Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes • Hacker News Board

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#111

Post by jvanderbot » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

badfutureahead wrote: post #81

mrnobody_67 wrote: post #45

Playing out as Naval Ravikant predicted on the After-on podcast: https://after-on.com/episodes-31-60/044 Eventually cheap drones, anonymous assassination markets, etc. will make commercial flying a thing of the past. Written summary of podcast - https://podcastnotes.org/2019/03/20/after-on-naval-01/

Today it's basically a week-long project to train a neural network to fly towards a jet engine in a 3D simulation. Then you just need to hook that to the drone control software. No amount of jamming helps you here, this is radio control off, GPS off, entirely visual "guided missile" approach. And this approach scales, with 20 drones, 2 drones assigned to each engine, you can engage 5 taking off planes in a row off a…

"fly towards" doesn't scale too well with the huge speed difference. Your intercept cone is super narrow when jets travel 10x your quads speed. Then factor in altitude and this approach only works near airports, where defense is arguably easiest.

where this works really, really well is with boats. Iran did this with 15m RHIBs.

I work on these problems directly. Its scarey but mostly because we're not thinking about it, not because it's something we can't prevent. Don't get me started on all the truly horrifying things commercial drones are capable of even worse than airline terror.

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#112

Post by yyyk » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

Didn't anyone look at the map? The drone strikes have nothing to do with the Houthis, they don't have the range. This is a purely Iranian operation with obvious motives - control oil supply from ME. This adventurism is going to lead into a huge war which will be bad for anyone in the region. Perhaps that can't be stopped now.

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#113

Post by netsharc » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

edf13 wrote: post #64

aazaa wrote: post #9

An unusual (and worrying) part about this incident is how drones are being used, not with an explicit military goal in mind, but rather for the purpose of economic strangulation. Like terrorist operatives, drones are relatively cheap and expendible. But unlike terrorism, which seeks to grind away at the enemy's resolve, this kind of attack attempts to deprive an enemy of the money needed to fund its operations. Like…

And watch the share prices of Drone Defence companies soar...

"My new startup leverages AI/ML combined with blockchain technology to do real-time disabling through software hacking of drones in-flight... we also rent out office space for dynamic companies!"

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#114

Post by justinzollars » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

Fill up your gas tanks.

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#115

Post by aodin » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #98

HarryHirsch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You needed airplanes, and antiaircraft weapons were so much cheaper. With drones the calculation is the other way around. It completely changes the face of war, offensive warfare is now possible again. Ernst Jünger said something similar when he witnessed the first tanks in World War 1.

> It completely changes the face of war These changes are always really, really interesting. One of my favorite moments similar to this is the Battle of Nicopolis [1] between the Ottomans led by Bayezid I and a Crusader force which included many Western cavalry forces. The much more mobile and easy-moving Ottomans were no match for the Western (especially French) forces who were accustomed with using their heavy armo…

Over 660 years before the Battle of Nicopolis, the French under Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Tours[1] using phalanxes of heavy infantry against lightly armored Arabian calvary. The difference being that the French forces purposefully took a defensive position on top of several hills instead of initiating an attack up them.

The battles are an interesting echo through history. Perhaps the lesson is simply "hold the high ground".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#116

Post by partialrecall » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #62

partialrecall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted, engineers being well represented in these sort of rebel/revolutionary/terrorist organizations isn't a new phenomenon. Here is an article from a decade ago: https://slate.com/technology/2009/12/why-do-so-many-terroris... The notion of terrorists as uneducated goat farmers is more a manifestation of western biases than it is an accurate representation of the truth.

You see Yemeni citizens defending their country against Saudi war crimes and the murder of innocent civilians as terrorism, huh? No wonder you had to make a new account just to post that opinion! What's your regular account here?

No, I don't. I think the difference between a terrorist, rebel and revolutionary tends to be a matter of perspective. I was trying to keep my personal thoughts out of it, hence I generalized my comment to "rebel/revolutionary/terrorist". However, since you asked, my personal stance in this particular case is that the Yemeni are plainly in the right.

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#117

Post by tyingq » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #112

Didn't anyone look at the map? The drone strikes have nothing to do with the Houthis, they don't have the range. This is a purely Iranian operation with obvious motives - control oil supply from ME. This adventurism is going to lead into a huge war which will be bad for anyone in the region. Perhaps that can't be stopped now.

From a WaPo story:

"U.N. investigators said the Houthis' new UAV-X drone, found in recent months during the Saudi-led coalition's war in Yemen, likely has a range of up to 1,500 kilometers (930 miles). That puts the far reaches of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE in range."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/saudi-tv-ch...

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#118

Post by zipwitch » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:15 PM UTC

kingofpandora wrote: post #51

lapnitnelav wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SA's economy is -AFAIK- mostly / completely dependent on natural ressources. Given that SPOF, one can't help but think of the IRA's threat to Margaret Thatcher : "[...] we only have to be lucky once – you will have to be lucky always."

Or Kissinger's aphorism that (I'm paraphrasing a bit here), "the military loses if it doesn't win, while the rebels win if they don't lose."

There's a relevant Latin quote from the era of the Punic Wars (if I recall correctly), Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatebur - "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#119

Post by aodin » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #112

Didn't anyone look at the map? The drone strikes have nothing to do with the Houthis, they don't have the range. This is a purely Iranian operation with obvious motives - control oil supply from ME. This adventurism is going to lead into a huge war which will be bad for anyone in the region. Perhaps that can't be stopped now.

> The Houthi spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV, which is owned by the Houthi movement and is based in Beirut, that further attacks could be expected in the future.

> He said Saturday's attack was one of the biggest operations the Houthi forces had undertaken inside Saudi Arabia and was carried out in "co-operation with the honourable people inside the kingdom".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49703143

Re: Saudi Arabia Shuts Down About Half Its Oil Output After Drone Strikes

#120

Post by dan_mctree » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #9

An unusual (and worrying) part about this incident is how drones are being used, not with an explicit military goal in mind, but rather for the purpose of economic strangulation. Like terrorist operatives, drones are relatively cheap and expendible. But unlike terrorism, which seeks to grind away at the enemy's resolve, this kind of attack attempts to deprive an enemy of the money needed to fund its operations. Like…

Even diversified countries are vulnerable to similar shenanigans. There are a lot of vulnerable points in modern society. Destroy a couple of electricity substations or power line towers and you could paralyze cities housing millions.

These kinds of targets are also really hard to defend and comparatively easy to destroy. Hell, you could probably drive around tossing copper wires over power lines and inflict gigantic economic damage that way. (You would also probably die)