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As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill peop

by JackFr 6y ago

As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people. Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them are going to be hard. While the “cool” factor is high, I suspect guns, bombs, hard men, threats and bribes are more efficient.

mark-r 6y ago
Technology progresses. What's hard today may be easy tomorrow.
Causality1 6y ago
I'm always torn about articles like this. The fact the headline is a lie makes me want to flag it but the content itself is interesting enough I would have read it without a clickbait title. I wish HN had guidance on this topic.
- Mromson 6y ago
  I'm of the opinion that if the headline is a lie, then the thread should be flagged; no matter how interesting the content. Lying shouldn't be rewarded. But then again, I don't have flagging rights yet, so who am I to judge?
- divbzero 6y ago
  HN guidelines [1] do mention: “please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait”. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
antupis 6y ago
Killing specific people might be hard but harassing gathering and attacking to crowds don't need 2 kilos.
ashtonkem 6y ago
High value targets will justify expenditure of more resources. For most targets a few men with AK-47s might do the trick, but for the well protected target this would be a pretty decent strategy. It certainly would strike fear into the hearts of men otherwise protected against more pedestrian threats, which is probably part of the point.
- clarus 6y ago
  This is exactly how drones were used in Syria as I understood. To attack otherwise protected targets or strike fear. To attack Russian bases they even use swarms of suicide planes: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_mans_airforce/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_man...
- peteretep 6y ago
  Seems like more hassle than a mortar for about the same effect?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    You can’t order a mortar on alibaba, and it requires much more training to use it effectively than flying a drone. Mortars are also large and heavy and require a crew to serve as well as spotters to direct fire which means you need to have people closer to your target and working communications. All of this complicates the logistics considerably which makes them less effective and more dangerous to their operators. Effective mortar attacks can be fairly easily countered in the long term by jamming radios, cutting brush and removing other natural hiding spots and by killing experienced mortar crews. Drones can be piloted by nearly anyone and with basic consumer grade equipment they can also be piloted from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.
    - JackFr 6y ago
      > You can’t order a mortar on alibaba Well you can’t order C4 on Alibaba either. But if you can get C4 you can likely get a mortar.
dmos62 6y ago
I don't know. How many attacks happen that have a budget in the thousands of dollars (that's what I ballpark the price of a load bearing drone to be)? I presume a lot. Another way to look at it is, how much does personal protection cost? Bodyguards, etc. If your attack methods are cheaper and at least comparably effective, they're good. Considering IED drone effectiveness, I think it's just a question of developing tactics and maybe custom tech. It doesn't sound complicated to have a drone descend vertically at such high speeds that even if you notice it and disable its motors it's too late; fuse set to airburst. Exciting time to be a narco weapons engineer.
- poisonarena 6y ago
  You can give a pistol and a few hundred dollars to many assassins/sicario in Mexico
imtringued 6y ago
Honestly, the only explanation I can think of is that it is easy to see a quadrocopter fly and do its thing but it is actually hard to actually notice its real life impracticality unless you own one of them. I don't know what specific model is shown in the picture but if it is a DJI Mavic Air 2 then it only weighs 570 gram and can only fly for 34 minutes. When you compare a quadrocopter with a real life bomber then practically no bomber on earth is lighter than the bombs it is carrying. A B-52 can carry 30% of its weight in payload. So that would give us at most 171g for the bomb the Mavic Air 2 is carrying but even this is optimistic because it was not designed for this use case. The idea of "cheap" drones carrying bombs is basically an urban legend. You can certainly build a good bombing drone for $5000 to $10000 and fly many missions and thereby kill hundreds of people with it but that same money can also buy guns and lots of ammo as well.
- stiray 6y ago
  I understood it as they dont intend to get the drone back. I did some searching, letter bombs were using 50g of RDX [1] and were able to kill a person so driving (and exploding) a drone with 171g of RDX into someone is more than enough. If you take its 18km of reach (while I doubt the controls are able to go that far although with a 4g sim card this could be doable) you get a poor mans cruising "missile" for $1k. And there is nothing preventing (except the price) launching few of them. I think that those drones are posing a real threat even more as probably the drug cartels have the money to realize it, if they can afford to build parallel cellular network [2], they surely can also perform this. Their use case probably is not killing an average Joe but rather assassinations on high profile targets that are heavily guarded. And quite frankly I am really interested how bodyguards can tackle this as drone can literally fall from the sky, without any electricity being used so jamming (or frying electronics if feasible) wont work here. I think this is going to become a real nightmare in the future. [1] 4g of RDX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg or 100g of "something" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-specialreport/special-report-drug-cartel-narco-antennas-make-life-dangerous-for-mexicos-cell-tower-repairmen-idUSKCN24G1DN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s...
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
> drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t A M-67 fragmentation grenade weighs 400g, with a lethal radius of 5 meters. A bullet still obviously remains cheaper than a single-use drone + grenade + modifications to it.
dalbasal 6y ago
I agree that this article is talking about drones because it's newsish, where bribery and guns are less so. But, that's not really how the economics of violence works. It's more of a whatever-works, and whatever you can get your hands on element. Guns, bombs, hard men, threats and bribes are still in use. Infantry still exists, even though ICBMs exist. They don't have to choose. This is quasi military conflict we are talking about. Air power, however meager is a game changer in military conflict. At the fully militarized level, drones have seen a lot of use. They can be deployed everywhere that full air power is impractical, either for tactical or political reasons. A drone base can be orders of magnitude smaller than a traditional air base, even a floating one. A 2kg payload (or even 200g) is enough to carry a grenade. Grenades kill. It seems likely that drones will be used this way.
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  There must be a reason then that these drones don’t feature in death tallies? Death by friendly fire far far exceeds lethality of these drones worldwide. They’ve been in documented use over 7 years at this point. Why are they less effective than Facebook posts at killing people?
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    Quite likely because the logistics aren’t there yet and even more so because actual weapons are available everywhere. Drones still require someone to turn them into weapons going after bomb makers is an extremely effective strategy because while there are a million guides on the internet on how to make an IED or a suicide vest the actual amount of people capable of making them is extremely small the world isn’t HN.
    - CraigJPerry 6y ago
      What do you mean the logistics aren’t there yet? Drones are used daily by bad guys for recon purposes. These bad guys are groups with caches of weapons and skilled bomb makers in their numbers. Why in 7 years havent They just put the two together? What in our arm chair analysis are we overlooking?
lifeformed 6y ago
It's tried and true: there's lots of drone footage out there of ISIS drones dropping bombs on vehicles and people. Here's a quick example of an attack on a vehicle: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/video-reportedly-shows-isis-drone-dropping-bomb-on-iraqi-tank/video/807ba3094fc14299b94636ce0a440fcd https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/video-reportedl...
m0zg 6y ago
Drone isn't necessarily a quadcopter. It can be an RC plane, too, and those can be cheap in larger sizes, although they are more difficult to fly accurately. I'm actually surprised this isn't more prevalent - any teenager could do it, if they had access to explosives, which teenagers in war zones (current or past) typically do. And so do adults, of course. Truly we are blessed with unequal distribution of technical skill between the terrorists and the rest of us. If a real, world class engineer took up terrorism, they'd never be found and could do _a lot_ of damage.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
There was that movie where the mobster told the incompetent hitman - "Just walk up to them, put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. That way, you can be sure." Then he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger (because his uzi attack had failed to kill the target) Anyway, hard to beat the classics. Until the drone can lie in wait, identify the target itself, home in on it and explode at point blank range, well then we haven't gotten close to the traditional approach.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Fly a drone to a location and conduct surveillance for the target. ID target and activate drone bombing protocol.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Still have to track, home and estimate distance to target before exploding. We know this is hard, witness that nobody has accomplished it yet?
darksaints 6y ago
While I agree with your premise, I would just like to point out that in Mexico, the number of missing people far outweigh the number of confirmed deaths. Not all cartel murders result in visible bodies on streets, and many of them do take care to hide their trails.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Unless you are trying to send a message, it seems to me that the best assassination would leave doubt even as to whether the person was dead, or how they died. I think the parent's observation is spot on.
andrewtbham 6y ago
the costs are dropping
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DreamScatter 6y ago
Actually, you can kill a person with a tiny drone the size of a hand palm, it only requires a tiny explosive to enter the forehead and kill the person.

by JackFr 6y ago

mark-r 6y ago

Technology progresses. What's hard today may be easy tomorrow.

Causality1 6y ago

I'm always torn about articles like this. The fact the headline is a lie makes me want to flag it but the content itself is interesting enough I would have read it without a clickbait title. I wish HN had guidance on this topic.

Mromson 6y ago
I'm of the opinion that if the headline is a lie, then the thread should be flagged; no matter how interesting the content. Lying shouldn't be rewarded. But then again, I don't have flagging rights yet, so who am I to judge?
divbzero 6y ago
HN guidelines [1] do mention: “please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait”. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

antupis 6y ago

Killing specific people might be hard but harassing gathering and attacking to crowds don't need 2 kilos.

ashtonkem 6y ago

High value targets will justify expenditure of more resources. For most targets a few men with AK-47s might do the trick, but for the well protected target this would be a pretty decent strategy. It certainly would strike fear into the hearts of men otherwise protected against more pedestrian threats, which is probably part of the point.

clarus 6y ago
This is exactly how drones were used in Syria as I understood. To attack otherwise protected targets or strike fear. To attack Russian bases they even use swarms of suicide planes: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_mans_airforce/ https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_man...
peteretep 6y ago
Seems like more hassle than a mortar for about the same effect?
- dogma1138 6y ago
  You can’t order a mortar on alibaba, and it requires much more training to use it effectively than flying a drone. Mortars are also large and heavy and require a crew to serve as well as spotters to direct fire which means you need to have people closer to your target and working communications. All of this complicates the logistics considerably which makes them less effective and more dangerous to their operators. Effective mortar attacks can be fairly easily countered in the long term by jamming radios, cutting brush and removing other natural hiding spots and by killing experienced mortar crews. Drones can be piloted by nearly anyone and with basic consumer grade equipment they can also be piloted from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    > You can’t order a mortar on alibaba Well you can’t order C4 on Alibaba either. But if you can get C4 you can likely get a mortar.

dmos62 6y ago

I don't know. How many attacks happen that have a budget in the thousands of dollars (that's what I ballpark the price of a load bearing drone to be)? I presume a lot. Another way to look at it is, how much does personal protection cost? Bodyguards, etc. If your attack methods are cheaper and at least comparably effective, they're good. Considering IED drone effectiveness, I think it's just a question of developing tactics and maybe custom tech. It doesn't sound complicated to have a drone descend vertically at such high speeds that even if you notice it and disable its motors it's too late; fuse set to airburst. Exciting time to be a narco weapons engineer.

poisonarena 6y ago
You can give a pistol and a few hundred dollars to many assassins/sicario in Mexico

imtringued 6y ago

Honestly, the only explanation I can think of is that it is easy to see a quadrocopter fly and do its thing but it is actually hard to actually notice its real life impracticality unless you own one of them. I don't know what specific model is shown in the picture but if it is a DJI Mavic Air 2 then it only weighs 570 gram and can only fly for 34 minutes. When you compare a quadrocopter with a real life bomber then practically no bomber on earth is lighter than the bombs it is carrying. A B-52 can carry 30% of its weight in payload. So that would give us at most 171g for the bomb the Mavic Air 2 is carrying but even this is optimistic because it was not designed for this use case. The idea of "cheap" drones carrying bombs is basically an urban legend. You can certainly build a good bombing drone for $5000 to $10000 and fly many missions and thereby kill hundreds of people with it but that same money can also buy guns and lots of ammo as well.

stiray 6y ago
I understood it as they dont intend to get the drone back. I did some searching, letter bombs were using 50g of RDX [1] and were able to kill a person so driving (and exploding) a drone with 171g of RDX into someone is more than enough. If you take its 18km of reach (while I doubt the controls are able to go that far although with a 4g sim card this could be doable) you get a poor mans cruising "missile" for $1k. And there is nothing preventing (except the price) launching few of them. I think that those drones are posing a real threat even more as probably the drug cartels have the money to realize it, if they can afford to build parallel cellular network [2], they surely can also perform this. Their use case probably is not killing an average Joe but rather assassinations on high profile targets that are heavily guarded. And quite frankly I am really interested how bodyguards can tackle this as drone can literally fall from the sky, without any electricity being used so jamming (or frying electronics if feasible) wont work here. I think this is going to become a real nightmare in the future. [1] 4g of RDX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Qj1qSZDKg or 100g of "something" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_664jlLwqI [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-specialreport/special-report-drug-cartel-narco-antennas-make-life-dangerous-for-mexicos-cell-tower-repairmen-idUSKCN24G1DN https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-telecoms-cartels-s...

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

> drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t A M-67 fragmentation grenade weighs 400g, with a lethal radius of 5 meters. A bullet still obviously remains cheaper than a single-use drone + grenade + modifications to it.

dalbasal 6y ago

I agree that this article is talking about drones because it's newsish, where bribery and guns are less so. But, that's not really how the economics of violence works. It's more of a whatever-works, and whatever you can get your hands on element. Guns, bombs, hard men, threats and bribes are still in use. Infantry still exists, even though ICBMs exist. They don't have to choose. This is quasi military conflict we are talking about. Air power, however meager is a game changer in military conflict. At the fully militarized level, drones have seen a lot of use. They can be deployed everywhere that full air power is impractical, either for tactical or political reasons. A drone base can be orders of magnitude smaller than a traditional air base, even a floating one. A 2kg payload (or even 200g) is enough to carry a grenade. Grenades kill. It seems likely that drones will be used this way.

CraigJPerry 6y ago
There must be a reason then that these drones don’t feature in death tallies? Death by friendly fire far far exceeds lethality of these drones worldwide. They’ve been in documented use over 7 years at this point. Why are they less effective than Facebook posts at killing people?
- dogma1138 6y ago
  Quite likely because the logistics aren’t there yet and even more so because actual weapons are available everywhere. Drones still require someone to turn them into weapons going after bomb makers is an extremely effective strategy because while there are a million guides on the internet on how to make an IED or a suicide vest the actual amount of people capable of making them is extremely small the world isn’t HN.
  - CraigJPerry 6y ago
    What do you mean the logistics aren’t there yet? Drones are used daily by bad guys for recon purposes. These bad guys are groups with caches of weapons and skilled bomb makers in their numbers. Why in 7 years havent They just put the two together? What in our arm chair analysis are we overlooking?

lifeformed 6y ago

It's tried and true: there's lots of drone footage out there of ISIS drones dropping bombs on vehicles and people. Here's a quick example of an attack on a vehicle: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/video-reportedly-shows-isis-drone-dropping-bomb-on-iraqi-tank/video/807ba3094fc14299b94636ce0a440fcd https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/video-reportedl...

m0zg 6y ago

Drone isn't necessarily a quadcopter. It can be an RC plane, too, and those can be cheap in larger sizes, although they are more difficult to fly accurately. I'm actually surprised this isn't more prevalent - any teenager could do it, if they had access to explosives, which teenagers in war zones (current or past) typically do. And so do adults, of course. Truly we are blessed with unequal distribution of technical skill between the terrorists and the rest of us. If a real, world class engineer took up terrorism, they'd never be found and could do _a lot_ of damage.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

There was that movie where the mobster told the incompetent hitman - "Just walk up to them, put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. That way, you can be sure." Then he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger (because his uzi attack had failed to kill the target) Anyway, hard to beat the classics. Until the drone can lie in wait, identify the target itself, home in on it and explode at point blank range, well then we haven't gotten close to the traditional approach.

newsclues 6y ago
Fly a drone to a location and conduct surveillance for the target. ID target and activate drone bombing protocol.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Still have to track, home and estimate distance to target before exploding. We know this is hard, witness that nobody has accomplished it yet?

darksaints 6y ago

While I agree with your premise, I would just like to point out that in Mexico, the number of missing people far outweigh the number of confirmed deaths. Not all cartel murders result in visible bodies on streets, and many of them do take care to hide their trails.

Communitivity 6y ago
Unless you are trying to send a message, it seems to me that the best assassination would leave doubt even as to whether the person was dead, or how they died. I think the parent's observation is spot on.

andrewtbham 6y ago

the costs are dropping

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

DreamScatter 6y ago

Actually, you can kill a person with a tiny drone the size of a hand palm, it only requires a tiny explosive to enter the forehead and kill the person.