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> A DJI Mavic drone was used a few years ago to aid in a rescue operation on K2 Are drone rescue-assist stories collected somewhere? I dreamed about this kind

> A DJI Mavic drone was used a few years ago to aid in a rescue operation on K2 Are drone rescue-assist stories collected somewhere? I dreamed about this kind of thing all the time as a kid and now that it's actually happening I want the details! Congrats to DJI.

m4jor 4y ago
Consumer drones have reached the point of insane use cases that I dont think a lot ever believed possible. They are being used in the Ukraine/Russia conflict atm by each side for spotting and dropping grenades and mortar shells. They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. They are also being used in other conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar. They quite literally have changed warfare because they are so affordable. Really interesting overall. Will be interesting to see this all morphs into.
- Maursault 4y ago
  Be prepared for your interest to taper. I expect the anti- or counter- drone technology is a little more expensive, but it exists, a lot, so drone warfare has technically been stalemated already. I think this is a good thing, leaving most of the interesting bits in earnest ethical discussion.
  - waste_monk 4y ago
    Apparently flak guns are predicted to become useful again (in the sense of anti-aircraft artillery), as anti-drone weapons.
    - lazide 4y ago
      The issue is collateral damage. Using a flak gun to take out a drone flying 20 ft over a crowds head at 120mph is going to probably do far more damage than the drone would.
      - tragictrash 4y ago
        What are you talking about
        ehnto 4y ago
        Their point I think is that drones can operate outside of the safe operation envelope of a flak canon. I don't think flak canons would be a good anti-drone defense except in really specific scenarios, and drone operators would then just not fly those scenarios.
        tragictrash 4y ago
        I was too tired to elaborate, thank you for doing it for me.
        beachy 4y ago
        Flak shells are designed to explode into a hail of steel fragments, in order to damage the target. Naturally a rain of steel from the sky is not good if you are standing below. Allegedly at Pearl Harbour 63 American civilians were killed by anti-aircraft shells falling on them and 34 wounded.
        lazide 4y ago
        Yup, and the smallest typical flak shell is going to necessarily have a pretty large lethal radius as that is what would get the drone. It takes a lot less than that to blind everyone in the crowd with shrapnel or kill them, if you’re trying to shoot down the drone flying 20 ft over their heads. The smaller the kill radius, the more difficult the intercept (fundamentally) - and that’s assuming there is a safe backdrop for any non-exploded shells. These scenarios are much different than point defense at sea of a warship, or defense of the skies over a military base or city surrounded by mostly empty desert.
      - registeredcorn 4y ago
        Well, if proximity detonation is an issue, there's always weapons like CIWS [1] and C-RAM [2]. I imagine there could easily be some kind of adaption made for specialized ammo. Instead of typical bullets, use some kind of very low grade concussive. The explosive wouldn't necessarily need to be an explosive, but merely just something to disrupt the air around one or two blades of the drone to force it into an unrecoverable spin. Similar to small grade concussives, I've heard some interesting defense systems use a projectile that has a kind of "mini parachute" to overwhelm target acquisition systems. I can't recall what it was in relation to. Chaff, maybe? The point is, if you could get enough small objects floating in the area, you could make it much harder for an enemy drone to maneuver within a specific area. Honestly, I think the soon-to-be hurdle would be around implementing a good jamming system against automated defenses, which would probably lead to inventing some sort of miniaturized version of current fighter planes, but built in such a way that doesn't need to account for things like G tolerance for pilots. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf38NYzo5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf38NYzo5Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpabF_5ulU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpabF_5ulU
    - hackernewds 4y ago
      Flak guns are neither as mobile nor cheap
    - mikewarot 4y ago
      Proximity fuzes are a thing, and you've got a target that doesn't have the torque to deal with random strands of carbon fiber thrown into it propellers, it should be a fairly simple matter to make a shell that is almost nerf safe, but deadly to drones.
      - JTbane 4y ago
        You probably don't even need carbon fiber, some fishing line would do it.
    - hcrean 4y ago
      A silly-string canon is likely to be highly effective against most propeller driven drones. Safer for the people under it too.
    - rr888 4y ago
      Yeah it did seem a waste to use SAMS to take out $400 DJI gear.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    The problem is that the counter drone technology, if it is a drone itself, will necessarily always be more expensive than the attack drone (because it must follow the attack drone). In that case it becomes a lopsided war of attrition.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      It’s a radio jammer on a stick.
      - livueta 4y ago
        Also known as a perfect beacon for an anti-radiation missile. It's not quite "drones HATE this one weird trick". Yes, jamming is a thing, but so are FHSS, ARMs and any number of other countermeasure-counters. No GPS/GNSS/whatever? Inertial navigation systems. No comms at all? All kinds of flavors of automation. Simple countermeasures may be effective against consumer drones, but the overall problem is an iterative metagame where flawless countermeasures are pretty rare and there's usually a way to adapt or fight back.
        Maursault 4y ago
        > Also known as a perfect beacon for an anti-radiation missile. Wouldn't that just take out the remote drone controller?
        livueta 4y ago
        I meant that if you intend to use a jammer as a countermeasure against a drone, you're making yourself vulnerable to ARMs. Sure, you can position the jammer away from anything important but that ups your time to redeploy / reconfigure it, reducing its effectiveness. You also lose the jammer, though that might not necessarily be a problem if it's a lot cheaper than an ARM and you have a lot of them available. But of course ARMs work fine against a drone's controller, too - assuming it isn't using FHSS, though that itself assumes no crazy-advanced anti-FHSS RDF. That's kind of my point regarding how this stuff cuts both ways, how even if a countermeasure works in one instance that's no guarantee it'll continue working, and how countermeasures themselves generally have weaknesses. Naval engineering provides a lot of examples of this dynamic. Check out what the introduction and development of the torpedo did to the meta.
  - Animats 4y ago
    Already available.[1] It's a kit you bolt to the bed of your pickup truck. It's overkill for cheap drones, though. The missile costs more than the drone. [1] https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/vampire https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/vampire
    - dietr1ch 4y ago
      IDK, sounds like an overkill to take down any drone, but not so much for taking down a hostile one nearby you.
    - solardev 4y ago
      Just throw an angry bird at it: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-falcons-drones-research/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-falcons-drones-res... https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0042-8426/2017/0042-84261704146N.pdf https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0042-8426/2017/0042...
  - ignaloidas 4y ago
    A microwave hacked to work with the doors open will disable most of the commercially available drones. 800W of transmission at 2.4 GHz is tough to speak through. Of course, this way is quite dangerous, and violates radio frequency regulations, but if it's a war, who cares.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      Can't you go around that if you have direct line of sight to the drone, with some laser or very targeted radio? Or perhaps a relay drone. Also I assume the drones will increasingly become autonomous.
      - ignaloidas 4y ago
        Lazer? Sure, if you can aim it that well. Highly targeted radio? A bit doubtful, at least not without increased transmission power. For what it's worth, this attack can be sidestepped fairly easily just by not using open frequencies, to which microwave ovens are usually tuned(for regulatory reasons). This is only useful against drones that are available to buy for individuals, as they are forced to use the same open frequencies. Anything military grade is likely using other frequencies, and you can't use cheap microwave ovens to generate ridiculous amounts of them.
    - comboy 4y ago
      I would assume that unless you are able to deliver enough power to damage the receiver (and remember it goes down fast, r^2, plus transmitter is on the side of the microwave, standing wave perpendicular to the door), it wouldn't really impact transmission. It's not AM radio and you are not even outputting noise with timing comparable to transmission, just adding constant (or maybe 50hz sine). Plus there are multiple channels at 2.4Ghz, and you are probably outputting a narrow single freq. But that's just me guessing, I'd love to know if it would actually work.
      - ignaloidas 4y ago
        It slightly changes frequency randomly on every zero crossing of the input frequency, so 100Hz FSK modulation effectively. It is enough to slow down your bluetooth and wifi when the door is closed and the radiated power is fully legal (<0.1W IIRC), so the effect should be amplified a lot when the door is open. Long distance flight is already getting close to the limits of what signal integrity you can get, so even a few miliwatts at the drone might be enough to disable the communications with it. I too would really like to know, and try it too, but getting permission for 800W transmission would be a pain.
  - killingtime74 4y ago
    In the sense guns and body armour are stalemated? Only arm chair theorist think like this lol
- saagarjha 4y ago
  These are the less appealing uses of consumer drones.
- alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  > They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. Not only that, these parts are being crowd-sourced 3D-printed!
- stavros 4y ago
  > They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. I feel like this implies that they're using DJI/consumer drones. They aren't, those are too expensive and too slow. They use custom-built FPV drones, which are much faster, cheaper, and much easier to build from parts. The phrase "rigging them up with aftermarket parts" doesn't really apply when the entire drone is "cheap aftermarket parts".
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Yup and if they are custom FPV builds then you get quite a lot of IO ports at your disposal. Plus the flight controller supports easy mapping to your transmitter so you just have to flick a switch.
  - jeff_vader 4y ago
    It's both. DJI drones while expensive they are rather user friendly. Some fighters in Ukraine do use them with aftermarket droppers[1]. Payload is limited to a single VOG-17M grenade. Dropper has a light sensor and is triggered by aux light. They also build custom drones as well. For example there's R18 by Aerorozvidka[2]. Which is largeish octacopter from higher quality hobby parts. Payload is ~5kg which allows taking multiple anti-armor grenades or small mortar rounds. [1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taoke-Airdrop-Delivery-Foldable-compatible/dp/B095WTRS4R https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taoke-Airdrop-Delivery-Foldable-com... [2]: https://aerorozvidka.xyz/r18/ https://aerorozvidka.xyz/r18/
  - m4jor 4y ago
    Wrong. They ARE using regular consumer DJI drones. And they are using aftermarket parts that you can order off Amazon for ~$10. - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wz9j4v/longer_video_ukrainian_bomber_drone_team_shows/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wz9j4v/longe... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ws554a/drone_pilots_mark_targets_for_ukraine_artillery/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ws554a/drone... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wdzgt3/georgian_legion_active_here_in_eastern_ukraine/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wdzgt3/georg... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wq5dc4/soldiers_from_the_ukrainian_231st_tdf_battalion/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wq5dc4/soldi... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ui4vsc/dpr_soldier_using_dji_mavic_3_to_correct/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ui4vsc/dpr_s... - https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1559613023446261765 https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/155961302344626176... - https://youtu.be/oOV6Yq-aZNk?t=53 https://youtu.be/oOV6Yq-aZNk?t=53 etc etc. literally thousands of videos confirming this. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=dji&restrict_sr=on https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=dji&restrict... For more videos An Air Dropper for a Mavic Air 2 for $30 that uses the AUX light https://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Accessories-Delivery-Transport-Compatible/dp/B08CVBPSTM/ https://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Accessories-Delivery-Transpor...
- okasaki 4y ago
  Why can't we have one damn HN post without some obscene war tech shit?
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
    "War tech shit" is cool to some, obscene to others. Makes it perfectly memetic.
  - Moto7451 4y ago
    One reason is that the Tech Industry and the Military Industrial Complex are deeply intertwined. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ The idea of a personal drone has years of military drones as inspiration. We’re just “giving back” in the form of a COTS option.
  - m4jor 4y ago
    “War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
propwash 4y ago
Yes, You can find a map with news about (almost) all drone rescue events around the world here - https://enterprise.dji.com/drone-rescue-map/#map https://enterprise.dji.com/drone-rescue-map/#map
- themodelplumber 4y ago
  No way, this is great! Like this one: > A surfer was pulled out to sea by a rip current and was stranded in the water. The sheriffs department used their drone to find him, and used the drones loudspeaker to tell him to swim farther out where a boat could reach him. I would never have guessed...wow. Thanks!
ryanisnan 4y ago
The rescue team I was on (https://www.northshorerescue.com/ https://www.northshorerescue.com/) regularly uses drones to assist with rescues. They're incredibly handy when needing to navigate/peek-around hazardous terrain while avoiding the necessary rope rigging.
- icpmacdo 4y ago
  I would love to hear more about your experience volunteering with North Shore Rescue if you have anything to share.
  - ryanisnan 4y ago
    What in particular? Happy to share what I can.
Alex3917 4y ago
> Are drone rescue-assist stories collected somewhere? The K2 story is on YouTube. It’s pretty interesting.
sschueller 4y ago
Swiss air rescue (REGA) is using drones[1] to a limited degree but they are not what you think. They are not quad copters instead they look more like real helicopters. The primary reason being air time. [1] https://www.rega.ch/en/our-missions/cutting-edge-technology/rega-drone https://www.rega.ch/en/our-missions/cutting-edge-technology/...
matharmin 4y ago
I don't have any specific stories, but my local rescue team in Cape Town now uses a drone on many mountain rescue callouts to assist in locating the patients. It is surprisingly difficult to use a drone effectively for that - it is much harder to spot someone from a drone's camera than you'd expect. It is often still faster to find the patients by foot, but it has helped in some cases. And when the patients have been found, the drone can help to scout the surrounding area to find the best route out. So overall the drone has been some help, but it hasn't significantly affected the outcome of rescue operations in any case that I know of.
kymki 4y ago
From personal experience working with the Swedish Rescue Drone initiative, sensitive data captured during SAR might fall under GDPR. Some groups coordinating SAR operations request complete control over image data captured during flights, and in some cases for good reason. For instance, if the search is for an animal, providing the caretakers of that animal with imagery data may make them rush out on location to capture the animal. For a dog, for instance, that has been missing for a few days their behaviour is very much polarized towards the flight response. It may be that the person missing may not want to be found. It may be that the person notifying authorities may want to find the missing person for reasons they dont communicate. There are all kinds of reasons for why data from SAR operations should not be made public. That being said, drone use in the field is extremely useful in many SAR situations, and is often managed by volunteers that go out with machines of varying quality. Some show up with a DJI-platform equipped with thermal and optical cameras, others with sub 250g fpv drones. In some environments, simply having the altitude offers an effective enough leverage to use drones in the cheaper end of the spectrum. Flight time matters a lot. With respect to sensor types, having access to thermal information is invaluable in some cases, and in others completely useless. It ofc depends on the thermal difference between the object you are searching for and its surroundings. In all cases, it is very expensive relative to optical information. Anyone with decent electronics knowledge can put together a drone kit for around 150 bucks. Building a thermal camera without shelling out a decent sum of cash, on the other hand..

m4jor 4y ago

Consumer drones have reached the point of insane use cases that I dont think a lot ever believed possible. They are being used in the Ukraine/Russia conflict atm by each side for spotting and dropping grenades and mortar shells. They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. They are also being used in other conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and Myanmar. They quite literally have changed warfare because they are so affordable. Really interesting overall. Will be interesting to see this all morphs into.

Maursault 4y ago
Be prepared for your interest to taper. I expect the anti- or counter- drone technology is a little more expensive, but it exists, a lot, so drone warfare has technically been stalemated already. I think this is a good thing, leaving most of the interesting bits in earnest ethical discussion.
- waste_monk 4y ago
  Apparently flak guns are predicted to become useful again (in the sense of anti-aircraft artillery), as anti-drone weapons.
  - lazide 4y ago
    The issue is collateral damage. Using a flak gun to take out a drone flying 20 ft over a crowds head at 120mph is going to probably do far more damage than the drone would.
    - tragictrash 4y ago
      What are you talking about
      - ehnto 4y ago
        Their point I think is that drones can operate outside of the safe operation envelope of a flak canon. I don't think flak canons would be a good anti-drone defense except in really specific scenarios, and drone operators would then just not fly those scenarios.
        tragictrash 4y ago
        I was too tired to elaborate, thank you for doing it for me.
      - beachy 4y ago
        Flak shells are designed to explode into a hail of steel fragments, in order to damage the target. Naturally a rain of steel from the sky is not good if you are standing below. Allegedly at Pearl Harbour 63 American civilians were killed by anti-aircraft shells falling on them and 34 wounded.
        lazide 4y ago
        Yup, and the smallest typical flak shell is going to necessarily have a pretty large lethal radius as that is what would get the drone. It takes a lot less than that to blind everyone in the crowd with shrapnel or kill them, if you’re trying to shoot down the drone flying 20 ft over their heads. The smaller the kill radius, the more difficult the intercept (fundamentally) - and that’s assuming there is a safe backdrop for any non-exploded shells. These scenarios are much different than point defense at sea of a warship, or defense of the skies over a military base or city surrounded by mostly empty desert.
    - registeredcorn 4y ago
      Well, if proximity detonation is an issue, there's always weapons like CIWS [1] and C-RAM [2]. I imagine there could easily be some kind of adaption made for specialized ammo. Instead of typical bullets, use some kind of very low grade concussive. The explosive wouldn't necessarily need to be an explosive, but merely just something to disrupt the air around one or two blades of the drone to force it into an unrecoverable spin. Similar to small grade concussives, I've heard some interesting defense systems use a projectile that has a kind of "mini parachute" to overwhelm target acquisition systems. I can't recall what it was in relation to. Chaff, maybe? The point is, if you could get enough small objects floating in the area, you could make it much harder for an enemy drone to maneuver within a specific area. Honestly, I think the soon-to-be hurdle would be around implementing a good jamming system against automated defenses, which would probably lead to inventing some sort of miniaturized version of current fighter planes, but built in such a way that doesn't need to account for things like G tolerance for pilots. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf38NYzo5Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsf38NYzo5Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpabF_5ulU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phpabF_5ulU
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    Flak guns are neither as mobile nor cheap
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    Proximity fuzes are a thing, and you've got a target that doesn't have the torque to deal with random strands of carbon fiber thrown into it propellers, it should be a fairly simple matter to make a shell that is almost nerf safe, but deadly to drones.
    - JTbane 4y ago
      You probably don't even need carbon fiber, some fishing line would do it.
  - hcrean 4y ago
    A silly-string canon is likely to be highly effective against most propeller driven drones. Safer for the people under it too.
  - rr888 4y ago
    Yeah it did seem a waste to use SAMS to take out $400 DJI gear.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  The problem is that the counter drone technology, if it is a drone itself, will necessarily always be more expensive than the attack drone (because it must follow the attack drone). In that case it becomes a lopsided war of attrition.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    It’s a radio jammer on a stick.
    - livueta 4y ago
      Also known as a perfect beacon for an anti-radiation missile. It's not quite "drones HATE this one weird trick". Yes, jamming is a thing, but so are FHSS, ARMs and any number of other countermeasure-counters. No GPS/GNSS/whatever? Inertial navigation systems. No comms at all? All kinds of flavors of automation. Simple countermeasures may be effective against consumer drones, but the overall problem is an iterative metagame where flawless countermeasures are pretty rare and there's usually a way to adapt or fight back.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        > Also known as a perfect beacon for an anti-radiation missile. Wouldn't that just take out the remote drone controller?
        livueta 4y ago
        I meant that if you intend to use a jammer as a countermeasure against a drone, you're making yourself vulnerable to ARMs. Sure, you can position the jammer away from anything important but that ups your time to redeploy / reconfigure it, reducing its effectiveness. You also lose the jammer, though that might not necessarily be a problem if it's a lot cheaper than an ARM and you have a lot of them available. But of course ARMs work fine against a drone's controller, too - assuming it isn't using FHSS, though that itself assumes no crazy-advanced anti-FHSS RDF. That's kind of my point regarding how this stuff cuts both ways, how even if a countermeasure works in one instance that's no guarantee it'll continue working, and how countermeasures themselves generally have weaknesses. Naval engineering provides a lot of examples of this dynamic. Check out what the introduction and development of the torpedo did to the meta.
- Animats 4y ago
  Already available.[1] It's a kit you bolt to the bed of your pickup truck. It's overkill for cheap drones, though. The missile costs more than the drone. [1] https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/vampire https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/vampire
  - dietr1ch 4y ago
    IDK, sounds like an overkill to take down any drone, but not so much for taking down a hostile one nearby you.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Just throw an angry bird at it: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-falcons-drones-research/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-falcons-drones-res... https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0042-8426/2017/0042-84261704146N.pdf https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0042-8426/2017/0042...
- ignaloidas 4y ago
  A microwave hacked to work with the doors open will disable most of the commercially available drones. 800W of transmission at 2.4 GHz is tough to speak through. Of course, this way is quite dangerous, and violates radio frequency regulations, but if it's a war, who cares.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    Can't you go around that if you have direct line of sight to the drone, with some laser or very targeted radio? Or perhaps a relay drone. Also I assume the drones will increasingly become autonomous.
    - ignaloidas 4y ago
      Lazer? Sure, if you can aim it that well. Highly targeted radio? A bit doubtful, at least not without increased transmission power. For what it's worth, this attack can be sidestepped fairly easily just by not using open frequencies, to which microwave ovens are usually tuned(for regulatory reasons). This is only useful against drones that are available to buy for individuals, as they are forced to use the same open frequencies. Anything military grade is likely using other frequencies, and you can't use cheap microwave ovens to generate ridiculous amounts of them.
  - comboy 4y ago
    I would assume that unless you are able to deliver enough power to damage the receiver (and remember it goes down fast, r^2, plus transmitter is on the side of the microwave, standing wave perpendicular to the door), it wouldn't really impact transmission. It's not AM radio and you are not even outputting noise with timing comparable to transmission, just adding constant (or maybe 50hz sine). Plus there are multiple channels at 2.4Ghz, and you are probably outputting a narrow single freq. But that's just me guessing, I'd love to know if it would actually work.
    - ignaloidas 4y ago
      It slightly changes frequency randomly on every zero crossing of the input frequency, so 100Hz FSK modulation effectively. It is enough to slow down your bluetooth and wifi when the door is closed and the radiated power is fully legal (<0.1W IIRC), so the effect should be amplified a lot when the door is open. Long distance flight is already getting close to the limits of what signal integrity you can get, so even a few miliwatts at the drone might be enough to disable the communications with it. I too would really like to know, and try it too, but getting permission for 800W transmission would be a pain.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  In the sense guns and body armour are stalemated? Only arm chair theorist think like this lol
saagarjha 4y ago
These are the less appealing uses of consumer drones.
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
> They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. Not only that, these parts are being crowd-sourced 3D-printed!
stavros 4y ago
> They are doing it by rigging them up with cheap aftermarket parts and then rigging the AUX light on/off to trigger the drop. I feel like this implies that they're using DJI/consumer drones. They aren't, those are too expensive and too slow. They use custom-built FPV drones, which are much faster, cheaper, and much easier to build from parts. The phrase "rigging them up with aftermarket parts" doesn't really apply when the entire drone is "cheap aftermarket parts".
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Yup and if they are custom FPV builds then you get quite a lot of IO ports at your disposal. Plus the flight controller supports easy mapping to your transmitter so you just have to flick a switch.
- jeff_vader 4y ago
  It's both. DJI drones while expensive they are rather user friendly. Some fighters in Ukraine do use them with aftermarket droppers[1]. Payload is limited to a single VOG-17M grenade. Dropper has a light sensor and is triggered by aux light. They also build custom drones as well. For example there's R18 by Aerorozvidka[2]. Which is largeish octacopter from higher quality hobby parts. Payload is ~5kg which allows taking multiple anti-armor grenades or small mortar rounds. [1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taoke-Airdrop-Delivery-Foldable-compatible/dp/B095WTRS4R https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taoke-Airdrop-Delivery-Foldable-com... [2]: https://aerorozvidka.xyz/r18/ https://aerorozvidka.xyz/r18/
- m4jor 4y ago
  Wrong. They ARE using regular consumer DJI drones. And they are using aftermarket parts that you can order off Amazon for ~$10. - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wz9j4v/longer_video_ukrainian_bomber_drone_team_shows/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wz9j4v/longe... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ws554a/drone_pilots_mark_targets_for_ukraine_artillery/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ws554a/drone... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wdzgt3/georgian_legion_active_here_in_eastern_ukraine/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wdzgt3/georg... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wq5dc4/soldiers_from_the_ukrainian_231st_tdf_battalion/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/wq5dc4/soldi... - https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ui4vsc/dpr_soldier_using_dji_mavic_3_to_correct/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/ui4vsc/dpr_s... - https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1559613023446261765 https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/155961302344626176... - https://youtu.be/oOV6Yq-aZNk?t=53 https://youtu.be/oOV6Yq-aZNk?t=53 etc etc. literally thousands of videos confirming this. See: https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=dji&restrict_sr=on https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/search?q=dji&restrict... For more videos An Air Dropper for a Mavic Air 2 for $30 that uses the AUX light https://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Accessories-Delivery-Transport-Compatible/dp/B08CVBPSTM/ https://www.amazon.com/Airdrop-Accessories-Delivery-Transpor...
okasaki 4y ago
Why can't we have one damn HN post without some obscene war tech shit?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  "War tech shit" is cool to some, obscene to others. Makes it perfectly memetic.
- Moto7451 4y ago
  One reason is that the Tech Industry and the Military Industrial Complex are deeply intertwined. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ The idea of a personal drone has years of military drones as inspiration. We’re just “giving back” in the form of a COTS option.
- m4jor 4y ago
  “War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”

propwash 4y ago

Yes, You can find a map with news about (almost) all drone rescue events around the world here - https://enterprise.dji.com/drone-rescue-map/#map https://enterprise.dji.com/drone-rescue-map/#map

themodelplumber 4y ago
No way, this is great! Like this one: > A surfer was pulled out to sea by a rip current and was stranded in the water. The sheriffs department used their drone to find him, and used the drones loudspeaker to tell him to swim farther out where a boat could reach him. I would never have guessed...wow. Thanks!

ryanisnan 4y ago

The rescue team I was on (https://www.northshorerescue.com/ https://www.northshorerescue.com/) regularly uses drones to assist with rescues. They're incredibly handy when needing to navigate/peek-around hazardous terrain while avoiding the necessary rope rigging.

icpmacdo 4y ago
I would love to hear more about your experience volunteering with North Shore Rescue if you have anything to share.
- ryanisnan 4y ago
  What in particular? Happy to share what I can.

Alex3917 4y ago

> Are drone rescue-assist stories collected somewhere? The K2 story is on YouTube. It’s pretty interesting.

sschueller 4y ago

Swiss air rescue (REGA) is using drones[1] to a limited degree but they are not what you think. They are not quad copters instead they look more like real helicopters. The primary reason being air time. [1] https://www.rega.ch/en/our-missions/cutting-edge-technology/rega-drone https://www.rega.ch/en/our-missions/cutting-edge-technology/...

matharmin 4y ago

I don't have any specific stories, but my local rescue team in Cape Town now uses a drone on many mountain rescue callouts to assist in locating the patients. It is surprisingly difficult to use a drone effectively for that - it is much harder to spot someone from a drone's camera than you'd expect. It is often still faster to find the patients by foot, but it has helped in some cases. And when the patients have been found, the drone can help to scout the surrounding area to find the best route out. So overall the drone has been some help, but it hasn't significantly affected the outcome of rescue operations in any case that I know of.

kymki 4y ago

From personal experience working with the Swedish Rescue Drone initiative, sensitive data captured during SAR might fall under GDPR. Some groups coordinating SAR operations request complete control over image data captured during flights, and in some cases for good reason. For instance, if the search is for an animal, providing the caretakers of that animal with imagery data may make them rush out on location to capture the animal. For a dog, for instance, that has been missing for a few days their behaviour is very much polarized towards the flight response. It may be that the person missing may not want to be found. It may be that the person notifying authorities may want to find the missing person for reasons they dont communicate. There are all kinds of reasons for why data from SAR operations should not be made public. That being said, drone use in the field is extremely useful in many SAR situations, and is often managed by volunteers that go out with machines of varying quality. Some show up with a DJI-platform equipped with thermal and optical cameras, others with sub 250g fpv drones. In some environments, simply having the altitude offers an effective enough leverage to use drones in the cheaper end of the spectrum. Flight time matters a lot. With respect to sensor types, having access to thermal information is invaluable in some cases, and in others completely useless. It ofc depends on the thermal difference between the object you are searching for and its surroundings. In all cases, it is very expensive relative to optical information. Anyone with decent electronics knowledge can put together a drone kit for around 150 bucks. Building a thermal camera without shelling out a decent sum of cash, on the other hand..