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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I feel like there are quite a few ways to counter drones better than lasers. Even nets, ropes, or guns work better than lasers...

Soon we will have counter drones buzzing around I'm sure.

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The far future may be similar to Banks's Culture novels: each of us supports a cloud of thousands and thousands of micro-drones. As the ages pass countermeasures against these drones lead to counter-countermeasures lead to counter-counter-countermeasures and on and on until our sea of micro-dones essentially becomes an extension of our own immune system.

Launching nets or ropes can only work at very short ranges. The projectiles are too slow to hit a small, agile target.

Small plane that quickly strafes drones with silly string-like incapacitating weapon? Wouldn't need to sustain aim, just pass near by.

That's a bit like using a tank to hunt rats - it would work in theory, but the rats are a lot more agile than the tank. What are you gonna do, blanket whole neighborhoods in silly string? How are you gonna tell the difference between birds and droves while also flying the plane and avoiding ground fire from people who don't like you? Any anti-drone countermeasures are likely to involves more drones.

I was actually thinking more along he lines of an RC plane. Something launchable by a soldier but that would be quicker linearly than a drone.

Oh I see - I had misunderstood you to mean something like a crop duster. I'm sure we'll see a rapid evolution/arms race involving everything from machine learning to rapid prototyping to autonomous swarming behaviors, and more.

Skip the nets, why bring down a drone mostly intact that has a bomb on it anyway? Play to your strengths...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4PXou0aGiE

Above is a video of the Army's modified close in weapons system, it fires 75 rounds a second and is designed to shoot rockets and mortar shells out of the sky. Mortar shells and rockets move just a weeee bit faster than most drones.

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