4 ms·
Hundreds of thousands of autonomous drone killbots the size of bats flying around do get my pulse up.
by newen 6y ago
Hundreds of thousands of autonomous drone killbots the size of bats flying around do get my pulse up.
- m1gu3l 6y agoWhy do this when you can gas a bunch of people or blow them up old school for way cheaper? Not sold
- ceejayoz 6y agoHarder to do at range. I'm glad I'm not the Secret Service. A drone swarm has to be rapidly becoming one of their scary scenarios for something like inaugurations.
- vkou 6y agoA single medium-caliber mortar is a five-hundred-year-old piece of technology that can be carried and assembled by two men, has an effective range of ~1,000 to 5,000 yards, does not require line of sight to the target, can be operated by a high-school dropout, and has a kill radius of 30 meters. One can probably be picked up from an army surplus warehouse somewhere in the former Soviet Union/(some current conflict zone), for an ~$X,000 USD bribe, or alternatively, manufactured by a literate, mildly motivated individual with a high tolerance for personal risk, a welder, a lathe, a tool-shed, and an outhouse in the mountains. Given that we live in a world where gunpowder has been invented, you will have to pardon me if I'm more concerned about the dangers of lunatics with mundane explosives, and delivery systems thereof.
- varjag 6y agoMortar is hard to aim (even with modern aids), in a terrain that you haven't ranged already.
- Alupis 6y agoWith a cell phone and Google Maps, you can get distance, elevation, obstacles, and more with good-enough precision. Or, even use our own mission planning software against us - ATAK[1][2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Team_Awareness_Kit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Team_Awareness_Kit [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atakmap.app.civ&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atakmap.ap...
- varjag 6y agoYes, these are the kind of modern aids I mentioned. You're still likely to miss your first one. Mortar is not a precision weapon, it's a Monte Carlo prop.
- Alupis 6y agoDoes it need to be a precision weapon to be a weapon of terror? And with a kill zone of 20-30 meters... you can miss by quite a lot and still do a ton of damage.
- varjag 6y agoSure, but in the context of assassinating the VIP it does. Mortar attacks for this are not unprecedented†, but are not terribly effective. [†] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack#The_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack#T...
- Alupis 6y agoFor an assassination of a specific target - even with military equipment and technology, it would be dubious to use a mortar. They simply are not precision weapons, as you already pointed out. But, for inflicting terror and great loss of life in a populated area - they could be used very effectively.
- CamperBob2 6y ago
- m1gu3l 6y agoThanks for joining me on whatever list we are now on :)
- twic 6y agoExpert disruptive innovators, the Irish Republican Army, repeatedly proved this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=IRA+%22mortar+attack%22&title=Special:Search https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=IRA+%22mortar+at... Amongst other things, shooting down a helicopter, and having a go, separately, at the queen and the prime minister.
- Veen 6y ago> Expert disruptive innovators Is that tech industry slang for “murderous child-killing bastards”?
- ceejayoz 6y agoAnd yet, fairly skilled operators in Afghanistan and Iraq still regularly miss American forward operating bases and their fixed buildings with them.
- vkou 6y agoWe don't live in a James Bond movie, any non-state actor who wants to kill people will have a much easier time of doing something incredibly boring and mundane, like buying an automatic weapon, or building a bomb. You are vastly underestimating the difficulty of manufacturing hundreds of thousands of anything in secrecy.