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Comment by jaco6 | Hacker News Reader

The concerns about it being a foreign power seem misplaced. Shouldn’t the main concern with drones be domestic terrorism? A civilian could easily buy a small fleet of drones, equip them with small IEDs or sarin gas, and fly them into otherwise secured areas with large crowds. Are there any procedures in place to prevent this?

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Wouldn't a novice likely die synthesizing the amount of sarin needed to kill a large group of people? Then attaching a disbursement mechanism to the drone to make it into a gaseous form, etc. Seems like a lot of high risk effort to maybe have it work.

As for IEDs, the drones used in the Ukraine war use what look to be very effective munitions, and they seem to be only effective against a single target really.

Is that really of concern?

And its not like drones that can carry things are cheap, nor is the way you are hypothesizing about them being used.

That's not true. They have drones that can drop multiple rpg warheads or grenades. Imagine a bunch of drones each with ten grenades dropping them over Times Square. I doubt there is anything the NYPD would be able to do.

Do you have any media of those drones that drop "multiple rpg warheads" so I can visualize how large they are?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga_(aircraft)

> A civilian could easily buy a small fleet of drones, equip them with small IEDs or sarin gas, and fly them into otherwise secured areas with large crowds.

Easy? Is sarin gas freely available at big-box retailers?

the synthetic precursors are.

Which?

All of the weaponized forms involve some pretty nasty flourinated precursor chemicals which themselves are quite toxic -- and controlled.

all of them. if you understand chemistry; nasty, quite toxic, and controlled are not barriers.

e.g. isopropyl alcohol.

Don't underestimate hackers. The internet is supercharging hobbyist hackers in many domains, including electronics, chemistry and bioengineering.

I doubt the precursors to nerve gases(the worst ones, anyway) are readily available, but they are probably a handful of undergrad-level reactions away from easily available chemicals.

> but they are probably a handful of undergrad-level reactions away from easily available chemicals.

It's a bit further than that, and all of the intermediate chemistry is toxic.

RC helicopters have been a thing for decades.

yeah there's a lot of very very skilled people in these kinds of hobbies. A large RC Airplane + Ardupilot can be turned into a cruise missile pretty easily. The HPR rocketry crowd can get past the karman line and active stabilization (basically guidance but just straight up) is a thing now so decent range surface-to-surface guided missiles are pretty doable technically. The fortunate thing is these people also care deeply about their hobby and, besides, they just aren't mass murderers.

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