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How to hide from killer drones
https://archive.ph/xiCSq https://archive.ph/xiCSq
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- ButlerianJihad 3mo agoMachine Learning CAPTCHA https://m.xkcd.com/2228/ https://m.xkcd.com/2228/
- mananaysiempre 3mo agoUsername checks out :)
- esseph 3mo agoIf you're really interested in this kind of thing, Grand Thumb on YouTube has a couple of videos about it. I think it was Dirty Civilian on YouTube that had a good video on how to prepare hide sites and the impact of using the right laundry detergent as to reduce or eliminate IR brightener chemicals, etc.
- trhway 3mo agoHalf the time it is the nighttime and the things are in IR https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000051 . You may still try to camouflage and decrease your IR visibility - stealth planes try to do it, and there are some IR-decreasing covers for tanks and people. The night time hunt using IR is widely practiced today in Ukraine and even was widely practiced by US and USSR in Afghanistan and Iraq as surroundings gets cooled down and cars, people and say donkeys used to transport weapons in mountains become highly contrast against the surroundings and thus easy to spot visually and to lock IR seeker of a weapon. Saddam used USSR anti-ship missiles, old even then, to attack Iran oil storage tanks at night as the missiles were easily able to lock on that large bright IR emission of the tanks still hot from the day against the cold night desert.
- delichon 3mo agoTwenty four years later I'm still looking for ways to evade the spider drones deployed by PreCrime in Minority Report.
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoWhat about the drones in Screamers?
- ahartmetz 3mo agoOh, so dazzle camouflage is back. I wonder if the more sophisticated "classic" patterns would work better. They certainly do for human observers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
- djmips 3mo agoBack in the day, I had an early pre-release Xbox One Devkit and mouse and now I realize it was likely outfitted with Dazzle camouflage - but we just called it zebra.
- stevenwoo 3mo agoAutomobile manufacturers still use it for some new models in development - occasionally see photos on social media from passersby https://gizmodo.com/how-automakers-use-a-wwi-era-camo-technique-to-disguise-1647618861 https://gizmodo.com/how-automakers-use-a-wwi-era-camo-techni...
- ahartmetz 3mo agoI have seen a few Erlkönigs (German term for camouflaged pre-production models) IRL. On the Autobahn, they are not that rare. You get to see one for every few thousand kilometers driven.
- stefan_ 3mo agoThis is an odd article that tries to elevate some random grunt in the field painting their truck white stripes to grand battlefield strategy in the face of autonomous AI killer drones. Neither are the latter real nor is the former actually in widespread use, and it obviously is not effective, not least because the drones it's talking about barely have the resolution at altitude to resolve that detail.
- joezydeco 3mo agoThe evidence seems to be coming out to support the latter. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-used-fully-autonomous-drones-to-kill-russian-soldiers/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-us... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o
- stefan_ 3mo agoYes, media see a snapdragon running a YOLO and go off writing "AI apocalypse autonomous killer drones" articles. See it for yourselves: https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956 https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956 Some object detection and (human triggered) terminal guidance. It's essentially there to solve latency and control issues for a fixed wing platform with a spotty data link.
- joezydeco 3mo agoIf it works, who cares how it's made?
- FridgeSeal 3mo agoBecause how it’s made and functions is useful information for dealing with it when they’re trying to attack you?
- nine_k 3mo ago[dead]
- sleepyguy 3mo agoIf anyone here is into drones, manufactures, ideas, or wants to either use their drone piloting skills or learn how to pilot drones. Ukraine is recruiting for positions. https://usforces.army/en https://usforces.army/en
- kakacik 3mo agoJust beware that being part of the drone team isnt some comfy safe job far from danger, they are the most hated type of unit currently since they are deciding large part of this war (and any future war it seems). I see videos of ie glide bombs used by both sides targetting specifically positions of drone teams. If all this is clear and you go ahead, all the power to ya, fighting evil in this world is highly commendable.
- trhway 3mo agoLike sharpshooters, the drone operators are usually executed instead of being taken POW.
- wartywhoa23 3mo ago> fighting evil in this world is highly commendable Except more often than not it is fighting not evil but sleeping civilians who don't support this war, which is not even war in the strict sense of the word, but a deliberate meatgrinder set up to devour as much human beings on both sides as its orchestrators can get away with, for as long as possible.
- vanviegen 3mo agoIs there any evidence suggesting that Ukraine is targeting civilians? And what 'orchestrators' exactly do you think benefit from sending their soldiers through a meat grinder? Yes, Russia (not Ukraine) has done a lot of that, but you seem to think that getting their own soldiers killed was their goal..?
- Pay08 3mo ago
- jesuswasjew 3mo ago[flagged]
- input_sh 3mo ago> Are paywalls ok? > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. > In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- karim79 3mo ago[flagged]
- tcp_handshaker 3mo agoSlaughterbots: https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU
- echelon 3mo agoPrescient. This film predated the Ukraine war, and it felt like fiction six years ago. This is absolutely coming. The government is concerned about who might print a 3D gun, but this is the real danger.
- corky_buchek 3mo agoThe Ukraine war started in 2014.
- lifestyleguru 3mo ago"stay inside" scare... from late 2019...
- zer00eyz 3mo agohttps://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-used-fully-autonomous-drones-to-kill-russian-soldiers/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-us... Except the Ukraine kind of went out and built it. People in this thread keep talking about DJI, and off the shelf US drones. Ukraine has move so far beyond commercial products (but still in use) that it's laughable. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraines-drones-can-now-kill-without-human-in-loop-sa-061226 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraines-drones-can-n... https://www.kyivpost.com/post/60152 https://www.kyivpost.com/post/60152 A drone isnt terribly hard, or costly. It is a solved problem. The interesting bits are the software and even those are "easy" -- more so with "ai" in the aid of development. Ukraine isn't paying for "testing" either, they just send things to the front and try them against Russians.
- davidwritesbugs 3mo agoAs a bonus it will also repel horse flies. https://www.science.org/content/article/zebra-stripes-confuse-biting-flies-causing-them-abort-their-landings https://www.science.org/content/article/zebra-stripes-confus...
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- orthoxerox 3mo agoDazzle camouflage doesn't work on killer drones. Even civilian LLMs recognize that the object on the photograph is a military truck, except they can't explain why it's been painted to resemble a zebra. Most dedicated machine vision models easily lock in on a boxy shape moving along a road. If anything, the stripes make the trucks easier to see. The real answer to killer drones is a CIWS that can cover 2pi steradians and attack multiple drones at the same time, because otherwise it will be just swarmed by drones that quietly glide towards it, engines off, from several directions before entering the final dive.
- yogthos 3mo agoThe difference is that a neural network you can fit on a drone is going to be a lot less capable than an LLM you can run on a desktop.
- MengerSponge 3mo agoDoesn't a fiber tether give its drone desktop-class computing?
- haunter 3mo agoYou don't /r/CombatFootage (NSFL)
- mapmeld 3mo agoI have seen a few Ukrainian drone videos that cross over onto regular subreddits, and this subreddit is far more graphic. Do not take this 'NSFL' lightly.
- therobots927 3mo ago[flagged]
- Pay08 3mo agoHow so?
- therobots927 3mo agoAny comment about Gaza getting flagged in under a minute
- Pay08 3mo agoFlagging irrelevant comments isn't censorship...
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- xurxyrxyrxe 3mo ago[flagged]
- megous 3mo ago[flagged]
- Pay08 3mo agoThis is just complete fantasy.
- petit_robert 3mo agoApparently not : https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/ https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-perc...
- lelandfe 3mo agoA tip from a 2024 Google paper[0]: > It's important to note that the risk of misuse is significantly lower for individuals who have never had typical speech patterns How to Hide from Killer Drones: It's important to note that that the risk of being riddled with drone bullets is significantly lower for individuals who have never had human physical characteristics. [0] https://research.google/blog/restoring-speaker-voices-with-zero-shot-cross-lingual-voice-transfer-for-tts/ https://research.google/blog/restoring-speaker-voices-with-z...
- srameshc 3mo agoThis title scared me, not for myself but more thinking about how kids will probably need to learn these things next. We are such strange 'intelligent' creatures who have figured out everything but not to be at peace with each other.
- tim333 3mo agoThe percentage of the population that dies from war has gone down over time though. Just needs a bit more work.
- proshno 3mo ago[dead]
- laughing_man 3mo agoAfter WW II German u-boat captains said they were never particularly bothered by dazzle camouflage. Ten years from now I have a feeling we'll get the same information from drone operators.
- iLoveOncall 3mo agoIt's not camouflage for ships, it's so it's harder to estimate the distance.
- laughing_man 3mo agoI understand, but like I said, it never really worked.
- pbhjpbhj 3mo agoNot just distance, class (ie type of ship), speed and direction too. Having seen some freaky good examples, I'm not sure how it wouldn't work? It might not matter, but it seems to work (and I can't see how it wouldn't matter)? For example, you see a ship on the horizon, you can't tell the class - so whether it's likely to be in a group, or if it's a ship previously reported in this area - you can't tell the direction, etc ... you observe the ship, now you can plot the direction, speed. The ship fires on you, now you likely know the class.
- LorenPechtel 3mo agoDazzle isn't meant to hide. Dazzle is meant to confuse a human trying to estimate course and speed in order to send an unguided torpedo at it. You need to look at hit rates to judge effectiveness.
- laughing_man 3mo agoWe don't have that data. All we have is conversation from former captains saying it didn't work. EDIT: Also, IIRC, the most successful captains in the field didn't actually use the AOB method of determining the target's course. They would instead cross in front of the ship at a distance. When the ship's masts lined up they knew the ship was pointed directly at their current position and could calculate from their current bearing and the bearing to the target exactly what the target's course was. In hindsight what the Brits should have done instead of odd paint jobs is offset their masts by a few degrees.
- wa2flq 3mo agoHow about lots of similarly painted cheap decoys!?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- einpoklum 3mo ago> The probable result will be an arms race pitting increasingly sophisticated machine vision systems against cleverer and cleverer methods for fooling them. FPV drones are a thing. In, fact, I suspect most drones in the NATO-Russia war are FPV rather than fully autonomous.
- djmips 3mo agoIt's the really long range that have always needed an autonomous end phase
- ponector 3mo agoHow is it a NATO-russia war of NATO is not taking a participation? You can call it NATO-Iran, or NATO-NKorea war as well. Ukraine-Nkorea war? At least there were direct contacts between their forces.
- nine_k 3mo agoIndeed, the key low-cost mass-produced drone tech is Ukrainian, and NATO currently sorely lacks comparable capabilities.
- einpoklum 3mo agoNATO is certainly participating: * It supplies most ammunition and arms and much of the equipment. * It funds most of the war effort, including arms & ammunition, salaries, covering some of the civilian budget etc. Total expenditure by "Western" countries in the period 2014-2026 is 380 Billion USD [1] and the vast majority of that is by NATO; some by other US allies. * Its members train Ukrainian forces. * It imposes wide sanctions against Russia (along with a few other US allies). * Ukraine has already signed off half of all of its material resources to the US, the lead state of NATO [2]. * A negotiations process in Istanbul, having reached a draft agreement which would have concluded the war, in early 2022, was vetoed by NATO, or at least the US and the UK. [3] And this is in the context of NATO's long-standing strategy of expanding eastwards towards Russia, which includes introducing Ukraine into its sphere of influence and possibly inducting it as a member at some point. ---- [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_financial_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war#U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_financial_aid_to_Ukrai... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93United_States_Mineral_Resources_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93United_States_... [3] - https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch-why-did-the-west-stop-a-peace-deal-in-ukraine/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/09/02/diplomacy-watch...
- Jazgot 3mo agoMost drones use thermal cameras, this camouflage rather does not help.
- helterskelter 3mo agoGreat now we all need to wear mylar blankets under our ghillie suits now.
- dkresge 3mo agoIf only it was simple rage bait. As a member of this thing we call "civilization" I can't help but wonder how the hell we got to this point. #rhetorical
- projektfu 3mo agoVery few voices were complaining about flying killer robots in and around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and more and more people seem comfortable with the status quo. I guess things like fire-and-forget anti-tank missiles led the way. The future is Skynet.
- Narishma 3mo agoLike with many issues, people will only complain when it affects them directly. And by then it's usually too late to do anything about it.
- beardedwizard 3mo agoWhy do talented engineers keep going to work for these companies and building it?
- tomaskafka 3mo agoBecause otherwise the opponent absolutist regime would be the only one to wield the tech.
- xyzelement 3mo agoIt's absolutely ridiculous that this needs to be stated.
- beardedwizard 3mo agountil you are on the wrong side of an absolutist regime I guess
- 3mo ago
- iFire 3mo ago> https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drones-and-see-wifi-through-my-wall/ https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drone... You can't hide from drones. Attach quadrf to your drone and now you can see through walls.
- paulnpace 3mo agoAnything active eliminates stealth.
- spaqin 3mo agoI wonder if that works with drones not using Wifi frequencies, like 900MHz control link and 3.3GHz video?
- mrheosuper 3mo agoMany drones nowaday use optic fiber cable.
- gattr 3mo agoRemember the "Black Mirror" episode "Metalhead"? (If not, check it out, no spoilers here.) I'm afraid we'll see something like this in the not-too-distant future. Now, a squad of soldiers, or even just one experienced rifleman, would prob. dispatch of such a threat quickly. But against (at most poorly armed) civilians it would be an all too effective terror/area denial weapon.
- bluGill 3mo agoIf it actually becomes a problem, I start carrying my shotgun everywhere, but... Even in the US, most Americans aren't particularly good with a shotgun. Enough of us that most places could have a number of people that they just call. Wake up right now and get out because you might need to shoot something, but it's a dangerous job and I really hope that it never comes down to that.
- weard_beard 3mo agoThere is video out of Ukraine of Russians with shotguns shooting at drones. It’s not very effective.
- slyall 3mo agoRemember you are only seeing a selection of the thousands of times this has happened. The drone operating side will release more of the ones where it didn't work. It does work at least sometimes. If it didn't work at all soldiers would not bother carrying the shotguns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_shotguns_against_drones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_shotguns_against_drones https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-soldiers-best-chance-russia-fiber-optic-drones-shotguns-2025-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-soldiers-best-chance...
- beachy 3mo agoThere's a video of a Finnish clay target champion taking on drones with a shotgun. The first one gets him because he's unfamiliar with their flight paths. After that he does better but it clearly shows that you'd have to be an expert to take down a drone with a shotgun. Also there's a lot of air inside a shotgun spread, so even an on target shot may fail to disable a drone.
- armenarmen 3mo agoThink we're at a point where you could make a 2A argument for jammers
- mewse-hn 3mo agoThere are things to learn from the drone conflict in ukraine, eg drone netting, but I don't think neo dazzle camouflage is one of them https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-stunned-uk-military-didnt-use-anti-drone-nets-2026-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-stunned-uk-military-...
- AtlasBarfed 3mo agoOn a related note, why isn't a shotgun now standard armament for infantrymen? Is there a better/cheaper anti-drone infantry weapon? I saw this ridiculous Russian training video of some soldier doing a tuck and roll with an ak-47 against a drone.
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoMany FPV fiber optic drones include FLIR, so optical camo is pointless. What depresses me at a human level is seeing various UA drone films where Russian soldiers don't try to dodge, move, or shoot at an incoming drone. They mostly just freeze still in the open and wait for death with the saddest look of dread and sadness on their faces. Some may throw their weapons away and stumble a few steps, but the outcome is the same. I haven't seen many surrender to FPV drone videos.