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To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#31

Post by greedo »

samuelizdat wrote: post #20

Wouldn't the solution be jamming or EMP related? Of course, because the technological system must propagate itself at any cost this idea is counter-intuitive. Technological progress is seen as bending towards an inherent good. People never stop to think if it will be bad. Now people are to live in fear of drone swarms because nobody has autonomy in the technological system. People think they control technology, but i…

Jamming would address inter-swarm communications, but then they'd revert to solo operations. EMP isn't realistic, but microwave systems have already been tested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlmf032NmHU

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#32

Post by fighterpilot »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #4

Drones 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…

Plausible.

One thing that makes China today different to the US of WW2 is that China's export oriented economy would collapse in a war with the West and their industrial production capabilities would be hurt significantly along with that.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#33

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

abz10 wrote: post #17
WanderPanda wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strap a knife on a fpv rc airplane and you have something as deadly as a sniper

Unlike a bullet you could hear an RC airplane coming.

Not when it is diving down vertically, from high above.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#34

Post by lurquer »

rolph wrote: post #10
tarruda wrote: post #3

I 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

> if you can make a unabomber type of device you can construct a weaponized quadrocopter

It’s trivial, cheap, and simple to do massive harm to massive numbers of people.

Fortunately, humans don’t usually do this unless part of the government/military.

In a country of 300 million, the only non-state mass death events are a handful of terrorist attacks and deranged teenagers determined to shoot up their schools. The annual deaths caused by these non-state actors is, on average, less than the annual fatalities on a given stretch of a run-of-the-mill interstate.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#35

Post by blutack »

Military drones also remove part of the political calculation otherwise involved in attacking somewhere.

When soldiers are put in situations where they are being killed, in a fairly free society someone is generally going to ask the question of why they are there and whether they should continue to be.

Loss of military drones is only reported in specialised press if at all.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#36

Post by nradov »

samuelizdat wrote: post #20

Wouldn't the solution be jamming or EMP related? Of course, because the technological system must propagate itself at any cost this idea is counter-intuitive. Technological progress is seen as bending towards an inherent good. People never stop to think if it will be bad. Now people are to live in fear of drone swarms because nobody has autonomy in the technological system. People think they control technology, but i…

There is no practical way to use EMP as a defense against small drones. That's something that only works in movies, not real life. Generating enough power to disrupt electronics at a useful range requires a powerful explosion.

The military uses a mix of jammers, small missiles, guns, and (soon) lasers.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#37

Post by Animats »

The article has a good intro, and then never goes on to discuss the "key strengths". It's just clickbait. They're also late to the party on this. The US professional military has been discussing this for over a decade.

There have already been more than a half dozen articles on drones in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College's journal. "The coercive logic of militant drone use" [1] is worth reading. This covers how non-state groups have used drones, what worked and what didn't. The US Army is unused to fighting under a hostile sky, and now, a few times, they've had to. "In 2017, then commander of US Special Operations Command General Raymond A. Thomas noted, “[the] most daunting problem [of 2016] was an adaptive enemy who, for a time, enjoyed tactical superiority in the airspace under our conventional air superiority in the form of commercially available drones and fuel-expedient (?) weapons systems, and our only available response was small arms fire.” They also mention a drone disabling an Israeli naval vessel in 2006.

There's been a lot more military use of drones than is generally realized. Much of it is for recon. Commercial hobbyist drones are more than good enough for finding out what the enemy is up to, and most drone use by militant groups is for that.

So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict. At least to militant groups.

Not many people read Parameters. That paper has only 65 downloads. More should.

[1] https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#38

Post by splithalf »

jessaustin wrote: post #6

In 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?…

In theory it could all be a vast conspiracy of the news media to misinform people, sure, but that would be a conspiracy theory.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#39

Post by FredPret »

blutack wrote: post #35

Military drones also remove part of the political calculation otherwise involved in attacking somewhere. When soldiers are put in situations where they are being killed, in a fairly free society someone is generally going to ask the question of why they are there and whether they should continue to be. Loss of military drones is only reported in specialised press if at all.

With human soldiers, voters and family of voters get killed.

With drones, it's just some robots that were broken by the enemy.

Re: To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths

#40

Post by AlexCoventry »

korse wrote: post #18
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could someone get something like that for her house? Asking for a friend...

If you really wanted to, I'd recommend a microwave 'cannon'. You can build one yourself for cheap-ish based off a directional antenna and some recycled microwave-link components. Then you just need to target it. Probably need some sort of weather proof retractable cover so that the neighbors don't freak out. Gimbal under the cover to aim the thing, and then a means of target acquisition. People have tried to use audi…

How hard is it to shield electronics from a microwave blast? What impact would surrounding them in alfoil have?
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