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Drone warfare has always been equal parts distressing (it’s impersonal, it’s too easy to leverage, and therefore too easy to abuse) and incredible (ultra-thin f

• nadermx 1y ago
  I mean if war has existed since the dawn of man. Maybe we are trying to fix the problem incorrectly.
  • nradov 1y ago
    War has (probably) existed since before the dawn of man. Even chimpanzees engage in something like tribal warfare so that behavior probably goes back to a common ancestor species at least 6M years ago.
    • mensetmanusman 1y ago
      Chimpanzees haven’t even invented x86 yet though, so they clearly have no chance to stop from fighting.
• vasco 1y ago
  > As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale. How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? Any Christmas market in central Europe these days is surrounded by car barriers to prevent mass run-overs, but what do you do when soon someone has the idea of dropping some molotov cocktails from drones in public places? Answering my own question I guess you can already throw one manually without a drone. Securing public places is weird, I'm glad it's not my job.
  • bboygravity 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • throawayonthe 1y ago
      [dead]
    • lostlogin 1y ago
      Of we could use the opposite of isolationism, something being cut by governments at this time: soft power. Aid programmes and helping some of the more impoverished countries grow. Bombing Middle Eastern countries has been tried for about a century. It doesn’t seem to have helped.
      • nradov 1y ago
        Let's not be naive. Aid programs are a great idea when practical, and I'm certainly not in favor of indiscriminate bombing. But unfortunately in many countries, including Middle East conflict zones, any foreign aid is just stolen by local armed groups and used to fund terrorist activities. How do you think the leaders of Hamas accumulated billions in foreign bank accounts?
        • oneshtein 1y ago
          Leaders of Hamas has no bank accounts, AFAIK. Did you mean cryptocurrencies? If so, it's unlikely that these funds are personal savings. Usually, locals doesn't steal from locals in conflict zones, because their throats, or throats of their families, will be cut by other armed locals in no time. Invaders and mercenaries often rob or kill locals in many, many cases.
          • nradov 1y ago
            Don't be naive. Leaders of Hamas have control of foreign bank accounts. Probably cryptocurrencies as well now. Those funds are the personal proceeds of theft and embezzlement. They steal aid money directly, or steal supplies and sell them for cash. The locals can't do anything to stop them because Hamas has all of the weapons: there are no other armed locals. Hamas violently suppresses the locals who even try to protest against theft of foreign aid. https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-live-luxury-lives-in-qatar/ https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-... https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-must-end-shameful-crackdown-against-protesters-gaza https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-mu...
• UncleOxidant 1y ago
  > or costly (jammers, Are jammers really that costly? Also spoofers that could take over a drone - not sure how much encryption is used in most of these off-the-shelf drones, but it would seem like it wouldn't be too difficult to create a Flipper Zero-type device that could spoof the codes used between controller and drone.
• _1tem 1y ago
  This article did not even cover some of the weird solutions being deployed against drones. For example, Russia has surrounded many of their critical infrastructure sites with huge nets (similar to golf course barrier netting). They have also developed anti-drone drones that drop nets from above, catching and tangling target drones in a bunch of netting that simply snags the blades.
  • rollcat 1y ago
    > They have also developed anti-drone drones that drop nets from above, catching and tangling target drones in a bunch of netting that simply snags the blades. Yeah if we could just all agree that from now on, all warfare is limited to drone-on-drone engagements.
    • vasco 1y ago
      If we could agree on that we'd agree on simply simulating war, no need to actually send drones. But it's unlikely to happen for the same reason hero fights instead of army fights didn't happen like in the movies. Ultimately war is about a difference of opinion strong enough to not care about loss of life, so after a country would lose the simulation they'd just go onto the real war part anyway.
      • reaperducer 1y ago
        If we could agree on that we'd agree on simply simulating war, no need to actually send drones. That was an episode of Star Trek. Two warring cultures simulated war. The computers told each side how many casualties there were, and people reported to the extermination chambers.
      • _1tem 1y ago
        Actually simulated war does happen. Most of the Western world agreed to fight economic and culture wars since WW2 instead of actual killing.
        • vasco 1y ago
• empath75 1y ago
  I think watch out for Mexico. The cartels are swimming in cash and are already using drones to attack security forces and assassinate people.
  • mensetmanusman 1y ago
    Yeah, it’s much cheaper for China and Mexico to destroy the US from the inside with a slow poison of drugs over decades than any done attack.
    • BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      This how you look at the world?
• krunck 1y ago
  What is also distressing is that drones make false flag attacks even easier. Add to that the fact of AI generated media/propaganda means no war will be factually comprehensible to anybody.
  • mensetmanusman 1y ago
    I think the idea of a false flag will also be completely destroyed by ai video tech. Once everyone knows everything is fake, how will they know that the false flag was real?
• Y_Y 1y ago
  > The programming can be set-and-forget, meaning operations can be staged months ahead of deployment and make it difficult to find or prevent. This is something I haven't considered before. What's the worst case here? Is it feasible for me to go live on a farm in <country I want to harm>, buy a fleet of DJI drones at flea markets etc, stick something harmful to them, then hide them in the woods. I can move away, wait a year or two, and then have them fly to the nearest metro area and wreak havoc. This seems to be cheap and relatively straightforward, and hard to detect. What am I missing?
  • rurp 1y ago
    Not much. Autonomous targeting and control are quite new and currently take a fair bit of knowledge and skill to get right, but I expect those barriers to lower dramatically in the coming years. There might be power issues with such a long delay, but I'm not sure. I think the main drawback once this tech gets slightly more widespread is that most people who want to terrorize cities don't want to wait a year or two to do it. For long running conflicts (Israel vs Iran for example) I expect we'll see some fascinating and horrifying attacks in the near to medium term. Of course anti-drone tech is also evolving quickly and I expect that to continue so the shelf life of any specific attack will probably continue to be rather short.
    • stavros 1y ago
      It doesn't really take much knowledge to set up an autonomous drone mission. It's not DJI-levels of consumer friendliness, but I know multiple people that made and fly their own drones, and it's not something you can't do with a few YouTube tutorials.
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    They're battery operated, so I think there's a time limit of a few months. Then, you want to be very careful with the infrastructure you leave behind (little pop-open doors/roofs for them to fly out of) to avoid future investigation. You're going to need some practice, your first try will just go to shit perhaps. Opsec while you're setting all this up is still a big deal that amateurs will have trouble getting right. But none of these are particularly insurmountable. With the correct software and careful planning, this will succeed at its goals. Things you can't help: they will discover the remains of the drones, and also their origin. This evidence will eventually lead back to you (unless you have the aid of a enemy nation-state). Not a big deal if you're dying in a suicide attack, but maybe you don't want the extended vacation in the CIA's worst black ops rendition site.
• tim333 1y ago
  >horrified that we democratized violence on this scale Violence has always been pretty democratic - you've always been able to punch someone or hit them with a rock and the US seems to have more guns than people.
• ulnarkressty 1y ago
  Pandora's box is now open and multiple groups have access to drones[0]. This is something that I think escapes engineers in this line of work - that something they invented will eventually end up (legally or not) in the hands of people with no scruples. [0] - https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/drones-in-africa-are-a-new-frontier-for-armed-groups-and-propaganda-warfare/ar-AA1FZGGp https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/drones-in-africa-are-a-...
• agumonkey 1y ago
  When you blend mosquitos and terminators..
• Teever 1y ago
  I'm very interested in the consequences of vigilante applications of this kind of technologies. Imagine a scenario where people start taking out corrupt police officers who have until now been able to terrorize small communities with impunity. It may motivate actual reform in policing because law enforcement will realize that police officers who kill innocent people with no regard for the law are safer in prison than out on the streets with a paid vacation / desk job punishment.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    You don't need drones to do that.
    • Teever 1y ago
      You need drones to do it in a way that significantly reduces the risk of getting caught. As it is vigilante action against law enforcement in the west is a sure death sentence and probably life long reprisal against your family once you're dead which is what keeps people in line. If the development of drone technology significantly reduces the risk of that then you're likely to see many more people respond to violent abuses of authority by law enforcement with vigilante action.
• Yeul 1y ago
  I think drones are fantastic. Why throw good money after bad? Dutch soldier lives have been ruined because they had to be sent to places like Lebanon and Bosnia. Nobody decent deserves that.
  • I-M-S 1y ago
    Professional soldiers are rather low on the list of people deserving sympathy in a war.
• nostrademons 1y ago
  I'm also fascinated by the political implications on state formation, state size, and form of government. State formation tends to track the relative military effectiveness of large highly-trained standing armies vs. small distributed arms making. The Roman Empire collapsed when they ran out of money to pay their legions. The smaller tribes and kingdoms of the Early Middle Ages unified into the larger kingdoms of the High Middle Ages as the longbow and mounted knight gave the advantage again to large, highly trained standing armies. These collapsed into the city-states of the Rennaissance because the gunpowder musket rendered all the armor of the knights useless. Then the nation-state took over as mechanized arms and airplanes became military weapons, and needed the resources of a large territory to produce them. It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce, easy to use, and extremely lethal to existing weapon systems, will produce a similar political revolution. And it seems tailor-made for smaller political units: drones can lay waste to an invading army, but they suck at power projection because their range is only ~10-20 miles. Might we see a return to city-states as the primary form of political organization? Maybe all the arguments about whether Russia vs. the U.S. vs. China will come out on top are moot, because the very concept of a nation-state will disintegrate, and instead we'll have Beijing vs. Shanghai vs. Shenzhen vs. Moscow vs. Kiev vs. the Bay Area vs. NYC vs. Washington DC? Drones are also ideal for defending shipping lanes, so perhaps we'll see a loose confederation of economically-bound city-states, but each having their own culture and social laws.
  • lukan 1y ago
    "It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce" If you can buy the parts, then yes, but producing a complete drone all on your own is not that easy I think. Still easier than a stealth air plane or a cruise missile, though. So your predictions might come true, because I also see most state armies being really slow to adopt to this new reality.
  • heavyset_go 1y ago
    IMO the supply chain for drones requires the stability and resource extraction on the scale of a state. SoCs, radios, optics, batteries etc all require high tech manufacturing. Guerilla use of drones need off the shelf microcontrollers from somewhere, they aren't fabbing them in their backyard.
• drdrey 1y ago
  are jammers really that expensive? They shouldn't be particularly sophisticated
  • bufferoverflow 1y ago
    Doesn't work on fiberoptic drones. Doesn't work on drones that use laser/optical comms.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• MoonGhost 1y ago
  > jammers Jammers don't work against optical cable or AI vision controlled drones. That's a big problem today in Ukraine for both sides. As for defense, first of all it's detection and tracking. Copters and long range gas powered drones are very loud and easily detectable. Ukraine uses a net of cell phones. Several devices with microphones can accurately pinpoint all drone like sources in real time. That's cheap to install miles around important targets. Then we need just fast AI interceptors 'on hold', in the air if can afford. The last part is missing today, but we'll get there soon. As for danger, etc. Small remote controlled firearms were easily available for decades. Drones _are_ trackable. When one takes off in big city Russians know immediately where. By using radio scanners. All DJI drones, and most others, communicate and simply broadcast their coordinates. This is used in Ukraine to find their operators.