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African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones
- allochthon 12y agoIf I were a manager at the mining company that purchased the drones, I would be worried about retaliation in kind by workers who obtained a similar drone.
- TallGuyShort 12y agoManagers at South African mining companies already have good reason to be worried about retaliation from workers. Details in my other comment on this thread - but in short, buying a drone is really just throwing fuel on an already well-fueled fire in this case.
- venomsnake 12y agoWhy drones - invest in smart ground based flak cannon manufacturing. If we can't fly -- we won't let anyone else either - old anti aircraft moto.
- sudont 12y agoIndeed. Here's something somewhat related, from PyCon 2012. It deals with using computer vision to fire a squirt gun at squirrels. The principle is basically the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPgqfnKG_T4
- qbrass 12y agoThat would mean your workers had too much disposable income and free time. You should reduce both as a precaution.
- angersock 12y agoTechnical solutions to people problems.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI am surprised that anyone would be caught off guard by this sort of thing. After all it is going to be much more effective to fly over a crowd and shoot at them than to try to hit them from behind a riot shield. The Union outrage is interesting too, mostly because I agree that as your government (or companies) acquire tools for crowd control it certainly has a chilling effect on peaceful assembly. That said I don't see why these folks don't have drones of their own. They were used to good effect to document some of the protests in Turkey. As the drone is probably efiltrating its video during operation it is much harder for a repressive regime to shut it down and suppress the video.
- TallGuyShort 12y ago>> That said I don't see why these folks don't have drones of their own There's some important historical context here. The client was a South African mining company (I assume - it said mining company, and the company is in South Africa). There were recent riots in South Africa between a miner's union and the mine, and the miner's got slaughtered (literally). Most likely not the same company, but miner's in South Africa have a long, unfair history and it's getting worse. They're extremely destitute and there's no way I see them showing up to future protests with their own air support. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marikana_miners'_strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marikana_miners'_strike
- ChuckMcM 12y agoThe South African's aren't the only one, miners in the coal belt of the US, and in China today, have always been victimized by unscrupulous corporations. In both those cases having documentation of the problems with video from a drone could have furthered the miner's interest in getting justice. That was what I was trying to say that with my comment about them (the miners) having drones of their own.
- TallGuyShort 12y agoOh I agree - I think they SHOULD have drones of their own, I just think they're a lot less likely to have access to them than miners in America or most parts of the middle east. Don't know much about China, but yeah. I should have posted my comment as a top-level comment because it ended up being a more general response than to your comment specifically.
- yellowapple 12y agoI can't wait until someone builds a working ManHack. Only a matter of time at this rate.
- jobu 12y ago"Desert Wolf's website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second." If they sell this in the US our company paintball outings might get a little more interesting.
- stcredzero 12y agoHow about Terminator themed post apocalyptic LARP?
- MasterScrat 12y agoTake a look at this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vICfKPoCubw#t=258 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vICfKPoCubw#t=258
- downandout 12y agoFor a mining (or any) company to buy this to control workers is reprehensible, and it's rather shocking that they would publicize this as their first order. They could have just as easily said that an undisclosed buyer has purchased the first 25 of them. It's as if they are trying to market this as a slave-control copter. However, this makes me wonder why we don't have small military drones with guns on them. It seems like they only have the large missile carriers and tiny surveillance drones. Something in the middle that is armed would eliminate most soldier-to-soldier battlefield confrontations. They could just send several small armed drones out and fire at their opposition with near perfect accuracy for every bullet since a computer would control the aiming and firing.
- bmelton 12y agoDefine 'small'? Recoil and weight are the primary factors, I assume, in why no such beast exists. Anything in the size of the average quad-copter is going to have to manage the fact that its flight trajectory would be significantly altered with each shot. The guys at Red Jacket invented something like that, and the way they mitigated the recoil was to have the barrel pointing straight down, which limits the effectiveness dramatically. You're right, clearly, in that there's a lot of room between the missile and surveillance drones, but big enough to fire a rifle round might be a bit bigger than you suspect.
- downandout 12y agoAgreed that a quad-copter wouldn't be able to handle the recoil, and that weight is a factor - bullets are (relatively) heavy. I was just saying that something the size of a Predator drone isn't necessary for close combat. I'm sure that there is some engineering magic that could be done to manage both of these issues in a relatively small package.
- stcredzero 12y agoA swarm of small drones with photographic flashers could give one side of a gunfight a huge advantage.
- mattgibson 12y agoSurely these won't be too effective. They'd be easily brought down by getting anything at all (fishing wire, string, etc) fired from a makeshift catapult caught up in the rotors. High tech crowd control that can be defeated with stuff you've got lying around in the kitchen doesn't seen too useful.
- 6d0debc071 12y agoProvided someone brought the kitchen with them, sure. Though I think you may underestimate how easy it is to dodge relatively slow moving things in the sky. I could see that sort of thing being defeated by the operator flicking the drone up sharply when people start throwing stuff.
- jqm 12y agoHow about a cheap little suicide drone launched by the "protesters"? But ya, it seems some sections of rope with weights on the end (or improvised rope launchers) might be standard protest equipment if these things become widely deployed.
- jotux 12y agoThey should send the drone to defcon this year to compete in defconbots (defconbots.org).
- jayshahtx 12y agoSide note: I'm always a little bothered when people attribute something from "Africa". Africa has 54 countries, c'mon people
- ars 12y agoWhat about when they attribute it to "Europe"? Africa is a place, and the countries there are more similar to each other than to other countries, so combining them is natural.
- jxf 12y ago> the countries there are more similar to each other than to other countries, so combining them is natural. That seems like a very inaccurate generalization. If you think, say, Egypt is "similar to" Madagascar, Malawi, or Mozambique, that's difficult to agree with. They're in rough geographic proximity, if that's what you meant. But downtown Manhattan and Ecuador are also the same distance apart and they're pretty different.
- ars 12y agoI had a feeling someone would mention Egypt. But despite where it actually is Egypt is usually called Middle East, not Africa. And you didn't reply about people combining Europe - to someone in Europe France and Germany could not be more different - to someone outside Europe they are more similar than they are different.
- jxf 12y agoThat's precisely my point -- that it's important not to succumb to our internal biases. Just because we think they're "mostly the same" doesn't mean they are.
- dragonwriter 12y ago> Africa is a place, and the countries there are more similar to each other than to other countries In what sense (other than "being located in Africa") are North African countries like Egypt or Algeria more like, say, any countries in central or southern Africa than they are like countries in the Middle East?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- oakaz 12y agoFuck that and fuck you assholes who are excited about this torture weapon, it's gonna be used against people! The first order was probably for a mining company in Amazon, to torture the locals who defend their land against fucking mining companies. And soon, it's gonna be used everywhere in the world against people protesting for rights. Lots of people lost their lives, lots of people lost their eyes by pepper gas bullets this year, including this 15 years old kid: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Berkin_Elvan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Berkin_Elvan See this documentary: http://www.worldpressphoto.org/multimedia-gallery/2014/witnessing-gezi http://www.worldpressphoto.org/multimedia-gallery/2014/witne...
- greenyoda 12y agoUnfortunately, I can imagine militarized police departments all over the U.S. getting excited about these kinds of anti-crowd weapons.
- dmix 12y agoA few drones plus an 'armored riot-control vehicle': https://inkasarmored.com/armored-riot-control-vehicle/ https://inkasarmored.com/armored-riot-control-vehicle/ with a built in water canon and those evil protestors won't stand a chance.
- jonmrodriguez 12y agoWTF. Blinding lasers aren't even allowed in combat during war, they're considered inhumane and banned under international law.
- CapitalistCartr 12y agoThe problem with the tools we are currently seeing created is this: Nigeria (for example) doesn't derive its power from the people; but from its oil, currently being pumped by Western oil companies. The populace are simply an expense. The source of their money comes from Exxon and Shell; their military might from foreign weapons manufacturers. I know a number of people who work for said manufacturers.
- namlem 12y agoWhile I'm absolutely against using this kind of technology on peaceful civilians, I think it would be interesting to see autonomous non-lethal or less-than-lethal weapons deployed against actual terrorists. Not only would it virtually eliminate the risk of collateral damage, it would also allow us to capture and interrogate them.