6 ms·

An anti-tank kinetic energy round (non-explosive) can penetrate foot-thick armor when fired horizontally, much more when fired straight down from an aircraft.

remarkEon 7y ago
I think the point remains. Now that this thing is out in the Wild we’ll see all sorts of attempts, however futile, to defend against it.
- mrandish 7y ago
  The best defense would be to ensure no one knows which car you're in. I think we can assume that these HVTs have already employed stringent RF security for themselves and their minions via battery removal and securing all devices in Faraday bags. Yet U.S. intelligence is somehow still able to track them. It must be quite unnerving. I suspect some new techniques are being leveraged that are apparently having some success.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    If one assumes some level of constant or near-constant surveillance, I think there's likely some facial recognition or perhaps some kind of matching of your "bio signature" that's going on. These guys swap SIM cards all the time, and are pretty wise to RF tracking at this point.
    - mrandish 7y ago
      I agree. With 24/7 wide-area drone surveillance being recorded and a neural net automating 'vehicle of interest' tracks both forward and backward in time, it's not even necessary to tag vehicles with trackers. I've suspected that they're also using hidden surveillance cams that do license plate and make/model capture along with occupant facial recognition. Assuming you have some additional mobile tracking cameras hidden in vehicles so they can be relocated once a day, the neural net could pretty easily infer guesses about where to put them.
      - remarkEon 7y ago
        Pretty sure they sweep for cameras now too, but I absolutely expect a neural net could do most of that work anyway. It’s an interesting problem of finding good enough instruments to track.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Nobody is firing an anti-tank KE round out of a drone. If an AC-130 is shooting at you well then you have other problems. For someone who is particularly concerned about this threat model it wouldn't be hard to stick a concealed plate in the roof. Probably won't stop the missile but will probably prevent the "blades" from coming through or at least prevent them from coming through expanded.
- seriesf 7y ago
  I was mostly lampooning the threat model implied by base-model Hyundai with 4-inch solid steel roof, but why can't an MQ-9 fire a KE weapon? Aren't they light and compact compared to the 500-pound munitions the MQ-9 is capable of delivering? People think "drone" and don't realize the MQ-9 is bigger than the A-10.
  - onetimemanytime 7y ago
    They can. They can also fire "bombs" but we're talking about this particular weapon. It all depends how it was designed, for all we know it was designed to just penetrate a normal car roof. It might be a cat and mouse game for a while, and the cost of adding some sort of armor is virtually zero for them. Who knows, it might work. Pretty sure they can also make a missile that fires 20 30mm rounds, 10 yards or whatever distance is needed to pepper the entire car, before crashing in the car.

remarkEon 7y ago

I think the point remains. Now that this thing is out in the Wild we’ll see all sorts of attempts, however futile, to defend against it.

mrandish 7y ago
The best defense would be to ensure no one knows which car you're in. I think we can assume that these HVTs have already employed stringent RF security for themselves and their minions via battery removal and securing all devices in Faraday bags. Yet U.S. intelligence is somehow still able to track them. It must be quite unnerving. I suspect some new techniques are being leveraged that are apparently having some success.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  If one assumes some level of constant or near-constant surveillance, I think there's likely some facial recognition or perhaps some kind of matching of your "bio signature" that's going on. These guys swap SIM cards all the time, and are pretty wise to RF tracking at this point.
  - mrandish 7y ago
    I agree. With 24/7 wide-area drone surveillance being recorded and a neural net automating 'vehicle of interest' tracks both forward and backward in time, it's not even necessary to tag vehicles with trackers. I've suspected that they're also using hidden surveillance cams that do license plate and make/model capture along with occupant facial recognition. Assuming you have some additional mobile tracking cameras hidden in vehicles so they can be relocated once a day, the neural net could pretty easily infer guesses about where to put them.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      Pretty sure they sweep for cameras now too, but I absolutely expect a neural net could do most of that work anyway. It’s an interesting problem of finding good enough instruments to track.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Nobody is firing an anti-tank KE round out of a drone. If an AC-130 is shooting at you well then you have other problems. For someone who is particularly concerned about this threat model it wouldn't be hard to stick a concealed plate in the roof. Probably won't stop the missile but will probably prevent the "blades" from coming through or at least prevent them from coming through expanded.

seriesf 7y ago
I was mostly lampooning the threat model implied by base-model Hyundai with 4-inch solid steel roof, but why can't an MQ-9 fire a KE weapon? Aren't they light and compact compared to the 500-pound munitions the MQ-9 is capable of delivering? People think "drone" and don't realize the MQ-9 is bigger than the A-10.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  They can. They can also fire "bombs" but we're talking about this particular weapon. It all depends how it was designed, for all we know it was designed to just penetrate a normal car roof. It might be a cat and mouse game for a while, and the cost of adding some sort of armor is virtually zero for them. Who knows, it might work. Pretty sure they can also make a missile that fires 20 30mm rounds, 10 yards or whatever distance is needed to pepper the entire car, before crashing in the car.