Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

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The thing that gets me is that the US is using these to assassinate people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some by firring hellfire missiles at the targets.

Yet the same UAV have got to be useful to kill the president of the US (I do not have any desire to kill him, but I imagine there are people who do).

So, how the hell do you protect somebody against these kinds of weapons? The bullet-proof glass that is (almost certainly) installed in the oval office is properly enough to stop any kind of sniper bullet, but a missile? Heck the Iranians have anti-ship missiles that can fly at march 2.

How do you stop something like that? I have to guess that the Secret Service have tried, but I doubt it can be done.

They still have a radar signature. You stop them (in principle) the same way you stop all enemy aircraft.

Smaller UAVs might be hard to recognize among birds and other clutter. And you can probably apply some stealth technology to increase your chances of staying undetected.

As far as assasination machines go, an insect-sized UAV with a tiny dose of poison would be hard to beat.

One the size of a large bird could park itself on a glass window, then detonate a shaped charge that could send a jet of superhot plasma through the bulletproof glass and kill a person.

Whats the radar signature of something the size of my abdomen flying ten-twenty meters over the city streets?

The thing about nanotechnology is that people could build small machines that you can't see to kill people. Hmmmm aren't we making some sort of Luddite argument?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Yes, new technology can be used for bad things too.

You can still kill people with swords, knives and hammers. Don't knock the deadliness of old technology. As I say, it's not the gun in the hands of the lunatic in front of the leader he needs to worry about: it's the stilettos in the hands of his ambitious friends standing behind him.

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