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Comment by formvoltron | Hacker News Reader

Can the creator of these supply to Ukraine? They are using anti aircraft weapons to take down drones. the anti aircraft weapons obviously better saved for aircraft.

https://ukrspecsystems.com/ these guys are a Ukrainian based drone maker, with contact info on the page. I'm sure they would be able to get these anti drone drones onto the battlefield. Could help Ukraine win the war.

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The UAVs that Ukraine is targeting with anti-aircraft weapons aren't the kind that can be disabled with a net launched from a racing drone. They're large military aircraft.

Yes. I don't know the size of Russian drones but the infamous U.S. MQ-1 Predator drone is about the size of a Learjet, for example.

A predator is more in the Cessna/ultralight territory. A reaper though is in the Learjet range.

But yes Russian military drones are in the same niche as American military drones.

Good correction, you're right. The Predator has significantly more wingspan than a Cessna but is about the same length, and actually weighs less. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/article/1044...

The problem with the word "Drone" is that it's been used to mean everything, from the $5 toy that hovers above your hand, the $3000 VR Headset racing models, the military versions of the same that serve as recon tools, the modern man-portable-anti-tank weapons like the Switchblade [1] , to full-sized ground attack airplane replacements like the Predator. It's insane that they've all been lumped under a single label.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Switchblade

Drones are aircraft.

They are aircraft that is cheaper than anti-aircraft rockets normally used. One shot from anti-aircraft system cost 50-200k depending. This is great when the target costs 50 million, but drones costs start from 1k.

If the target is trying to kill you, this calculus is less relevant.

You're right, but it can become significant, actually. And the target needn't try to kill you directly, it's enough that it can relay your position to a competent artillery unit.

The Israeli Iron Dome is intercepting unguided ("dumb") rockets and shells that cost $500-$1500 each using missiles that cost ~$100k or more each. Had Hamas decided to launch 100 per day for a month it would exhaust the capacity fairly quickly. Ofc this kind of an action would reignite the war, but points at the problem with air defense systems.

In fact I don't think there's a practical solution against an enemy that has cheap, non jammable drones with a very high density, like 1 per soldier or more. There's just no way to counter that, and cheap military drones start at $5k-$10k, so it is feasible to achieve this level of density.

It seems the practical solution that both Isreal and ukraine have thankfully found themselves with is to get someone else to foot the bill. That might not even be an unusual solution in a world of proxy wars

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