4 ms·

Why are they useless? Could they not carry a payload, and swarm their way past defenses that aren't equipped for "volume"?

usrusr 3y ago
Getting signal through a hostile radio environment comes to mind. But as it stands now it looks like this might be a field were a hundred "macguyvers on typewriters" adapting consumer drones are more effective than a Shakespeare trapped in the bowels of the military industrial complex.
- lazide 3y ago
  Even basic consumer drones use frequency hopping and have relatively complex signal integrity logic - necessary even for using ‘free’ frequencies like 2.4 and 5.4 ghz in typical urban environments. And they’re pretty good, frankly.
  - 15155 3y ago
    "Frequency hopping" does nothing when your adversary can blow out the entire 2.4 and 5.4GHz bands, even before getting into sophisticated radio-specific attacks. Urban radio environments are crowded, not actively hostile.
    - lazide 3y ago
      And yet, plenty of field success right now with consumer (even basic amateur level) drones. The issue with high energy jamming (broad frequency band denial) is it makes your jammer a super tempting (and easy) target for a HARM or equivalent, and consumes quite a bit of power. If someone is actively denying such a wide frequency band, any high school level electronics student can design a pretty effective seeker. And the whole 'radio power drops off as a cube of the distance' thing means the equipment needs to be pretty close to operations, so it's going to get attacked pretty often. The noise level in a typical urban environment from wifi is already pretty terrible, 'hostile' or not. Way more terrible than a typical remote environment, which is where these drones are being used, unless there are active countermeasures pretty close. Counter measures, counter-counter measures, etc. But I'm not seeing much mention of effective jamming happening in-theatre right now.
gpderetta 3y ago
They do. In fact they graduated from simply dropping grenades on soldiers and IFVs to suicide roles taking out actual tanks. I'm not sure actual DJIs are being used in suicide missions or custom, still inexpensive, drones.
- callmemclovin 3y ago
  The video footage of suicide drones you can find on r/combatfootage is nearly always from custom drones, the giveaway is the analog video transmission. As the poster before said, DJI drones are only used for reconnaisance (for example DJI Matrice), where high-quality digital video transmission (and thermal image cameras) are very useful.
  - rasz 3y ago
    Plenty of DJI grenade drops (auxiliary light), both from cheap mavics and expensive matrices.

usrusr 3y ago

Getting signal through a hostile radio environment comes to mind. But as it stands now it looks like this might be a field were a hundred "macguyvers on typewriters" adapting consumer drones are more effective than a Shakespeare trapped in the bowels of the military industrial complex.

lazide 3y ago
Even basic consumer drones use frequency hopping and have relatively complex signal integrity logic - necessary even for using ‘free’ frequencies like 2.4 and 5.4 ghz in typical urban environments. And they’re pretty good, frankly.
- 15155 3y ago
  "Frequency hopping" does nothing when your adversary can blow out the entire 2.4 and 5.4GHz bands, even before getting into sophisticated radio-specific attacks. Urban radio environments are crowded, not actively hostile.
  - lazide 3y ago
    And yet, plenty of field success right now with consumer (even basic amateur level) drones. The issue with high energy jamming (broad frequency band denial) is it makes your jammer a super tempting (and easy) target for a HARM or equivalent, and consumes quite a bit of power. If someone is actively denying such a wide frequency band, any high school level electronics student can design a pretty effective seeker. And the whole 'radio power drops off as a cube of the distance' thing means the equipment needs to be pretty close to operations, so it's going to get attacked pretty often. The noise level in a typical urban environment from wifi is already pretty terrible, 'hostile' or not. Way more terrible than a typical remote environment, which is where these drones are being used, unless there are active countermeasures pretty close. Counter measures, counter-counter measures, etc. But I'm not seeing much mention of effective jamming happening in-theatre right now.

gpderetta 3y ago

They do. In fact they graduated from simply dropping grenades on soldiers and IFVs to suicide roles taking out actual tanks. I'm not sure actual DJIs are being used in suicide missions or custom, still inexpensive, drones.

callmemclovin 3y ago
The video footage of suicide drones you can find on r/combatfootage is nearly always from custom drones, the giveaway is the analog video transmission. As the poster before said, DJI drones are only used for reconnaisance (for example DJI Matrice), where high-quality digital video transmission (and thermal image cameras) are very useful.
- rasz 3y ago
  Plenty of DJI grenade drops (auxiliary light), both from cheap mavics and expensive matrices.