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This ban has more to do with how much geodetic data is being transmitted to China and less to do with the actual drone technology. People flying DJI drones are

by glitchc 9mo ago

This ban has more to do with how much geodetic data is being transmitted to China and less to do with the actual drone technology. People flying DJI drones are mapping the US on China's behalf, and that too with great fidelity.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
jjk166 9mo ago
Satellite synthetic aperture radar can have a resolution of like 6 inches. I can't imagine consumer grade drones are significantly improving on this, and even if they could do better I would question the utility of higher resolution data for anything military related.
- inetknght 9mo ago
  > I can't imagine consumer grade drones are significantly improving on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073808 It's not necessarily better than 6 inches. But it's pretty decent, down to 0.3m, roughly 12 inches. > even if they could do better I would question the utility of higher resolution data for anything military related. Oh boy. Suffice to say that it definitely is useful for many things military related.
  - jjk166 9mo ago
    > Oh boy. Suffice to say that it definitely is useful for many things military related. Can you give a single example?
    - inetknght 9mo ago
      > Can you give a single example? It's not like weapons targeting needs to have high precision data. Robotics or drone planning definitely doesn't need high precision data. Nah. You're right. Higher precision data is absolutely useless to everything.
      - jjk166 9mo ago
        The have high precision data. The question is what map precision better than 6 inches gets you. Still waiting on one example.
manarth 9mo ago
> "People flying DJI drones are mapping the US" With more fidelity than, e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ or https://maps.google.co.uk/ https://maps.google.co.uk/ ?
- leptons 9mo ago
  And what will they do with the maximum possible resolution a drone can provide, that they can't already do with publicly available data? I mean, if dropping a bomb is the intent, does it really matter if it's 3 inches off?
simpaticoder 9mo ago
I always thought the risk was more that such a drone fleet could be remotely commandeered for real-time updates on target locations. It's something that could only be done once, but wow, it would be a real advantage to the attacker.
KolibriFly 9mo ago
Yet DJI drones don't automatically stream raw imagery or mapping data back to China by default
- vibrio 9mo ago
  lol. The battery life seems so short, I was starting to wonder whether this was the case...
leptons 9mo ago
Google and others have already mapped practically everything. I don't buy that China is using access to DJI drones to map anything. Seriously, what data set can they provide that isn't already public domain?

by glitchc 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

jjk166 9mo ago

Satellite synthetic aperture radar can have a resolution of like 6 inches. I can't imagine consumer grade drones are significantly improving on this, and even if they could do better I would question the utility of higher resolution data for anything military related.

inetknght 9mo ago
> I can't imagine consumer grade drones are significantly improving on this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43073808 It's not necessarily better than 6 inches. But it's pretty decent, down to 0.3m, roughly 12 inches. > even if they could do better I would question the utility of higher resolution data for anything military related. Oh boy. Suffice to say that it definitely is useful for many things military related.
- jjk166 9mo ago
  > Oh boy. Suffice to say that it definitely is useful for many things military related. Can you give a single example?
  - inetknght 9mo ago
    > Can you give a single example? It's not like weapons targeting needs to have high precision data. Robotics or drone planning definitely doesn't need high precision data. Nah. You're right. Higher precision data is absolutely useless to everything.
    - jjk166 9mo ago
      The have high precision data. The question is what map precision better than 6 inches gets you. Still waiting on one example.

manarth 9mo ago

> "People flying DJI drones are mapping the US" With more fidelity than, e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ or https://maps.google.co.uk/ https://maps.google.co.uk/ ?

leptons 9mo ago
And what will they do with the maximum possible resolution a drone can provide, that they can't already do with publicly available data? I mean, if dropping a bomb is the intent, does it really matter if it's 3 inches off?

simpaticoder 9mo ago

I always thought the risk was more that such a drone fleet could be remotely commandeered for real-time updates on target locations. It's something that could only be done once, but wow, it would be a real advantage to the attacker.

KolibriFly 9mo ago

Yet DJI drones don't automatically stream raw imagery or mapping data back to China by default

vibrio 9mo ago
lol. The battery life seems so short, I was starting to wonder whether this was the case...

leptons 9mo ago

Google and others have already mapped practically everything. I don't buy that China is using access to DJI drones to map anything. Seriously, what data set can they provide that isn't already public domain?