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For those who like drone dystopia nightmare fuel, this video made me think of this disturbing modern weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu https://en
by narrator 5y ago
For those who like drone dystopia nightmare fuel, this video made me think of this disturbing modern weapon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu
:/
- resist_futility 5y agoSci-Fi Short Film “Slaughterbots” | DUST https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
- jl6 5y agoWhat defence could, say, a traditional military base, mount against a swarm of, say, 1000 of these?
- RalfWausE 5y agoI would think "old school" air burst flak could be enough... you only need a thick enough cloud of shrapnel flying around.
- fho 5y agoI am neither American nor a gun nerd, but from what I "overheard" on the internet a single Phalanx system should be able to take out drone swarms at incredible rates?
- sbierwagen 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret. That would make it vulnerable to a saturation attack. You could imagine firing fewer rounds per salvo, but that only slightly mitigates it. Against drone swarms you kinda want directed energy weapons, either microwave or laser. Which don't exist, currently. Also note that Phalanx is radar based, leaving it open to the usual suite of radar jamming/ECW/antiradiation attacks. You can tip the odds back in your favor by emplacing more Phalanx systems, but at ten million bucks each, that limits you to stuff like defending small-size/high-value targets like the White House, rather than numerous and sprawling US military bases.
- Aeolun 5y agoI think for drones of this kind you can set up mini phalanxes. They don’t quite move at the speed that a missile moves, and the caliber necessary to destroy a drone is much lower than that necessary to disable a missile.
- fho 5y agoAnd [load them up with birdshot](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28757668) ... or even salt. I guess most props won't handle any impact well.
- m4rtink 5y agoActually proximity fuzed rounds should work the best, each taking outv many swarm memvers. Its not like these things could be armored rather than as light as possible.
- WJW 5y agoProximity fused rounds do have the significant downside that using them near built up areas will cause significant collateral damage. For example, if a drone swarm attacks an election rally somewhere in the US then you can't really detonate airburst shells above the crowd to take out the drones, since you would do more harm than good with that.
- m4rtink 5y agoHmm, a slightly Rube Goldberg type idea - what about firing proximity fuzed "airbag rounds" ? A Kevlar bag + car airbag style gas generator. If fuzed and timed just right it could potentially punch the drone from the sky, either breaking it or casing enough flight path distortion it migh not recover. Or maybe release a bunch nylon filaments that will entangle any propellers and make the thing fall down ?
- Aeolun 5y agoWould you? What if the drones are carrying grenades? I mean, I can see how it’s less than ideal, but I don’t think it’s safe to assume you’d do more harm than good.
- erdo 5y agoclose the windows
- dane-pgp 5y agoIt only takes one exploding drone to create an open window, though.
- OneTimePetes 5y agoIs this the shattered window theory of technology profileration?
- asdff 5y agoLaunch their own swarm of drones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Coyote
- KingOfCoders 5y agoOne would probably use a laser, https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/rheinmetall_ag/press/themen_im_fokus/zukunftswaffe_hel/index.php https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/rheinmetall_ag/press/themen_i... As they are small, they do not need a lot of energy to be disabled, especially if they are jammed first.
- Tepix 5y agoOnce laser defenses are more common you can put mirrors on the bottom of the drones to protect them...
- ericbarrett 5y agoThe laser has to disable the drone in seconds, though. Wouldn't a laser with sufficient power to do so cause collateral vision damage from the diffused reflection? Think of a drone flying low and fast into a political rally with a crowd. You don't know the intentions of the pilot so it must be disabled immediately. Many people will look up at the source of noise and thus be exposed. I wonder if e.g. a birdshot cannon would actually be safer.
- aerostable_slug 5y agoYour own troops would be issued PPE — in this case, laser protective eyewear. This is already a thing due to the widespread use of laser rangefinders, designators, and the like, as well as the fact that the Chinese have fielded blinding laser weapons.
- ericbarrett 5y agoNot thinking troops so much as civilian use/defense, hence the political rally example.
- darkmarmot 5y agoIn future warfare, I'm pretty sure these will be fully autonomous to avoid jamming and latency issues.
- TheGrumpyBrit 5y agoA net?
- 20after4 5y agothis is exactly what I was thinking. Kevlar twine or some other sufficiently tough fiber should work wonders against small rotor craft.
- hansel_der 5y agoi guess adverserial attacks towards the employed ai-model or some form of physical obstacle (net) would be most efficient but emp or directed energy weapons are probably more reliable
- LostInTheWoods 5y agoBeside a swarm of your own, a Phalanx canon would come in handy.
- ashtonkem 5y agoI think we’re going to see the return of shotguns as a normal weapon issued to foot soldiers. Not useful against a thousand of these, but some birdshot will be a pretty good defense against lone ones used for observation.
- JohnFen 5y agoPolice are beginning to use special shotgun shells that fire what are essentially nets that tangle up drone props and make them fall out of the sky. I could see larger, military versions of this being effective. Drones are pretty fragile and easy to take down.
- trhway 5y agoAir superiority automated "hunter" drones.
- toxik 5y ago> these drones were initially designed as an airborne sentry or surveillance tool. So probably developed in part by people who had no idea they were building weapons.
- Tuna-Fish 5y agoNot really. The Turkish drone projects were created basically because Turkish engineers looked at all the drone stuff happening in the west and went "look at all these idiot westerners using all these amazing weapons as toys". Everyone who joined those companies knew from the start what field they were in. And while the original Kargus didn't have explosives, that doesn't mean they weren't weapons. In the military sense, a radio that's being used to call in artillery is a weapon. Whether the bomb is on the drone itself or is fired at something the drone is surveilling doesn't change what the drone is.
- bigiain 5y agoMaybe. How much would you bet against open source projects like Ardupilot having their code swiped and used by defence contractors or weapons manufacturers. What are the GPL requirements for making the source available to people targeted by drones running stolen GPL code?
- WJW 5y agoDo you think the Ardupilot people were blind to the military applications of what they were making? I personally can't imagine anyone bright enough to work on drone autopilots to be simultaneously ignorant enough not to realize that a drone could be used for harmful applications.
- bigiain 5y agoI know several people who've contributed to Ardupilot who are 100% "hobby guys". I've modified Ardupilot (and BetaFlight and iNav) for my own hobby use (but nothing really worth or in a state to contribute back). While it's true drone technology "could be used for harmful applications", that's also true for, say, compilers. Do you hold the gcc/clang developers to account for being "blind to the military applications of what they were making"? Or OpenStreetMap contributors? Or the engineers who designed the HiLux? Or the Casio F-91W watch designers? None of those were "designed for military application" yet all ended up being used for them. Where does the line need to get drawn? between my rights to design/build/fly drones as a hobby, commercial/industrial rights to use drones for photography or cinematograpy or crop monitoring or search and rescue or shark surveillance at swimming beachs - and the need to restrict "military applications" of that? Are people who, say, write blog posts explaining how to use microcontroller RTOS libraries for hard real time guarantees, with mentioned examples like nuclear power plant control "blind to the military applications of what they're making"? (Yeah, sorry. I profile stalked you a little there...)
- KingOfCoders 5y agoAnd the machine learning (I assume like modern camera auto focuses) anti weapon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WeVNiovukA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WeVNiovukA