Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmitch3020 | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised this isn't already happening in Ukraine. They could fly small surveillance drones deep in enemy territory, perch on a power line, and send back lots of data. Not just video, but also sound and triangulating signals. This would also be useful in fog by monitoring major roads where high altitude drones and satellites would be obstructed.

View on HN

I'm not like a drone-i-ologist or nothin, but from what I gather, both sides have gotten really good at detecting and jamming drone communication in the Ukraine/Russia conflict, which would probably make that a tough use case. I've read that the newer attack drones are controlled by a reaaallly long, reaaalllyy thin fiber optic line!

The idea would be to use autonomous drones, so they wouldn't need to communicate, the problem would be that the GPS signal is jammed.

If they're not communicating, how are they sending back lots of data?

I presume these are surveillance drones and are programmed to loop back to origin

Surveillance gathered by an completely autonomous drone with no outside data, stationed far enough away to require refueling, close enough to enemy operations to be useful, that then needs to make its way back to origin, intact, through hostile territory, quickly enough for the gathered information to be useful, seems like a preeeetty big lift. Something a startup would promise to tackle with a star team of technologists over the course of like 10 years? Sure. Something they’d have designed within the past, like, year while getting shot at? I’d have to see that believe it.

A jammed drone that's perched on a power line wouldn't fall out of the sky, and doesn't need to transmit 24x7, only when it detects some activity. The lack of a signal from it would itself be a signal of where the next attack is coming from. Anti-jamming weapons (missiles and autonomous drones) would also be useful, that lock on to any signal jamming sources and deliver the munitions directly to the target that's advertising itself.

Those fiber optic lines only work 50-60% of the time. Often the drones are carried 20km on foot into position which sucks as you know half the equipment on your back won't work.

How do they not work? Just fail in transmitting data completely? Do you have a link to learn more about this?

Cable breaks

Well, there's a difference between breaking and being broken. I wouldn't say 33% of all B-17s "didn't work" because they were shot down.

Also, those drones are essentially guided projectiles, and not even particularly expensive ones at that. What percentage of projectiles do you imagine successfully connect with their targets in combat?

That's exactly what I mean though. If you miss the target with your rifle, would you call that "bullet not working"?

Yeah I completely agree with everything you said.

That's right. It is just thin glass.

Where did you see that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJDkG9bBvms

Thanks, that must be a pretty interesting person to interview. I'll check it out.

New attack models are using shielded electronics that don't need GPS and are immune to traditional jamming. Relying on computer vision and old school navigation math.

Go ~X speed for Y distance(+/-) on Z heading until you reach A landmark and then start a new set of instructions.

I’m interested in reading up on that. Where did you see it?

You can take a look into inertial navigation systems and then also terrain mapping

Everything I’ve found about the drones in that conflict indicates they use automated navigation for pursuit once a target is locked, but human pilots before then.

you described two different steps: human pilots get to desired area and target locked. For the human part, if the drone isn't using fiber optic and is getting jammed (many types of jamming), the human pilot might not be able to communicate with the drone. If that's the case, how will the drone get to the desired area? that's where the two things i posted come into play.

I understand the technology and the purpose, in context. I’m curious about how they’re actually using this stuff because I haven’t seen anywhere say that they actually are.

Yeah, but not in ukraine. They brute forced fiber, fly by wire.

Dead reckoning via inertial sensors, cameras, etc are way to complex for the flight controllers without heavier hardware since theyre hugely inefficient.

AI at the sophistication to do this stuff is essentially bloatware. Like running electron instead of a bare metal gui.

At the end of WW2 the very same happened. As if they didn't learn from history. Well, that are Chinese drones, which weren't part of the signals war then.

The problem is signal jamming which forced using fiber.

So the limit isnt batteries, its fiber spools.

as soon as it sends RF it'll be located and destroyed.

There has been lots of work to make fibre connected drones, so that they can't be located as easily (also the pilot)

There's also powerline communication that these drones could use, relaying a signal to a second drone perched back in friendly territory. And if the military is going around blowing up all of their power transmission lines, that's also going to hurt them.

How many intact and tactically relevant cross border transmission lines between Ukraine and Russia can there be?

Use the transmission lines to link up with an RF node to hand off. Friendly territory might just be some place without good Russian internal security coverage (perhaps deeper in Russia rather than towards the front lines if the node uses satcom).

A friend of mine worked on a covert comms system for the Rangers to use in the Battle For Berlin that thankfully never occurred. The idea was to clamp onto plumbing, fences, and similar infrastructure where possible. Nodes with radios handed off to other comms systems. It worked reasonably well in tests but I don't know that it went anywhere, point is that the theory is sound.

Reminds me of the barb wire telephones

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41412221

I wonder if the power line could be damaged if they dry to take out the drone?

Why not lasers through the air?

Line of sight only, alignment is very hard, and if youre near the where its pointing you light up like a christmas tree

> you light up like a christmas tree

Perfect for Christmastime

The radio links and navigation are the hard parts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com