6 ms·

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 foll

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.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    Jamming sources can be identified and bombed because they are also effectively homing beacons
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      So what is the battlefield math on this? Are you spending a $500,000 cruise missle to take out a $200 transmitter mounted to a tree? To allow your $20,000 drone to not get shot down? What happens when you add 1,000 jammers? It pretty quickly becomes not super effecient to deal with this.
      - livueta 4y ago
        ARMs are just the flashy example: COTS SDR gear and a howitzer also work pretty okay.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4760/meet-israels-suicide-squad-of-self-sacrificing-drones https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4760/meet-israels-suic...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - the__alchemist 4y ago
    I think GPS jamming will be effective for the near future; there are no cheap/small/light INSes; the IMUs on drone are super noisy/will drift. That said - GPS jamming is the main RF attack that will stop sufficiently autonomous drones.
jfoutz 4y ago
I don't know anything about anything, so take with a large grain of salt. drones work because of their elegant control mechanisms. Those require a nice clean radio environment. I suspect, but I do not know, a big spark would mess with the video stream coming from the drone, and probably the real time controls going to the drone. So, like, an arc welder or Tesla coil sparking continuously would do unpleasant things to the drone - no remote control. You could, of course, make the drone smarter, use AI to detect targets. but that would hurt performance, and make the drone more expensive. I'd point to Iran faking gps signals to ground the us drone, like a while ago. It's a bunch of tradeoffs. Preprogrammed doesn't have versatility, but is cheap. Dynamic is versatile, but expensive. Remote control is vulnerable to other stuff.
- lazide 4y ago
  They don’t require a clean radio environment, and can (and have shown in field trials) excellent full autonomous modes. Still a generation or two out for typical consumer drones though.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Not just field trials, your average joe has been able to program waypoint missions for a long time. They generally require reliable GPS after take off, but I imagine rough intertial referential sensors would be enough for warfare. It's enough for commercial aviation.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Yup - and consumer drones have had reasonable inertial sensors for quite awhile now. Not good enough for nap of the earth, but not far off.
    - 05 4y ago
      Consumer grade IMUs drift into unacceptable garbage in about two minutes of flight without GPS corrections[0]. You would need visual odometry to work in GNSS-denied environments [0] https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/indoor-mission-plan-no-gps/74909/2 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/indoor-mission-plan-no-gps/7...
williamscales 4y ago
https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun-tactical https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun-tactical One option is radio antennas in a gun shaped thing. And it just scales up from there. You can use very powerful antennas on the ground or in a plane to interfere with the control system or GPS.
TMWNN 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). Same argument made against Israel's Iron Dome against Hamas's more or less crude rockets. Said argument misses the point. The question isn't whether an Iron Dome missile is more expensive than a Hamas rocket (it is). It's whether an Iron Dome missile is more valuable than the lives and property lost by letting that Hamas rocket through.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  Yes, but this works because Israel has access to vastly more money than Hamas does. So they can withstand a 10^X cost discrepancy. It would not work between two parties who are close to evenly matched financially.
trhway 4y ago
Not necessarily. The hunter drone don't need to carry payload that the attack drone is supposedly carrying. Also it may not need the batteries for long range. It is kind of like bomber-fighter situation. I think the hunter drones would be first to get autonomous operations. The cost of errors/bugs is less for them than say for a ground attack drone hitting your own tank or unrelated civilian truck.

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.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  Jamming sources can be identified and bombed because they are also effectively homing beacons
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    So what is the battlefield math on this? Are you spending a $500,000 cruise missle to take out a $200 transmitter mounted to a tree? To allow your $20,000 drone to not get shot down? What happens when you add 1,000 jammers? It pretty quickly becomes not super effecient to deal with this.
    - livueta 4y ago
      ARMs are just the flashy example: COTS SDR gear and a howitzer also work pretty okay.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4760/meet-israels-suicide-squad-of-self-sacrificing-drones https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/4760/meet-israels-suic...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  I think GPS jamming will be effective for the near future; there are no cheap/small/light INSes; the IMUs on drone are super noisy/will drift. That said - GPS jamming is the main RF attack that will stop sufficiently autonomous drones.

jfoutz 4y ago

I don't know anything about anything, so take with a large grain of salt. drones work because of their elegant control mechanisms. Those require a nice clean radio environment. I suspect, but I do not know, a big spark would mess with the video stream coming from the drone, and probably the real time controls going to the drone. So, like, an arc welder or Tesla coil sparking continuously would do unpleasant things to the drone - no remote control. You could, of course, make the drone smarter, use AI to detect targets. but that would hurt performance, and make the drone more expensive. I'd point to Iran faking gps signals to ground the us drone, like a while ago. It's a bunch of tradeoffs. Preprogrammed doesn't have versatility, but is cheap. Dynamic is versatile, but expensive. Remote control is vulnerable to other stuff.

lazide 4y ago
They don’t require a clean radio environment, and can (and have shown in field trials) excellent full autonomous modes. Still a generation or two out for typical consumer drones though.
- ehnto 4y ago
  Not just field trials, your average joe has been able to program waypoint missions for a long time. They generally require reliable GPS after take off, but I imagine rough intertial referential sensors would be enough for warfare. It's enough for commercial aviation.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Yup - and consumer drones have had reasonable inertial sensors for quite awhile now. Not good enough for nap of the earth, but not far off.
  - 05 4y ago
    Consumer grade IMUs drift into unacceptable garbage in about two minutes of flight without GPS corrections[0]. You would need visual odometry to work in GNSS-denied environments [0] https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/indoor-mission-plan-no-gps/74909/2 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/indoor-mission-plan-no-gps/7...

williamscales 4y ago

https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun-tactical https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun-tactical One option is radio antennas in a gun shaped thing. And it just scales up from there. You can use very powerful antennas on the ground or in a plane to interfere with the control system or GPS.

TMWNN 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). Same argument made against Israel's Iron Dome against Hamas's more or less crude rockets. Said argument misses the point. The question isn't whether an Iron Dome missile is more expensive than a Hamas rocket (it is). It's whether an Iron Dome missile is more valuable than the lives and property lost by letting that Hamas rocket through.

spoonjim 4y ago
Yes, but this works because Israel has access to vastly more money than Hamas does. So they can withstand a 10^X cost discrepancy. It would not work between two parties who are close to evenly matched financially.

trhway 4y ago

Not necessarily. The hunter drone don't need to carry payload that the attack drone is supposedly carrying. Also it may not need the batteries for long range. It is kind of like bomber-fighter situation. I think the hunter drones would be first to get autonomous operations. The cost of errors/bugs is less for them than say for a ground attack drone hitting your own tank or unrelated civilian truck.