To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
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Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#2I can already imagine ships being outfitted with hundreds of anti aircraft autocannons just for shooting down drone swarms, kind of like the USN ships of WWII. An old solution for a new problem
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#3I wonder how long until DIY weaponized drones are available to common criminals.
It doesn't seem like we are prepared to deal with something like this.
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#4Drones are the new aircraft carriers. That is, pre-WWII, the dominant naval ship was the battleship. Heavily armored, with enormous guns, military planners expected that the battle for the Atlantic and Pacific would be carried out by these monsters slugging it out. Though there were hints that planes could be quite effective against ships, few admirals realized that the longer range of an aircraft carrier would make the battleships effectively obsolete in ship-ship battles. And after all, they'd spent a ton of money producing those battleships, and developing doctrine. Would you really want to throw that all away on some newfangled novelty?
After Pearl Harbor, it became clear that the answer should have been Yes.
Drones offer overwhelming advantages -- they're cheap and disposable. A drone generally costs less than the US missile used to shoot it down. You can lose 100 of them, and there will be no lives lost on your side.
During WWII, by 1943 the European theater was essentially decided, except for a lot of killing. The US was producing tanks and planes so quickly that it was simply mathematically impossible for the Germans to counter them. Will the same thing happen when China decides to throw its manufacturing capacity into war drones?
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#5Drones are the new aircraft carriers. That is, pre-WWII, the dominant naval ship was the battleship. Heavily armored, with enormous guns, military planners expected that the battle for the Atlantic and Pacific would be carried out by these monsters slugging it out. Though there were hints that planes could be quite effective against ships, few admirals realized that the longer range of an aircraft carrier would make…
A drone with the same range as a missile would be indistinguishable from a missile. A drone without the same range as a missile would likely have its carrier detected and destroyed before it can get in range to release it's drones. Drones are great for irregular forces that can hide among civilian populations or in dense terrain to have short ranged air strike capabilities cheaply, but they are not substitute for long range naval strikes.
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#6In 2018, an unidentified nonstate actor used two explosive-bearing commercial drones in the attempted assassination of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
It's funny to see the phrase "nonstate actor" here, when we're assured that ransomware script kiddies who use Coinbase are all "state actors". Maduro knows who sent the drones. [0] Why is even IEEE Spectrum in ideological thrall to the military-industrial complex?
[0] https://thegrayzone.com/2019/08/06/interview-venezuelan-pres...
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#7I wonder how long until DIY weaponized drones are available to common criminals. It doesn't seem like we are prepared to deal with something like this.
Strap a knife on a fpv rc airplane and you have something as deadly as a sniper
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#8I can already imagine ships being outfitted with hundreds of anti aircraft autocannons just for shooting down drone swarms, kind of like the USN ships of WWII. An old solution for a new problem
Could someone get something like that for her house? Asking for a friend...
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#9> The potential of consumer or commercial drones harming world leaders became immediately evident when a protester hovered one close to German chancellor Angela Merkel at a campaign rally in 2013
Pretty arbitrary incident to choose, but I suppose the writer would have felt silly mentioning the flying dildos that buzzed Gary Kasparov at a political event in 2008.
Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths
#10I wonder how long until DIY weaponized drones are available to common criminals. It doesn't seem like we are prepared to deal with something like this.
if you can make a unabomber type of device you can construct a weaponized quadrocopter
thinking further, even just the manner, or tactics used when flying could be weapon like, such as chaff drones