To protect against weaponized drones, we must understand their key strengths • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by godtoldmetodoit » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #44

fighterpilot wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed - in this awful scenario where the US is fighting China, their economy would absolutely crater as the US shoots any ship heading towards Chinese ports after the embargo was declared.

China can't feed itself.

China only produces a third of the oil it consumes.

If your people begin to starve as soon as war starts and you all of a sudden have 1/3rd the oil you used to.... well, that's not exactly a recipe for success.

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

#102

Post by wearywanderer » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #29

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…

Drones are the new infantry and land mines. For sea battles missiles still dominate, since all you need to do is destroy the ship with the drones. Drones fly around and autonomously eliminate targets while maintaining perimeters, which replaces infantry doing the same thing. Drones are easy to launch from land-based bases and due to their limited range are best suited to land-based operations. Aerial drones are easil…

The line between drone and missile is fuzzy at best. Most of the distinguishing characteristics often cited in these conversations are wrong. For instance, missiles are usually powered by rockets, but many missiles are powered by jet engines instead. Drones are usually meant to be reusable, but the first drones ever made were specifically expendable (which is why they are named after drone bees, which fly once before dying.) Loiter munitions are sometimes considered drones instead of missiles, but nobody doubts that a tomahawk cruise missile is a missile, and yet, a modern tomahawk is also a loiter munition that can cruise in a circle for hours.

Sometimes autonomy is cited as a key characteristic of drones. But the first drones were pure-RC with no autonomy at all, while there are a myriad of autonomous missiles and non-autonomous human-guided missiles. So autonomy is not a distinguishing characteristic either.

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

#103

Post by K0balt » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

korse wrote: post #66

K0balt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty easy to protect electronics from rf energy.

Yes it is, but most consumer drone hardware doesn't do a very good job of it. Also, most drones require a a couple of RF/EM sensors for position and heading which can't exactly be Faraday caged. 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.

Yeah, it would need to be customized for sure. Antennas can be filtered pretty effectively even in high rf environments, but they might be jammed. The Magnetometer will work in a box.

Straight consumer drones should be easy to disable though.

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

#104

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

hungryforcodes wrote: post #51

coderintherye wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So far, that article indicates, drones have been unable to yield a decisive advantage in any conflict Drones gave Azerbaijan a decisive advantage in the recent conflict with Armenia: https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-ka...

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.

> Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against

How? They fly just few hundred meters above the ground, launch from field runways, and for the price of a single B-2, a country can buy 2000 of them.

Jamming? Even a country like Turkey was able to devise a passable inertial navigation, and and programming for autonomous operation way exceeding an easy to trick "attack anything that moves" mode.

To counter them, you will need a very sizeable air force fitted with best radars possible to track them down individually, and strafe with a cannon (since no missile currently can lock onto something so small, slow, cold, and low flying.)

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

#105

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #69

sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And even drone races are slow and predictable compared to what is possible with an applied military mind and decent tools. I suspect (or hope) we already have some decent options in the top secret space. 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 distrib…

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by sklearncowboy » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

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…

China was already way past this by the late 90s.

This is old thinking. Same battlefield with different technology.

The war that changed everything was the 1st Gulf War.

20 years ago they could see how stupid it was to use weapons to blow things up that cost more than what you were blowing up.

Our military has already been lapped. We only don't think so because we waste so much money on outdated expensive weapon systems and then use the amount spent as proof we have the better military.

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

#107

Post by FridayoLeary » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #80

trhway wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Only once. Everyone has paid attention, and the next drone attacks will be suitably defended against. no. Azerbajan/Turkey went into it only after verifying that it works, to the devastating effect, against the Russian made air-defenses in Syria and Libya. Now Ukraine has bought these drones and is starting their production. In the next year or two we'll see them being used to the same great effect in Donbass. So fa…

Rafael Systems sells Drone Dome anti drone mobile defense.

I think they even proved themselves in the recent Gaza campaign.

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

#108

Post by baybal2 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

jcrawfordor wrote: post #68

sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has been working on means of defending against those for decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do with detection than firing.

> Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets.

The thing is exactly that those drones are so slow, and low.

Phalanx performance against sea skimming missiles is know to be poor.

And that on dielectric, flat sea surface.

Even military drones weighting few tons can fly autonomously under 100m.

Ironically, it's now depressions in the terrain which will provide more air defence since they will force terrain following drones, and cruise missiles to move at oblique angles.

Basically the problem is the same as with low, and slow cruise missiles, except worse.

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

#109

Post by wearywanderer » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

jcrawfordor wrote: post #68

sliken wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Modern CIWS are designed to be effective against substantially faster and more agile rockets. Drones really are slow and easy to take down compared to guided rockets and especially kinetic ones, and the military has been working on means of defending against those for decades. The Phalanx is being modified to serve as an anti-UAS system, for example. The challenge is more to do with detection than firing.

Flying nape-of-the-earth is a hard counter to CIWS-style defense systems. For antiship missiles this tactic doesn't help a whole lot, but for drones over land? C-RAM can't see through a hill, let alone shoot through one.

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

#110

Post by magicsmoke » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

wearywanderer wrote: post #102

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones are the new infantry and land mines. For sea battles missiles still dominate, since all you need to do is destroy the ship with the drones. Drones fly around and autonomously eliminate targets while maintaining perimeters, which replaces infantry doing the same thing. Drones are easy to launch from land-based bases and due to their limited range are best suited to land-based operations. Aerial drones are easil…

The line between drone and missile is fuzzy at best. Most of the distinguishing characteristics often cited in these conversations are wrong. For instance, missiles are usually powered by rockets, but many missiles are powered by jet engines instead. Drones are usually meant to be reusable, but the first drones ever made were specifically expendable (which is why they are named after drone bees, which fly once before…

It feels like most of the recent fascination with drones is due to overlap with civilian off-the-shelf technology and the fantasy of being able to buy something that could potentially go toe to toe with advanced militaries. When in fact, militaries have always had "aerial munitions with varying degrees of intelligence and maneuverability and propulsion methods selected based on speed/maneuverability/range tradeoffs." An off the shelf quadcoptor is as far from military weaponry as a hand calculator is from a supercomputer even if they're both calculating machines.

It's weird seeing this fascination with drones yet not seeing an analogous fascination for Toyota trucks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War