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> The moon is illuminated by the sun, so not really a fair comparison. Take a drone and paint it the color of the sky and it's going to be a lot more difficult

> The moon is illuminated by the sun, so not really a fair comparison. Take a drone and paint it the color of the sky and it's going to be a lot more difficult than “a quarter the size of the moon” would imply. A drone can also fly much higher than 300 feet, and it's not a solid object. A good point. I think flying above 400 ft is already illegal though, so dealing with that might be somewhat simplified. > All drones will have transponders I assume? I think that might be a fair assumption. We require license plates for vehicles on the road, requiring transponders for use in populated areas sounds like a good way to track and license (if your transponder is issued, there you go). > So now the camera needs a radio, and access to a national database of transponder codes. Well, yeah. If it's a system responsible for tracking and ensuring licensing compliance and flight permission, it would, just as bridge toll systems now often use license plates to track fees. It's not all that hard in this day and age. > Assuming drones become more popular how does the camera know which transponder code belongs to which drone? Signal strength? This will be different depending on environment. Signal direction? You need multiple receivers for this. You already likely need multiple systems to get good visual and radio coverage. But even then, it doesn't need to be a perfectly self-contained system, just a piece of the puzzle. If you see six objects and receive 5 signals, eliminate the ones you can, and send someone to investigate with directional equipment. We don't expect red-light cameras to pull us over, but we do expect they do something. It's not crazy to expect they also might have specific circumstances that flag to additional review for possible dispatch of an officer. > How do you stop a drone from emulating another drone’s transponder code? A challenge response system with a public/private key pair? How do you keep one car from using another's license plate? You make the sale of fake license plates illegal, you make sure the only valid plates are issued by the government, and you make it illegal to tamper with them. > And the most important question yet. What do you do when you spot an unauthorized drone? If a cop spots a car he can chase it. Already covered a little above, but there's already solutions appearing to help with this. There's anti-drone ammunition[1] and trained animals[2] on the simple end, up to military grade anti-drone solutions. > How does the interceptor drone bring down the unauthorized drone without causing any collateral damage? What happens if there are multiple unauthorized drones in an area? How do you trace the unauthorized drone back to the owner? Unlike a car, the operator isn't in the vehicle. What do we do with vehicles or trailers without clearly defined ownership we find on the street? It's towed to an impound lot. If someone wants to claim property, they they come for it. If downing it for legitimate reasons ensues, the owner of the drone would be responsible for damage, and if the owner can't be determined, I'm sure there's a legal precedent to fall back on. It's not that wild a situation. > All of that just to say yeah it’s possible, but it’s a lot harder and a lot more expensive than it seems. Much too hard and much too expensive to feasible anytime soon. Unless drones prove to be a lot more popular and effective than truck, car, and suitcase bombs, than I think they will, no one is going to pay for all of this. I don't think it's nearly that expensive, as outlined above. If there isn't something like this, I expect drone terrorism would definitely be the go-to solution. This wouldn't stop that, but it does put a hurdle in the way (in the same way that doors and locks and security systems put a hurdle in the way of a home invader, but in the end only slow and dissuade, and do not actually prevent in most cases). 1: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/03/23/usaf-anti-drone-amtac/ https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/03/23/usaf-anti-dro... 2: http://fortune.com/2017/02/22/drones-eagles-france/ http://fortune.com/2017/02/22/drones-eagles-france/

jsjohnst 8y ago
> I think flying above 400 ft is already illegal though So is using a drone for a terrorist act, so by that logic, wouldn’t that negate the need for this system you propose? > I don't think it's nearly that expensive, as outlined above. To cover what area? If you mean something like the White House, sure, the cost would very likely be justified. If you are talking covering the entire United States, or even just everything important, you are insane (not meant to be rude, but a trillion dollars wouldn’t be unrealistic estimate there). I think a key point you are missing is what real threat a consumer grade drone is in reality. $500 Drone - might be able to lift a hand grenade. Keyword there might. $1500 Drone - the hand grenade is now pretty solidly possible depending on the type of grenade (M67, doable, but anything bigger less likely). In the best case you might get up to a pound of cargo weight, but it’s significantly going to impact maneuverability and flight time. $10k+ drone - once we get into this category, sure, we can get up to 5lbs or maybe slightly higher in cargo weight, but then we are in the category of 4ft or larger hexacopters or octocopters. They are very noticeable and very loud. I think that’s the real reason we’ve not seen much (and likely won’t see much unless drones dramatically change in lifting capacity) terrorism from drones. To put it bluntly, there are just too many ways to deliver tiny explosives that are more practical and less likely to fail than are with drones. For the realistic payload of something like an M67 grenade, the “kill radius” is only 5 meters. If I saw a drone with something attached to it (or even if not) within 5m of me, I’m already going to be getting out of the area. Sure, you could argue someone may intend to drop it from altitude, but even then do you really think the accuracy of dropping something like that is actually going to be very precise? The terrorism angle is in reality pure FUD and is used as an excuse to appeal to the uninformed masses.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > So is using a drone for a terrorist act, so by that logic, wouldn’t that negate the need for this system you propose? No, I'm just noting that however we deal with this for aircraft might help here, since the same rules apply. > To cover what area? If you mean something like the White House, sure, the cost would very likely be justified. High risk locations. Dense metro downtowns, sports stadiums, government buildings, large public utilities (nuclear power plants), etc. > If you are talking covering the entire United States, or even just everything important, you are insane (not meant to be rude, but a trillion dollars wouldn’t be unrealistic estimate there). Assuming 10,000 locations across the U.S., and assuming 50 $50,000 average installation cost (which might be low, but we can scale it easily for ballpark costs after), that's $500 million. If we double locations and quadruple average install cost (which is supposed to account for locations with multiple towers, etc), that's still just $8 billion. That's totally doable when it comes to stuff tagged as national defense. > I think a key point you are missing is what real threat a consumer grade drone is in reality. 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. > For the realistic payload of something like an M67 grenade, the “kill radius” is only 5 meters. Grenades are not optimized for damage. They are a compromise that takes into account explosive power, compact size, and delivery. The fact they are meant to be hand delivered to within a few tens of feet means a large blast radius is actually detrimental to their design. 10+ lbs of payload for something that would want the maximum blast radius and power, or the maximum directed penetration for hard targets, probably allows for quite a different set of compromises. > The terrorism angle is in reality pure FUD and is used as an excuse to appeal to the uninformed masses. There's a lot of FUD, but I don't think it's complete FUD. It's a real attack vector, and if there's no mitigations, I think it's possible it will have the best cost to benefit ratio (since the chances of finding the perpetrator would be virtually nil, and the cost is relatively low), and that's all it takes for it to be used. 1: https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/top-heavy-lift-drones.html https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/top-heavy-lift-drones...

jsjohnst 8y ago

> I think flying above 400 ft is already illegal though So is using a drone for a terrorist act, so by that logic, wouldn’t that negate the need for this system you propose? > I don't think it's nearly that expensive, as outlined above. To cover what area? If you mean something like the White House, sure, the cost would very likely be justified. If you are talking covering the entire United States, or even just everything important, you are insane (not meant to be rude, but a trillion dollars wouldn’t be unrealistic estimate there). I think a key point you are missing is what real threat a consumer grade drone is in reality. $500 Drone - might be able to lift a hand grenade. Keyword there might. $1500 Drone - the hand grenade is now pretty solidly possible depending on the type of grenade (M67, doable, but anything bigger less likely). In the best case you might get up to a pound of cargo weight, but it’s significantly going to impact maneuverability and flight time. $10k+ drone - once we get into this category, sure, we can get up to 5lbs or maybe slightly higher in cargo weight, but then we are in the category of 4ft or larger hexacopters or octocopters. They are very noticeable and very loud. I think that’s the real reason we’ve not seen much (and likely won’t see much unless drones dramatically change in lifting capacity) terrorism from drones. To put it bluntly, there are just too many ways to deliver tiny explosives that are more practical and less likely to fail than are with drones. For the realistic payload of something like an M67 grenade, the “kill radius” is only 5 meters. If I saw a drone with something attached to it (or even if not) within 5m of me, I’m already going to be getting out of the area. Sure, you could argue someone may intend to drop it from altitude, but even then do you really think the accuracy of dropping something like that is actually going to be very precise? The terrorism angle is in reality pure FUD and is used as an excuse to appeal to the uninformed masses.

kbenson 8y ago
> So is using a drone for a terrorist act, so by that logic, wouldn’t that negate the need for this system you propose? No, I'm just noting that however we deal with this for aircraft might help here, since the same rules apply. > To cover what area? If you mean something like the White House, sure, the cost would very likely be justified. High risk locations. Dense metro downtowns, sports stadiums, government buildings, large public utilities (nuclear power plants), etc. > If you are talking covering the entire United States, or even just everything important, you are insane (not meant to be rude, but a trillion dollars wouldn’t be unrealistic estimate there). Assuming 10,000 locations across the U.S., and assuming 50 $50,000 average installation cost (which might be low, but we can scale it easily for ballpark costs after), that's $500 million. If we double locations and quadruple average install cost (which is supposed to account for locations with multiple towers, etc), that's still just $8 billion. That's totally doable when it comes to stuff tagged as national defense. > I think a key point you are missing is what real threat a consumer grade drone is in reality. 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. > For the realistic payload of something like an M67 grenade, the “kill radius” is only 5 meters. Grenades are not optimized for damage. They are a compromise that takes into account explosive power, compact size, and delivery. The fact they are meant to be hand delivered to within a few tens of feet means a large blast radius is actually detrimental to their design. 10+ lbs of payload for something that would want the maximum blast radius and power, or the maximum directed penetration for hard targets, probably allows for quite a different set of compromises. > The terrorism angle is in reality pure FUD and is used as an excuse to appeal to the uninformed masses. There's a lot of FUD, but I don't think it's complete FUD. It's a real attack vector, and if there's no mitigations, I think it's possible it will have the best cost to benefit ratio (since the chances of finding the perpetrator would be virtually nil, and the cost is relatively low), and that's all it takes for it to be used. 1: https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/top-heavy-lift-drones.html https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/top-heavy-lift-drones...