Low-Cost Drone Add-Ons from China Let Anyone Turn Toys into Weapons of War | Hacker News Reader

Low-Cost Drone Add-Ons from China Let Anyone Turn Toys into Weapons of War

wired.com

32 pointsjstrieb28 comments

I feel the other commenters being dismissive of this are overlooking that there is massive proliferation risk with drone technology.

The next time a western country has a civil war, you can expect that one or both sides will be using drones, at least for surveillance if not for offense.

While it's true that the things on AliExpress could be built by a dedicated hobbyist, a typical large city would only have 100 to 1,000 people even capable of putting together a computer vision module in a couple of months' time. Selling a computer vision module on AliExpress puts that capability in the hands of anyone that wants it at the speed of FedEx.

> you can expect that one or both sides will be using drones, at least for surveillance if not for offense

How is this any different than the risk that is currently present? Surveillance technology, in this day and age is ubiquitous and cheap. Attaching it to a drone is convenient for the offense, sure, but the technology described in this article is only a marginal improvement to what a stock drone can provide.

> cameras that use object recognition to identify humans and road vehicles at long range

Is nothing more than a software improvement to a stock drone with a camera, but nobody complains about the massive proliferation of consumer drone devices.

This article, to me, reads like Red Scare propoganda. Regardless of where people are buying this technology, there are much more lethal "weapons of war" currently available to people with very little legal oversight (i.e. you can buy a semi-automatic rifle in most US states without a permit or background check).

Small, local law enforcement knows how to deal with people with guns (putting aside Uvalde) - that's one of the few things they are prepared for.

Investigating or preventing a small drone attack is probably way beyond even a large city's police force.

Isn’t the investigation difficulty a function of its novelty? I figure after the first few drone bombings cities will learn how to deal with them.

It's not clear to me how the police will track down who operated what drone, especially if the drone operator is several kilometers away, perhaps not even near the launch site, and even if caught, only has a controller and headset.

This is much more like the DC sniper than a typical gunman.

Also we're already looking at a) onboard autonomy, so control is not needed or b) rebroadcast hardware that runs over LTE or WiFi. Satellite comms on the way, at least for the civilian market.

the current risk are all government created highvtech artifacts. this has the potential to be as destabilising as the ak was fot teibal societies .

I’ve been thinking that the emergence of drone warfare may have a similar impact as the start of the Iron Age, when suddenly instead of needing complex networks of trade to acquire tin and copper to make expensive bronze weapons, cheaper and superior iron weapons became widely available to many groups that previously could not have afforded to arm themselves. There’s a compelling theory that this is what lead to the Bronze Age collapse.

No, it was the other way around; the famine of 1198 BC led to an economic collapse that lasted so long that most of the copper miners, tin miners, and smelters died off and didn't train their replacements. The uptick of ironworking came a few decades later.

Doonesbury: "Aha! The Hittites!" "You know their work?" "Complete degenerates. But tough to beat after they invented iron." https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1978/12/26

So the “weapons of war” in question are… cameras? But because those cameras are also used by the Russian military that means that China Bad? Meanwhile gun laws in the US would like to have a chat…

The modified drones have far more than cameras. This is more something like "You can buy a rocket, but supply your own warhead."

... which changes nothing. You can build a rocket in your kitchen with stuff you likely already have.

Not a good one that goes where you want.

You can build a gun in your garage but that does not mean it doesn't matter if they suddenly show up at your local web outlet for anyone to buy. That said the combination of a drone and a mobile phone with the right software already makes for a pretty effective weapons platform - just add weapons of course - so this was to be expected.

Cameras and fiber optic wire apparently

https://archive.is/20250320103959/https://www.wired.com/stor...

It's a shame that Slaughterbots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA) didn't have the intended impact and shortly after the video was released it seems that autonomous drones were used to hunt down humans Libya.

What's the defence against a swarm of drones apart from jamming them? If the drone is self-guided (very cheap these days), jamming wouldn't work anyway right?

Counter-drone or other ballistic interception?

EMP, strong winds, netting, lasers, and trained hawks

Or what's the defense for high end autonomous drones that doesn't even need operator for terminal guidance. Getting drones to terrain hug also circumvents alot of interception methods on the horizon.

> What's the defence against a swarm of drones apart from jamming them?

It's the same as the defense against a large air raid, except the targets are a little different:

+ Size of targets + Speed of targets + Altitude of targets

Fiber optic cabling is definitely a bigger lift but the idea that the mount to drop something from a drone is something that is difficult for anybody with even a bit of knowledge seems like fear mongering. I mean it's a 3D print and servo away for any appropriately sized drone.

As someone who just picked up flying FPV drones (very fun) I do fear these may turn illegal before long.

the fear mongering is real with this article, sheesh.

anything can be a "weapon of war" if desired. actors are using broken up bike chains for shrapnel in IEDs. is my huffy a weapon of war? :/

But it's not fear-mongering. It's not exaggeration.

So, it's a real concern.

It absolutely is both fear mongering and exaggerations. The two things the article talks about is cameras and fiber optic wire. Hardly weapons of war.

I agree. Both items are only useful in situations where extensive jamming is happening.

The far more dangerous thing would be explosives and those are not available from the listed sources. Weapons of war don’t do much if they don’t go boom.

Drones, artillery, and cruise missiles/air-to-surface missiles are the most effective weapons in the biggest modern non-insurgency war of the past decade (Ukraine).

Small arms (guns) and tanks are not.

A bike chain or your huffy is also not. Care to point to a source suggesting broken up bike chains have been a big part of the most recent, modern military war?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com