7 ms·

Major Saudi Arabia oil facilities hit by Houthi drone strikes

60 points by jarmitage 7y ago

aazaa 7y ago
This reminds me of a certain line of discussion about WWI. The leaders of the countries involved looked to the last war for clues on how to fight the next one. Except in the case of WWI, mechanization and the fruits of the industrial revolution had transformed the way war could be and ultimately was fought. The result was catastrophic. It seems that we may be seeing a similar transformation with weaponized robots. Not just planes, but ships, tanks, trucks, and even submarines. The US is leading the way here, with its ongoing, active drone warfare program: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ But unlike nuclear weapons, the barrier to entering the drone club is much lower. Poor countries and even non-state entities can play. The strike against Saudi Arabia also hints at the enormous leverage possible when automated warriors are used with the goal of economic strangulation. As such, this attack may be a preview of a world in which automated killing machines rework power relationships between countries rather suddenly.
- eloff 7y ago
  People here are quick to point out you can jam remote piloted drones, but you could also use AI to control then locally. That's much easier than the self driving car problem. I think drones are the future of warfare, which means you are limited not by the number of soldiers you can field, but by your manufacturing and resource base ( and how well you can protect it.) To be fair, that's been at least partially true since the second World War, but now it will be the dominating factor. However, it shouldn't change the balance between major powers, because conflict with major powers will almost certainly end in nuclear annihilation. Even if it starts without nukes, the loser may soon see it as their only option. So I hope this means war between major powers is no longer possible. You wouldn't know it the way China and the US posture though. Or more ominously India and Pakistan.
  - baybal2 7y ago
    Inertial navigation of toy drones these days can outmatch mid-cold-war ballistic missiles without any effort. I doubt that those existing Yemeni drones use any radionavigation or remote control to begin with, as it looks to be a certain overkill for the task. All their targets so far were big stationary targets, and there are all signs that they all use simple time (and not position) programmed maneuvers.
    - CPLX 7y ago
      Are you actually claiming they are using dead reckoning? I don’t know much about drones but I have a pilots license and in my opinion it would be extremely hard to have forecast winds aloft accurate enough to reach a target hundreds of miles away with only time and vector information as the inputs. They aren’t ballistic missles, going thousands of miles an hour, they’re going to be affected by wind. They’ve got to be using GPS positioning too I would think. Why wouldn’t they?
      - baybal2 7y ago
        Just guessing by reports that some of them get both lost wildly of course and do strikes wildly off target, and some ran into the ground, which is consistent with, say, few of them being hit by gusts of strong wind which overwhelmed the INS, or some of them getting a freak barometric input. And unlike with early ICBMs, precise accelerometer and airspeed inputs can provide quite good measure of lateral forces. Were they had a satellite, or used HF comms, somebody would've either timed the satellite, or spotted the HF signal long ago. And there were no sign of a huge satellite dish one needs to communicate to satellites in high orbit in found drone remainings.
- xenihn 7y ago
  I've been thinking about this lately. I feel like it will lead to an increase of nuclear powers. If you can't match a neighboring nation's robot output, and they aren't dealing with local attrition due to a negligible loss of combatants' lives (since most of it is machine loss and not human loss), your only reasonable form of resistance is MAD, and you can't have assurance if you are dependent on another nation's decision to use nukes in your defense.
  - warbird 7y ago
    Attribution? On some podcast (Malicious Life?) I heard an interesting take on this. Short version: cyber war is not yet real war because attribution is too difficult to justify irl bombs. So, if the barrier to entry in drone attacks is sufficiently low, could not a nation outsource some tactical operations to controllable private entities in order to obfuscate the origin of the attack? This, I would think, is plausible if the goal is to cause damage, rather than to demonstrate national prowess. In this scenario, nukes would not be a sure deterrent.
- chvid 7y ago
  I am curios about the technology used. The drones as I understand are similar to what is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil How can the Houti rebels fly 10 drones hundreds of kilometers into Saudi territory? How do they pilot them? It must be a very expensive attack to undertake compared to forms of "asymmetric" warfare (say a car bomb).
  - howard941 7y ago
    The article points out another successfully hit target was the Patriot search radar. The fiberglass airframe indicated in your link supports that capability. Autopilot code is as mentioned elsewhere open source. Scary stuff
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Houthi drones can and do fly 900 miles carrying significant ordinance, it's happened multiple times. They started on their drone journey buying cool consumer drones on aliexpress for $100 or so and modifying. They have access to the internet and enthusiast blogs and have rapidly grown their industry. Obviously unlike quadcopters they don't rely on wifi but rather use other RF bands. These people have lived there in the desert for tens of thousands of years. They are smart people and able to understand and improve on designs. It's not particularly sophisticated, liek on the Manhattan Project level requiring state backing. There are kids doing this stuff for fun without their parents even realizing.
    - TACIXAT 7y ago
      They'd need a really tall tower to remotely pilot something 900 miles off with no satellite. I think autonomous flight via gps is more realistic.
      - droithomme 7y ago
        The GPS and inertial gets the drone close enough. During the last stretch the Houthis have stated they have local guidance assist. The population in the area of the targets is significantly Shia, anti-KSA, and revolutionarily minded so it's not surprising this resource is available.
- jmpman 7y ago
  The barrier is getting so low, that a dispersed group, 1000 miles from a target could all 3D print the same drone, powered by an efficient commercially available RC engine, using a GPS guided computer (cell phone) with the capabilities to switch to visual terrain guidance and inertial navigation (making them immune to RF jamming), could all be launched at the same time, and deliver their payloads on the same target at exactly the same millisecond. All the software is available on GitHub today. The model airplane community has proven flights of 1888 miles, with 3 quarts of fuel, flying at 50mph. So 1000 miles plus a payload equivalent to the weight of 1 quart of kerosene has been demonstrated to be possible. The technology is proven. How many people in a 1000 mile diameter from a sensitive target could be motivated enough to build such a device and launch them simultaneously? Depending upon the fanaticism, I could imagine 10,000 of these drone, all swarming in from every direction, from every altitude, overwhelming any defense. How does a society defend themselves from such an attack? With such a swarm, the final 500 yards from a target is covered in 30 seconds. I don’t know of anything that can stop 10,000 RF shielded drones in 30 seconds. That dystopia is our future.
  - Jd 7y ago
    All the more reason to support a social media platform that creates extreme groupthink?
    - jmpman 7y ago
      Add in Tor and bitcoin, there’s complete anonymity, a funding mechanism and virtually zero possibility for response. When groups felt wronged, they “voted from the rooftops”. Now they will be able to anonymously vote from their basements.
  - voldacar 7y ago
    There's opensource visual terrain guidance software on github? I would love a link
    - jmpman 7y ago
      Here you go: https://github.com/agtbaskara/dsmac-drone https://github.com/agtbaskara/dsmac-drone
AYBABTME 7y ago
Anyone knows what type of drone they used?
- mikhailfranco 7y ago
  Previous Houthi attacks have used Ababil drones, with some variants known as Qasef. The Ababil-T can deliver up to a 45-kilogram (100-pound) warhead up to 150 kilometers (95 miles) away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil Yemen: Drone attack on base kills at least six soldiers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xba_q6Kr_fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xba_q6Kr_fU Archive of drones used allegedly by Houthis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Z_8HQrH5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Z_8HQrH5E
  - mikhailfranco 7y ago
    Update from UN investigation panel: https://undocs.org/en/S/2019/83 https://undocs.org/en/S/2019/83 pp30,31 describe and photograph a previously unknown drone, imaginatively given codename UAV-X, which was used in attacks on UAE and KSA: The most distinctive feature of the UAV-X is its significantly increased endurance and range. Powered by the Chinese-made DLE 170 or the German-made 3W110i B2 engine, with a top speed of between 200 km/h and 250 km/h, the unmanned aerial vehicle may have a maximum range of between 1,200 km and 1,500 km, depending on wind conditions.
yorwba 7y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969633
xenospn 7y ago
This is what happens when you play Civilization in God mode.
md2be 7y ago
Look back to all the fools in the Democratic Party fools in congress in the 80s. Ronald Regan and his Star Wars initiative was a bulls eye.
Fjolsvith 7y ago
So, everyone is worried about a fleet of drones attacking. I've seen some interesting drone flight formations for Chinese celebrations at night which indicate to me that they could be controlled, perhaps, by AI, to search out and attack incoming hostile drones. Imagine facing a fleet of the drones from, for example, the movie Oblivion.

60 points by jarmitage 7y ago

This reminds me of a certain line of discussion about WWI. The leaders of the countries involved looked to the last war for clues on how to fight the next one. Except in the case of WWI, mechanization and the fruits of the industrial revolution had transformed the way war could be and ultimately was fought. The result was catastrophic. It seems that we may be seeing a similar transformation with weaponized robots. Not just planes, but ships, tanks, trucks, and even submarines. The US is leading the way here, with its ongoing, active drone warfare program: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ But unlike nuclear weapons, the barrier to entering the drone club is much lower. Poor countries and even non-state entities can play. The strike against Saudi Arabia also hints at the enormous leverage possible when automated warriors are used with the goal of economic strangulation. As such, this attack may be a preview of a world in which automated killing machines rework power relationships between countries rather suddenly.

eloff 7y ago
People here are quick to point out you can jam remote piloted drones, but you could also use AI to control then locally. That's much easier than the self driving car problem. I think drones are the future of warfare, which means you are limited not by the number of soldiers you can field, but by your manufacturing and resource base ( and how well you can protect it.) To be fair, that's been at least partially true since the second World War, but now it will be the dominating factor. However, it shouldn't change the balance between major powers, because conflict with major powers will almost certainly end in nuclear annihilation. Even if it starts without nukes, the loser may soon see it as their only option. So I hope this means war between major powers is no longer possible. You wouldn't know it the way China and the US posture though. Or more ominously India and Pakistan.
- baybal2 7y ago
  Inertial navigation of toy drones these days can outmatch mid-cold-war ballistic missiles without any effort. I doubt that those existing Yemeni drones use any radionavigation or remote control to begin with, as it looks to be a certain overkill for the task. All their targets so far were big stationary targets, and there are all signs that they all use simple time (and not position) programmed maneuvers.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    Are you actually claiming they are using dead reckoning? I don’t know much about drones but I have a pilots license and in my opinion it would be extremely hard to have forecast winds aloft accurate enough to reach a target hundreds of miles away with only time and vector information as the inputs. They aren’t ballistic missles, going thousands of miles an hour, they’re going to be affected by wind. They’ve got to be using GPS positioning too I would think. Why wouldn’t they?
    - baybal2 7y ago
      Just guessing by reports that some of them get both lost wildly of course and do strikes wildly off target, and some ran into the ground, which is consistent with, say, few of them being hit by gusts of strong wind which overwhelmed the INS, or some of them getting a freak barometric input. And unlike with early ICBMs, precise accelerometer and airspeed inputs can provide quite good measure of lateral forces. Were they had a satellite, or used HF comms, somebody would've either timed the satellite, or spotted the HF signal long ago. And there were no sign of a huge satellite dish one needs to communicate to satellites in high orbit in found drone remainings.
xenihn 7y ago
I've been thinking about this lately. I feel like it will lead to an increase of nuclear powers. If you can't match a neighboring nation's robot output, and they aren't dealing with local attrition due to a negligible loss of combatants' lives (since most of it is machine loss and not human loss), your only reasonable form of resistance is MAD, and you can't have assurance if you are dependent on another nation's decision to use nukes in your defense.
- warbird 7y ago
  Attribution? On some podcast (Malicious Life?) I heard an interesting take on this. Short version: cyber war is not yet real war because attribution is too difficult to justify irl bombs. So, if the barrier to entry in drone attacks is sufficiently low, could not a nation outsource some tactical operations to controllable private entities in order to obfuscate the origin of the attack? This, I would think, is plausible if the goal is to cause damage, rather than to demonstrate national prowess. In this scenario, nukes would not be a sure deterrent.
chvid 7y ago
I am curios about the technology used. The drones as I understand are similar to what is described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil How can the Houti rebels fly 10 drones hundreds of kilometers into Saudi territory? How do they pilot them? It must be a very expensive attack to undertake compared to forms of "asymmetric" warfare (say a car bomb).
- howard941 7y ago
  The article points out another successfully hit target was the Patriot search radar. The fiberglass airframe indicated in your link supports that capability. Autopilot code is as mentioned elsewhere open source. Scary stuff
- droithomme 7y ago
  Houthi drones can and do fly 900 miles carrying significant ordinance, it's happened multiple times. They started on their drone journey buying cool consumer drones on aliexpress for $100 or so and modifying. They have access to the internet and enthusiast blogs and have rapidly grown their industry. Obviously unlike quadcopters they don't rely on wifi but rather use other RF bands. These people have lived there in the desert for tens of thousands of years. They are smart people and able to understand and improve on designs. It's not particularly sophisticated, liek on the Manhattan Project level requiring state backing. There are kids doing this stuff for fun without their parents even realizing.
  - TACIXAT 7y ago
    They'd need a really tall tower to remotely pilot something 900 miles off with no satellite. I think autonomous flight via gps is more realistic.
    - droithomme 7y ago
      The GPS and inertial gets the drone close enough. During the last stretch the Houthis have stated they have local guidance assist. The population in the area of the targets is significantly Shia, anti-KSA, and revolutionarily minded so it's not surprising this resource is available.
jmpman 7y ago
The barrier is getting so low, that a dispersed group, 1000 miles from a target could all 3D print the same drone, powered by an efficient commercially available RC engine, using a GPS guided computer (cell phone) with the capabilities to switch to visual terrain guidance and inertial navigation (making them immune to RF jamming), could all be launched at the same time, and deliver their payloads on the same target at exactly the same millisecond. All the software is available on GitHub today. The model airplane community has proven flights of 1888 miles, with 3 quarts of fuel, flying at 50mph. So 1000 miles plus a payload equivalent to the weight of 1 quart of kerosene has been demonstrated to be possible. The technology is proven. How many people in a 1000 mile diameter from a sensitive target could be motivated enough to build such a device and launch them simultaneously? Depending upon the fanaticism, I could imagine 10,000 of these drone, all swarming in from every direction, from every altitude, overwhelming any defense. How does a society defend themselves from such an attack? With such a swarm, the final 500 yards from a target is covered in 30 seconds. I don’t know of anything that can stop 10,000 RF shielded drones in 30 seconds. That dystopia is our future.
- Jd 7y ago
  All the more reason to support a social media platform that creates extreme groupthink?
  - jmpman 7y ago
    Add in Tor and bitcoin, there’s complete anonymity, a funding mechanism and virtually zero possibility for response. When groups felt wronged, they “voted from the rooftops”. Now they will be able to anonymously vote from their basements.
- voldacar 7y ago
  There's opensource visual terrain guidance software on github? I would love a link
  - jmpman 7y ago
    Here you go: https://github.com/agtbaskara/dsmac-drone https://github.com/agtbaskara/dsmac-drone

AYBABTME 7y ago

Anyone knows what type of drone they used?

mikhailfranco 7y ago
Previous Houthi attacks have used Ababil drones, with some variants known as Qasef. The Ababil-T can deliver up to a 45-kilogram (100-pound) warhead up to 150 kilometers (95 miles) away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Ababil Yemen: Drone attack on base kills at least six soldiers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xba_q6Kr_fU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xba_q6Kr_fU Archive of drones used allegedly by Houthis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Z_8HQrH5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Z_8HQrH5E
- mikhailfranco 7y ago
  Update from UN investigation panel: https://undocs.org/en/S/2019/83 https://undocs.org/en/S/2019/83 pp30,31 describe and photograph a previously unknown drone, imaginatively given codename UAV-X, which was used in attacks on UAE and KSA: The most distinctive feature of the UAV-X is its significantly increased endurance and range. Powered by the Chinese-made DLE 170 or the German-made 3W110i B2 engine, with a top speed of between 200 km/h and 250 km/h, the unmanned aerial vehicle may have a maximum range of between 1,200 km and 1,500 km, depending on wind conditions.

yorwba 7y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20969633

xenospn 7y ago

This is what happens when you play Civilization in God mode.

md2be 7y ago

Look back to all the fools in the Democratic Party fools in congress in the 80s. Ronald Regan and his Star Wars initiative was a bulls eye.

Fjolsvith 7y ago

So, everyone is worried about a fleet of drones attacking. I've seen some interesting drone flight formations for Chinese celebrations at night which indicate to me that they could be controlled, perhaps, by AI, to search out and attack incoming hostile drones. Imagine facing a fleet of the drones from, for example, the movie Oblivion.