Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by throwanem » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #271

ashtonkem wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still much easier to defend against than high explosives, and probably much harder to procure. If narco-terrorists can get blocks of C4 and cheap drones, why bother with the extra steps and international attention that a nerve agent would get you?

Nerve agents could be attached to much smaller delivery platforms. If you could build a drone the size of a mosquito you could use it to deliver a tiny, fatal dose of nerve agent to your target. No chemical explosive could match that level of miniaturization. It may be sci fi at this point but it seems entirely possible to me. After all, mosquitoes exist and their behaviour is quite sophisticated. They’re able to loc…

Even if we grant the possibility, which is a real courtesy, that still would be a lot more expensive than a Mavic with a Tupperware bomb. And for what? Dead is dead.

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

#282

Post by nl » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:26 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #270

asdff wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fuc…

This is wrong.

ISIS used[1] the X-UAV Talon. This is a off-the-shelf 1.7M wingspan drone plane available for about $150 without electronics (which are around $50-$200 depending on how elaborate you want to get).

It's capable of 100km+ flights[3].

Here's a pic of one after being shot down in Iraq[4]

[1] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/commercial-dro...

[2] https://au.banggood.com/X-UAV-Talon-EPO-1718mm-Wingspan-V-ta...

[3] https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/100km-in-the-x-uav-talo...

[4] https://armamentresearch.com/islamic-state-unmanned-aerial-v...

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

#283

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:26 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #274

ashtonkem wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like more hassle than a mortar for about the same effect?

You can’t order a mortar on alibaba, and it requires much more training to use it effectively than flying a drone.

Mortars are also large and heavy and require a crew to serve as well as spotters to direct fire which means you need to have people closer to your target and working communications.

All of this complicates the logistics considerably which makes them less effective and more dangerous to their operators.

Effective mortar attacks can be fairly easily countered in the long term by jamming radios, cutting brush and removing other natural hiding spots and by killing experienced mortar crews.

Drones can be piloted by nearly anyone and with basic consumer grade equipment they can also be piloted from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection.

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

#284

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:28 AM UTC

dandelany wrote: post #280

CraigJPerry wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A phone network is no use - latency means it’s useless for visual realtime control of a drone and you could just store a gps waypoint route on the flight controller and save the 4g modem weight if you meant as a mission control mechanism. Achieving the precision of someone holding a letter would be remarkably challenging. Source: racing drone pilot for 5+ years.

Forget visual - DIY (semi-)autonomous drones are doable today and could be pretty scary too. 4G may not be good enough for a human pilot flying FPV but it’s likely more than enough for a drone with GPS running Ardupilot to hone in on a target tagged with a planted transmitter or bugged phone.

Hobbyists have been documenting step by steps for this since 2008, nothing you’re suggesting is remotely new.

Why hasn’t it happened? What is the part of the movie plot imagination that doesn’t translate quite as well to real life?

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

#285

Post by dogma1138 » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:33 AM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #268

dalbasal wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quite likely because the logistics aren’t there yet and even more so because actual weapons are available everywhere.

Drones still require someone to turn them into weapons going after bomb makers is an extremely effective strategy because while there are a million guides on the internet on how to make an IED or a suicide vest the actual amount of people capable of making them is extremely small the world isn’t HN.

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

#286

Post by chongli » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:54 AM UTC

throwanem wrote: post #281

chongli wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nerve agents could be attached to much smaller delivery platforms. If you could build a drone the size of a mosquito you could use it to deliver a tiny, fatal dose of nerve agent to your target. No chemical explosive could match that level of miniaturization. It may be sci fi at this point but it seems entirely possible to me. After all, mosquitoes exist and their behaviour is quite sophisticated. They’re able to loc…

Even if we grant the possibility, which is a real courtesy, that still would be a lot more expensive than a Mavic with a Tupperware bomb. And for what? Dead is dead.

It may be expensive to develop but it need not be expensive to produce. Look at all of the technologies and products enabled by computers.

Sure, it cost a fortune to develop computers from nothing and miniaturize them to the scale we have today. But now anyone can grab a cheap RPi off the shelf and use it to build something that would’ve been amazingly difficult to do 50 years ago.

If we manage to develop drones and robots to the point where they’re mosquito sized, we could find a million uses for them. They could become so cheap weed buy them by the thousands and program them for whatever tasks we want. And of course they could be larger as well; wasp sized rather than mosquito.

I’m not expecting the cartels to develop this technology, of course. But I can envision how they’d use it and it’s pretty terrifying.

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

#287

Post by sudosysgen » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

DuskStar wrote: post #186

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…

Bigger isn't necessarily better, here. There's a term for "small jet turbine powered autonomous suicide drone" already - "cruise missile" - and it's something that the US military has put a lot of work into stopping. Small drones aren't really part of the same threat profile, near as I can tell.

Cruise missiles generally have a diameter of around 70+ cm and a length of over 5 meters. They are also hideously expensive. These drones would have a diameter of around 15-25 cm, a length of a meter or two, a cost a hundredth of a cruise missile. Not comparable.

They're not bigger than a large camera drone, they're just much faster.

The US military has absolutely nothing that can stop a legion of a thousand or more "mini cruise missiles" such as these. Not a chance in hell.

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

#288

Post by sudosysgen » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

denisastoyanov wrote: post #201

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…

Umm people speak about lasers, energy based weapons and etc and etc. That problem was solved almost century ago. Flak cannons. The moment you have means to properly detect such cloud of problems, few flak cannons will rip them apart in seconds.

No they wouldn't. Flak cannons don't work very well against low flying targets, they tend to just kill everyone on the ground.

Morso, flak cannons are less effective against small targets due to a smaller amount of debris.

Finally, there's no reason for the drones to be that close together. You can have them 30 meters apart , flying at an altitude of 20 meters or so. What then?

Finally, there's targeting. How are you going to target reliably a threat you've never seen before that's a similar size to a lot of birds?

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

#289

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:04 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #285

CraigJPerry wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quite likely because the logistics aren’t there yet and even more so because actual weapons are available everywhere. Drones still require someone to turn them into weapons going after bomb makers is an extremely effective strategy because while there are a million guides on the internet on how to make an IED or a suicide vest the actual amount of people capable of making them is extremely small the world isn’t HN.

What do you mean the logistics aren’t there yet? Drones are used daily by bad guys for recon purposes.

These bad guys are groups with caches of weapons and skilled bomb makers in their numbers.

Why in 7 years havent They just put the two together?

What in our arm chair analysis are we overlooking?

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

#290

Post by sudosysgen » Mon, Aug 31, 2020, 12:05 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #249

nostrademons wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There're relatively easy countermeasures against that too: reflective paint and a rolling airframe. To be effective the laser needs to heat the airframe fast enough to cause structural damage before the energy is dissipated away. This is relatively easy when you're targeting a black plastic drone that remains stationary in the sky. It becomes orders of magnitude less effective when the drone is white or metallic and…

Lasers have been demonstrated strong enough that those countermeasures are insufficient. Bigger problem is, if you’re a politician and this scenario plays out during a rally, you just blinded your own supporters by shining a metal-melting laser at a shiny bauble while it was just above their heads.

I haven't seen any demonstration of a laser destroying a rolling airframe with reflective coatings. The only practical demonstration I could find anywhere was a laser on a boat burning one single drone that was gray in color, from only about 800m away. And it took about ten seconds to do so.

Anyways, I'd love your source.