago
        >However, you don't really want to fire up into the air in the middle of a domestic city, making birds a more interesting option. Shotguns with bird-shot would be effective and are comparatively low risk to bullets.
      - owenversteeg 10y ago
        You can build a great payload carbon fiber blade octocopter for $2000 or so and a few Youtube tutorials. Cheap carbon fiber blades can be $2 each! I wouldn't recommend using them if you care about safety, but on a single-flight mission they're perfectly fine. If you can get a missile (!) inside of metropolitan Paris for $2000 I would be very doubtful (as well as very concerned.) There's also no way that a golden eagle can fly away with the drone: it'll definitely be taking it down too. A golden eagle has a payload of 900 grams. [0] Nine hundred grams! Videos of birds (typically not golden eagles) 'carrying' dogs or even goats for a half-second or so are because they perform a special swooping maneuver with their wings that lets them lift things up, taking advantage of the ground effect. There is no way this would work with a UAV, unless it was moving extremely slowly near the ground. There are lots of people defending this PR piece because it sounds cool. This happens every time a new way to 'catch drones' comes out. Yes, golden eagles are extremely majestic. The reality however is that bullets are by far the best way to take down an unwanted UAV. Please, think about the realities of this: several hard blades going hundreds of mph is something you can only stop with a bullet. It doesn't matter if you put a super-suit on your eagles - at best, you'll just make the eagles die of internal bleeding instead. Finally, if this UAV is flying over a city, it'll be very often above roofs/rivers/canals/etc where it's safe to crash. Give some special ops 20 minutes of training on shooting UAVs and a bullet, not a bunch of raptors that'll end up dead - that's the way to protect your city. [0] https://raptorresource.blogspot.nl/2015/11/how-much-can-bald-eagle-carry.html https://raptorresource.blogspot.nl/2015/11/how-much-can-bald...

by seszett 10y ago

owenversteeg 10y ago

Ehh. Orders of magnitude, plural? Several hundred km/h? That's a stretch. These are golden eagles, my favorite kind of bird. Their diving speed is around 220-250 km/hr, and their horizontal speed is around 40 km/hr. They will speed up horizontally to catch prey, but this is typically only up to about 90 km/hr. I've seen UAVs kill birds before though, and it's always a horrifying scene, reminiscent of the plucky character in a dystopian sci-fi movie meeting the all-powerful violent crusher of doom. Moderately powerful UAVs can easily resist birds. Even an off the shelf DJI Phantom 4 can - with stock everything - go 72 km/hr horizontally. I'd bet the eagle could catch up to it, however: the problem comes when the bird meets drone. Every bird-drone incident I've seen is usually an instant kill (or comes close) for the drone, simply because most of the surface area of the drone is covered by four spinning propellers. The tips of these blades are going several hundred miles per hour, and the area of the top not covered by blades is only a few square centimeters covered in smooth, hard to grip plastic. Now you're telling me that a huge bird (that has a wingspan longer than most humans are tall) can grab onto this tiny place without becoming mincemeat? If the blades are carbon fiber, there's a good chance they won't break upon cutting the bird in half. I've worked with drones enough to know what will and won't stop them. A bird won't: it'll brush the blades and fall to the ground in a bloody mess. A bullet will. Bullets are tried and true technology, we know how to use them, they're not ridiculously expensive, and they will certainly take down any drone of reasonable size. This is PR, plain and simple. There's no other explanation for it, unless France's air force is hilariously incompetent, which I would doubt.

kriro 10y ago
Here's a bird vs a slow cruising drone. The attack style seems decent enough to avoid the rotors depending on size. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-xBtVU4lg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr-xBtVU4lg
- y4mi 10y ago
  this is a hobbyist drone, not a militarized one. you can see that the blades got damaged because they're cheap plastic, perfectly fine if you just want to shoot some videos from an aerial pov. if you want to use your drone offensively you'd use a) a swarm of drones, b) a significantly stronger one or c) a swarm of hardened drones. as the parent mentioned: the rotors become brutal weapons if you make them from carbon fiber or cheaper but still durable material
  - Retric 10y ago
    At that point why build a drone, a missile is cheaper. The terrorist > drone link is all about off the shelf components. Military drones like the predator weigh more than a car, and we have plenty of weapons built for that. Small off the shelf drones are not something you can really hit with a missile, but you can shoot them down fairly easily with a gun. However, you don't really want to fire up into the air in the middle of a domestic city, making birds a more interesting option. PS: They don't need to disable the drone, simply adding 8lb of weight will take most of them down easily.
    - voidlogic 10y ago
      >However, you don't really want to fire up into the air in the middle of a domestic city, making birds a more interesting option. Shotguns with bird-shot would be effective and are comparatively low risk to bullets.
    - owenversteeg 10y ago
      You can build a great payload carbon fiber blade octocopter for $2000 or so and a few Youtube tutorials. Cheap carbon fiber blades can be $2 each! I wouldn't recommend using them if you care about safety, but on a single-flight mission they're perfectly fine. If you can get a missile (!) inside of metropolitan Paris for $2000 I would be very doubtful (as well as very concerned.) There's also no way that a golden eagle can fly away with the drone: it'll definitely be taking it down too. A golden eagle has a payload of 900 grams. [0] Nine hundred grams! Videos of birds (typically not golden eagles) 'carrying' dogs or even goats for a half-second or so are because they perform a special swooping maneuver with their wings that lets them lift things up, taking advantage of the ground effect. There is no way this would work with a UAV, unless it was moving extremely slowly near the ground. There are lots of people defending this PR piece because it sounds cool. This happens every time a new way to 'catch drones' comes out. Yes, golden eagles are extremely majestic. The reality however is that bullets are by far the best way to take down an unwanted UAV. Please, think about the realities of this: several hard blades going hundreds of mph is something you can only stop with a bullet. It doesn't matter if you put a super-suit on your eagles - at best, you'll just make the eagles die of internal bleeding instead. Finally, if this UAV is flying over a city, it'll be very often above roofs/rivers/canals/etc where it's safe to crash. Give some special ops 20 minutes of training on shooting UAVs and a bullet, not a bunch of raptors that'll end up dead - that's the way to protect your city. [0] https://raptorresource.blogspot.nl/2015/11/how-much-can-bald-eagle-carry.html https://raptorresource.blogspot.nl/2015/11/how-much-can-bald...