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

#121

Post by noobermin » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

matheweis wrote: post #96

joey_bob wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this attitude, anything is a week long project. 1. You're making extremely optimistic assumptions about the results of your system. The translation between your simulation and reality may not be so smooth. Also jets are fast. 2. Lasers jam your system. 3. It's a difficult problem to crash a malfunctioning plane in a certain area when you are behind the sticks, let alone by doing it with a collision.

In the context of asymmetric warfare this might not be a significant issue. The offensive side need only be successful a fraction of the time, but the defensive side must be successful nearly all of the time.

Tbh, I think the only stable outcome is that which was during the cold war, MAD.

That or may be people can try diplomacy for once.

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

#122

Post by trhway » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

One of the side effects of Russia's maintaining of the official decorum of non-involvement ("little green men" of unknown origin in Crimea, and the whole tank battalions taking their tanks on voluntary vacation to Donbass :) in similar situation in Ukraine was avoiding opening themselves to the risk of otherwise legitimate counter-strike by Ukraine and scaling up of the war. Saudis seems to have forgo such risk in favor of full military power they can apply in the open war. Nothing helps a regime popularity better than a quick victorious war ... until counter strikes hit deep home where it really hurts, like the Saudi oil fields in this case. Reminds about the Berlin bombing that USSR did several months after the start of the war in 1941 - the almost unstoppable, at the moment, German forces were already deep in the USSR territory with the Moscow and the glorious relatively quick and easy victory pretty much already in sight, the Germans had full air superiority, and reaching Berlin from the yet unoccupied USSR territories was on the edge of USSR bombers capabilities. 11 bombers took part in the raid. The actual damage to Berlin, if any, was minimal, yet the psychological impact was huge on the both sides. ( US have the similar story of bombing of Tokyo in 1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid)

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

#123

Post by buckminster » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #110

cameronbrown wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being successful is not binary. The offensive side needs to be significantly more successful in order to gain an upper hand. Otherwise it's defenders advantage every time.

And yet, the odd successful terrorist attack makes word headlines.

It's almost like there aren't actually vast numbers of motivated terrorists trying to kill us.

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

#124

Post by petschge » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:33 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…

Note that an airplane with a single engine out, even during the initial accent, typically does not crash into a city. The Hudson river landing occurred because all engine power was lost, not because of OEI (one engine inoperative).

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

#125

Post by yyyk » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

aodin wrote: post #119

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-4970…

Of course they'd take responsibility. That's awfully convenient. But it's not their doing.

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

#126

Post by partialrecall » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

heartbreak wrote: post #100

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term “rebel” is usually used to designate someone who isn’t on our side. There’s lots of smart people who aren’t on our side.

American southerners endearingly refer to the Confederate States Army as the “rebels.” Star Wars makes a good fictional counterpoint as well.

Perhaps also worth mentioning, some of the Russian Separatist forces in Donbass have adopted a flag that looks strikingly similar to CSA flag. It could be that they did this because they see themselves as rebels and therefore a famous rebel flag was fitting for them. When asked about it, they claim the similarity is coincidental.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Novorossiya#Similarity...

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

#127

Post by badfutureahead » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #111

badfutureahead wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

With FlightRadar24 historical data you already know exactly where regular flights will be, so you just wait there. The only thing left is that the pilot will try to dodge you, but then you have automatic drone control versus human (with low visibility).

I agree with you that this is a high touch attack, a kind of "drone 9/11", versus other low hanging fruits like dropping drones on peoples head.

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

#128

Post by yyyk » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #117

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...

Well, if one believes their 'taking of responsibility', of course you believe they have the flight range, which means you assigned 'their' drones a flight range, which is then picked up to 'explain' it.

If you apply a more realistic standard (no actual evidence including footage, no way to guide it, no facilities in Yemen to even test it), it's obvious this is an operation by a state, and only Iran can fit the bill.

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

#129

Post by azinman2 » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #111

badfutureahead wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Let’s not forget what’s possible 20 or 200 years ago. You can poison water supplies, you can stab people on the street, you can crate rail guns shooting out nails, you can drive giant semis into crowds of people, you can bomb or otherwise derail trains, etc etc. The ways to inflict carnage are great. But it doesn’t happen all the time, because most people aren’t seeking out murder on a repeated basis.

Yes we should find ways to defend against new kinds of attacks on common infrastructure that causes asymmetric levels of worry, but so recognize humanity has always had the potential to do damage.

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

#130

Post by SergeAx » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

Commercially available drones are easily detectable ("a week project", as said before) and very fragile. I believe automatic anti-drone systems are now months from being deployed worldwide. It is not even necessary to be very powerful: something like airsoft gun gonna be enough.