Military exercise Black Dart to tackle nightmare drone scenario

Id imagine a drone based short ranged flak weapon would be rather effective.

Thinking about it though, i could get absolutely burried in details rrying to think of counters and counters-to-counters haha.

I get the feeling you want something tough enough to take down the drone but not penetrating enough to be any danger to the concrete containment building.

Thinking about it, shotgun shells should work. Flechette rounds would probably be a good choice.

I'd bet 15g of explosives right at the rotor of a helicopter or intake of an airplane would be catastrophic.

How about 15g consisting of a potent toxin and a spray nozzle?

You might as well shoot somebody if you are going to try to land a drone with c4 on their head

Well this little video says it shows twice that amount, 1 oz, (https://youtu.be/AwyniA5ryhY?t=40) for what that is worth. Doesn't look like something I would want going off near my head.

But I would think slow/predictably moving and fixed targets are in more danger, since the attacker can get away with overloading the vehicle a bit (don't need the full flight envelope), and navigating to the target(s) becomes much easier. I'm thinking something like an stolen delivery/repairman van parked in a neighborhood, a few hours later the top opens, and out come some thermite delivering drones which fly to the top of houses and start setting the neighborhood aflame. Houses are easy to GPS target, lightly defended, and have a very high psychological impact.

The result of conditioning from playing Portal?

What you're going to jam mobile phones and GPS at a music festival?

There is security at festivals and concerts who do check bags. And in many busy subway/bus terminals there is manned police and lots of cameras.

These are by no means significant deterrents but a drone is free to go anywhere, anytime with right now nothing to stop them.

Because this makes it far easier to both get away with it, and not kill yourself in the process.

Today or in the near future, plant a bomb anywhere in public in a city and you're likely to end up on camera.

If a terrorist can accomplish the same outcome while not killing their self (suicide), they get to keep killing; it net lowers the cost of terrorism dramatically. The biggest cost in suicide bombings directed at the developed world, is getting the bomb carrying person into location (immigration, housing), feeding the person, and the time it takes to arrange it all. Drones mean you bring one person in, and they get to take action potentially numerous times.

Well, yes, but it fits the "new name for old threat" situation that can be hyped to the key of G.

I'm the last one to try to support the theatre of fear the media and government maintain, but the dollars and skill required to acquire and operate an RC vehicle have dropped massively in the last few years. Yes, 20 years ago you could build from balsa a sweet RC airplane that had tremendous range (and try to strap some home made explosives to it for nefarious purposes). You could build an RC helicopter but you were going to have a hell of a time learning to fly it (and probably wreck your first few helis before you get the hang of it).

That required serious patience and skill on the model building front. It required decent understanding of the radio, setting up the servos and trimming for flight, and to be honest the damn things (planes) are hard to fly at first. (RC helicopters border on impossible!) You also needed to find a field with room to practice take off and landing, etc.

Today I can buy a pre-built quad-copter that can fly for 15-20 minutes with no assembly required. It's stabilized and ridiculously easy to start flying. I can practice for hours in private (in my living room, or back yard). That same quad copter can be given an autonomous course to follow, becoming a "fire and forget" delivery vehicle which can be discretely launched far enough away from a target to be completely unobserved.

What if I load it up with as much anthrax as it can carry and set up a timed trigger to open the bag as it flies over a crowded festival, protest or some other gathering? How many victims would result from the downwash at 30' above ground level?

I don't think this can be solved with legislation to be honest (you won't ever be able to stop a bad actor from getting the equipment, and bad actors will not register their gear). I also don't think this is a nightmare scenario - but I do think it's a legitimate concern we should be talking about.

That's exactly correct: Autonomy is a spectrum. And a multirotor would fall out of the sky without at least some degree of autonomy.