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Illegal drones ground water-dropping helicopters in Maria fire battle
- brenden2 7y agoStartup idea: an accurate weapon for destroying drones that are flying in places they shouldn't be. Has anyone tried doing something like this?
- freeflight 7y agoA ton of it, from having other drones capture the hostile ones with nets, to disrupting the hostile drones RF signals to force it into landing. Been a bit of a fad a while ago when drones first became somewhat mainstream.
- bicubic 7y agoDisrupting the control signal doesn’t force a landing. Even on super locked down DJI drones you can program several actions, including continuing a waypoint mission. Jammers are a moronic idea for this task. They cause an unpredictable response and increase risk.
- freeflight 7y agoYou might wanna take those issues up to the people actually working on these things [0], I only shared what I remembered about startups working on the problem. [0] https://newatlas.com/droneshield-dronegun-mkiii-jamming-drones/60579/ https://newatlas.com/droneshield-dronegun-mkiii-jamming-dron...
- missosoup 7y agoThey are aware of the limitations, read the carefully worded marketing on that page: "When on target, they can prompt a drone to land safely on the spot or return to its point of takeoff, while cutting the video livestream back to the operator immediately." Just because someone is making a product doesn't mean the product isn't stupid. I remember there was a mob making another anti-drone 'gun' which jammed GPS. That didn't end well for them. Unless the target drone is actively being used in a hostile manner (as opposed to idiots flying where they shouldn't be), then removing the operator's control of the drone without establishing another means of control makes the situation more dangerous.
- inamberclad 7y agoYou mean a gun or missile? Unlikely in a populated area. There are several companies that sell equipment that's promised to jam these drones, however.
- TaylorAlexander 7y agoI think an attack drone would work well.
- rubbingalcohol 7y agoIt's relatively easy to shoot down a drone, you can do it with birdshot. The problem would be falling debris and the safety hazard that represents. Might be a moot point in cases of fire, but in general that would be a pretty specialized startup around a task that a basic shotgun would already excel at.
- _iyig 7y agoBirdshot is effective against drones, but only within a few hundred meters: https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/how-far-will-birdshot-go-as-in-clay-pigeon-shooting.250869/ https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/how-far-will-b...
- Enginerrrd 7y agoThere's a very big difference between the maximum distance an individual pellet of birdshot will go (which is still likely less than 300 yards at its maximal ballistic trajectory)and the "effective range" which is usually defined something like 'the maximum range at which accurate fire will produce a 50% hit probability'. For birdshot, that's usually considered to be around 40 yards for a bird. A drone would probably be similar.
- reaperducer 7y agoyou can do it with birdshot. You can also do with with a bird. https://time.com/4675164/drone-hunting-eagles/ https://time.com/4675164/drone-hunting-eagles/ (Awesome picture in the link of an eagle sinking its talons into a drone mid-flight.)
- sitkack 7y agoIt is inhumane to use birds to take down drones. The rotors can easily mame or kill even a large bird
- rkagerer 7y agoMy intent isn't to engage in argument with you, but I'm curious, by that line of reasoning do you feel the same about K9 dogs used to take down criminals who may be armed?
- aresant 7y agoAnduril working hard on this concept https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019/10/03/palmer-luckey-anduril-interceptor-counter-drone/ https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019/10/03/palmer-luckey-anduri...
- _iyig 7y agoAnduril just recently announced their drone-interceptor drone: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20898931/anduril-anvil-drone-footage-palmer-luckey-quadcopter https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/4/20898931/anduril-anvil-dr...
- RaiseProfits 7y agoWhy not just shoot the drone down?
- kylek 7y agoI’ve been wanting to get some of these 12-gauge net cartridges [0]. They really seem more like a novelty unfortunately. [0] https://www.budk.com/12-Gauge-Skynet-Drone-Defense--3-Pack-35975 https://www.budk.com/12-Gauge-Skynet-Drone-Defense--3-Pack-3...
- loeg 7y agoLike, a rifle? Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. The gun space isn't exactly rife with opportunity for a disruptive startup.
- _iyig 7y agoRifles aren’t a desirable drone-interception tool. For one thing, it’s hard to hit a small moving target that may be hundreds of meters up in the air. Overshoot is also a huge problem - unlike birdshot pellets which fall harmlessly to the ground after 300 meters or so, rifle bullets can travel at lethal velocity for several kilometers. Even if you hit the drone, your bullet may keep traveling.
- reaperducer 7y agoit’s hard to hit a small moving target that may be hundreds of meters up in the air. I wonder if a local skeet-shooting club could be deployed for this sort fo thing. Certainly they have the practice. But I'm not sure about the range.
- JshWright 7y agoYou don't use a rifle for skeet shooting either...
- loeg 7y agoI don't think you need a .50 cal to take out a drone; a 22 would be fine and basically doesn't have the overshoot problems you described.
- _iyig 7y ago.22 LR fired at 45 degrees will travel for at least a mile, according to ballistic calculators and the warning on my ammo box.
- afiori 7y agoThere was a marketing campaign for a jamming gun to essentially disable drones. (I imagine some would just float statically though)
- lsb 7y agoYes! People have trained large birds to do this as well! https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hawk+catching+a+drone&ia=videos&iax=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hawk+catching+a+drone&ia=videos&ia...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tarr11 7y agoThe military has been doing this for a long time. Google “drone defense systems”
- amenod 7y agoAre drones' RC controllers any more sophisticated than regular old-skool ones? If not (if the communication protocol still lacks encryption and authentication), they could easily be intercepted and destroyed by sending them to the ground. Also, the source of radio transmission can probably easily be located by appropriately trained "drone hunters". It does mean that not all of the responders can deal with the catastrophe at hand, but a few stiff penalties would make drones less frequent in disaster areas.
- NickNameNick 7y agoIf it's 2.4 Ghz, then even the straight RC systems use some form of spread-spectrum frequency hopping. Newer variants include some limited forms of error checking, and most drone controllers have a return-to-launch-site feature that can be enabled if they lose contact with the controller. Only slightly more advanced drones can fly a pre-programmed course without talking to the transmitter at all.
- amenod 7y agoThank you for the info!
- AmericanChopper 7y agoThere’s already a bunch of products that do this. In Singapore the police use drones that shoot nets to catch other drones. The net shooting drone handles tracking and targeting, and the net is tethered, so it doesn’t fall to the ground. The military has laser technology designed for this purpose, and there’s various radio jammer solutions on the market. Also, police in the Netherlands use trained eagles. There’s plenty of existing solutions to this problem already.
- godelski 7y ago> Has anyone tried doing something like this? Yes, lots. There's active and open gov solicitations for solutions. It's enough of a problem that the major news media have been covering it for a few years. Talking about solutions like eagles, RF jammers, net guns, etc.
- Mathnerd314 7y agorelevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CzURm7OpAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CzURm7OpAA ("Knocking my neighbors kids cruddy drone offline")
- bsamuels 7y agoI hope DJI responds with a firmware update preventing flight in temporary no-fly zones. Right now they respect static no fly zones, but when temporary ones get put up you can still fly inside them. It's a real shame that large ready-to-fly drones aren't required by law to prevent arming in no-fly zones. About half of the DJI pilots I know actively prevent their firmware from being upgraded to the one that will respect static no-fly zones.
- mopsi 7y ago> It's a real shame that large ready-to-fly drones aren't required by law to prevent arming in no-fly zones. What if I have a permission to fly there? A friend of mine struggles with this a lot. He does real estate photography and has photographed even at international airports (under strict supervision).
- bsamuels 7y agoThe FAA establishes complete "no-fly" zones where you may never fly a UAS period. These are zones like active landing/takeoff routes and areas with low flying aircraft like the fire fighting aircraft in the article. I have never heard of someone obtaining FAA authorization to fly a UAS in one of these zones, so I seriously doubt someone using a ready-to-fly kit would be able to do so. One common misconception is the difference between a no-fly zone and controlled airspace. If you want to fly in controlled airspace (within 3 miles of an airport or so), you can obtain said authorization using the LAANC system. It's extremely easy, you just install an app, verify your phone number, and submit the flight request.
- dvtrn 7y agoThere are actually a couple classes of airspace that are technically “controlled” but don’t require authorization from nearby towers. May want to refresh your 107 information.
- bsamuels 7y agoFor the purpose of non-aviation people reading a comment thread about drones, it's good enough. I could edit my post and include all the weird side cases about controlled airspace but at the end of the day it's not relevant to the reader.
- jiofih 7y agoDuplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21426012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21426012 (14h ago)
- DoctorOetker 7y agoIn the case of continued deadlock, the water-dropping helicopters will have to become unmanned. (which may even make sense on its own given lowered risk to human pilot) there may even be a load of upshots: the tyranny of the helicopter equation, mass deployment of firefighting drones from other regions not currently facing fires (without needing to temporarily house pilots from far away), ... there will always be a trade-off between risk to the firefighter and potential reward for risky moves. with unmanned vehicles the fire might be more effectively fought without needing to take into account the loss of pilots, thus allowing more effective fire fighting moves to be taken.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rgbrenner 7y agoWhat type of risky maneuvers are you imagining are required to drop some water on a fire? And how many $30-100 million dollar planes would you throw away to do it? It's risky enough as it is, I doubt anyone wants to increase that risk.. and it seems to me they're perfectly capable of fighting fires without the multiple $100m losses you think might be "effective". It isn't like these fire depts have that kind of money to throw away. And they would still want to clear unauthorized drones from the area... It would be a big loss if one of these crashed because of someones hobby drone. And unpiloted or not, a plane that big and heavy won't be capable of moving out of the way of a small drone that gets in its way.
- afiori 7y agoAs a premise I am not an expert in any related field, but with regards to flying in the smoke it is possible (maybe, I do not know which constraint are relevant) that an unmanned could have more freedom of approaching a fire from more angles.
- zlsa 7y agoWhere are you seeing $30-100 million dollars? The largest firefighting plane in operation today cost [about $10 million](https://www.outsideonline.com/2079591/can-10-million-firefighting-machine-actually-stop-fires https://www.outsideonline.com/2079591/can-10-million-firefig...) to purchase and outfit.
- ahaferburg 7y agoWould it be possible to triangulate the remote? Maybe even from the helicopter?
- nradov 7y agoIn theory it's possible. But accurate triangulation requires multiple passes with specialized equipment not carried on firefighting aircraft.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y ago> While the unmanned aerial vehicles are small, drones can wreak incredible havoc. A collision with a wing, engine or any part of a larger aircraft can cause severe damage. How so? Which part of a helicopter is so sensitive to the impact of a drone? They are not fast and they are not heavy. > “A bird collision with a plane can cause a plane to go down,” said Jessica Gardetto, a spokesperson for the National Interagency Fire Center. “These are hard plastic items.” Different scenario. Planes crash into birds with a huge speed, and they can get into the turbines, which obviously can damage them.
- danharaj 7y agoThe blades?
- thanatos_dem 7y agoThis is seriously your argument? Alright, hold my red bull, it's math time. Let's assume they're using a Boeing Vertol 234, a civilian model of the Chinook commonly used for firefighting. They're double rotor, and as such the rotors are slower than most single rotor helicopters, at around 225 RPM [1] at full throttle. The rotors on a chinook are 60ft in diameter [2]. This means that the edge of the blade is traveling about 188.5 ft per revolution. At 225 RPM, that's 706.8 feet per second, or ~481 miles per hour, on par with a commercial aircraft at cruising speed. So yeah, smacking a drone into a relatively thin and lightweight rotor blade at over 400 miles an hour may cause a wee bit of damage. [1] http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/standards/areas/blade.html http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/standards/areas/blade.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook#Specifications_(CH-47F) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook#Specifica...
- MrBuddyCasino 7y agoJust to be clear, I think the people flying drones are assholes. I'm not saying "don't make a such a big deal out of it". I'm just wondering what the actual danger is. Are the blades really that sensitive? I'd assume they would easily shred a drone to pieces and not be harmed in the process, because they already need to be quite tough to not tear apart under the centrifugal force during normal operation. But I have no idea, thats just my intuition.
- tomohawk 7y agoTime for firefighters to keep a few shotguns in the equipment with bird shot. They already have clearance to destroy property to stop a fire.
- bilbo0s 7y agoI'd imagine things are not as simple as that in large forest fires. What if they shoot this stuff down, and start more fires? They have to think about all that probably.
- hurrdurr2 7y agoThe article mentioned people may be operating drones to film footage for social media or to sell to TV stations. If this was really the case then it shouldn't be too hard to track these kinds of folks down.
- rasz 7y agoLets not forget "Air tanker drops in wildfires are often just for show" https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-wildfires29-2008jul29-st... "To professional firefighters, though, it was a prime example of a “political air show,” the high-profile use of expensive aircraft to appease elected officials." “CNN drops.”
- newguy1234 7y agoSo what would be an effective way to fight wildfires then? Just clear brush, better fire resistant structure...or?
- biggestdecision 7y agoIt's not that aerial drops aren't effective. But the way they are used is sometimes more political than practical.
- angry_octet 7y agoIt may be a practically effective way to get news coverage, important for getting the public to move their ass out of the dangerous area. Not to mention a visible symbol requiring funding.
- mrexroad 7y agoI can’t help but think of analogy to engineering orgs where leadership places higher value on engineers whose highly visible “heroics” fix a mess they created in the first place, rather than the engineer that makes boring decisions that prevent the problems in the first place. I have zero knowledge or expertise in forest management or wildfire fighting, but I suspect there isn’t a simply a single method that’s more effective. Meaningful progress likely requires an interrelated system of measures spanning education, policy, understanding risk tolerances, prevention and response. But if expensive response measures — with low-efficacy — are taken primarily for political reasons, I’d love to see the political value shift to more boring proactive measures. With that said, I don’t have any understanding/data on efficacy of tankers, or what proactive measures would be more valuable, just thinking aloud.
- sakopov 7y agoJust throwing this out there, but can this issue be tackled with licensing? Similar to a HAM radio operator license. The drones would also have to be registered and identified with the operator license number. I feel like it is likely where this is heading anyway.
- code4tee 7y agoMost drones already do need to be registered and commercial operators need to be licensed. Pieces of paper don’t stop stupid though unfortunately.
- godelski 7y agoI think this would take care of a lot of low hanging fruit, but probably not much more. Just like in HAM it is hard to find someone abusing the airwaves unless they are constantly broadcasting (and you can go on a fox hunt. But it is a hunt). So you get the people that are just flying to see the fire and you can ring them up or knock on their door. The real problem though is that this doesn't fix the major concerns with drone DOS attacks. It is not hard to set up a repeater to control the drone (adding an extra level of difficulty to your fox hunt) or by just programming the drone to take certain actions (even basic AI can do some disastrous things). That seems, to me, to be more what the FAA is after and why more effort is being put in to take down drones instead of tracking the operators. This also has the effect of stopping the DOS attack immediately instead of just fining the person later. This being much more important considering that peoples' lives are at risk.
- hanniabu 7y agoIs there not anything similar to a cell phone jammer for RC? Would also be cool if they can send out an overriding "return to home" signal that will make the drones return to their starting position. This is something that would need to be in the hardware or firmware or to where the device would be bricked if removed from there or software.
- mips_avatar 7y agoGPS jamming would be more effective. The flight computer relies on it heavily.
- missosoup 7y agoFor older consumer products yes. For new ones or military purpose, nah. Optical flow + vSLAM + IMU is now the primary localisation system. GPS is just there to stay on track for long paths.
- kevingadd 7y agoThere are a bunch of different frequency ranges they can use, and it's not trivial to jam lots of frequencies without running into legal issues. If you figured out what frequency range the drone is using you might be able to drown it out but the odds seem high that other equipment might be using that frequency band and it could interfere with emergency operations. Like, hypothetical example - a long range hobbyist drone might be hooked up with a SIM card and the cellular network, so blocking it would require blocking cells like the ones used by emergency responders. Shorter range drones are probably using unlicensed bands, and you might be able to block those - but again emergency responders might be using them for short range communications equipment etc. Long range jamming also runs into power issues due to the inverse square law, I think. You'd need to do it directionally, and at that point I think you'd be better off just shooting the drone down with something like a gas-powered BB rifle or net launcher.
- zanethomas 7y agomorons
- rcurry 7y agoit seems like the only realistic solution to these asshats is to mount jammers on all the police and fire aircraft. You could tax drone sales to pay for it.