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I doubt it. Shrapnel and bullet kills will decline because of the energy cost of carrying the weight restricting range. I expect them to use needles fired preci

I doubt it. Shrapnel and bullet kills will decline because of the energy cost of carrying the weight restricting range. I expect them to use needles fired precisely by a mini railgun at exposed areas of skin. Coated with a chemical agent. I also expect them to be able to recharge via solar or perching on power lines. They can then sit on rooftops and wait for a facial recognition match on the streets below. They could sit there for years. And what about the use of a nuclear battery? Now you can’t shoot them down for fear of contamination. Nightmare

nradov 4y ago
That's a total joke. We can't even make large railguns work reliably, let alone small railguns. Poisoned projectiles have long been banned by international treaty, and there's no evidence of any major military power even considering violating that ban. Nuclear batteries are far too heavy for use in any aircraft. Stop watching so much SciFi and come back to the real world.
- what-imright 4y ago
  I can promise you it doesn’t make a shred of difference to the victim if they get their brains blown out of their ears by a sniper a mile away, burned alive by white phosphorus, ripped to pieces by high explosives, crushed under a tank, frozen solid by nerve gas or melted by neutron radiation. It was routine what 80 years ago to gas civilians. The only reason it wasn’t employed on the battlefield was that it was as likely to kill your troops as the enemies. Violating that ban is inevitable - as soon as one country adopts a ‘more discriminating’ method of killing and gains an edge, the rest will follow suit. They’ll sell it saying a drone would never accidentally kill a non combatant. The naivety of suggesting the technology can’t be developed with the pace of change we’re witnessing is astounding. They certainly can make a micro railgun, probably already have secretly. And I doubt a micro drone needs much more current than a pacemaker provides, especially with an energy efficient SoC at the latest fab.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Fortunately, despite your unhinged and scientifically illiterate rant, the laws of physics still apply in the real world. It takes a significant amount of energy to get a weapons platform flying with useful range and speed. Do the math, and show your work. As for a "micro railgun", that's just pure nonsense. You might as well claim that the military has secretly developed time machines or warp drives. Come on. You're in no position to make promises about anything.
    - what-imright 4y ago
      When the types of financial incentives an arms race provides become available, r&d will make the impossible solid reality. You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one.
r00fus 4y ago
None of this is currently feasible not even partially. It would have shock value if you did something half-assed with a drone swarm but then you should be very careful that your drones or deployment mechanisms aren't traceable back to you.
- what-imright 4y ago
  It would be pretty difficult to trace a silent, transparent, palm sized micro drone, hopping over the ocean for months in daily solar recharge cycles from San Francisco to Pyongyang. You could even make it out of a flammable polymer to incinerate when exhausted of ammunition. I think it's highly feasible. Imagine going back to the 1920's and discussing the technicalities of the ICBMs of the 60's. You'd be laughed out of the bar and into the asylum. But commonly accepted today. And still not feared for a fraction of its potential. But drones are an order of magnitude more dangerous, because they can be anonymous.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
> I expect them to use needles fired precisely by a mini railgun at exposed areas of skin. How in the world could a railgun compete with chemical explosives? The energy density of batteries is nowhere even close to the energy density of chemical explosives; throw away the sci-fi railgun thing and put a small EFP on the UAV instead. That would be a thousand times more lethal with a fraction of the weight. If you really want to use poison needles, then turn the UAV into a pincushion and crash it into people. If you're dead set on throwing needles, give it a compressed air blowgun. Small scale railguns make no sense.
- what-imright 4y ago
  >>How in the world could a railgun compete with chemical explosives? It can selectively kill in a crowd. And no recoil, better accuracy during rapid fire. Compressed air requires a canister of fluid that requires weight. With a rail gun, much of the weight is in the needles, which could be very thin indeed. When it's out of ammunition, it can do the suicide run perhaps. But the key is the unit doesn't need to carry all the energy required to dispense the projectiles on launch. Can feed off solar or power lines half way through its lot and therefore extend range or needle load. In fact if you had a rechargeable system the drone could conceivably, albeit slowly, travel halfway around the globe, assuming it can extend its solar panels and float on the ocean. I also expect they'll be totally silent and made of transparent material.
  - kaashif 4y ago
    > And no recoil, better accuracy during rapid fire. Good troll so far, but I think this puts it over the top.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    As kaashif points out, railguns have recoil. Recoil isn't a special trait of chemical propellants, it's Newtonian. The railgun pushes the needle, so the needle pushes the railgun. Add to that, the rails and the capacitor bank have mass, substantially more mass than the needles. The same force that sends a railgun projectile down the rails also tries to push the rails apart. The rails need to be strong enough to resist this force trying to separate them. You can't even let the rails flex, because if the rail loses electrical contact with the projectile then there's no current flow and therefore no force to push the projectile. For a railgun this small you can probably wrap the whole assembly in carbon fiber and call it a day, but there's no way any of this comes out weighing less than the needles themselves. Just one of the capacitors will weigh more than a bunch of needles. An air canister weighs to much? A standard CO2 cartridge weighs about 50-100 grams and has ample capacity. A CO2 cartridge in an air pistol lasts for dozens of shots, that's plenty. And silent and transparent? Now I think you might be trolling. Neither UAVs nor railguns are silent and only a few components in them could conceivably be made transparent.
ThrustVectoring 4y ago
Everything other than "sit on rooftops with a camera" in the post is just technically wrong. 1. Needles do not have the aerodynamic properties necessary to be effectively fired. 2. Chemical explosives and kinetic payloads are far better in terms of energy and weight than railguns. You'd see electromagnetic launchers being used for nailguns if they were at all reasonable for the relatively low amounts of power involved, and they aren't, and it's for good engineering reasons. 3. Chemical agents often have shelf-life issues, particularly when they're stored like you're proposing. 4. Solar recharging is going to have significant weight costs and result in either low duty cycles (most of the time spent sitting waiting for more energy) or other significant performance tradeoffs. 5. Perching on a power line does not give you access to electrical energy, you need a voltage difference to recharge, plus line voltages are really unsuitable for batteries and electronics, so you'd need a large (and heavy) transformer to step things down anyways. 6. Everyone with the technical capability to develop nuclear-powered aircraft has already looked at the problems and risks involved and said "oh hell no". Furthermore, if you miniaturize these things so they can be deployed en masse, the battery size and long-term contamination risk go way down anyways.

nradov 4y ago

That's a total joke. We can't even make large railguns work reliably, let alone small railguns. Poisoned projectiles have long been banned by international treaty, and there's no evidence of any major military power even considering violating that ban. Nuclear batteries are far too heavy for use in any aircraft. Stop watching so much SciFi and come back to the real world.

what-imright 4y ago
I can promise you it doesn’t make a shred of difference to the victim if they get their brains blown out of their ears by a sniper a mile away, burned alive by white phosphorus, ripped to pieces by high explosives, crushed under a tank, frozen solid by nerve gas or melted by neutron radiation. It was routine what 80 years ago to gas civilians. The only reason it wasn’t employed on the battlefield was that it was as likely to kill your troops as the enemies. Violating that ban is inevitable - as soon as one country adopts a ‘more discriminating’ method of killing and gains an edge, the rest will follow suit. They’ll sell it saying a drone would never accidentally kill a non combatant. The naivety of suggesting the technology can’t be developed with the pace of change we’re witnessing is astounding. They certainly can make a micro railgun, probably already have secretly. And I doubt a micro drone needs much more current than a pacemaker provides, especially with an energy efficient SoC at the latest fab.
- nradov 4y ago
  Fortunately, despite your unhinged and scientifically illiterate rant, the laws of physics still apply in the real world. It takes a significant amount of energy to get a weapons platform flying with useful range and speed. Do the math, and show your work. As for a "micro railgun", that's just pure nonsense. You might as well claim that the military has secretly developed time machines or warp drives. Come on. You're in no position to make promises about anything.
  - what-imright 4y ago
    When the types of financial incentives an arms race provides become available, r&d will make the impossible solid reality. You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one.

r00fus 4y ago

None of this is currently feasible not even partially. It would have shock value if you did something half-assed with a drone swarm but then you should be very careful that your drones or deployment mechanisms aren't traceable back to you.

what-imright 4y ago
It would be pretty difficult to trace a silent, transparent, palm sized micro drone, hopping over the ocean for months in daily solar recharge cycles from San Francisco to Pyongyang. You could even make it out of a flammable polymer to incinerate when exhausted of ammunition. I think it's highly feasible. Imagine going back to the 1920's and discussing the technicalities of the ICBMs of the 60's. You'd be laughed out of the bar and into the asylum. But commonly accepted today. And still not feared for a fraction of its potential. But drones are an order of magnitude more dangerous, because they can be anonymous.

MichaelCollins 4y ago

> I expect them to use needles fired precisely by a mini railgun at exposed areas of skin. How in the world could a railgun compete with chemical explosives? The energy density of batteries is nowhere even close to the energy density of chemical explosives; throw away the sci-fi railgun thing and put a small EFP on the UAV instead. That would be a thousand times more lethal with a fraction of the weight. If you really want to use poison needles, then turn the UAV into a pincushion and crash it into people. If you're dead set on throwing needles, give it a compressed air blowgun. Small scale railguns make no sense.

what-imright 4y ago
>>How in the world could a railgun compete with chemical explosives? It can selectively kill in a crowd. And no recoil, better accuracy during rapid fire. Compressed air requires a canister of fluid that requires weight. With a rail gun, much of the weight is in the needles, which could be very thin indeed. When it's out of ammunition, it can do the suicide run perhaps. But the key is the unit doesn't need to carry all the energy required to dispense the projectiles on launch. Can feed off solar or power lines half way through its lot and therefore extend range or needle load. In fact if you had a rechargeable system the drone could conceivably, albeit slowly, travel halfway around the globe, assuming it can extend its solar panels and float on the ocean. I also expect they'll be totally silent and made of transparent material.
- kaashif 4y ago
  > And no recoil, better accuracy during rapid fire. Good troll so far, but I think this puts it over the top.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  As kaashif points out, railguns have recoil. Recoil isn't a special trait of chemical propellants, it's Newtonian. The railgun pushes the needle, so the needle pushes the railgun. Add to that, the rails and the capacitor bank have mass, substantially more mass than the needles. The same force that sends a railgun projectile down the rails also tries to push the rails apart. The rails need to be strong enough to resist this force trying to separate them. You can't even let the rails flex, because if the rail loses electrical contact with the projectile then there's no current flow and therefore no force to push the projectile. For a railgun this small you can probably wrap the whole assembly in carbon fiber and call it a day, but there's no way any of this comes out weighing less than the needles themselves. Just one of the capacitors will weigh more than a bunch of needles. An air canister weighs to much? A standard CO2 cartridge weighs about 50-100 grams and has ample capacity. A CO2 cartridge in an air pistol lasts for dozens of shots, that's plenty. And silent and transparent? Now I think you might be trolling. Neither UAVs nor railguns are silent and only a few components in them could conceivably be made transparent.

ThrustVectoring 4y ago

Everything other than "sit on rooftops with a camera" in the post is just technically wrong. 1. Needles do not have the aerodynamic properties necessary to be effectively fired. 2. Chemical explosives and kinetic payloads are far better in terms of energy and weight than railguns. You'd see electromagnetic launchers being used for nailguns if they were at all reasonable for the relatively low amounts of power involved, and they aren't, and it's for good engineering reasons. 3. Chemical agents often have shelf-life issues, particularly when they're stored like you're proposing. 4. Solar recharging is going to have significant weight costs and result in either low duty cycles (most of the time spent sitting waiting for more energy) or other significant performance tradeoffs. 5. Perching on a power line does not give you access to electrical energy, you need a voltage difference to recharge, plus line voltages are really unsuitable for batteries and electronics, so you'd need a large (and heavy) transformer to step things down anyways. 6. Everyone with the technical capability to develop nuclear-powered aircraft has already looked at the problems and risks involved and said "oh hell no". Furthermore, if you miniaturize these things so they can be deployed en masse, the battery size and long-term contamination risk go way down anyways.