61–70 of 214 posts
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Not when it is diving down vertically, from high above.
Like this RC airplane (drone) modeled after a WW2 dive bomber. https://youtu.be/ogxKvQeVqqc?t=583
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Not when it is diving down vertically, from high above.
Off the shelf RC airplanes have terrible unpowered terminal velocity. You'd have to custom build to get anything decent. Which is more difficult than strapping a knife to a RC plane.
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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.
Doubtful. The CCP runs a command economy. It doesn't need to sell its goods to finance a war when the state can simply force the economy to produce the means of war. Want to stop China from waging war? Knock out its means of production -- target its imports.
My point is that the analogy of US in WW2 doesn't really hold up because the US had an excellent economy throughout WW2 relative to others which fueled their excess industrial production. China would be in the opposite situation - economic collapse.
Would China be able to maintain industrial production by forcing workers and firms to produce equipment despite economic collapse? Perhaps. But the US in WW2 shouldn't be considered historical precedent, due to the above distinction.
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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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Actually this isn't a big problem. Quads or RC planes at a reasonable height aren't audible. Add in night and lack of running lights and no one is going to notice. If you are using a wing, then you just program your robot to come in high, cut it's engine and continue on a glide trajectory to the target. The flap servos make nearly no noise. If you've got a quad, come in fast and basically huck the vehicle at the targ…
Ardupilot will not hit a human size target. People can barely do it. You're not going to lob a tumbling quad at a target with any accuracy that's a joke. To do this with any reliability you need custom software and probably hardware. It'll look more like a smart munition. But it'll also be more difficult than strapping a knife to a RC plane.
Second, who said the quad was tumbling? Significantly cutting engine speed and removing significant lift forces on a quad in order to kill the buzz doesn't mean it will start wildly gyrating.
Third, Ardupilot will get you within a few feet of a specified point with a good enough vector and speed. Luckily you can use a subroutine (secondary control program) to handle the final approach from the 'point' to the target.
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How hard is it to shield electronics from a microwave blast? What impact would surrounding them in alfoil have?
Pretty easy to protect electronics from rf energy.
I was being somewhat facetious about mounting a microwave auto-turret on your house, but the technology has been toyed with for years as a man-portable solution to consumer drone intrusion.
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If we're talking a commercial quadcopter drone, is it feasible to auto-target it via microphones and then shoot some CIWS at it? Something like this https://youtu.be/LThD0FMvTFU?t=42 but drones and bullets instead of mortars and lasers. It's be nice if you could slap an anti-drone turret onto your vehicle to protect the airspace for a hundred meters. Maybe jamming exceeds commercial drones' flight ceiling, but if not…
There are a number of bulky systems intended for larger targets which will work against drones, but most are not very portable. Ship-mounted systems such as CWIS do work.[1] But all those shells that don't hit the target land someplace. [1] https://youtu.be/3UVuV5WvraQ
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36412/centurions-roari...
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Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. The fact is the "killer bot" scenario is just a one time thing. After it happens, all cities or armies or whatever, will have very solid defences installed against swarming or even just loitering bots. Flying drones are incredibly fragile and exposed. They are slow and easy to kill.
Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
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Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. The fact is the "killer bot" scenario is just a one time thing. After it happens, all cities or armies or whatever, will have very solid defences installed against swarming or even just loitering bots. Flying drones are incredibly fragile and exposed. They are slow and easy to kill.
Slow and easy to kill? Seen a drone race? At what range and with what weapon would they be easy to kill? How long would the kill take? At what range could the drone be killed at? Sure often drones fly in straight lines or hover. But in an adversarial environment they could easily move pseudo randomly and be quite difficult to kill.
Nothing we have now (publicly) is going to do a damn against a shipping container full of 2-5 lb drones each carrying 1 lb of C4 in a swarm with cheap off the shelf sensors going 100 mph nap of the earth in a distributed pattern. And that is currently entirely doable with off the shelf drones using existing software and published techniques for peanuts. Add in some decent programming and logistics talent, and that is a huge problem.
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…
Embedded consumer electronics/IoT generally have awful security configs and an internet connection. Consumer-grade, and I bet a fair bit of the more high powered drones, are vulnerable to this same risk.
I'd love an educated opinion on this, but to the extent I've thought about this as well - many of these drones must be vuln to some form of remote code exploitation and shutdowns, if you can get a targeted signal to hit their admin "beacon" or w/e.
As consumer drones do show up in warfare a fair bit, this feels like a possible counter-drone route to explore.