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The economy does. There are no off the shelf drone weapons. To develop them would require moderately skilled professionals. Moderately skill professionals in go

The economy does. There are no off the shelf drone weapons. To develop them would require moderately skilled professionals. Moderately skill professionals in good economies do not engage in guerrilla weapon production because they have better ways of making money without the criminal liabilities.

KaiserPro 8y ago
ISIS/hamas et al says otherwise. War brings out terrifyingly brilliant innovations from the strangest of places.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  Terrorism like this tends to happen in more impoverished areas of the world. And any innovation that is found in this pales in comparison to what the US military already has.
  - wyattpeak 8y ago
    How is that relevant? The fact that IEDs wouldn't pass muster in a proper military doesn't mean we don't need tools to deal with them. Having a better weapon doesn't stop a shitty weapon from killing you.
    - petermcneeley 8y ago
      "Having a better weapon doesn't stop a shitty weapon from killing you." True I guess that im just making an argument about the modern west.
    - erobbins 8y ago
      It's true.. when was the last time the US fought "proper" army regulars? Iraq in 2003/2004? Most war these days is asymmetrical.
  - KaiserPro 8y ago
    I don't think 1970-90s UK counts as "impoverished" the IRA/UDF did lots of innovation. Deadly destructive innovation. Making bomb timers that lasted months/years to avoid detection was no mean feat in the early 80s
pohl 8y ago
Just out of curiosity, had you already watched the embedded video ("Prototype Quadrotor with Machine Gun!") – of the quadrotor with the machine gun & the self-destruct ability – before you wrote your comment? The gentleman in the video didn't strike me as someone terribly concerned about product liability.
- rhcom2 8y ago
  It's fictional. http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/MQ-27_Dragonfire http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/MQ-27_Dragonfire
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
sophistication 8y ago
I'd agree that this is a fundamental factor enabling social peace (besides a culture of sincerity and trust), but aren't there in principle always incentives for competitors to eliminate one another? What if this becomes too easy to accomplish in a physical manner without leaving any trace?
- merpnderp 8y ago
  What are the odds someone could pull off a drone assassination that leaves no physical evidence recoverable by the FBI? Surely some piece of debris will contain DNA, a serial number, some identifying information that would lead law enforcement to the perpetrators.
  - sophistication 8y ago
    If the drone sets itself to fire it will be very hard to identify anything on it (DNA denaturates after 60 seconds at 200 °C). The problem about off–the-shelf components is exactly that they can rarely be traced back to a particular seller and could even be salvaged from stolen junk etc.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    They don’t have to. We have crazy people who decide to shoot up schools and public areas with no concern with getting caught or killed.
Pica_soO 8y ago
And that's why well skilled professionals did not participate in the 9/11 attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta#Academic_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta#Academic_studies Actually, among all groups- engineers are considered - if religious to be the most dogmatic and fanatic. That - tabula rasa and lets start with a complete new approach mindset - sometimes glimpsed on hacker news, is the gateway to heaven on earth.
jarfil 8y ago
Moderately skilled teenagers with lots of free time can do plenty of things "just for the lulz". More skilled adults disgruntled by any reason (religion, politics, love, etc) can do some serious harm even when they could put those skills to far better use.
Spooky23 8y ago
It’s pretty trivial for someone with basic reading comprehension to find out how to make a self-igniting Molotov cocktail.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
Professional, singular. All it really takes is one person with an ideological axe to grind and a moderate amount of skill, and you have instructions that others can use to turn off-the-shelf components into weapons. It's happened before. P.A. Luty wanted to make a point about British gun control laws, so he built a submachine gun out of ordinary hardware store parts and wrote a book ("Expedient Homemade Firearms") containing detailed instructions. He got jailed over making these weapons, of course, but the point stands.
- angersock 8y ago
  And that's why Britain is overrun with submachine guns to this very day!
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    Mexico and Latin America are the main place these sorts of weapons show up, and there was a noticeable uptick in these types of firearms after the book was published. Most people aren't willing to flout the law and build submachine guns, but once the knowledge is out there it's a thing that outlaws can and will do.
    - mijamo 8y ago
      Which is nice because then you get a super easy way to arrest them. It's much easier to arrest a gang member for having a weapon than catching them on the act. It is very common in Europe.
Gustomaximus 8y ago
Ted Kaczynski. Timothy Mcveigh. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mark Conditt. Etc

KaiserPro 8y ago

ISIS/hamas et al says otherwise. War brings out terrifyingly brilliant innovations from the strangest of places.

petermcneeley 8y ago
Terrorism like this tends to happen in more impoverished areas of the world. And any innovation that is found in this pales in comparison to what the US military already has.
- wyattpeak 8y ago
  How is that relevant? The fact that IEDs wouldn't pass muster in a proper military doesn't mean we don't need tools to deal with them. Having a better weapon doesn't stop a shitty weapon from killing you.
  - petermcneeley 8y ago
    "Having a better weapon doesn't stop a shitty weapon from killing you." True I guess that im just making an argument about the modern west.
  - erobbins 8y ago
    It's true.. when was the last time the US fought "proper" army regulars? Iraq in 2003/2004? Most war these days is asymmetrical.
- KaiserPro 8y ago
  I don't think 1970-90s UK counts as "impoverished" the IRA/UDF did lots of innovation. Deadly destructive innovation. Making bomb timers that lasted months/years to avoid detection was no mean feat in the early 80s

pohl 8y ago

Just out of curiosity, had you already watched the embedded video ("Prototype Quadrotor with Machine Gun!") – of the quadrotor with the machine gun & the self-destruct ability – before you wrote your comment? The gentleman in the video didn't strike me as someone terribly concerned about product liability.

rhcom2 8y ago
It's fictional. http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/MQ-27_Dragonfire http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/MQ-27_Dragonfire
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

sophistication 8y ago

I'd agree that this is a fundamental factor enabling social peace (besides a culture of sincerity and trust), but aren't there in principle always incentives for competitors to eliminate one another? What if this becomes too easy to accomplish in a physical manner without leaving any trace?

merpnderp 8y ago
What are the odds someone could pull off a drone assassination that leaves no physical evidence recoverable by the FBI? Surely some piece of debris will contain DNA, a serial number, some identifying information that would lead law enforcement to the perpetrators.
- sophistication 8y ago
  If the drone sets itself to fire it will be very hard to identify anything on it (DNA denaturates after 60 seconds at 200 °C). The problem about off–the-shelf components is exactly that they can rarely be traced back to a particular seller and could even be salvaged from stolen junk etc.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  They don’t have to. We have crazy people who decide to shoot up schools and public areas with no concern with getting caught or killed.

Pica_soO 8y ago

And that's why well skilled professionals did not participate in the 9/11 attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta#Academic_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta#Academic_studies Actually, among all groups- engineers are considered - if religious to be the most dogmatic and fanatic. That - tabula rasa and lets start with a complete new approach mindset - sometimes glimpsed on hacker news, is the gateway to heaven on earth.

jarfil 8y ago

Moderately skilled teenagers with lots of free time can do plenty of things "just for the lulz". More skilled adults disgruntled by any reason (religion, politics, love, etc) can do some serious harm even when they could put those skills to far better use.

Spooky23 8y ago

It’s pretty trivial for someone with basic reading comprehension to find out how to make a self-igniting Molotov cocktail.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

Professional, singular. All it really takes is one person with an ideological axe to grind and a moderate amount of skill, and you have instructions that others can use to turn off-the-shelf components into weapons. It's happened before. P.A. Luty wanted to make a point about British gun control laws, so he built a submachine gun out of ordinary hardware store parts and wrote a book ("Expedient Homemade Firearms") containing detailed instructions. He got jailed over making these weapons, of course, but the point stands.

angersock 8y ago
And that's why Britain is overrun with submachine guns to this very day!
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Mexico and Latin America are the main place these sorts of weapons show up, and there was a noticeable uptick in these types of firearms after the book was published. Most people aren't willing to flout the law and build submachine guns, but once the knowledge is out there it's a thing that outlaws can and will do.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    Which is nice because then you get a super easy way to arrest them. It's much easier to arrest a gang member for having a weapon than catching them on the act. It is very common in Europe.

Gustomaximus 8y ago

Ted Kaczynski. Timothy Mcveigh. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Mark Conditt. Etc