Wasp Flamethrower Drone Attachment | Hacker News Reader

Wasp Flamethrower Drone Attachment

throwflame.com

39 pointsmooreds44 comments

We are getting to the technological capability/availability stage where drone based terror attacks are a real threat... Imagine a swarm of drones with 9mm handguns, flamethrowers, bombs, acid, etc... Multiple operators that can't be killed because they are far away. Terrifying!

I imagine the government has plans to prevent this like how they close airspace near big events or employing drone jamming technology around a perimeter for large events. Idk this all just scares me a bit. Does anybody smarter have a good point of re-assurance? This just seems much more capable to do large amounts of damage where the operator may still feel "safe" which lowers barrier to entry.

Drone jamming technology? What are they doing, jamming the entire 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies? Seems like it would jam everything else nearby too. Sounds like total BS to me... If I was doing something shady, I certainly wouldn't use the default frequencies. You're already doing something illegal with the drone, why would you care about keeping inline with the FCC regulations? The entire spectrum is yours to use.

Not to mention, if the drones were fully autonomous, they don't even need to be run by a remote control.

Type “drone jamming” into YouTube.

Self piloting and target detection is enough to make it useless.

Or tiny little ones with nothing but a single needle. Now a cloud of 50 of those that approach from all directions at once.

50? Think 50000.

Well I was thinking about a single person, and it would be hard to stage 50000 of anything without being noticed.

Part of what makes drones so scary is how you have no effective way to defend against them, and part of that is not being able to see them coming.

You can see 50000 coming. You can defend against 50000 by getting inside a structure.

Oh ya think? Drones with explosive ordnance have been used in terror attacks for years now. You should be scared.

But really you should be thankful you don’t live somewhere that the US feels it can drop hellfire missiles from predator drones with zero regard for collateral damage.

The terrorists have had a pretty damn good reason to start using drones. We did it first.

It's definitely a real, known threat. DARPA and friends have been working on their own swarm technology for years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W34NPbGkLGI

> Does anybody smarter have a good point of re-assurance?

I'm not very smart, but I don't think you need to worry about drones using the linked flamethrower attachment: in order to buy from the website, the terrorist needs to click the "Agree" checkbox that says "I understand that operating a drone or UAS in the US with this attachment would require a Part 107 Waiver."

This page has some information about operating drones over people: https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/operations_over... . That page says "the remote pilot must take steps using a safety risk-based approach to ensure that ... the small UAS is not operated in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another (§ 107.23)". So IIUC, I think it's likely that the FAA would deny the application for the Part 107 Waiver, and the terrorist wouldn't be able to use it.

Hope that helps!

I’m 99% sure you’re joking… but since this is the internet, I’ll say it explicitly: obviously the terrorist would check the box, never bother applying for FAA waiver, and fly the drone anyway.

That would be breaking the law, however, which is against the law.

Much like the beloved US Visa question "are you a terrorist? y/n"

I'm shocked people aren't using drones for graffiti.

Drones + spray paint can reach anything and escape with impunity.

Thoughtful idea, I've also been thinking about that for a long time but surprised it hasn't happened yet. I've never tried to tackle the tech but I'm guessing it must be hard to execute it with the precision necessary for good results.

I bet a large part of the graffiti scene, would see that as cheating as you would remove huge chunks of the danger. As an armchair psychologist, I know it's not the art that attracts teenage boys to graffiti.

Anti drone technology is actually a pretty decent sized market right now and there's plenty of options. I'm not an expert, but I've got a buddy who is into this stuff and we've talked about this before. According to him, some companies are using high powered lasers and microwaves to destroy the drones from distance. Others offer ways to either mess up the drones GPS and send it off course or hack into the drone and take control of it. More than a few companies make large net guns that can be fired to take the drones down and I've heard of companies who train eagles to knock them out of the air.

I definitely think it's a threat, but I think it's a well known threat at this point and something that is accounted for for large events. I doubt it's anymore likely than any other type of terrorist attack.

For a glimpse into how complicated this is, take a look at how Israel has been dealing with Hezb and Iranian drones. They're very hard and expensive to defeat and fairly effective unless you're willing to put full time air patrols in the sky

We were once enjoying a nice picnic in a park when it started raining bees.

It turned out their was a drone above us attracting bees (not sure if it was the sound or if it had disturbed something), and every time a bee got struck by a propeller it would fall down onto us.

So a flamethrower may not even be necessary! Poor bees :(

Check out the Thermonator robot on this site:

https://throwflame.com/products/thermonator-robodog/

Ok, so what's the actual, legitimate use case for this thing?

They show it lighting random fires, which doesn't seem like a good thing to do unless you also have a crew of firefighters handy... and those don't come flying on on drones.

They show it torching a wasp's nest, but that seems to be the most overkill way of doing that.

And then there's this (https://youtu.be/07rtBip9ixk?si=HA8yddntggntGv92&t=60), where they appear to be torching a power line. Why?

Drones with flamethrowers are used to de-ice power lines. Can’t see why an individual would need one.

> They show it torching a wasp's nest

Note that in some countries, wasps are protected and torching a nest like this (or in any other way) is actually illegal.

Yes, but what about a tiny flamethrower for shooting down wasps (and hornets, mosquitoes, etc)?

Or arson?

This seems like it could be entirely undetectable.

Undetectable in what sense? The scream of the drone props or the fuel residue left behind?

There's a tiny catapult that yeets pies at insects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J__V7AyXWY8

> I take full responsibility for obtaining the necessary licenses and waivers to operate a drone or UAS with the TF-19 WASP attachment. I understand that operating a drone or UAS in the US with this attachment would require a Part 107 Waiver. *

Coming to a Russian trench in Ukraine soon*

Seriously though... the explosion of drone tech thanks to Russian aggression in ukraine is a somewhat terrifying glimpse into the future of war.

Flame-throwing drones have been deployed widely by Ukrainians since late August this year (and sporadic experiments have been done before), e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00-ngEj5Q9k. Russians are quickly catching up, as well.

For the most part, if it is something to do with drones that has any practical military use and does not require a massive budget, you can assume that someone in Ukraine is already doing or at least prototyping it.

Could this be used for controlled burns in forests?

I think this is indeed invented for controlled burns in fighting bush fires

So do I.

As someone who lives next to a large, very flammable forest, it's kind of worrying that someone might be able to use this or something like it for uncontrolled burns.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, gas cans are way cheaper and more effective/scalable.

This should be outright banned from dry western states

Very illegal in US per FAA rules.

This is indeed the evil timeline.

guys will see this and just think "hell yeah"

it will be my emotional support flamethrower.

This would be pretty useful for when my neighbors are playing the wrong sort of music in their back yard

So humans can torch wasps and/or kill/cull any "nuisance" animals they wish using advanced technology because? We're more intelligent than they are?

So would it be fair game for an "AI" or alien race to cull the human nuisance using advanced technology because they are more intelligent than humans?

Asking for an instance of a friend. He's a friend of Roko.

> So humans can torch wasps

The name of the device is supposed to evoke the threatening nature of the insect. Not necessarily its intended use. Sadly, my first thought was of humans using it on one another.

However - yes, we often kill nuisance animals like wasps and while I can't imagine a drone filling that need, if there were better tech for removing pests like wasps when they nest somewhere inconvenient for humans, we should probably take advantage of that new tech.

Roko's basilisk seems like a fun concept to entertain the mind but one that can't be taken too seriously until it itself is taken seriously.

> So would it be fair game for an "AI" or alien race to cull the human nuisance using advanced technology because they are more intelligent than humans?

Well, feel free to tell them they're not allowed to because you've decided that it doesn't comply with your chosen code of ethics.

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