5 ms·

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 r

by 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...
    - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      2 minutes is a pretty long time for a lot of use cases.
    - lazide 4y ago
      And visual assistance has been well supported in most commercial drones for years.
- jfoutz 4y ago
  I guess I don't understand what precision is needed when dropping a grenade. I've never had a grenade thrown at me. I sort of suspect, but have no first hand knowledge, that a half a second is a big deal. yes, the drone will go to the location and drop the grenade. But there's no opportunity for dynamic reaction for changing conditions. I think, but do not know, that a few feet are a big deal with small explosives. Well, I kinda know from bottle rockets and such, but they aren't that scary. You can cover a lot of small errors with a bigger explosion. but that means more payload, and more expensive. denying that elegant control of small explosive in a precise location seems like a winner. yeah, you can go to position X but maybe I'm a little to the left of that. of course it's not free, but me picking up my shit and moving 10 feet is pretty cheap. cheaper than a drone for sure. Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe tensor flow says that's a person near the target, adjust location to drop the explosive on the person. from the point of a know nothing observer, it sure seems like there is some wiggle room. I'm not convinced an inexpensive drone has the capacity to solve these problems. (but you could send like 36 and drop grenades in a 6x6 grid, but that seems expensive). Screwing around with RF seems like step 1.
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    you're underestimating the control software. with consumer grade cameras and simple image processing, you can write "go to x, find the nearest person and drop on them". also, just having the camera in the air is enough to make it much easier to launch a rocket at a target for juicier targets.
  - lazide 4y ago
    See [https://youtu.be/m89bNn6RFoQ https://youtu.be/m89bNn6RFoQ]
mlsu 4y ago
The feedback control necessary to keep them in the air is done on board. Radio is used for very high level waypoint nav.
ajuc 4y ago
Sparks are easy to filter out. There are complex jamming and anti-jamming measures. Civilian drones aren't designed for this so they are easy to shut down, military drones are getting better at this quickly. Before the war in Ukraine people said russian electronic warfare systems and air defence will make drones useless. There were different phases in this war, at first Russians weren't even doing air defense so Bayraktars were destroying airdefense systems (which is crazy :) ). Now that Russians fixed that issue - Bayraktars aren't doing much damage from what we can see, but the artillery guidance drones are still doing OK. I've heard good things about WB Electronics Fly Eye drones for example. They have some capacity to survive in area where the radio communication is jammed. Also - if you do jamming - it makes you a big target broadcasting "I'm HERE!". There are missiles that are designed to guide themselves towards jamming/radar stations like HARM. So with combined arms you can: - launch a decoy - watch for radar/air defence/jamming stations - launch HARM missiles to destroy them - launch drones to guide artillery - destroy undefended bases with cheap and accurate drone-adjusted artillery fire Also - military drones are usually controlled differently from the civilians ones. It feels more like playing RTS (click on the target, wait for the drone to get there) instead of a flying simulator (control the engines constantly). So if you're jammed for 5 minutes while going from point A to point B - it doesn't matter. Also military drones often use satellite communication which is much harder to disrupt than direct radio connection.

by jfoutz 4y ago

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...
  - adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
    2 minutes is a pretty long time for a lot of use cases.
  - lazide 4y ago
    And visual assistance has been well supported in most commercial drones for years.
jfoutz 4y ago
I guess I don't understand what precision is needed when dropping a grenade. I've never had a grenade thrown at me. I sort of suspect, but have no first hand knowledge, that a half a second is a big deal. yes, the drone will go to the location and drop the grenade. But there's no opportunity for dynamic reaction for changing conditions. I think, but do not know, that a few feet are a big deal with small explosives. Well, I kinda know from bottle rockets and such, but they aren't that scary. You can cover a lot of small errors with a bigger explosion. but that means more payload, and more expensive. denying that elegant control of small explosive in a precise location seems like a winner. yeah, you can go to position X but maybe I'm a little to the left of that. of course it's not free, but me picking up my shit and moving 10 feet is pretty cheap. cheaper than a drone for sure. Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe tensor flow says that's a person near the target, adjust location to drop the explosive on the person. from the point of a know nothing observer, it sure seems like there is some wiggle room. I'm not convinced an inexpensive drone has the capacity to solve these problems. (but you could send like 36 and drop grenades in a 6x6 grid, but that seems expensive). Screwing around with RF seems like step 1.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  you're underestimating the control software. with consumer grade cameras and simple image processing, you can write "go to x, find the nearest person and drop on them". also, just having the camera in the air is enough to make it much easier to launch a rocket at a target for juicier targets.
- lazide 4y ago
  See [https://youtu.be/m89bNn6RFoQ https://youtu.be/m89bNn6RFoQ]

mlsu 4y ago

The feedback control necessary to keep them in the air is done on board. Radio is used for very high level waypoint nav.

ajuc 4y ago

Sparks are easy to filter out. There are complex jamming and anti-jamming measures. Civilian drones aren't designed for this so they are easy to shut down, military drones are getting better at this quickly. Before the war in Ukraine people said russian electronic warfare systems and air defence will make drones useless. There were different phases in this war, at first Russians weren't even doing air defense so Bayraktars were destroying airdefense systems (which is crazy :) ). Now that Russians fixed that issue - Bayraktars aren't doing much damage from what we can see, but the artillery guidance drones are still doing OK. I've heard good things about WB Electronics Fly Eye drones for example. They have some capacity to survive in area where the radio communication is jammed. Also - if you do jamming - it makes you a big target broadcasting "I'm HERE!". There are missiles that are designed to guide themselves towards jamming/radar stations like HARM. So with combined arms you can: - launch a decoy - watch for radar/air defence/jamming stations - launch HARM missiles to destroy them - launch drones to guide artillery - destroy undefended bases with cheap and accurate drone-adjusted artillery fire Also - military drones are usually controlled differently from the civilians ones. It feels more like playing RTS (click on the target, wait for the drone to get there) instead of a flying simulator (control the engines constantly). So if you're jammed for 5 minutes while going from point A to point B - it doesn't matter. Also military drones often use satellite communication which is much harder to disrupt than direct radio connection.