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Japan is building cardboard suicide drones
- pigpag 6mo agoIt's sad to see Japan completely ditch their "unconditional peace" brand after WWII.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it." - The Hunt for Red October
- jedberg 6mo ago"I've planned ahead. We're just three miles from a primary target. A millisecond of brilliant light and we're vaporized. Much more fortunate than millions who wander sightless through the smoldering aftermath. We'll be spared the horror of survival." -- War Games I'm glad I live only a few miles from Moffit Airfield, which is almost certainly a primary target (given that besides taking out NASA you'd also get Google HQ). Knowing that I most likely wouldn't even perceive a nuclear attack is strangely comforting.
- johng 6mo agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qc8jJ0TjSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qc8jJ0TjSY Kid: What started it? Col: I don't know two toughest Kids on the Block I guess sooner or later they're going to fight. Kid: That simple? Col: Maybe somebody just forgot what it was like. Kid: Well who is on our side? Col: 600 million screaming Chinese. Kid: Last I heard there were a billion screaming Chinese. Col: There were. Red Dawn.
- actionfromafar 6mo agoThey must have been tempted to write "Kamikaze drones". Anyway, interesting development, I wonder why it hasn't been popular to use cardboard so far. Maybe cardboard weighs more, cutting in to payload capability?
- HNisCIS 6mo agoThe airframe isn't the main cost driver for these things and cardboard is aerodynamically inefficient. You could blow mould or a million other techniques and get a better, possibly cheaper airframe.
- esseph 6mo agoStyrofoam works great for short to medium range glide interceptors that are supposed to be cheaper than the attacking airframe (less weight, less fuel/energy required, less explosive required etc.). Ukraine seems to be pouring a lot of these right now.
- pfdietz 6mo agoStyrofoam has been used in model aircraft for decades. It's easily shaped with a hot wire.
- chucksta 6mo agoweather and protecting it from it?
- Alive-in-2025 6mo agoI'd suspect almost all drones lose significant range if wet or stormy. But in Ukraine the drone war seemed to go on all winter
- nine_k 6mo agoCardboard is heavy and not very strong. Quadcopter drones carry their payload all by the motors' thrust, and experience large accelerations; they would break if made out of cardboard. OTOH small airplanes like the one pictured derive most of their lift from wings, and are not expected to do aerobatic, so they have somehow lower requirements for strength, and cost considerations can take over. I wonder what would be the military usefulness of such a drone: it's much more visible, likely has rather low payload capacity, and cannot hover. It could work as a recon drone, or a retransmitter for extending communications range. It may be significantly more quiet than a quadcopter, it could even glide with the motor off, so it could sneak towards manned positions, especially in the dark.
- WillPostForFood 6mo agoMisleading headline, not sure if the article is misleading because it is paywalled, but so far, these are drones used as targets for anti-drone practice.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> Naoki said that the AirKamuy 150 could carry around three pounds, which is just enough to carry a small amount of supplies or munitions to a target and it’s not hard to imagine swarms of incendiary cardboard drones slamming into targets in the near future. "so far" is for the next five minutes or so. It's a bit silly to claim a misleading headline when you can't read the article. https://archive.is/5Pqg6 https://archive.is/5Pqg6
- Ayaan2004 6mo agoKamikaze was always Japanese either it planes in world war 2 or drones for world war 3
- WalterBright 6mo agoBallistic missiles are also kamikazi. Also, proximity detecting artillery shells. and torpedos.
- WalterBright 6mo agoDoolittle: “What is your one purpose in life?” Bomb: “To explode, of course.”
- bitwize 6mo ago"WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?" "You blow yourself up." "OH MY GOD" See also: https://blog.wrouesnel.com/posts/jipi-and-the-paranoid-chip/files/Neal%20Stephenson%20Jipi%20and%20the%20Paranoid%20Chip.html https://blog.wrouesnel.com/posts/jipi-and-the-paranoid-chip/...
- pfdietz 6mo agoKamikazes have been described as anti-ship missiles before it was possible to build anti-ship missiles.
- falcor84 6mo ago> The AirKamuy 150 is a cheap pre-fab cardboard drone meant to die on the battlefield Oh, that makes more sense. I probably watched too many episodes of Futurama for my mind to immediately imagine drones used by people to commit suicide.
- bravoetch 6mo agoI had a similar reaction to the headline. The idea that munitions 'suicide' doesn't seem novel enough to have it in the headline. We don't say suicide icbms, or suicide cruise missiles etc.
- esseph 6mo agoA drone isn't necessarily a munition. Some carry things like air to air missiles or act as communications relays for other drones. Some have multiple munitions. Some are the munition.
- comrade1234 6mo agoFrom the headline I was picturing flying futurama-style suicide booths.
- everdrive 6mo agoDepending on who invades who, that's more or less what we have.
- cjs_ac 6mo agoAustralia has been making cardboard drones for military purposes for a while now: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/ukraine-war-australian-made-cardboard-drones-russia-warfare/102804120 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-03/ukraine-war-australia... EDIT: The company that makes them first pitched them to the ADF in 2018: https://www.sypaq.com.au/news/sypaq-wins-for-the-cardboard-drone-afr-article-27-sept-2023/ https://www.sypaq.com.au/news/sypaq-wins-for-the-cardboard-d...
- excalibur 6mo ago$2000 apiece for cardboard?!
- geremiiah 6mo agoOne scary aspect of drones is that they can loiter around an area. Unlike shelling or traditional missiles, you can spam an enemy city with drones and they can remain operational and waiting, until people emerge from their bunkers. And soon enough (some psychopath is vibecoding it this very second for sure) drone control will be surrendered to some LLM based system to make the final life/death decision. Another chilling aspect of drone warfare is that you don't get to surrender. No prisoners are taken. You just get blown up even if you are clearly cornered, and helpless and in a traditional setting you'd have surrendered your weapon and became a POW.
- ceejayoz 6mo ago> One scary aspect of drones is that they can loiter around an area. There are some new ones that work like landmines, too; they sit on the ground until they detect something worth going after. > Another chilling aspect of drone warfare is that you don't get to surrender. You can. First one happened in 1991. https://www.wearethemighty.com/featured/humans-surrendered-to-a-robot-for-the-first-time-in-1991/ https://www.wearethemighty.com/featured/humans-surrendered-t... It happens fairly regularly in Ukraine. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukraine-robot-soldiers-drone-army-zelensky-b2957813.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukrai...
- geremiiah 6mo agoI have seen the videos where they surrender. I have also seen the countless videos where they would clearly have surrendered if given a chance, but instead, they were blown up.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoSure; the same is true for humans shooting at you with machine guns and artillery. You don't always get a chance to surrender.
- andriy_koval 6mo ago> I have also seen the countless videos where they would clearly have surrendered if given a chance, but instead, they were blown up. surrender is likely usually accepted when its possible, but with drones it is often logistically difficult because frontline is very wide now.
- Onavo 6mo agoThe airframe is the cheapest part of the drone though. You can make it out of Balsa wood and foam like traditional "model planes" and there won't be any major performance differences. Modern CAD is very good at simulating stress on the frame and as long as your engine's powerful enough, most materials should hold up fine at those scales for single use (anything smaller than than a Cessna basically).
- c22 6mo agoYou can flatpack the cardboard frame.
- traeregan 6mo agohttps://archive.is/5Pqg6 https://archive.is/5Pqg6
- chvid 6mo agoBut where is battery, engine, controller board, camera, optic cable etc from?
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoI wouldn't be surprised if the battery, camera and optic cable and such could be harvested from a smartphone nowadays Engine probably still needs to be custom but lightweight drone engines are off the shelf products so...
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 6mo agoAliExpress? In bulk, that'll cost you what, $50 or so?
- chvid 6mo agoThe same place as the Ukrainians and the Russians get their stuff.
- analogpixel 6mo agoAren't they worried the cardboard will catch fire on impact and cause damage?
- avidruntime 6mo agoWe have different interpretations of what suicide means
- ck2 6mo agoif another country towed a raft full of thousands of cheap drone off a US coast and launched them into the country we have absolutely no defense they could take out all water and power utilities on the entire east coast over 24 hours our million dollar missiles would be useless even if Whiskey-Pete was more than willing to use them over crowded cities North Korea, Russia, China, et al and considering we've depleted a decade's worth of weapons and half of the fleet is overseas, we're pretty darn vulnerable right now thanks to those in power I wonder how far away we are from "dirty drones" where they don't even need a bomb, just radioactive material or toxic chemicals as dust