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DARPA Wants Millions to Design an Unmanned 'Flying Gun' Under Its New Gunslinger
- _iyig 7y ago'Flying gun' reminds me of TIKAD, a drone-mounted assault rifle developed at Duke University. Israel is buying/has bought them for 'anti-terrorist operations': https://www.armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_military_technology_uk/israel_tikad_armed_drone_with_assault_rifle_to_perform_anti-terrorist_operations.html https://www.armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_mil...
- topspin 7y agoHere is the Ziyan Blowfish A3 shooting a paint target against a hill with a small caliber automatic weapon. The manufacturer claims autonomous operation without admitting autonomous targeting. Shooting anyone it finds, in other words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDGqc0FrXZg&feature=youtu.be&t=57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDGqc0FrXZg&feature=youtu.be... According to the US secretary of defense these are being exported from China now.
- starpilot 7y agoMade by Duke Robotics in Florida, no affiliation to Duke University. Mostly staffed by Israelis: https://dukeroboticsys.com/team/ https://dukeroboticsys.com/team/
- _iyig 7y agoThank you for the correction! Apparently I’ve been confused on this for years. Wouldn’t be surprised if Duke University brought a trademark lawsuit.
- blakesterz 7y agoI remember at some point seeing an interview with someone that was involved with the design of the A-10 Warthog and he described it as something like a gun wrapped in an airplane. Unsurprisingly this site mentions attempts to replace the A-10 Warthogs big gun.
- caycep 7y agothis smells like an attempt to update the CAS concept; kind of like an AC-130 that's more survivable or expendable with less risk to a live pilot. That being said, I'd have expected them to make something like a Reaper with guns instead of AGMs. I'm just not sure why they are describing it as a "missile with guns" vs a "drone with guns"
- crocodiletears 7y agoGiven the rough form factor they describe (I think a hellfire when I read it), I'd expect they're looking to be able to quickly deploy multiple of these things to do targeted killing or automated area denial in firefights w/o having to risk a pilot or a whole plane. Like a swarm of mini warthogs firing 5.56 or 7.62.
- hindsightbias 7y agoA 30mm a-10 round weighs like .75kg. Would seem we could make CAS anti-personnel drones for less weight and longer range. Of course you’d still need armor piercing, or maybe not if you could make a drone that would foam engine intakes or optics.
- jacquesm 7y agoThere are some youtube videos of people that have built their own drone mounted handguns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI--wFfipvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI--wFfipvA There was another one of a rifle shooting at balloons from a drone, but I can't find the video for that. Not quite a 'missile' but the basics seem to be relatively straightforward and within the budget of hobbyists, the DARPA program is mostly about scaling it up and dealing with the recoil and mechanical and thermal stresses associated with mobile launch platforms. Drones are severely weight constrained so getting this to a level where it is combat ready is harder than it might seem. I'm personally not sad about that, I think that any 'remote kill' capability comes with its own special set of problems and that we are very far from being ready to handle that responsibly, witness the current assassination programs.
- neltnerb 7y agoNot to knock on hobbyists doing cool projects, but to me "missile" means "at least supersonic if not hypersonic". I guess the article is light on details there, but I get the impression that this is intended to be a way to send a very fast (and so hard to shoot down) missile at a target with the ability to fire multiple smaller missiles or simply to fire bullets at enemy aircraft from a vastly closer range where it's onboard sensor suite will be far more effective against enemy aircraft countermeasures. Or simply to provide much more active countermeasures against AA sites shooting the missile down. Something incredibly fast that uses a computer to rapidly analyze and respond to sensor data to respond with a variety of lethal options sounds terrifying and I don't especially want it to exist. But I can see the appeal of having a new missile that stands a much better chance of striking a target to make actual global adversaries think thrice. The new cold war... yet we still have citizens without food security or health care... priorities I guess.
- starpilot 7y agoMissile usually just means guided. The tomahawk cruise missile is subsonic, among others.
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- mfer 7y agoDidn't they make a Marvel movie about this titled Captain America Winter Soldier?
- walshemj 7y ago1 why are not the army involved as well as 2/3s of the roles are army related 2 Why an expendable missile and not a reusable gun armed drone in a loyal wingman role or a parasite drone that can be launched from a mother ship or from a truck / avf back in the 50's they had the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin parasite fighter You could have a disposable sprint motor to get into into position quickly Finally what calibre, type of round and capacity are required
- empath75 7y agoImagine a few thousand of these under the control of alphastar.
- taneq 7y agoSounds great, do you think we could get the system online by August 4th?
- OrgNet 7y agoReminds me of the slaughterbots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y agoI know this is still a weapon but it's surprising the lengths we go to in order to minimize civilian suffering. I just got finished watching The World at War series. During WWII there was routinely air raids that would kill 20,000+ people. Tokyo firebombing killed 100,000+ War is still bad but I'm glad I don't have to live thru that.
- AWildC182 7y agoI don't think it's quite so altruistic. Militaries are systematically moving to smaller, more precise munitions across the board. If they're smaller and smarter you need A)fewer of them for a given mission and B)can carry more of them, therefore being able to complete more missions, on any given launch platform. A B-29 can carry max 20,000lbs of ordinance but with no precision so at most it can kill one factory or depot. Hypothetically, the same aircraft carrying a max load of GBU-53/B StormBreaker small diameter smart bombs would be able to destroy a hundred factories and installations in one flight.
- nostrademons 7y agoKilling people is also a good way to create more enemies, which a.) you then have to dispatch and b.) have a chance of killing you. There are very large second-order efficiencies to creating weapons that only kill those who pose an immediate threat to you and minimize collateral damage. Remember that the military operates as an extension of larger foreign policy goals, and it's far more efficient to never create an enemy in the first place than it is to get rid of them. (Sometimes I wish world leaders would realize this, but a lot of foreign policy isn't actually about advancing a nation's strategic goals, it's about providing an outlet for aggressive tribal emotions that are usually suppressed within the population.)
- AndrewKemendo 7y agoMinimizing casualties is typically the first priority in any combat engagement. People like to point at very publicised situations where things went horribly wrong or there were major breakdowns in good order that led to those considerations being ignored. However if you dig deeper there will typically be major investigations (which is BTW how these Incidents come out usually) and severe punishments, not to mention all the follow on effects for the rest of the force like increased training in Laws of armed conflict etc...
- heyflyguy 7y agoI feel like DARPA doesn't have enough money.
- adam 7y agoThey got a slight budget increase in the 2020 budget to $3.56B.
- jessriedel 7y agoJust for a sense of scale, this is $12M of the DOD's $70B R&D research budget, of which DARPA Is $3.5B.
- danieltrembath 7y agoThis stood out to me also. $13million is a tiny sum in military research. Seems like a pretty limited research project.
- chiefalchemist 7y agoHow about we harden our infrastructure first? You can't use this against hackers taking down your power grid. This won't stop misinformation campaigns on social media. In the 20th century DARPA might be right. But two decades into the 21st century? It sounds pointless.
- jswizzy 7y agoDARPA is hardening our infrastructure. They just did a bunch of anti drone experiments in San Diego it was in the news. There were even some UFO articles written about it.
- aspaceman 7y agoI am aware of some DARPA projects that actually focus on improving infrastructure. I'll edit my comment if I can find a link.
- Nasrudith 7y agoWhile not having infastructure needlessly vulnerable to hacking is generally known as not being a goddamned idiot be very cautious of "misinformation campaign" protection beyond critical thinking and auditability as a norm. It is one thing to somehow get any news agency who even tries to be reputable to sign their stories, the government to sign their official publications, and people to expect anything claiming to be them to actually prove it. Allowing anyone the authority to enforce "blocking misinformation" for "national security" is a concept tailor made for a use. My Lai and Tiananmen Square would be "misinformation" while antivaxxer bullshit and "if you vote with a relative in jail you will be arrested" style misinformation would go untouched because it would be born an instrument to be abused for power.
- kryogen1c 7y agoWhat if this was flying tubes of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11 loaded with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangible_bullet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangible_bullet Idk much about the field, but it seems close to as-light-as-possible.
- mapmap 7y agoEvery gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
- dataking 7y agoExcept that scientists working on DARPA programs have also produced some technologies that have proven phenomenally useful to civilians such as the internet, computer mice, GPS, Siri, etc.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoStill a relevant quote that makes you think about the costs of war, especially when you think about the fact that the person who said it being one of the planners for- and also talked to the soldiers who would participate in- D-Day.
- sneak 7y agoNASA put people on the moon and brought them back. They could have designed, launched, and operated GPS like they do Hubble and other satellites. It’s well within their expertise. We don’t need to accept massive DoD funding of violent undertakings that end up killing millions simply for the meager benefits we get as a side effect sometimes.
- microcolonel 7y agoThey could develop GPS, but they didn't and wouldn't. The U.S. military commissioned and deployed GPS to configure the clocks and weapons systems required to hold off the hostile and ignorant powers of the world.
- brokenmachine 7y agoThe future is scary.
- henvic 7y agoHow long until people realize that their beloved politicians are warmongers and tax evaders helps people by avoiding money being diverted from society to be wasted by the evil military-industrial complex creating war and destruction or, at least to parasites working on different levels of the state? Despite what the state apparatus sell people, most taxation money doesn't come back as services for society, but goes to the pocket of parasites or end up being used in the destruction of society. http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html
- seamyb88 7y agoThe title was truncated to fit into HN, here is the full title: "DARPA Wants Millions to Design an Unmanned 'Flying Gun' Under Its New Gunslinger, which will then be tested on your family, you stupid shit"