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Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

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Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#231

Post by anitil »

bigiain wrote: post #155
anitil wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in this field. There's two components to this. There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering. The second is to track them in the sky. DJI has a product AeroScope that tracks their drones, my company has a competing product (this isn't a plug so won't mention the name). The issue wi…

> There is the possibility to track devices from the manufacturer via serial numbers etc. Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering. From where I'm, sitting, I can see one drone which can readily be "tracked via the manufacturer" (A DJI Spark). There are two more which came assembled - from random AliExpress (or maybe GearBest) vendors, which have nothing resembling a se…

Yes there's plenty of difficulties with home-grown devices. Fortunately most people aren't capable of designing an over-the-air protocol like lightbridge, and there's a limited selection of chips to choose from.

Vision/IMU/Lidar are obviously much harder

My email is in my bio

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#232

Post by Aerroon »

blackoil wrote: post #182
sudosysgen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but kinetic countermeasures scale really badly. The definition of "drone" is also quite flexible here, a couple guys with shotguns, falcons, or your own anti-drones work fine against a few slow drones, badly against a few dozen slow flying drones, not at all against a few hundred slow flying drones, are essentially useless against one jet-powered drone (microjet engines are very cheap!) don't have a hope against…

Why can't shotguns be automated. Building a personal "anti-aircraft/drone" gun should be feasible.

They are. They're usually called CRAM or CIWS on ships (Close in weapons system).[0] They are used as the last line of defense on modern warships against missiles and other threats.

Here you can see one of them in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsVUISS8oHs

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#233

Post by dasKrokodil »

Yc4win wrote: post #97
anitil wrote: post #85

I actually work in the drone detection/jamming field. My only surprise is that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. We already see drones used for drug smuggling and privacy violations, as well as the use of drones to carry IED payloads. Drones are an amazing tool but as with any tool, they can be used in nefarious ways.

Has there been any progress with coming up with a system that can _reliably_ jam them?

We need an anti-drone drone!

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#234

Post by meheleventyone »

sudosysgen wrote: post #165
kortex wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you just get stealth drones (fixed wing). Bondo, styrofoam, electric ducted fans, frequency hopping radio links, all easily doable. Only hard part really is range. For that, I could see hybrid electrics that power down the gas/nitro engine for stealth.

Or even just a gas turbine, as RC people already use. 10:1 TWR, relatively cheap. Quite loud, but works at high altitudes.

Small gas powered drones for the military are already pretty common.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#235

Post by imtringued »

JackFr wrote: post #123

As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people. Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them are going to be…

Honestly, the only explanation I can think of is that it is easy to see a quadrocopter fly and do its thing but it is actually hard to actually notice its real life impracticality unless you own one of them.

I don't know what specific model is shown in the picture but if it is a DJI Mavic Air 2 then it only weighs 570 gram and can only fly for 34 minutes.

When you compare a quadrocopter with a real life bomber then practically no bomber on earth is lighter than the bombs it is carrying. A B-52 can carry 30% of its weight in payload. So that would give us at most 171g for the bomb the Mavic Air 2 is carrying but even this is optimistic because it was not designed for this use case.

The idea of "cheap" drones carrying bombs is basically an urban legend. You can certainly build a good bombing drone for $5000 to $10000 and fly many missions and thereby kill hundreds of people with it but that same money can also buy guns and lots of ammo as well.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#236

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

JackFr wrote: post #123

As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people. Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them are going to be…

> drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t

A M-67 fragmentation grenade weighs 400g, with a lethal radius of 5 meters.

A bullet still obviously remains cheaper than a single-use drone + grenade + modifications to it.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#237

Post by poisonarena »

dmos62 wrote: post #225
JackFr wrote: post #123

As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people. Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them are going to be…

I don't know. How many attacks happen that have a budget in the thousands of dollars (that's what I ballpark the price of a load bearing drone to be)? I presume a lot. Another way to look at it is, how much does personal protection cost? Bodyguards, etc. If your attack methods are cheaper and at least comparably effective, they're good. Considering IED drone effectiveness, I think it's just a question of developing t…

You can give a pistol and a few hundred dollars to many assassins/sicario in Mexico

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#238

Post by dvdkhlng »

ashtonkem wrote: post #210
kumarvvr wrote: post #137

The next worst case scenario is autonomous drones, that do not require radio or gps inputs. Navigation can be done with crude inertial navigation systems and advancing AI can identify and fly to targets with increasing accuracy. Causing general chaos or exploding in crowds will not require AI though. The only counter measure against those will then be an EMP system, Blinding lights to disable cameras, etc. The next e…

You forgot one: shotguns. The most reliable means to take out a drone might be some good old fashioned birdshot.

And what about good old water cannons? I can't imagine how the drone's rotor would be able to generate predictable lift when hit by a lot of water.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#239

Post by brendawalsh »

implements wrote: post #228
dron3r wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can jam signals they rely on, like GPS and cellular, but there are already drones that are capable of flying on vision alone, so no.

Well, if you managed to detect and track an incoming drone you could ‘jam’ its camera with a high-powered laser - or something that threw up a curtain of flares or burning magnesium, or whatever.

Does that work for a fleet of 10 drones? 100 drones? 1,000 drones?

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#240

Post by 2rsf »

Israel's "Lahav Or" (Light Blade) can

> Said to be the first defense system of its kind in the world, the Light Blade system will target incendiary balloons and kites, which have started countless fires in the southern border vicinity communities in recent years, as well as drones.

[0] https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/08/12/israel-deploys-first-...

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