Hacker News Reader

Comment by originalvichy | Hacker News Reader

If your country is an adversary of China, I would be scared. I've seen videos on YouTube of how the drones from Chinese drone light shows take off and return to their launch areas. They have remarkable accuracy.

View on HN

These generally just use RTK and a base station; nothing interesting and extremely easily rejected by EW (since they need both accurate global positioning signal _and_ RTK signal).

Inside-out SLAM strategies and on-device ML are much more interesting and are starting to trickle into COTS drones. For example, the latest DJI drones all use SLAM for return-to-home even when GPS denied: https://www.facebook.com/reel/440875398703491 , and the latest Matrice 4 enterprise drones also have end-user ML model runtimes that can fine-tune flight plans using user-provided logic.

Inside-out last-second targeting is also very popular in Ukraine, with off-the-shelf "find the nearest car/person in analog video, lock to it on signal lost, and send Betaflight MSP stick commands to hit it" modules readily accessible on Aliexpress.

We do that in the US as well, it’s just more regulated (for some reason)

But the US can't manufacture them at the scale china can.

Why would you? A glide kit for a Mk84 has twice the range, 100x the payload and the same price tag. The warfighting America does isn't rooted in that domain (even if you can argue drones are smarter).

Drones will be fine for defending territory that you already control.

China has no intention of attacking a distant country besides taking control of Taiwan in 2027.

If GPS geolocation makes you scared then don't look up what America did when we invented the JDAM...

It’s not GPS geolocation, it’s the fact that the use of supply chains for injecting a container filled with drones is easier to sneak in when you’re a massive exporter like China. Nukes might already be flying before China has to resort to these tactics against the US, but there are other potential victims like Taiwan or other neighbours who can have major hubs and infrastructure damaged like this before a major attack.

Boards don't hit back.

Eh that's easy enough with inertial or ground navigation and some kind of beacon on the charging bay, the hard part is in enemy territory under the fog of war, jamming, and spotting targets on the fly.

If the drones are self-guided there's nothing to jam[1], and what can you do after spotting a swarm of drones? Shoot $5m missiles at each one of them?

Not to mention DJI has AESA radars on $8000 agricultural drones. COTS drones withsensors + sensor fusion on par with best smart munitions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com