Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrewADesign | Hacker News Reader

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!

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

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

That's right. It is just thin glass.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com