Also I'd really expect HN of all places to understand why banning what is basically computer vision based targeting systems is absurd.
My thought is that ransomware is seeing a resurgence because corporations are increasingly internetworked and hybridized with the global internet, because they have to be. So ransomware has begun to outweigh espionage as a method for extracting money from corporations.
Drones (as used so far, in the remote suicide version) solve a key problem many states have: lack of effective tactical ISR. The US and major powers do not have this problem.
Autonomous drones solve... what problem?
My inclination is that they'll deliver the same value as current-gen ML systems: mass, automated intelligence collection & basic analysis. As well as continuous monitoring and triggering on a pre-configured event (e.g. truck leaves this building, launch missile).
Killing something, once you know what and where it is, is not a problem most militaries have.
Training and paying and allocating large numbers of soldiers to do basic intelligence trawling is absolutely a problem most militaries have.
I think you see this in the US drone approach evolution. Shifting from a single vehicle approach to a survivable system with attritable assets communicating back through stealth communication hubs. Because persistence is the real value.
It would be if there was a real war with a lot of things at once. That statement is only true for peacetime "executive action" wars with a 100:1 force ratio. It is an auxiliary role that has little to do with how things would go if there was a war between somewhat equal powers.
The lessons of enforcing foreign policy on ten people who live in a country with neutral diplomatic status will probably not apply if you change the number ten or the neutral diplomatic status.
Which makes sense, because cruise missiles cost less than radar systems.
And I question whether "build one more drone" is an economically superior answer vs "build one more smart bomb."
This bit NATO forces in Libya[1], for example.
Building drones may well be more scalable and economically viable than smart bombs. Consider a multiuse drone that could be utilized for battlefield recon with its camera, or the user snaps something akin to a BLU-108[2] smart munition onto the bottom of the chassis and now they have a remote controlled smart anti-tank weapon. The drone being multi use could increase the use cases, increasing the order size, decreasing the unit cost.
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some...
> Building drones may well be more scalable and economically viable than smart bombs
That's the heart of the matter. Is it, or isn't it? And for what? The commentary usually glosses over this.
E.g. what's the difference between a JSOW-ER deploying CBU-103s / BLU-108s or a "drone"?
I think the more important future distinctions are going to be between attritable/simple vs expensive/capable platforms, temporary vs persistent platforms, and organic autonomy vs network-reliant. Where some combination of the qualities is optimal for any particular mission.
As an example: Is a mid-air refuelable X-61 without organic sensors but carrying smart munitions a cruise missile or a drone?
For those on the receiving end, I can't imagine its anything more than an academic distinction.
For the forces using such items, it could come down to doctrine, or funding fights. It could be that lawmakers approving budgets will find it more palatable to approve a big purchase of 'drones' instead of 'smart cluster munitions'.
I expect we'll see a profusion of new devices marketed as either, or both, depending on the use case and the audience. It may be that the definition will never really be nailed down.
> I think the more important future distinctions are going to be between attritable/simple vs expensive/capable platforms, temporary vs persistent platforms, and organic autonomy vs network-reliant. Where some combination of the qualities is optimal for any particular mission.
I absolutely agree.
They were acting like moving air-landmines. They key part of this is that they are super cheap to make (cost of a car), and operate, and work autonomously. Thousands of them launched, can wreck havock even on a sophisticated military like the US of Russia.
That's why there is a return of modernized cheaper ww2 type of anti aircraft guns.
China’s New Air Defense System Looks Similar To American ‘Stryker’ SHORAD https://eurasiantimes.com/chinas-new-air-defense-system-look...
That describes Azerbaijan and Armenia's war precisely.
> work autonomously
The TB2 [0] is not capable of autonomous engagement. It's remotely operated for weapons release. And half its key components rely on foreign technology (regardless of what Turkey claims).
The Israeli Harop platform [1] does have autonomous engagement, but intended for the S/DEAD role and is in a different class of technical sophistication and price.
Calling Russian export military equipment "sophisticated" is a bit of a stretch, considering modern delivered models are circa-1995 designs, only recently realized.
Maybe 30 years ago, but they haven't been able to even afford to modernize their own forces, and basically lost 20 years of progress to post-Soviet upheaval and kleptocracy.
We'll see what happens when drones go up against a military keeping pace with the times.
On the contrary, I would expect a site with a usersbase that screams incessantly about "privacy" and has an intense hatred of data-mining dark patterns, dislikes opaque ML models, would be against the lack of privacy and data-mining culminating in an execution by the state.
You'll still see them used in targeted assassinations and some countries will have illegal military stockpiles, but that's very different from these things being treated like regular guns/ammo, being commercially available or legal to build.