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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

How is that different to the rest of the application of advanced technology to war? (e.g., radar, missile guidance, shaped explosives, etc)

I don't really disagree with you, just asking.

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A suicide drone can be used to take out any individual anywhere on the planet, fully remotely and untraceably with minimal collateral damage, while radar, missles and explosives can't. The scenario depicted in the film below is getting closer to reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fa9lVwHHqg

Although the above is overdramatised, it's not unrealistinc.

Modern guided missiles are not essentially different that these drones. I guess the main difference is that these drones are intended to be cheap and disposable, while having a much shorter range.

I love this analogy. While Turkey can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy smart missiles, it innovated to protect herself.

Its allies used to rent drones for surveillance against terrorism, then used it as both a carrot and a stick. Now, Turkey has its own drones that regularly take down targets effectively, even some air defenses.

After Syrian war started and "modern western liberal democracies" failed to help with the refugee crises, those borders became even more treacherous.

"Protect herself" sounds funny when they're invading neighbours left and right.

We fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here."

Heard that before?

By that logic, the EU should invade Turkey.

Then her neighbors should stop harboring, training and hosting terrorists, no?

...and it is laughable to suggest EU will lift another finger for Greece after taking their wallet and vacationing with that money too

What terrorists is Greece harboring, and how is driving refugees to the border and forcing them to cross a solution to that?

Greece financing terrorists: https://www.counterextremism.com/threat/kurdistan-workers-pa... . Please scroll down to "Financing". They also have links to their sources.

As for refugees, they weren't forced. The border police just didn't stop them. I agree Erdogan coming on TV and yelling it out openly was a below-the-belt tactic and after that people started transporting refugees by the bus to the border.

Being on the side of Turkey in the Syria conflict cannot be the right side of history. Especially because they are now in control of Kurdish occupied lands in Syria. Saying that the Turkish government harbors a century-long paranoid animosity toward the Kurds is the understatement of the year.

Turkey's government is just the big despotic fish in the small geopolitical pool that is the Caucasus / Northwest Middle East. Finding cheap ways to kill is not a defensive strategy for the gov't.

Turkey is a major economy that can and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on missiles, so not really.

Drones are consumer level technology. This isn't very different from a high-end Mavic drone, except that someone mounted an explosive instead of a camera to it. On the other hand there is absolutely nothing that a regular consumer can buy that would reassemble a guided missile.

I agree. Technology trickles down the bank account spectrum. At first only nation states could do drones. Then smaller nation states could do drones. Then bigcos could do drones. Now we've got drones in consumers hands. It should come as no surprise that some nation states decide to use consumer quality and price drones for nation state purposes (their police probably patrol the streets with the same handguns consumers can buy). Just because it's trickled down doesn't mean it's not useful.

oh you should definitely checkout some of the more serious "hobby" rockets and launches. All it would need is some extra kick and some guidance. Hezbollah builds and launches even more basic missiles all the time, and hurts Israel all the time.

You can buy a jet engine and build a 700mph drone that can carry a payload. You can also buy a laser gyroscope, or use open source code to build a SLAM system for guidance.

So yes, a consumer can build a guided missile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k

I wonder what chance anyone has of stopping something like this. It can certainly carry an explosive and flying 50 or even 200 km is probably doable with a bit of a scaleup.

Not that I necessarily disagree with your opinion, but generally minimizing collateral damage is a good thing.

It is great when the use of a weapon is well thought out. The risk of collateral damage forces people to think twice before deploying these weapons though.

It's an interesting thought experiment as to whether there is a point of inflection where the risk of collateral damage is so little that it drives the opportunity for extra judicial killing too high.

> A suicide drone can be used to take out any individual anywhere on the planet, fully remotely and untraceably with minimal collateral damage, while radar, missles and explosives can't.

This just sounds like you're trying to persuade people on why drones are definitely the future of war.

They are going to be, doesn't matter what I say. The cost/kill is significantly lower with a small fully autonomous suicide drone carrying a small explosive. All it takes is a small drone (30$), a few grams of explosives and software to kill someone (anyone). I'm sure the software will get there.

Drones don’t have unlimited range. The ones in the article have a range of 6km. If there was really a war situation I imagine an EMP could disable them or a MOAB could just blow everyone up instead.

What, like this? https://www.foxnews.com/world/al-qaeda-secret-us-missile-kni...

Dunno about "untraceable" though, there's a long history of tracing munitions from fragments.

The difference is cost. Only states can afford R9Xs, and the costs will never come down significantly.

Private individuals will soon be able to afford automated drone swarms. Set it and forget it.

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