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>Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser weapons I tend not to believe this. In part because Russia is very comfortable with shameless lying, and i
by javajosh 4y ago
>Russia said they're shooting down drones with laser weapons
I tend not to believe this. In part because Russia is very comfortable with shameless lying, and in part because it's really hard to deliver enough energy with a laser to a moving target. That said, non-moving (hovering) drones would be very reasonable targets as you can illuminate for as long as it takes for an important part to melt.
BTW my favorite anti-drone tech are trained hunting hawks. Hawks are a weapon for a more...civilized time.
- the_snooze 4y ago>it's really hard to deliver enough energy with a laser to a moving target. Israel demonstrated that capability earlier this year. https://news.yahoo.com/video-shows-israel-testing-iron-130044341.html https://news.yahoo.com/video-shows-israel-testing-iron-13004...
- dTal 4y agoSounds like a fantastic way to rapidly maim a hawk.
- doodlebugging 4y agoI think the goal with this method could be to train the hawk to carry an object such as a net or dangling string that the hawk would drop into the propellers of the drone, thus disabling it. One could also use a hawk as a platform to carry electronic means of disabling drones. The problem with hawks and drones becomes one of teaching the hawk to recognize enemy drones since it is likely in future wars that all sides will use drones and that it may be difficult to identify who controls a particular drone without monitoring that drone to map its communication path. It's cool to use a bird that instinctively hunts other birds but we need to understand that hawks are not hard to see and to eliminate so their utility on a battlefield is limited.
- javajosh 4y agoI upvoted you because you may be right. I don't really know if people are IRL training hawks for this purpose, but if they did maybe they could give them protection of some kind, like articulated metal "shoes". It's also possible that smaller drones' propellers just don't have the kinetic energy to damage a bird in any meaningful way. It's all speculation, but I still think it would be very cool.
- trasz 4y agoWeaponised hawks have many interesting properties. They don't emit radio waves, and not much infrared either, so are hard to locate and shoot down. They can loiter forever (well, limited by hawk's lifetime, whatever it is), are self-refueling, and, to some extent, also self-repairing and self-replicating.
- javajosh 4y agoHawks also can't be suborned.