German chancellor’s drone “attack” shows the threat of weaponized UAVs | Hacker News Reader

German chancellor’s drone “attack” shows the threat of weaponized UAVs

arstechnica.com

43 pointswallflower49 comments

This was staged by the german pirate party. They wanted to "take pictures" / draw attention to the surveillance issue.

The incident wasn't discussed in terms of being a threat in german media. Merkel was photographed smiling as the drone crashed down in front of her.

They would have been more effective if they had 50-100 individually-controlled quadcopters, and had them hover near specific individuals, looking at facial expressions, phone screens, gestures, etc. Crashing the drone at the guy's feet makes them seem harmless, or even hapless.

> The drone was harmless, aside from potential political collateral damage to Merkel's Christian Democratic Party, and the pilot of the drone was released after being briefly held by police.

Can you imagine where this guy would be right now if he had attempted this near President Obama?

Gitmo. But Europeans are generally a bit more reluctant to freak on non-existing threats than US (not impossible though).

And you just don't have grounds on which to accuse him - flying drones is legal, he didn't endanger anyone and it was a prank.

Drones are sensational but a deer rifle with a scope is going to be a much bigger threat for a long time to come. RC planes were available in '63 but I doubt Lee Harvey Oswald considered one of those.

You can stop "drones" like these with a simple net if they really become a problem.

You're thinking short term. DARPA was already testing drones that can see who you are from 1.8 KM above.

See http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-01/darpa-can-s.... 17500 feet is about 5km, but the video does not indicate that this can see "who you are", although it is close enough for tracking persons.

I wonder why they released that video, though. Do they need more funding? Is it semi-faked to scare off would-be villains? Are the real things way better, and is this a diversion?

lol @ the countermeasures being high tech lasers.

Spray them with water or vegetable oil. Water is easiest - just use a high pressure hose to knock them out of the sky / potentially break flight-critical components. Oil requires some special equipment but would presumably ruin the propellers/rotors.

>> Spray them with water or vegetable oil.

And what happens when the Prez, PM or Pope is at a rally and 10+ UAVs at the size of small birds start buzzing around? Remember, they are people around, even the sniper has to worry about what his bullet will hit next.

It's water. I think the people will be fine.

Not trying to be purposefully antagonistic but water can cause some serious harm when fired out of a high-pressure hose (e.g. the types used in riot "control" situations).

Fly the drone low enough and you have people in the "firing" line.

EDIT - (although, I hope they would realise they do not need the same level of pressure to knock a drone out of the sky. On the other hand, they have the cannons anyway so they might just use those to save having to have a smaller "anti-drone" one.)

The best, and soon only, good defense against terrorism is a society where people don't want to become terrorists. You guys are thinking in completely wrong terms by worrying about countermeasures. You could create 10 grenade-wielding UAVs, set them for a pre-programmed course above the crowd, out of reach of everyone, and set them off almost immediately. Water cannons, oil cannons or any other countermeasure would be useless. This attack is dirt cheap, incredibly destructive and you don't even need a depressed individual to commit suicide to do it. It could be run from any outside location within a couple of kilometers from the target.

The only long-term solution against terrorism is to just make sure that people's options in society are good enough that they won't resort to blowing things up. This is also the only sustainable way of fighting crime, which any reasonable study will show you.

I'm from Norway, we recently had a terrorist attack that was bigger than 9/11 in relation to our population size. So I'm not saying this as some cold outsider who doesn't see what problems the United States is facing. This is the way things should be handled.

How dare you endanger 200-300 Billion industry with your pleas for sanity. Think of the jobs, think of the political careers, think of the media ... what will the media do if when the next time they call for the president to address the nation because 19 year old set his pants on fire and are laughed out of existence. The current landscape is good at unraveling the social network. But it is oh so profitable.

Shame on you sir, for living in advance society, that deals rationally when confronted with a statistically insignificant event of high emotional impact. Shame!!!

On an unrelated note, where can I get your citizenship?

If I knew there were 100 veggie-oil cannons on a stadium ready to protect the populace, I'd join a kickstarter campaign to attack that stadium just to see what 100k people covered in oil looks like. I'm equally enthused by the idea of a fire engine following the Prez' car around, or by the Secret Service agents carrying two guns: an Uzi and a water pistol. I do suggest colouring the oil in red, white and blue just for a bit of extra pizzazz.

The future just got brighter!

I wonder how hard it would be to taser a quadcopter.

So the counter measures are more deadly and dangerous than the threat. As usual. One of this combined with red eye detection and a flash could blind a thousand people in a heartbeat.

The threat is not in a single one of them, the threat is in drone swarms. We (as in: the general public, I'm quite sure secluded labs have working prototypes) don't have the technical details figured out, but in 5 years, it will be possible for a swarm of 100's of these things to appear out of nowhere (from backpacks, rooftops, garbage cans, sewer drains) and, blitzkrieg style, overwhelm even largish targets within minutes. It will take very sophisticated counter measure technology to correctly identify, isolate and attack a sufficiently large part of such a swarm; technology that will not be available at the time motivated amateurs will be able to deploy such weapons.

These are interesting times to live in, indeed.

Aw, come on. I've got an inanimate bar of tungsten on my desk that's more dangerous than a hypothetical drone swarm. 'Overwhelm largish targets', what, like people are 'overwhelmed' by flocks of pigeons?

You're just in love with the technology.

> It will take very sophisticated counter measure technology to correctly identify, isolate and attack a sufficiently large part of such a swarm

Or, you know... nets.

Or just use a slingshot. Even kids used to have it.

It is really depressing that we live in a society where our first instinct is to think "what would happen if someone strapped a bomb to that".

In contrast, in Germany this wass a prank, and only about surveillance. And the police let the guy go after a short interrogation.

The blog Marginal Revolution considered the question a few months ago: "What is the political equilibrium when insect-sized drone assassins are available?"

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/06/wha...

Adapting my comment from there:

One possibility is that in the future, high-status (and thus also high-office) can only be safely held by pseudonymous cryptographic identities that can’t be linked to soft, locatable, assassination-prone meatspace bodies.

Note that this also makes it possible for a high-status identity/officeholder to be a branded collective (or AI) that continues beyond the death of any its members.

So, potential news from that future:

The Supreme Court, on a 5-4 ruling authored by Chief Justice @CyberJeffersonian_7, rejected the suspiciously-late election returns from Puerto Marte, throwing the 2096 election to Senator @Verax1983 over Governor @Locke2001, in the closest Electoral College contest since Bush-Gore in 2000.

From his/her undisclosed location, President-Elect @Verax1983 praised the ruling and again denied allegations that he/she has been a software-only entity for the last 17 years.

I, for one, welcome our new pseudonymous overlords.

This will bring new meaning to the "we are legion" motto.

This makes the current setup look so innocent. Probably we should enjoy till it lasts.

And in conclusion - future politicians will be banned from using Google+

I see some Enders Game references in there.

You may very well be right about your future vision, I'd love to be a fly on a wall somewhere in 2100.

You might be able to do that, If Brain-Machine interfaces become advanced enough.

This sort of thing could be done almost as easily without the drone. For example, the 1991 Mortar attack on the British Prime Minister:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_mortar_attack

It's worth noting that his response was "democracies cannot be intimidated by terrorism". Our current politicians are more craven.

If Battlefield 3 has taught me anything, someone is going to strap a brick of C4 to one soon enough.

I know quadcopters are very sensitive to weight, and a 10oz (285g) quadcopter could probably not carry more than a 1oz (28g) payload. How destructive is 1oz (28g) of C4?

I want to see the destructive potential of a quantity of C4 graphed against its weight.

Someone (T.E. Lawrence?) said that beginners overestimate the amount of explosives needed to accomplish any given task.

That said, a standard-issue hand grenade weighs something like 450 g, of which 150 g is explosives. The shrapnel travels out to 15 m. I think the verdict is that with 30 g of payload an assassin needs to aim really well.

So most of the destructive power of grenades comes from the shrapnel? (I'm remembering a photo of a grenade cut in half.) What would that 150g of explosives do without the shrapnel shell?

How much shrapnel would a 285g quadcopter generate? What would be the effect of an external explosion on the lithium battery?

>What would that 150g of explosives do without the shrapnel shell?

Most likely lower the kill zone < 5m, though if one wanted to not sacrifice that and shave off some weight they could use ceramic ball bearings[0].

[0] http://www.ebay.com/itm/10-pcs-Ceramic-Diff-Balls-Si3N4-5-32...

C4 in a carbon-fiber tube with an open end plugged with wax and ball bearings would make a hell of a political statement.

Even shotgun shells, if you prefer your weaponization pre-fab.

Kinetic energy might be enough to do some serious harm. Or imagine putting a knife in front and via!

But they'll probably buy larger drones, take out some parts /weight and replace it with c4.

I'd never thought of stabbing someone with a drone. How much pressure does it take to puncture the average human's skin? How fast can a quadcopter fly? How much does a steak knife weigh? We can build the future weapons of war...

Less than you think unless you hit a rib or bone. But if you are really nasty just put pressure operated container that fires a poison into the body http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarian_umbrella style. Depending on the payload they won't save him even if he is in ER the moment he gets shot.

You don't even need a knife, you already have several of them - spinning. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2413231/Roman-Piroze... - "... was pulling a stunt with the chopper at a Brooklyn park Thursday afternoon when he lost control and the RC device flew into his head. The blades sliced off a piece of his skull and slashed his throat."

It could be carried by an African quadcopter.

Friend just bought a hexacopter for photography. I'm sure it carries more than that. Or this octacopter that carries beer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=janur7RJwm0

Or this jet. Going to need a railgun for this thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTHWBSluUjU&feature=player_em...

Try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ttSwYNspw

There was a similar politically-motivated drone "attack" against Gary Kasparov 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0

Oh great, a lot of fear-mongering about to happen.

We honestly can't defend against all of these things--might as well simply try to structure society to be resilient in the face of inevitable attacks, and try not to make such things desirable to anybody even remotely sane.

No fear mongering going on here. As i wrote earlier, the incident wasn't discussed in terms of being a threat in the german media.

Also, the pilot of the drone was only briefly arrested for disturbing the rally and released hours later by the police. After conducting an examination of the drone, the police concluded that it posed no threat. case closed.

Just read the linked article. Talk of deploying ground-to-air missile systems or gun turrets against drones at public events, etc. You can be sure the billion dollar defense contractor industry is salivating at the 'threat' and will spend the money to make us all believe in it.

The obvious solution of course is to move all the people (except select few) underground for their own safety.

I'm going to be in any one of the following businesses:

- light guides

- vitamin D pills

- solaria

The Computer is your friend.

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