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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

#261

Post by dalbasal »

imtringued wrote: post #235
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 p…

> So that would give us at most 171g

Grenades weigh about that much.

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

#262

Post by clarus »

ashtonkem wrote: post #209
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…

High value targets will justify expenditure of more resources. For most targets a few men with AK-47s might do the trick, but for the well protected target this would be a pretty decent strategy. It certainly would strike fear into the hearts of men otherwise protected against more pedestrian threats, which is probably part of the point.

This is exactly how drones were used in Syria as I understood. To attack otherwise protected targets or strike fear.

To attack Russian bases they even use swarms of suicide planes: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/01/12/the_poor_man...

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

#263

Post by pjc50 »

pvaldes wrote: post #241

I assume that an attempt on assasination on a really relevant figure, president and so, could end with the entire cartel city nuked in retaliation. There is always a bigger fish, so there is a limit to what you can do with this. My bet would be that this is a PR stunt and what they are really trying is to discourage people from catching drones that transport thousands of dollars in drugs to steal the cargo. Beware!,…

Slightly baffled by this comment; Mexico is not a nuclear-armed state and is not going to start responding to its cartel problems with genocide? Or are you suggesting that the US would engage in a first strike genocide in response to a single quadcopter bomb?

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

#265

Post by meheleventyone »

_pmf_ wrote: post #217

I'm still somewhat surprised there have been no prominent terrorist attacks in Western countries by means of drones with payload.

Isn’t that just because the drone bit is easy and the payload bit is hard. Particularly in terms of procuring explosives, and making them effective and light enough for a drone to carry? Then you need a target that actually needs a drone to attack it versus doing something simpler.

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

#266

Post by himinlomax »

imtringued wrote: post #235
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 p…

> 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.

It's worth what, on the order of $1000? Strap 100 g of explosives to it, fly it to the target's face and detonate. It does not need 34 minutes of fly time.

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

#267

Post by meheleventyone »

imtringued wrote: post #252
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…

>Regulation will help here. This isn't useful until after the fact for evidence gathering. This is actually the most effective anti drone defense. The only meaningful benefit of a drone vs a firearm is that the pilot is unknown. If you can link a drone to its pilot then you can just use conventional law enforcement. This would force abusers to build their own drones and thereby limit the impact of drone attacks signi…

Or they’d just remove the serial numbers.

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

#268

Post by CraigJPerry »

dalbasal wrote: post #260
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 agree that this article is talking about drones because it's newsish, where bribery and guns are less so. But, that's not really how the economics of violence works. It's more of a whatever-works, and whatever you can get your hands on element. Guns, bombs, hard men, threats and bribes are still in use. Infantry still exists, even though ICBMs exist. They don't have to choose. This is quasi military conflict we are…

There must be a reason then that these drones don’t feature in death tallies? Death by friendly fire far far exceeds lethality of these drones worldwide.

They’ve been in documented use over 7 years at this point. Why are they less effective than Facebook posts at killing people?

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

#269

Post by visarga »

kumarvvr wrote: post #181
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…

For a state backed terrorist organization, the cost of drones could be even lower. Mass production and very low complexity of engineering will make it easy and cheap to produce drones. Add to that, the cost of failure and innovation is also very less, consequently, the use of drones will increase exponentially. Just imagine what destruction a terrorist can create if he can launch a 100 drones, from miles away, to att…

This drone craze is all because we have better batteries today. They should have thought of that when they invented such dangerous tech. /s (Law of unintended consequences)

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

#270

Post by mschuster91 »

asdff wrote: post #177
Yc4win wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know if you could ever stop a low cost drone short of using a shotgun. Even if you had some sort of directed EMP technology, the drone could position itself along the correct precomputed vector from far away, cut off electric, and glide the bomb to the target silently.

> the drone could position itself along the correct precomputed vector from far away, cut off electric, and glide the bomb to the target silently.

An octocopter/ordinary drone can't do this - their electric goes out and they fall from the sky.

For a glider you'd need an actual flyable airplane model (something like this: https://laughingsquid.com/a-15-foot-long-radio-controlled-ai...), and these are expensive as fuck - a single engine alone will run up well into four digit range, if not five digits (something like the JetCat P1000). And at that point, you could also go ahead and buy an outright RPG, should be far cheaper to acquire depending where you are, or buy a couple junker cars, load them up with fertilizer bombs, and distribute them where one expects the target.

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