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An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose. In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear
by smackeyacky 1y ago
An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose. In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear deterrent.
Hard to know whether to be seriously impressed or seriously concerned - if Europe decided that enough was enough and started helping Ukraine with troops if they decided the Russian nuclear threat was a paper tiger we're in for some very interesting times.
- Teever 1y agoImagine an assassination that is done with a drone mailed internationally to a PO Box. Send a gig driver to pick up a small box and drop it off at an abandoned lot. The box has a machine inside that cuts the box open and opens up to release a drone that pops out and hits the target. Bonus points if the box itself can fly away and self destruct so there's even less of a physical trail to figure out where the drone came from.
- smackeyacky 1y agoThe ultimate sleeper agents. By all accounts the Ukrainian attack took a year to execute. It's the kind of planning that was behind the explosive pagers that Israel cooked up. It's a new kind of automated terrorism - who knows what is planted around Russia now and when the Ukrainians will set it off.
- Teever 1y agoThe next step in the automation is a cargo container sized machine that can be fed parts and spit out packaged drones ready to go.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety
- alisonatwork 1y agoIt's not terrorism if a country is at war and their military facilities were targeted.
- o11c 1y agoBut the definition of "country", "at war", and "military facility" depend entirely on whether your audience perceives that you're winning or not.
- mmooss 1y agoI don't understand that. Nobody would debate that the countries are Russia and Ukraine, that they clearly are at war, and that the target was a military facility.
- mmooss 1y agoWhile you define a legal act of war, that can stil be terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic that works by insipiring fear and causing a response. The attack itself usually doesn't do enough damage to change the outcome of the war. By creating fear among Russian officials and, possibly, the population, Ukraine causes Russia to divert resources to protecting more places in Russia. The loss of the planes, while a substantial economic blow, doesn't change the outcome of the war.
- preisschild 1y ago> Terrorism is a tactic that works by insipiring fear and causing a response. The attack itself usually doesn't do enough damage to change the outcome of the war. Yeah, like the Blitz Terror bombing in WW2. But this isn't that. They attacked strategic enemy assets, so it's not terror bombing.
- mmooss 1y agoWe agree, other than a matter of definition. I don't think the definition of terrorism excludes legiimate military targets, though it certainly includes illegitimate civilian targets.
- ponector 1y agoBy your definition, introduction of the new ballistic missile capable to hit Russian airstrips is also a terrorism
- hayst4ck 1y agoWhen it comes to abuse of trust, I'm worried about goods coming from China. Israel's compromise of the pager supply chain shows that innocuous seeming devices can be weaponized via trust. Imagine if every IoT appliance decided to burn down/self destruct and every phone with satellite connectivity decided to weaponize its battery pack. If every car with cell service connectivity decided to accelerate with brakes disabled at once. If every access point/router decided to make itself inoperable/turned into a bot net removing home internet all at once and likely shifting traffic to cell towers which could overload them resulting in zero communication. Imagine that as many devices as possible were programmed or constructed in a way to create failure on a specific date or period. Sounds insane, but I would have said the pager thing sounds insane too. All those things definitely sounds possible to me.
- euroderf 1y agoSo why doesn't Black Mirror have an episode where the PRC are the bad guys?
- dfex 1y agoDragon Day[1] beat them to it [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772262/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772262/
- nobodyandproud 1y agoNervously eyeing my robo vacs.
- mmasu 1y agoi recently heard a podcast where a16z claimed this was one of the main reasons why you need a US electric vehicle and robotic industry - what if Chinese device could be weaponized at will in the event of a conflict?
- ak217 1y agoA less far-fetched reason is that modern EV and robotics technology (lithium ion and LFP batteries, motors, power electronics, embedded electronics, RF electronics etc) is dual-use and absolutely crucial for building all modern weapons
- Gibbon1 1y agoImagine an anti-tank drone buried in the bushes 100 yards off the road.
- throwaway422432 1y agoYou don't need a drone. Ukraine has these, and there are numerous videos of them taking out Russian vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARM_1_mine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARM_1_mine
- mrguyorama 1y agoHow about an automated weapon you shoot from a howitzer 15 miles away that autonomously surveils the area under it's impact zone for a couple armored vehicles and reliably eliminates them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMArt_155 You can actually see video of these in action in Ukraine. Bofors has also produced the BONUS round which is basically identical in action.
- andix 1y agoIt's probably not so easy to just send explosives via mail.
- ioseph 1y agoWho needs explosives? Spring loaded pointy rod to the skull or razor to the neck
- DonHopkins 1y agoOr boxes of chocolates? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6uLfermPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy6uLfermPU Spring Surprise??!
- slt2021 1y agoits much easier to buy them in the USA, like guns, bullets, grenades. to damage an airplane you dont need much: just a mix of molotov cocktail, and aluminum and metal shavings a-la Walter White in order to penetrate and ignite the fuel tank of a strategic nuclear bomber.
- ponector 1y agoWhy to use explosives at all? Thermite compound could be easily bought online and should be awesome for such fragile taget as a plane. Have you seen a footage of "fire dragon" drones?
- slt2021 1y agoNo need to buy compound and trigger authorities. Thermite is just metal oxide powder and aluminum powder that can be made at home, just add magnesium from matches to ignite and thats it.
- tim333 1y agoI doubt the post office does that much screening.
- nthingtohide 1y agoI can now understand Palmer Luckey's point of intelligent weapons. It truly brings to life the quote from Game of Thrones, "Why is it more noble to kill 10,000 in battlefield than dozen at a battle." Intelligent weapons enable the second scenario. Civilian lives are mostly unharmed.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoI think autocorrect mangled your quote! "Why it is more noble to kill 10,000 men in battle than a dozen at dinner?"
- smackeyacky 1y ago[flagged]
- m463 1y agoI imagine a "glitter bomb" operation. Basically a postal package that leaks drones all along its delivery route. Also, why can't drones just infiltrate a country in little spurts from the borders, pausing near power lines to inductively power themselves. A lot of this stuff is terrifying, and conflicts like the ukraine are basically funding/inventing nightmares.
- sigwinch 1y agoThe mode is new, but you must agree that choosing cluster munitions for a church on Sunday is an actual nightmare compared to a slight background hum of latent independent drone missions.
- boruto 1y agoWould be sitting in customs for bribe clearance in here.
- ClumsyPilot 1y ago> An amazing idea: Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory and let them loose. Is it such an amazing idea? Imagine the shoe is on the other foot - would you normally be able to drive a truck full of drones into a country at war, say Israel? This puts a target on civilian vehicles. > In the process, manage to poke serious holes into Russia's nuclear deterrent. Again, is it such an amazing idea? Do you want to make people in charge of nuclear weapons more jumpy and likely to make a rash decision?
- CoastalCoder 1y agoAmazing doesn't necessarily mean welcome. It's amazing in how effective it was, and the asymmetry of the destruction compared to cold-war assumptions.
- Zamaamiro 1y agoRussians are using those planes to bomb Ukrainian cities and murder Ukrainian civilians. “Amazing” is the correct word for it
- ClumsyPilot 1y agoI would support this idealistic approach and disregard for consequences if we didn’t have an “ally” that’s doing exactly the same thing, and potentially vulnerable if a major power decides to intervene
- Zamaamiro 1y agoIdealism is thinking you can bomb a country’s cities with impunity and not expect any blowback.
- jsiepkes 1y agoPut a target on civilian vehicles? This changes nothing. I don't know if you read or watched "generation kill" but even US troops shot at everything which came too close for comfort in Iraq. And I understand that, any unidentified vehicle could be hostile. You are not going to sit and wait to find out as a soldier. Also they didn't drive a truck into Russia. The trucks were acquired and modified in Russia. And according to Russia they are not in a war. They are in a "special military operation"...
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoRussia has a nuclear triad. Unless all of their submarines were in port and taken out during the attack, there’d be no way to prevent them from losing all three delivery mechanisms simultaneously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad
- Braxton1980 1y ago[flagged]
- rcxdude 1y agoPutin has very carefully put himself in the position that his death would cause a very chaotic power vacuum in Russia (to the detriment or at least risk of almost everyone), to dissuade any would-be assassins.
- lostmsu 1y ago> very chaotic power vacuum in Russia How is having chaotic power vacuum in any way worse than having Putin?
- slt2021 1y agorussia has dead hand system, any attack on putin will trigger the dead hand. most importantly USA doesn't want putin dead, because his next successor could be smarter and more brutal
- drysine 1y ago>any attack on putin will trigger the dead hand of course not
- addandsubtract 1y agoWho would this dead hand attack even target? Wat?
- throwaway422432 1y agoI can imagine this could have been the motivation 18 months ago. "In the early morning hours of 29 December 2023, Russia launched what was seen to be the largest wave of missiles and drones yet seen in the Russo-Ukrainian War, with hundreds of missiles and drones hitting the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities across the country." You have to wonder how much of that time was inventing/creating the actual capability on top of planning/rehearsing. Would be an interesting story in the mold of the "Dam Busters".
- smackeyacky 1y agoIt’s just an incredible of a story to me. The logistics and spycraft required boggle the mind
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Drive a truck full of drones deep into enemy territory The trucks used for the delivery were acquired (along with the mobile homes the drones were launched from that were on their beds) in Russia, as I understand it, not driven from Ukraine (of course, the drones still needed to be delivered from Ukraine for the attack packages to be assembled.)
- mrheosuper 1y agoI wonder if those drones could be made in RU ? They were all using off-the-shelf parts. I don't see the need to import then from Ukraine.