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It’s a lot cheaper to 3D print your own frame and just buy the components to build an FPV drone with an attachment for whatever payload you want to deliver. You

It’s a lot cheaper to 3D print your own frame and just buy the components to build an FPV drone with an attachment for whatever payload you want to deliver. You can build one for under $300 if you already have controllers and headset to pilot one. Blades can now be 3D printed as well using SLA printers or using carbon fiber. ESC’s can be made with Arduino. I doubt they are flying DJI’s in one-way missions. Military drones are one thing but these new front-line drones have changed warfare forever.

spywaregorilla 3y ago
The drones are so cheap it's pointless not to send them on suicide missions. The cost per kill is vastly far from the limiting factor.
aftbit 3y ago
They are 100% flying DJI drones on 1-way missions. Even a relatively expensive DJI drone costs less than an artillery shell. War is hell in many ways, not least of which is the sheer expense and resource consumption it demands.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Actually the American M795 155mm HE artillery round costs the US army about $820 each. However, FPV drones are the cheapest GUIDED weapon by far. It's finally cost effective to give every single soldier a "Fuck that guy in particular" weapon. They will be significantly less effective in a real, peer conflict between great powers though. China or the US would likely have significant EW capabilities against drones. The US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely than deal with American soldiers being donked on the head with personalized grenades every day. So drones in a conflict like that would be much less useful in "hot" locations, or will be significantly more expensive per unit so they can be made harder to jam and interfere with, or will be used more as a nuisance.
  - stormfather 3y ago
    In a great power war the autonomous drones with inertial guidance and optical targeting are coming out.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Hell, with cell phone AI capabilities these days it wouldn't be too hard to shove an android in one of the larger dones and say if you get jammed and see something like this list of pictures, blow it up.
  - swamp40 3y ago
    The drones will soon be autonomous. The technology is already here, just not well distributed. EW (except for EMP pulse) will be a dead end. They are already tracking down signal sources and targeting them. The drones fly around till they get a signal maximum then look down. I have also seen enemy analog video snooping where they watch the drone take-off point and geo-locate it to bomb.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      The drone wars have just begun and it's going to be years before the new paradigm shakes out.
  - swamp40 3y ago
    Grenades used to cost $8. Crazy how cheap that stuff is. I just saw Ukraine drone-dropping Russian landmines back onto Russians. Fields full of free munitions.
  - pavel_lishin 3y ago
    > The US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely than deal with American soldiers being donked on the head with personalized grenades every day. Would that help, considering that GLONASS, or Galileo, or BeiDou or could be used instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou
latchkey 3y ago
> these new front-line drones have changed warfare forever. Beyond true. I'm in a telegram of the Ukraine war and there is so much drone footage of them literally dropping bombs on the heads of Russians, it is insane. All of this caught on 4k video. There is one video of a guy sitting in the dirt... he's pointing at the drone to show where his friend is... drone bombs the friend, right on the head... and then comes back and bombs him. I'd link it here, but I think it is just too extreme for this site.
- rainworld 3y ago
  [flagged]
- throwaway_765 3y ago
  Can you link the telegram of the Ukraine war? I would like to see the state-of-the-art militarized tech in modern warfare.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    WarArchive
    - AlexanderTheGr8 3y ago
      Sorry for the silly question but how did you reply so fast. HackerNews doesn't tell an account when someone replied to them. So how did you know I asked? Do you monitor all your comments or use some service which does that?
      - latchkey 3y ago
        Not silly or magic. https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/
swamp40 3y ago
The Ukrainian drone frames are almost all 7"-10" carbon fiber pieces machined out from a sheet in China. About $15. Speedybee (Also China) took over the ESC and controller market by undercutting everyone by 50%. The blades can't be 3D printed because they need to be smooth and strong, but China again sells them for $1. Motors, China. Ukrainian volunteers are assembling them en masse. China is also selling the same stuff to Russia. Some local manufacturing is being attempted (for instance I have seen a Ukrainian made ESC board and Russian steel frames) but China pricing and quality is really difficult to compete against. Russia is beginning to ramp up drone production in real factories and I suspect they will eventually out-produce Ukraine, who is easily building 10K/month right now.

spywaregorilla 3y ago

The drones are so cheap it's pointless not to send them on suicide missions. The cost per kill is vastly far from the limiting factor.

aftbit 3y ago

They are 100% flying DJI drones on 1-way missions. Even a relatively expensive DJI drone costs less than an artillery shell. War is hell in many ways, not least of which is the sheer expense and resource consumption it demands.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Actually the American M795 155mm HE artillery round costs the US army about $820 each. However, FPV drones are the cheapest GUIDED weapon by far. It's finally cost effective to give every single soldier a "Fuck that guy in particular" weapon. They will be significantly less effective in a real, peer conflict between great powers though. China or the US would likely have significant EW capabilities against drones. The US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely than deal with American soldiers being donked on the head with personalized grenades every day. So drones in a conflict like that would be much less useful in "hot" locations, or will be significantly more expensive per unit so they can be made harder to jam and interfere with, or will be used more as a nuisance.
- stormfather 3y ago
  In a great power war the autonomous drones with inertial guidance and optical targeting are coming out.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Hell, with cell phone AI capabilities these days it wouldn't be too hard to shove an android in one of the larger dones and say if you get jammed and see something like this list of pictures, blow it up.
- swamp40 3y ago
  The drones will soon be autonomous. The technology is already here, just not well distributed. EW (except for EMP pulse) will be a dead end. They are already tracking down signal sources and targeting them. The drones fly around till they get a signal maximum then look down. I have also seen enemy analog video snooping where they watch the drone take-off point and geo-locate it to bomb.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    The drone wars have just begun and it's going to be years before the new paradigm shakes out.
- swamp40 3y ago
  Grenades used to cost $8. Crazy how cheap that stuff is. I just saw Ukraine drone-dropping Russian landmines back onto Russians. Fields full of free munitions.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  > The US would probably rather turn off GPS entirely than deal with American soldiers being donked on the head with personalized grenades every day. Would that help, considering that GLONASS, or Galileo, or BeiDou or could be used instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou

latchkey 3y ago

> these new front-line drones have changed warfare forever. Beyond true. I'm in a telegram of the Ukraine war and there is so much drone footage of them literally dropping bombs on the heads of Russians, it is insane. All of this caught on 4k video. There is one video of a guy sitting in the dirt... he's pointing at the drone to show where his friend is... drone bombs the friend, right on the head... and then comes back and bombs him. I'd link it here, but I think it is just too extreme for this site.

rainworld 3y ago
[flagged]
throwaway_765 3y ago
Can you link the telegram of the Ukraine war? I would like to see the state-of-the-art militarized tech in modern warfare.
- latchkey 3y ago
  WarArchive
  - AlexanderTheGr8 3y ago
    Sorry for the silly question but how did you reply so fast. HackerNews doesn't tell an account when someone replied to them. So how did you know I asked? Do you monitor all your comments or use some service which does that?
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Not silly or magic. https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/

swamp40 3y ago

The Ukrainian drone frames are almost all 7"-10" carbon fiber pieces machined out from a sheet in China. About $15. Speedybee (Also China) took over the ESC and controller market by undercutting everyone by 50%. The blades can't be 3D printed because they need to be smooth and strong, but China again sells them for $1. Motors, China. Ukrainian volunteers are assembling them en masse. China is also selling the same stuff to Russia. Some local manufacturing is being attempted (for instance I have seen a Ukrainian made ESC board and Russian steel frames) but China pricing and quality is really difficult to compete against. Russia is beginning to ramp up drone production in real factories and I suspect they will eventually out-produce Ukraine, who is easily building 10K/month right now.