5 ms·

Yeah, this worries me. I think we're probably counting down the final months before the first time someone is assassinated via civilian drone. It could be train

by b6 12y ago

Yeah, this worries me. I think we're probably counting down the final months before the first time someone is assassinated via civilian drone. It could be trained to keep its distance until it recognizes its target's face, and then approach very fast and detonate explosive when close enough. The attack could be complete before anyone realizes anything is wrong. One defense might be to have your own fleet of anti-drone drones, and hope that they're faster and more aggressive than the attacker's. Another might be to place a rifle under the control of a CV system. Both options seem awful to me, and inevitable.

vwruetag 12y ago
I doubt the first (civilian) drone assasination will be that sophisticated. Face recognition from a moving object at an unfortunate angle is not easy and it's even harder if you want to do it from a fixed-wing drone that can't hover like a quadcopter. I'd rather expect an assassination by a fixed-wing remote-controlled UAV targeted at someone speaking at a public event, some place where traditional methods (knives, rifles, car bombs) fail because line-of-sight access is heavily restricted.
- hga 12y ago
  Line of sight for rifles goes out to as much as 2,707 yards for .338 Lapua Magnum (in the very longest recorded sniper kill). 1,000 yards is a very standard range for long range target shooting. What's more significant here is that people so exquisitely experienced just have no reason (today) to assassinate, and protection out to, oh, 500-600 yards is I suppose generally good enough.
Patrikvo 12y ago
I don't think a rifle would be a good anti-drone solution. The problem is you would be operating close to other people and missing a shot could end up killing someone else. Perhaps the solution could be in shooting a web over the drone and having the wires entangled in the rotors or maybe a tennis ball cannon could work.
- bryondowd 12y ago
  How about something like a firehose? Water wouldn't be a threat to people, but a high pressure water cannon could probably down a drone within a reasonable range.
codeduck 12y ago
Lasers would be more effective. 1W and above lasers are readily available on the open market, and output more than enough power to fuse or burn out any optics that are not shielded.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Including eyeballs. Using high-power lasers in crowded area seems even more dangerous than bullets - the latter at least don't reflect off surfaces.
  - codeduck 12y ago
    No, but they follow ballistic trajectories and can ricochet. A laser is at least predictable, and given that most drones would fly above ground level for visibility, it would take a very unlucky reflection to injure someone on the ground. A bullet is going to come down somewhere.
    - hga 12y ago
      And we're likely talking about fairly low angles, i.e. less than 45 degrees up from horizontal. Straight up is fairly safe because air resistance slows the bullet on its way down. Less than 45 degrees, it's going to come down hard a long distance away. Shotguns are another possible approach, but I'm pretty sure the shot size required would be big enough to cause harm to more than people's eyes. And for this sort of thing civilian shotguns would have an effective range of maybe 50 yards max, so it would be a CIWS. The US Navy is moving from the 20mm Vulcan Gatling gun based Phalanx to a missile based CIWS ... that might be the most discriminating system after a laser, but still very problematic, you would have issues with the operators being very hesitant to set them to firing because there would likely be civilian casualties, and if it just turned out to be a paparazzi or otherwise non-dangerous drone, they'd get crucified.... And neither an effective laser nor an effective kinetic/explosive CIWS would be cheap.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      I didn't do the math here, but my intuition tells me that as lasers scatter, if you point a 1MW beam at a rough surface, you'll have a lot of high-power reflections in every direction - even a laser pointer reflecting off a wall is annoying for the eyes. I'd love someone more knowledgable about high-powered lasers to chime in here. Anyway, neither of those two options seem safe for drones flying just above people's heads. Maybe microwave lasers would be better? Also low-powered visible-light lasers could be enough to blind sensors and force the drone to rely on dead reckoning while not risking eye damage.

by b6 12y ago

vwruetag 12y ago

I doubt the first (civilian) drone assasination will be that sophisticated. Face recognition from a moving object at an unfortunate angle is not easy and it's even harder if you want to do it from a fixed-wing drone that can't hover like a quadcopter. I'd rather expect an assassination by a fixed-wing remote-controlled UAV targeted at someone speaking at a public event, some place where traditional methods (knives, rifles, car bombs) fail because line-of-sight access is heavily restricted.

hga 12y ago
Line of sight for rifles goes out to as much as 2,707 yards for .338 Lapua Magnum (in the very longest recorded sniper kill). 1,000 yards is a very standard range for long range target shooting. What's more significant here is that people so exquisitely experienced just have no reason (today) to assassinate, and protection out to, oh, 500-600 yards is I suppose generally good enough.

Patrikvo 12y ago

I don't think a rifle would be a good anti-drone solution. The problem is you would be operating close to other people and missing a shot could end up killing someone else. Perhaps the solution could be in shooting a web over the drone and having the wires entangled in the rotors or maybe a tennis ball cannon could work.

bryondowd 12y ago
How about something like a firehose? Water wouldn't be a threat to people, but a high pressure water cannon could probably down a drone within a reasonable range.

codeduck 12y ago

Lasers would be more effective. 1W and above lasers are readily available on the open market, and output more than enough power to fuse or burn out any optics that are not shielded.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Including eyeballs. Using high-power lasers in crowded area seems even more dangerous than bullets - the latter at least don't reflect off surfaces.
- codeduck 12y ago
  No, but they follow ballistic trajectories and can ricochet. A laser is at least predictable, and given that most drones would fly above ground level for visibility, it would take a very unlucky reflection to injure someone on the ground. A bullet is going to come down somewhere.
  - hga 12y ago
    And we're likely talking about fairly low angles, i.e. less than 45 degrees up from horizontal. Straight up is fairly safe because air resistance slows the bullet on its way down. Less than 45 degrees, it's going to come down hard a long distance away. Shotguns are another possible approach, but I'm pretty sure the shot size required would be big enough to cause harm to more than people's eyes. And for this sort of thing civilian shotguns would have an effective range of maybe 50 yards max, so it would be a CIWS. The US Navy is moving from the 20mm Vulcan Gatling gun based Phalanx to a missile based CIWS ... that might be the most discriminating system after a laser, but still very problematic, you would have issues with the operators being very hesitant to set them to firing because there would likely be civilian casualties, and if it just turned out to be a paparazzi or otherwise non-dangerous drone, they'd get crucified.... And neither an effective laser nor an effective kinetic/explosive CIWS would be cheap.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I didn't do the math here, but my intuition tells me that as lasers scatter, if you point a 1MW beam at a rough surface, you'll have a lot of high-power reflections in every direction - even a laser pointer reflecting off a wall is annoying for the eyes. I'd love someone more knowledgable about high-powered lasers to chime in here. Anyway, neither of those two options seem safe for drones flying just above people's heads. Maybe microwave lasers would be better? Also low-powered visible-light lasers could be enough to blind sensors and force the drone to rely on dead reckoning while not risking eye damage.