>High risk locations. Dense metro downtowns, sports stadiums, government buildings, large public utilities (nuclear power plants), etc.
You take out dense metro downtowns and I think that's perfectly sensible.
It doesn't require any kind of licensing, or national database, or wide scale distributed systems of any kind. Drones are off limits in the those areas just like aircraft are. If you have an automated defense system and you need a drone for some exceptional reason, you clear it with whoever manages the local system and they install a friend or foe transponder on the drone.
Wide scale drone licensing enforcement isn't required or effective if your goal is to protect high threat targets from drone attacks. It solves completely different problems.
>No, I'm just noting that however we deal with this for aircraft might help here, since the same rules apply.
You need a much higher density of radar installations, with an exponentially higher cost since drones are much smaller than aircraft.
>$8 billion
That's off by a few orders of magnitude if you're talking about a wide-scale system including towers, radar, personnel, drone take down capability etc...
>10+ lbs of payload for something that would want the maximum blast radius and power, or the maximum directed penetration for hard targets
You’re still talking pipe bomb levels. It’s still much more effective to leave a bag in a trashcan in a crowded space.
> A few grand ($3k-$6k) gets you 20 lbs of payload easily (and more if you need it), from multiple manufacturers.[1] $10k seems to get you like 40 lbs or more.
You're looking at a list of maximum payloads from the marketing department. Not maximum realistic operational loads. And the drones with 40lb payloads are huge.
>It's a real attack vector, and if there's no mitigations,
There are no feasible large scale mitigations that are effective enough to change the calculus.
Again if you’re talking local mostly automated drone defense, then sure that’s feasible and probably necessary at some point.
I'm not feeling this is a particularly constructive discussion anymore. You seem to be picking specific statements to counter, while ignoring the context of the statements and explanations that address your counterargument I've made in a prior comment or within the same comment.
For example, drone payload, where you focus on smaller sizes, and say they can't do much damage, and then either ignore larger size payloads as marketing lies (with no evidence to back it up, or to at least show actual payloads in practice), or that those drones are huge... which would make them easier to track, which was one of my earlier points that makes the system easier to develop. Feasible drones for attacks will likely be larger, and this easier to detect.
Time an again, I've tried to come up with real data or approximate numbers, with all calculations and reasons for such outlined so you or anyone else could question where you thought my assumptions were wrong, but I haven't seen that. Instead, I get blanket rejections without evidence, or even much explanation of reasoning.
I think you're conflating 2 separate people's statements. I've never had any focus on smaller sized payloads.
You could fairly easily find a drone with a 10 lbs payload. 40 pounds though isn't a realistic operational payload for those drones, which is why it says "max payload".
>Feasible drones for attacks will likely be larger, and this easier to detect
That's true, my point is that setting up a nationwide drone licensing and tracking system to track hobby drones isn't necessary when what you're really worried about is protecting high value targets from drones that are approaching the size of small helicopters.
> Instead, I get blanket rejections without evidence, or even much explanation of reasoning.
You haven't provided any evidence either, just a random assumption that such a system will cost $50k-$200k per site.
I clearly explained why that is too low. Increasing the density of radar coverage to handle drones above 400', trained personnel, towers, and drone take down systems are going to cost a lot more than you think. You can believe me or not, but I've provided at least much explanation and evidence as you have.
> I think you're conflating 2 separate people's statements. I've never had any focus on smaller sized payloads.
I know you weren't the prior commentor. This is a long discussion. I expect you're reading the prior comments in the same direct thread. When I've specifically addressed an item, in the thread, or even in the same comment, to have that ignored is... frustrating.
> You could fairly easily find a drone with a 10 lbs payload. 40 pounds though isn't a realistic operational payload for those drones, which is why it says "max payload".
I didn't pull that number out of my ass. It was actually a conservative number, based on what I saw some models as capable of (but could not find good pricing info for). For example, the VulcaUAV Airlist model advertises a payload capacity of 25kg (~55lbs).[1]
> That's true, my point is that setting up a nationwide drone licensing and tracking system to track hobby drones isn't necessary when what you're really worried about is protecting high value targets from drones that are approaching the size of small helicopters.
Not just hobby drones, all drones. I expect there to to be a lot of commercial drone usage in the future. If they are all licensed, then the costs are limited to applying towards the small hobby usage, but overall U.S. drone usage, which I expect to be substantial compared to hobby use.
I've explained this multiple times.
> You haven't provided any evidence either, just a random assumption that such a system will cost $50k-$200k per site.
I've explained what type of hardware I expect the system to require, including multiple cameras per station. I've given a guesstimate as to the number of installations required. I've guessed at a per-station cost, and thus a total system cost.
Your counter of "it's off by a few orders of magnitude" is in my opinion not sufficiently explained by personnel and countermeasures, since a few order of magnitude is at a minimum 100x off (and then if I assume you used a meaning of "few" that includes 2 as the minimum). I do not believe training existing personnel that are already stationed around every location (police!) you would want these and providing additional devices and training constitutes hundreds of billions of dollars.
> I've provided at least much explanation and evidence as you have.
No, you haven't provided any idea of what you think it would actually cost to have personnel on site and have them trained and outfitted. If you had, I might have been able to point out that we already have officials that serve a very similar purpose that could be used, the police, and that I don't think training and outfitting would be nearly as costly. I think $100 billion would be an fairly extreme upper bound of this system, but that's not a few orders of magnitude, it's one, and surmountable over time with a tiered rollout IMO, if it's event that high. For example, the FAA alone out of all the DOT agencies has a $16 billion annual budget.[2] In 2018 the U.S. spent over $90 billion on transportation in the federal budget.[3]
In the end, I doubt we're going to convince each other of anything at this point, and I've lost the desire to continue. We should just agree to disagree. :/
Feel free to address any of the points I've made here though. I'll read the response and consider the points, I just don't think I'll respond.
1: http://vulcanuav.com/aircraft/ http://vulcanuav.com/aircraft/
2: https://www.transportation.gov/mission/budget/fy-2019-budget-estimates https://www.transportation.gov/mission/budget/fy-2019-budget...
3: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_fy18 https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_f...
> Your prices and payloads are way off. A few grand ($3k-$6k) gets you 20 lbs of payload easily (and more if you need it), from multiple manufacturers.[1] $10k seems to get you like 40 lbs or more.
Actually, my numbers aren’t off (and the companies aren’t lying in their marketing directly), it’s simply a misunderstanding over the units of scale.
For purposes of discussion, I’m going to focus on the payload numbers used in the link you provided, not manufacturer spec sheets as they vary a lot in terminology. I also own three of the drones listed in that link too, so what I’m saying isn’t hypothetical assumptions, but real world experience.
Let’s also use the DJI S1000 (but I’m happy to break it down for others too) for this discussion. The article claims a payload capacity of 7kg. This is actually a bit off flat out as the max takeoff weight is 11kg and the drone in question weighs 4.4kg. So our number is actually 6.6kg for payload. The biggest disconnect though is that the 4.4kg is just the airframe / motors / props / mcu, it doesn’t include the batteries (biggest impact) or some other needed electronics. Unlike with your average consumer drone, batteries are something you have wide control over in size, weight, and capacity. That said, unless you want to only fly a very short distance (think short walking range), you are still stuck with a heavy pack. On the low end, expect about 2kg, on the high end 3kg. That puts us under 4kg of payload now. If we want to see where it’s going (allowing us to be further away from this hypothetical bomb) or have more telemetry, we are going to be getting closer to the 3kg payload mark. Now let’s talk about price. These big drones are money pits. Sure, you see those $3-6k price tags advertised, but the part you don’t realize until you get into the field is that’s not a “flight ready” price. You are going to need batteries, radios, battery chargers, etc etc to actually be able to fly. For these big drones, you’ll spend >$500 just for one flight’s worth of batteries if done right. Shockingly, for a good battery charger, you’ll spend nearly a grand. For an appropriate radio, $500. You want remote video too? That’s another $1-2k, not including a gyro or camera. Heck, I spent pretty close to $1000 just on the carrying case for my S1000. Yes, a terrorist would likely cut a lot of corners, but it’s still going to be a lot more than the base sticker price you see advertised and my number of $10k is a fair median point for what it’d really cost on these bigger drones. Could you do it cheaper, yes, but my numbers are still in the right ballpark.
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I agree with your later point to another person, I don’t think this venue is encouraging a healthy discussion. You come off as someone intelligent, just not personally experienced in this field. As such, I’d be more than happy to continue the discussion offline. Shoot me an email if interested, info in my profile.