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Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

thedrive.com

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

#341
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underscore your point, here's an example of how easy it is to get god-tier military hardware in Mexico from one of the many people breaking bad across the border in the US. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/arming... This fella in Texas was selling .50-cals and miniguns straight to the Cartels for years. There are likely many, many more like him. Mexican think tanks have spent years trying to f…

There was an absolutely trivial solution: send a few fighter planes to blow up the haciendas and spray herbicide on the plantations. But the US government prefers to profit and make political hay from the drug war.

Dude that's how you get the child of American senators kidnapped andmailed back in pieces or another 9/11.

Everything sounds simple in theory until you think of the consequences.

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

#342
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skripal? There's a lot of contention and contradicting evidence that suggest it was a false flag.

Absolutely false. I didn't know Russian propaganda had reached into HN. Study Exposes Russia Disinformation Campaign That Operated In The Shadows For 6 Years: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878169027/study-exposes-russi...

You can't post like this without evidence. Someone having an opposing opinion does not count as evidence (or rather, it is evidence only that a topic is divisive). Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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

#343
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Discussing/brainstorming this in a public forum is volunteering your brainpower in support of murderers. If you think that you in a few moments on the back of a napkin will come up with something that someone funded and fuelled by an ideology that they are willing to die for can't with months of planning, then that's arrogance of an epic scale. This is as ridiculous as don't talk about hacking/spoofing/phishing bec…

A worldwide forum discussion among dozens of creative people out to one-up one another on clever strategies for killing another human may well put an effective idea in front of someone who might put it into practice. There are occasions for discussing mechanisms by which one might construct such a weapon. I feel that this moment isn't one of them. Just because we can talk about it (and must be willing to defend the r…

This is absurd. How are we supposed to discuss mitigation strategies for a problem if we can't talk about the problem?

This is a total head in the sand mentality.

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

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was that movie where the mobster told the incompetent hitman - "Just walk up to them, put the gun to their head and pull the trigger. That way, you can be sure." Then he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger (because his uzi attack had failed to kill the target) Anyway, hard to beat the classics. Until the drone can lie in wait, identify the target itself, home in on it and explode at point blank range,…

Fly a drone to a location and conduct surveillance for the target. ID target and activate drone bombing protocol.

Still have to track, home and estimate distance to target before exploding.

We know this is hard, witness that nobody has accomplished it yet?

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely false. I didn't know Russian propaganda had reached into HN. Study Exposes Russia Disinformation Campaign That Operated In The Shadows For 6 Years: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/878169027/study-exposes-russi...

Did I miss the mention of Skripal in that link? https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/04/the-skripal-case-two-yea... http://johnhelmer.net/austria-confirms-opcw-report-on-skripa... https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/07/15/mainstream... https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/09/the-impossib...

What is the story about the photos of the russian operatives entering on the airport trying to show?

Nobody, not even they themselves, dispute being on that flight.

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

#346

Well, it will be 3 years next month since the first open source kinetic attack by non state actors using commercial off the self drones was conducted. Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken 3 years for them to be used for kinetic attack by exceptionally well funded narcos. Illicit use of drones has happened and will continue to grow.

I'm surprised that it has taken this long for all of it. I remember reading the news several years ago about how some small drones got close to Merkel. My first worry was about assassinations. Quadcopters aren't expensive or even very difficult to make. How do you even stop something like that?

There are a range of options to defeat drones that include kinetic(birdshot and specialist shotgun rounds, netguns), non kinetic(electronic attack), as well as anti-drone drones(Anduril Industries). There have also been trials on using falconry to counter drones.

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure, tbh, though I suspect it's due somewhat to the general technical incompetence of (terrorist & gang) organizations. Bright people aren't exactly attracted to the idea of joining an organization which doesn't value life highly, and the bright ones that do enlist may be likely to be conscripted to work on other projects or killed by enemies/rivals. It's doable by hobbyists, but doing it with the scale/accuracy needed to be dangerous is a complicated endeavour that doesn't lend itself well to this kind of organization.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure, tbh, though I suspect it's due somewhat to the general technical incompetence of (terrorist & gang) organizations. Bright people aren't exactly attracted to the idea of joining an organization which doesn't value life highly, and the bright ones that do enlist may be likely to be conscripted to work on other projects or killed by enemies/rivals. It's doable by hobbyists, but doing it with the scale/accu…

Fly a drone carrying a 500gram camera behind a tall building. You’ll learn the 6 things that stops this whole idea working. It’s consigned to the movie plots for the foreseeable future.

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

#349

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?

Hand grenade toting drones more or less came of age during the ISIS shenanigans and Syrian civil war. Both those conflicts are/were hot enough and had enough state resources pumped in that you had guys taking pot shots at each other with AGTMs. Basically the other sources of casualties were too much background noise for drones to be noteworthy. When a cooler conflict comes around, think whatever the 2020s, 2030s equi…

The Iranians dropped hand grenades from hobby grade remote control planes in the 80s. This idea is definitely not new.

It just doesn’t work very well.

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