Pentagon Confronts a New Threat from ISIS: Exploding Drones
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I always remember FPSRussia's drone [1] and I'm surprised they haven't made these in mass over there.
Looks like it's CGI.
I really hope we don't over correct out of fear because drones will be a net positive for society.
I didn't RTFM, but drone defense has been a high priority for the Pentagon and they've been rapidly testing and developing various options.
A big challenge is doing it cost-effectively, AFAIK. Legacy anti-air technology is designed for shooting down airplanes and uses missiles that may cost 100-1000x the drone; it's not affordable to build missiles to shoot down all of an enemy's drones. I've seen reports of sniper rifles, lasers (less than $1 marginal cost per shot, reportedly), electromagnetic weapons that fry the drone's electronics, old-fashioned anti-aircraft guns, etc.
Not only can drones carry explosives, but apparently the Russians very effectively use drones as artillery spotters in Ukraine, and it's not just a battlefield problem: What happens when someone targets a drone at major public events or at VIPs such as the U.S. President? How do you stop it?
why not an anti-drone drone? would it be cost effective to fit a weapon capable of downing a drone onto a drone?
A guess: It would cost the defender the same as the attacker. That's a big improvement over anti-air missiles, but you want the equation heavily in your favor. If you can do it with sniper rifles, for example, your enemy will almost certainly run out of drones before you run out of bullets.
But their website seems to be replaced with blogspam though, so I assume they went out of business.
One of the countermeasures we can expect is "persistent aerial surveillance" (airship based eye-in-the-sky platforms), which are semi-secret platforms being used in battlefields by the US currently. I wonder how rapidly one of these systems can detect an unknown drone in the air.
Amazed you believed the FPSRussia video.
Not sure what you mean. I believed what about it, exactly?
Our policy of using them so freely on the other hand...
...until the 'other guys' start doing the same. Then it becomes a heinous, unfair act of terror.
That said, here's the question:
How would you approach eliminating terrorists, terrorist training camps, terrorist strongholds and terrorist leaders with zero collateral damage? Of course, knowing full well that the collateral damage is split between terrorist supporters and absolutely innocent people.
Remember, these are the very people who not only want to but have killed thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands innocent civilians throughout the world. If they could detonate a massive bomb in the middle of a stadium full with 50,000 people, they would.
In other words, they are coming to kill you, your family, friends and loved ones. What do you do?
In many ways it's the old "If you could save a thousand lives by taking one, would you?"
I've heard opinions ranging from "just get out of the middle east and let them rot in hell" to "one nuke, one time and it's over". Not sure what the answer is. Always interested in hearing what others might thing the solution could be.
The weapons industry is sick this way. The US doesn't want to sell? OK, maybe Russia does. Or some third party who knows how to get them, whether a front for a country or not.
Truly sick.
Now imagine what happens when drones with explosives/guns/chemical weapons start flying into sports stadiums, concert halls, etc in unpredictable swarms.
A cheap 100-200$ RC plane can carry 1-2kg if pushed which is considerably more than any drone at that price range.
In fact older RCs could carry more since they were still petrol based newer electrical ones tend to have considerably less power on average.
Does it have to? It's main job in these scenarios is as a high speed shrapnel dispersal device.
Suicide vests contain about 12kg of explosives usually and even they are only exceptionally effective in highly enclosed environments.
Quads take less skill to operate, because they hover and are self-stabilizing. Also first person video hardware did not exist in the past, so finding a target is much easier.
It's easier than ever to fly several kilos of something somewhere a few hundred meters away.
Helis were also stabilized with gyros.
If an 8 year old can learn to fly in an afternoon a determined attacker can do so also, lets stop pretending that barrier to entry is a thing for people who strap 20kg of PETN and ball bearings to their chests.
And how much did your FPV unit cost? Certainly today they are cheaper and far better than they were in 1998?
As for the better you'd be surprised but the only thing that has improved really is the camera.
FPV is still transmitted today in the same analog manner as it always was.
As for the skill required, it's still the same level of skill if you are planning such an attack you'll train the drones executing it regardless if you are using a quad or an 1986 RC plane.
Quads aren't new, they've been around for a long time waiting for the electronics to make them feasible.
Another great near-future fiction about how modern warfare might evolve is Ghost Fleet. Fast read, and highly interesting - if a bit frightening.
https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-Novel-Next-World/dp/05441...
However, as it is true with many ideas, there is the idea and there is the execution of that idea. Now that there are confirmed uses of this sort of system in the field I expect much more energy in finding ways to mitigate them. On the plus side it is easier to destroy/disable a drone than root out a sniper's nest, on the down side it is really hard to defend soft targets from pop-up deployments of them.
[1] http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2016/10/11/irak-...
Of course its an RPG.
EDIT: I've been downvoted, but I don't think drone software has any backdoors, safeguards, or even registration requirements, and I don't think drone manufacturers even vaguely consider that they might be making what could be part of munitions, or give a second thought to completing an order to a war zone or to anyone, except of course unless there is some kind of general embargo or difficulty (that applies to every class of products.) I think it's being left too free, to be honest, and the possibilities that will unfold naturally are not going to be well. I strongly advise agencies to put in the necessary legal and technical safeguards today, not when it is too late. Other posters point out that this stuff might apply "just as well" to model airplanes -- but I personally don't think this is true at all. A model airplane won't fly to a specific user-supplied location unattended. it's a different beast entirely and it's not being handled with enough seriousness, in my personal opinion. I don't know that much about drones though. (Just flew a small cheap model helicopter toy, like a $20 one. I'm basing this based on general reading.) I stand by my comment.