4 ms·
The military has its own effective means of silencing interfering sources permanently it can't use in peacetime. Also these altimetes are most useful when land
by wbl 6y ago
The military has its own effective means of silencing interfering sources permanently it can't use in peacetime.
Also these altimetes are most useful when landing which is generally done on your side of the lines.
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoThose interfering sources cost on the order of $10, the, uh, "mechanisms of silencing them" probably cost a couple orders of magnitude more, and the aircraft that could be brought down (such as the C130 in the article) cost on the order of $100M. It's a highly asymmetric problem. Also, bombing every cell phone within a few miles of your airport is likely to have some undesired side effects... Edit: A commenter further down mentioned the AGM-88 HARM, which is a $280k missile. That's significantly more expensive than my estimate of a couple orders of magnitude for a 'dumb' missile from a helicopter.
- wbl 6y agoTube artillery also works to silence sources. HARM is for things like air defense radars in enemy territory.
- _jal 6y agoThe combination of battery tech advances, cheap wireless comms and cheap processors has created a huge range of asymmetric risks like this. I suspect terrorists/freedom-fighters (depending on which side of which conflict you're on) will be exploring them for a long time to come - bomb-drones and remote IEDs are just the start of the development curve.
- whatshisface 6y agoEveryone keeps calling these risks asymmetric, but we haven't seen the price of a birdshot flak cannon because there hasn't been that much of a need yet.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe cannon, targeting system, radar, and so on, is likely to be more expensive than the number of suicide drones to destroy it.
- hodgesrm 6y agoWell as the famous game theorist Voltaire said, you shoot one to encourage the others. That brings down the cost pretty quickly.
- Ekaros 6y ago10$ of parts, manufactured in some basement with soldering iron... Or similar level stuff... Add batteries(for this regular ones work too) add basic timer software and spread around... Yep, pretty funny if it really would work.