Hacker News Reader

Comment by tshadley | Hacker News Reader

The context missed by the article is that Iranian drones are crude, low-tech, and cheap by most military standards, hence, made with only the cheapest and most widely available parts.

The article below estimates the Shahed-136 at $20,000. The Mohajer-6 probably isn't that much more.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-iranian-made-killer-drones...

But that's the economic-warfare genius of cheap drones: it [might] cost as much $500,000 to shoot down a $20,000 drone.

https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-...

View on HN

You might be surprised, from the pictures of the insides the Shahed drones have a software-defined radio (SDR) in them with a decently beefy FPGA and presumably some other similarly expensive chips on the analog side.

Certainly for the FPGA side you can make the case that these things are actually very, very rare in true consumer products (anything that sells in numbers they are the first thing to go off the BOM, at all costs). But they power an overwhelming number of military gadgets that don't have the unit numbers to be sensitive to their cost.

So yeah, today FPGA are an utter commodity item that are impossible to trace. But if you want sanctions like these to work, they probably shouldn't be.

The SDR for reference: https://i.imgur.com/oyexLez.jpg

I guess its using an FPGA as a foreign foundry won't fab something a custom one-way UAV signal processing chip for a sanctioned country & they don't have the technology to fab it themselves ?

And a discrete component version might not be realistically doable or too heavy/expensive.

They are currently mostly using machine guns mounted on LAT to shoot down Shaheds + tuned the detection system to figure out their location(crowdsourcing through app). That's why Iranian drones kinda stopped being a problem at all recently. And other valuable weaponry is spent more wisely rn.

Ukrainians claiming something doesn’t make it true. The effects speak for themselves.

Here's an example of “air defense doing it's job” that somehow ends with an explosion on the ground and lights going out: https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1610326116757114880

That video literally shows nearly a dozen objects being blown up. Yes, one makes it through and causes damage. No air defense is 100% unfortunately.

It also shows how shitty Russia is, continuing to bomb Kyiv when it's far from any military objective. And shows why we need to expedite Ukraine's victory.

That video shows various air defense systems trying and likely failing to intercept anything. Air bursts are not interceptions.

"Ukrainians claiming something doesn’t make it true"

Claiming what specifically?

"Here's an example of ..."

From how many examples? And what exactly do you see it's happening on the only video?

Asking just to understand what's the point you're trying to make.

Most of the cost of operating a $20k drone probably isn't the drone itself. Think transportation, maintenance, crew training, caring, and feeding, development, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com