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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

Beyond the limitations mentioned in the article (shortish range, reduced payload capacity), these drones also leave behind a trail pointing directly at wherever they were launched from.

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This is a consideration, but not a deal breaker. Most weapons leave a signature (though to be fair, usually much more transient) of the launch location. Artillery has to operate under the threat of counterbattery radar and fires. I'm certain the Russian operators have figured out acceptable mitigations.

Depending on how you want to count either the Chechens or the Soviets invented a sophisticated method called Shoot-and-Scoot [1]. I wager this method also works great for drone operators.

You're not going to respool that wire anyways, those drones either find their way back autonomously or all have to find a target. After the attack just cut the wire and leave. You just have to be extra careful not to be detected before the attack.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot-and-scoot

Shoot and scoot doesn’t work with lots of drones near front line. You will be most vulnerable when you “scoot” actually. You need to dig in well instead

Based on their endless meat wave attacks, I'm pretty sure we know what their "acceptable mitigations" are.

Unless you get some magically high quality camera on your own drones, the only realistic way to follow this trail is on foot. You can't just guide artillery or missiles to the other end of the wire, and if the Drone was launched over the frontline - there is little to do about it. And nothing stops the operator from pulling at least a part of the wire back, even if it's ripped in the middle - the trail is gone.

They could shine a very bright light into the fiber and see which tree lights up on the other end, at night :D

I mean, mostly joking, but maybe an IR beam could actually be visible to a night vision equipped drone?

It's surprising how hard it is to find low-diameter fibre if it drops off the desk, never mind through undergrowth.

Of course, if it was monomolecular wire [0] you'd just encircle the opposition and reel in the loop, cutting them in two (horizontally).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomolecular_wire

It's hard to track a sliver of transparent 0.125mm optic fiber back to the operator, unless you're doing it Ariadne's-thread-style - but you'd have to find it first (post explosion).

That seems solvable with a payload of a transceiver that is dropped outside the range of the jammer. Then you only need a spool as long as the radius of the jammer + some margin.

If it's not a problem for the TOW-2 anti-tank missiles using wire guidance mentioned in the article, why would be a problem for these drones?

If it was me programming it, I would program it to cut off the cable and fly off diagonally into the air and scoot as far as possible.

Who says the base needs to be a ground station? You could have a hot air balloon above the drones.

Because your opponent will thank you for the nice juicy target and you will not only lose your drone but also all the others tethered to your carrier.

As opposed to a ground station that costs a lot more and can’t be moved?

I suppose you could have a mobile ground-based launcher though.

A normal car or motorcycle

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