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Lithuanian startup launches open-source network to detect Shahed-type drones
- tristanj 4mo ago[flagged]
- Avicebron 4mo agoAs much as I like to point and guffaw at "bad evil rocket man" the from orbit bit is doing a massive amount of lift (pun not intended) for that price.
- nefarious_ends 4mo ago[flagged]
- snovv_crash 4mo ago[flagged]
- comrade1234 4mo ago[flagged]
- dzhiurgis 4mo ago[flagged]
- celsoazevedo 4mo agoI don't follow American politics that closely, but here in Europe, I don't remember ever seeing Merkel doing this: - https://i.haasie.com/KeO.mp4 https://i.haasie.com/KeO.mp4 Can you please provide videos of them doing the same gesture?
- dzhiurgis 4mo agoTook me 15 seconds to find https://sempreentreviagens.com/2012/11/merkel-em-lisboa/ https://sempreentreviagens.com/2012/11/merkel-em-lisboa/
- celsoazevedo 4mo ago[flagged]
- dzhiurgis 4mo ago[flagged]
- celsoazevedo 4mo agoYou made a claim. I've asked you to back up your claim with a video. You can't. The reason for this is easy: Merkel, and I'd be willing to bet the others you've mentioned too, haven't done the same as Musk. You lied, made it up. The thing is, you're not on Twitter/X, people here can also perform 15-second searches and dismiss bs claims just as fast, so please don't do that. Not only makes you look bad, but it's also weird doing it for some random famous person that doesn't even know you exist. On a side note, I don't know what annoys me more. The sieg hail itself or grown up people not owning up to what they did and lacking the balls to stand by their views.
- brookst 4mo ago[flagged]
- dzhiurgis 4mo ago[flagged]
- dzhiurgis 4mo ago[flagged]
- burnerRhodov3 4mo agoWhy is the american taxpayer funding healthcare clinics in 100's of countrys when we don't have free healthcare here in America? >"Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid... Development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need." >"When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help... Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle."
- Aboutplants 4mo agoMulti billion dollar spend to “see” $2,000 aircraft and try to shoot it down with multi million dollar equipment. The speed to produce and cost effectiveness of these drones are seemingly at a massive advantage right now vs Defense capabilities and straight up cost and looks to be that way for a good while.
- dzhiurgis 4mo agoApples != oranges
- zer00eyz 4mo ago> Defense capabilities and straight up cost and looks to be that way for a good while. You are correct, that today, we (USA) lack the capability to defend against this threat in a meaningful way. > Multi billion dollar spend to “see” $2,000 aircraft Look at how we deploy SOCOM assets today: smaller teams in the field far from fixed detection, a satellite to do this job, allows it to be tasked rather than having to deploy more, fixed detection equipment. As part of a larger system it would be integrated by software: see the "Lattice" project from Anduril. > and try to shoot it down with multi million dollar equipment. DAWG, (Defense Autonomous Warfare Group ) has requested a billion dollar base budget and 54 billion of flexible spending (More than the USMC per year) for 2027. There is also the "Replicator" program (I think headed for phase two) to get unit costs back down, and volume up. Facets of this are bleeding into other spend. Andurill openly talks about unit costs, and how few tools are needed to put together their low cost missiles (still more expensive than drones but... headed in the right direction). As for the astronomical size of that budget: it's cheap to build an idea, what is hard is testing. The Ukrainians have a massive advantage here, in that they ship these things to the front line. It's much cheaper to trial things when you don't have to buy something to blow up, repeatedly. The US military has been falling behind for 25 years now (especially the navy: if you want to understand why it has become schrodinger's straight read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 ) and I think what is going on in Ukraine has been eye opening for them.
- tristanj 4mo agoThe program will track every aircraft flying on earth simultaneously. The level of scope is not comparable.
- tpolm 4mo agoI wonder how this system can be protected from spam - if anyone can send data there, enemy can, too
- embedding-shape 4mo agoI feel like if/once they reach the number of expected participants (10k), it'd be easy to filter out the spam as long as the majority are truthful.
- sourcegrift 4mo ago[flagged]
- embedding-shape 4mo ago"Unwanted traffic", is what I go by typically. What is your understanding (if you have one) of that term?
- quietbritishjim 4mo agoSpam specifically means (at least originally) so much unwanted traffic that it overwhelms legitimate traffic. So can I see why that commenter might have considered it a contradiction to say "the majority being truthful" as a strategy to deal with spam. The name comes from a Monty Python sketch where "SPAM!" is being sung so loudly that it drowned out any other conservation.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago> Spam specifically means (at least originally) so much unwanted traffic that it overwhelms legitimate traffic. I guess what today is more commonly known as DOS (or even DDOS sometimes, even if it isn't actually "distributed" per se, for some reason). I did know about the name since before, but not the original meaning, so cheers for the explanation :)
- paganel 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- tristanj 4mo agoShahed drones have increased in altitude from ~500m at the beginning of the Ukraine war to 2000-3000m, which is a 4x reduction in noise on the ground. The higher the drones are, the less noise they make at ground level, and the less effective this ground-based microphone system will be. The drones have moved to elevations to make them more difficult to target with ground based weapons. Reductions in ground noise are a secondary effect. The latest versions of Shahed can reach 5000m in altitude, which would largely be inaudible on the ground.
- anovikov 4mo agoIt's not about "can reach", it's fairly easy to get them to fly even higher. It's about danger of interceptors vs danger of detection. Today's Ukrainian detection network (based on radars) is so dense there is no way to hide from it anywhere, anyway, so high altitude wins.
- Hackbraten 4mo ago> It's about danger of interceptors vs danger of detection. What's with that "vs" trade-off? You're saying avoiding detection requires high altitudes. What do interceptors have to do with that?
- anovikov 4mo agoInterceptors are battery powered and their energy budget and thus range suffers if they have to climb high. Detection is facilitated by radar, low altitude means flying under the radar (due to curvature of the Earth) - except radar network is now so dense, it in practice can't work anymore. So they can fly low or high they will be detected anyway - but flying high reduces interceptor's reach and makes intercept geometry harder, giving them better chances to slip through.
- zer00eyz 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone) The distance to the horizon at sea level, is 5km, a high flying drone only increases that. With a 25k range and a 10k ceiling, and a stupid low unit cost it is dead easy to deploy this en mass to protect vital infrastructure and deny lower visibility routes (valleys, places where detection range is short). They (Ukraine) are heavy users of YOLO (image model) that runs on some very low end hardware (sub .35 watt for the most efficient models) - and have shown it to be effective for terminal guidance. The US has a budget item for 2027, DAWG (defense autonomous war group) - that requested 54 billion dollars. This is larger than the USMC's entire budget. This is a quite admission (another one) that the US is far behind, and the things that are going on in the Ukraine are, terrifying.
- reboot81 4mo agoWouldn’t a purpose built Esp32 with microphones aimed at the sky do a better job? It would be always on, better directional targeting.
- rdtsc 4mo agoI believe Ukrainians had already deployed such a system. This is specifically designed to use old Android phones already sitting in a drawer somewhere without any other use, and most importantly by anyone without technical skills.
- MiracleRabbit 4mo agoIf these Shahed drones have a propeller they should have a brutal signature between 0-250Hz as they are moving a lot of air. And if the engine speed of the Shahed stays constant it will be even easier to detect it ("Angry lawnmower sound".. but that's only the high frequency part of it). There are extremely sensitive differential pressure sensors (like SDP600-25Pa) available from Sensirion that aren't overly expensive. Use one differential side and connect it to a kitchen funnel for directional listening the other one to a plastic bottle with a tiny hole in it. This way the sensor will "Null" out the environmental pressure (which the bottle follows very very slowly) from both inputs. It then only will pick up everything high frequency which is left over (and the bottle cannot follow because of its small hole). This way I was able to detect washing machines that have a physical link to a house from many hundred meters (machine spinning -> house wall shaking -> pressure waves) away. The speed pattern of washing machines when spinning is very unique (several steps over many seconds). Add this with some GPS PPS frame timestamping and you should have a nice tracking network that doesn't require a lot of bandwidth. But maybe the setup must switch to analog differential pressure sensors as these Senirion-I2C sensors do not have a Sync ping for super precise timestamping.
- ejanus 4mo agoInteresting! I will like to see your circuits, if any.
- MiracleRabbit 4mo agoNot much circuits needed. The SDP600-25Pa speaks I2C and only has a handful of commands. Just read it out with a microcontroller you love (like ESP32) and send the samples to a host for analysis. The ESP32 has limited I2C time stretching capabilities limiting it in the highest resolution modes of the sensor - but often that's not a big factor. To not overwhelm the poor processor and Wifi maybe better a bunch of frames (like 512 or more).
- stavros 4mo agoIsn't detecting pressure waves in air exactly what microphones do?
- dmos62 4mo ago[flagged]
- Hnrobert42 4mo agoWow. This may be the most offensively condescending messages I've seen on HN. And unnecessarily so, to boot. Is the Ukrainian system open source? Can you link to it?
- dmos62 4mo agoThe Ukrainian system isn't open-source. Not a lot of defence tech is. I don't know about condescension, but a degree of grounding is in order, I believe. European sense of defence is waking up, but it still needs a lot of stimulation, and patting ourselves on the back for some volunteer work is not that.
- shevy-java 4mo agoThat statement made ignores several facts. For instance: a) Lithuania is not at war right now. Ukraine is. So the comparison already does not work. b) There are drones entering the airspace of Lithuania somewhat regularly; two weeks ago was the last one: https://tvpworld.com/93695919/nato-rafale-jet-shoots-down-drone-violating-latvias-airspace https://tvpworld.com/93695919/nato-rafale-jet-shoots-down-dr... So, knowing this, but also for more reasons, it absolutely makes sense for Lithuania to not neglect its capabilities, and that includes start-ups that want to be supportive here. > If we're serious about defence, cooperation with Ukies and expansion of the EU defence sector is the way. So at which point has the war been about other countries? Lithuania is not at war and it makes no sense to assume that every other country but Ukraine is clueless. > Phones against windows will not deter ww3. Aha. So pray tell and explain what your plan is against nukes.
- dmos62 4mo agoI don't understand what you're saying. What do you mean by comparison? I don't think that every other country but Ukraine is useless. What makes you say that? What are you saying about nukes?
- AIcanbiteme 4mo ago[flagged]
- nxpnsv 4mo agoSlovenia is not baltic
- kamranjon 4mo agoFor those interested there is an open source radar based phased array project here: https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR I may have even discovered it from hacker news, I forget now.
- kklisura 4mo agoI remember seeing this on HN when it was first submitted. I honestly think that project is either a scam, an elaborate hoax, a cover for a Chinese company selling radar systems or a three-letter-agency honeypot. The files [1], [2], [3] on Github (once featured on README and on some articles) depict what I presume is a Chinese built radar which you can see here [4], [5]. I also suspect this might be a honeypot since Instagram - of all places - is full of accounts offering these radars [6], [7]. Some of the contributors on that projects are heavily leaning into AI. Git project history is suspicious. Discussions on the issues seem very artificial. I remember having bunch of notes on this project, but can't find it now. Just looking at it from outside, nothing about it seems real. [1] https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/assets/img/3fb1dabf-2c6d-4b5d-b471-48bc461ce914.jpg https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/a... [2] https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/assets/img/SplitRing_test.mp4 https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/a... [3] https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/assets/img/b79a6fe3-5abf-473d-b3e2-178e6a9cf4da%20-%20Copie.jpg https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR/blob/main/docs/a... [4] https://www.cloudwalkerfpv.com/product/CW-t20.html https://www.cloudwalkerfpv.com/product/CW-t20.html [5] https://www.militarysignaljammer.com/supplier-4701497-surveillance-radar https://www.militarysignaljammer.com/supplier-4701497-survei... [6] https://www.instagram.com/cloudwalker_radar/ https://www.instagram.com/cloudwalker_radar/ [7] https://www.instagram.com/radar_lisa88/ https://www.instagram.com/radar_lisa88/
- kamranjon 4mo agoWhile you may be correct in some of these assumptions, the repo is open source, contains actual schematics and code, appears to have real community contributions, and also happens to exists now, which is something that can't be said for the original post this was a response to. I was hoping to just provide some reference to existing work that I found interesting since it is what I think is a much more traditional type of detection system.
- dzhiurgis 4mo agoAFAIK started by a fellow HN’er
- k4rli 4mo agoSounds like a simple app with mic input being sent to a yamnet-like audio classification model for a single target detection. Hardly anything innovative?
- lnsru 4mo agoOr it is a public stunt? I am naysayer engineer. Build acoustic detection system for anomaly detection in manufacturing line. It worked with studio level equipment with lots of noise filtering measures. First challenge was to have microphone listening to the right place and getting reliable signal. Second challenge was to amplify the right signal to a level where the features could be extracted. I doubt an old android with dirty microphone can detect anything reliably.