Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

baesystems.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 188 posts

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#131

Post by na85 »

Sideloader wrote: post #105

Hmm...from a tech porn perspective it’s a cool little gadget. But given the shadow surveillance and police state that was erected post 9/11 and how often “national security” outfits have been caught playing fast and loose with the laws of the land, there is a good chance that bugs like this one will be eventually be used to illegally spy on domestic dissidents and whistleblowers. Governments in most western countries…

>there is a good chance that bugs like this one will be eventually be used to illegally spy on domestic dissidents and whistleblowers.

I'd say there's a 100% certainty this will happen.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#132

Post by secfirstmd »

jjeaff wrote: post #130
Sideloader wrote: post #105

Hmm...from a tech porn perspective it’s a cool little gadget. But given the shadow surveillance and police state that was erected post 9/11 and how often “national security” outfits have been caught playing fast and loose with the laws of the land, there is a good chance that bugs like this one will be eventually be used to illegally spy on domestic dissidents and whistleblowers. Governments in most western countries…

>Governments in most western countries have thrown out habeas corpus and have given themselves the right to indefinitely ‘disappear’ anyone they arbitrarily deem a threat to national security. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden come to mind. Neither of those seem to be examples of habeas corpus being thrown out. Neither were "disappeared" and the court systems were used against Assange and nothing has happened to Snow…

Whoa that's a bit of a US Centric broad brush there. "Most Western Countries" - there's more to the West than the US, UK and less than half a dozenish who have or are doing that. I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#133

Post by mianos »

mattivc wrote: post #27

I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.

I agree the photos are probably just mockups. No way they would be using that sort of prop. That said, Li-FES2 primary cells (at 400Wh/kg) have well over twice the energy density to LiPo/LCO rechargables (at 190 Wh/kg). If I can make a custom 7" bi-blade quadcopter fly for 30 minute, 40 minutes is doable with better battery density.

In my own builds it is much easier to get long flight times with larger props but that is probably on account of the lesser need for exotic material science at larger scales.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#135

Post by krimpenrik »

andy_ppp wrote: post #34
the__alchemist wrote: post #31

Two thought triggered by this article. 1: What alternative designs for quadcopter would be viable for small drones? Some lighter-than-air quality? I assume the complexity involved in making a helicopter collective would be too heavy. Is it really quadcopters all the way down? 2: Why not smaller? Would an even smaller drone be unfeasible due to battery weight and square/cube law issues? What's stopping us from gram-sc…

Interesting idea to fill a drone with helium, then presumably it could have smaller motors or longer flight time.

Went down this rabbit hole once, you'll need too much helium volume to make any difference.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#136

Post by peteretep »

secfirstmd wrote: post #132
jjeaff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Governments in most western countries have thrown out habeas corpus and have given themselves the right to indefinitely ‘disappear’ anyone they arbitrarily deem a threat to national security. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden come to mind. Neither of those seem to be examples of habeas corpus being thrown out. Neither were "disappeared" and the court systems were used against Assange and nothing has happened to Snow…

Whoa that's a bit of a US Centric broad brush there. "Most Western Countries" - there's more to the West than the US, UK and less than half a dozenish who have or are doing that. I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people.

> I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people.

How would you know? The point of disappearing people is that they disappear, and you don't know how.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#137

Post by peteretep »

mianos wrote: post #133
mattivc wrote: post #27

I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.

I agree the photos are probably just mockups. No way they would be using that sort of prop. That said, Li-FES2 primary cells (at 400Wh/kg) have well over twice the energy density to LiPo/LCO rechargables (at 190 Wh/kg). If I can make a custom 7" bi-blade quadcopter fly for 30 minute, 40 minutes is doable with better battery density. In my own builds it is much easier to get long flight times with larger props but tha…

> I agree the photos are probably just mockups

The article makes it sound like they've got a whole bunch of these in active use by the Army (albeit for testing), so it'd seem a little odd to have a picture of a mockup. Maybe, I guess, but I'd have the assumption be that this is the real thing.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#138

Post by amitport »

Reminds me of Prey by Michael Crichton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(novel).

(from Wikipedia): "The novel serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology; in this case, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and distributed artificial intelligence."

Autonomous flying drone army you say? what could possibly go wrong?

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#139

Post by dash2 »

peteretep wrote: post #136
secfirstmd wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa that's a bit of a US Centric broad brush there. "Most Western Countries" - there's more to the West than the US, UK and less than half a dozenish who have or are doing that. I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people.

> I'm Irish and the vast majority of the EU and other Western Countries (however that is defined) aren't in the business of disappearing people. How would you know? The point of disappearing people is that they disappear, and you don't know how.

The OP’s claim was that governments have given themselves the right to disappear people. That’s a legal change which couldn’t be done without the standard public process. Also, in general, when people are arbitrarily detained or disappeared, the outside world does hear about it, even in highly authoritarian regimes (see eg the Amnesty website for plenty of examples).

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#140

Post by dash2 »

Sideloader wrote: post #105

Hmm...from a tech porn perspective it’s a cool little gadget. But given the shadow surveillance and police state that was erected post 9/11 and how often “national security” outfits have been caught playing fast and loose with the laws of the land, there is a good chance that bugs like this one will be eventually be used to illegally spy on domestic dissidents and whistleblowers. Governments in most western countries…

There are probably bigger worries in the surveillance area already (smartphones etc). I’d be more concerned about their potential use for assassination. How heavy does a bomb have to be?
Post reply on HN