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Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

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Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#71

Post by WJW »

bigiain wrote: post #65
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The Turkish drone projects were created basically because Turkish engineers looked at all the drone stuff happening in the west and went "look at all these idiot westerners using all these amazing weapons as toys". Everyone who joined those companies knew from the start what field they were in. And while the original Kargus didn't have explosives, that doesn't mean they weren't weapons. In the military se…

Maybe. How much would you bet against open source projects like Ardupilot having their code swiped and used by defence contractors or weapons manufacturers. What are the GPL requirements for making the source available to people targeted by drones running stolen GPL code?

Do you think the Ardupilot people were blind to the military applications of what they were making? I personally can't imagine anyone bright enough to work on drone autopilots to be simultaneously ignorant enough not to realize that a drone could be used for harmful applications.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#73

Post by bigiain »

sbierwagen wrote: post #57
fho wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am neither American nor a gun nerd, but from what I "overheard" on the internet a single Phalanx system should be able to take out drone swarms at incredible rates?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret.…

> Against drone swarms you kinda want directed energy weapons, either microwave or laser. Which don't exist, currently.

These guys reckon they can detect, locate, and take down drones and drone swarms by jamming them with directed RF (not energy weapons as such): https://www.droneshield.com

These guys build "remotely operated weapons" that include 5.56mm up to 30mm cannons (as well as grenade launchers and missile launchers), and a "Counter Drone Defence System" that can drive them: https://www.eos-aus.com/defence/

I don't know it this works anything like as well on moving targets, but what you see at about 30 secs in this video looks like it'd take down most significanbtly-smaller-than-Predator drones pretty reliably at 900m out: https://vimeo.com/429825806 And I suspect 7.65 or 5.56 would probably work just as well as 50cal for that (though perhaps less accurately at long range?)

Not anything like as vicious as Phalanx, but if you're trying to protect against quadcopter or fixed wing drone swarms instead of cruise missiles, I'd bet they're remarkably more cost effective.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#74

Post by bigiain »

fho wrote: post #67
sbierwagen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret.…

> shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each That's pretty crazy to think of ... I guess the only justification for that is that the assets that are protected by such a system are worth more than that. > You could imagine firing fewer rounds per salvo If I learned anything from games, it's that you want AoE damage for swarming enemies ;-)

Phalanx was designed to protect battleships and aircraft carriers from cruise missiles.

Emptying 6 or 8 4500 round Phalanx turrets at the half dozen cruise missile locked onto your aircraft carrier seems like a pretty sensible way to spend a million bucks.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#75

Post by chrismorgan »

michaelt wrote: post #69
chrismorgan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time... That doesn’t immediately sound very plausible to me (as a layman who’s never dealt with drones but has dealt with battery-powered devices): I can’t imagine auto-power-down being based on flight time: surely it would be driven by battery voltage measurements, since batteries vary somewhat to begin with and vary a…

> I then wouldn’t expect such homogeneity of battery lives that they would all drop out of the sky in such a short range of time. Well, they have all been doing a synchronised routine. Presumably they were purchased as a batch, and operated together. And if these were mini-drones that only had a 10 minute battery life to begin with? I could believe they'd all run flat within 60 seconds of one another.

They’re not small drones—see the footage as they reach the ground.

The flat battery hypothesis also feels unlikely because it’s too obvious a failure mode. On the other hand, I suppose it’d be possible to have them send the drones up, then get told to delay by a few minutes, and so exceed the planned flight time. But the drones aren’t that high up (much less than 30 seconds of controlled descent), so that doesn’t feel so likely.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#76

Post by WJW »

m4rtink wrote: post #60
sbierwagen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret.…

Actually proximity fuzed rounds should work the best, each taking outv many swarm memvers. Its not like these things could be armored rather than as light as possible.

Proximity fused rounds do have the significant downside that using them near built up areas will cause significant collateral damage. For example, if a drone swarm attacks an election rally somewhere in the US then you can't really detonate airburst shells above the crowd to take out the drones, since you would do more harm than good with that.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#77

Post by IshKebab »

chrismorgan wrote: post #47
winrid wrote: post #37

These drones are used for light shows. I'm guessing they tried to run the show too long. It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time...

> It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time... That doesn’t immediately sound very plausible to me (as a layman who’s never dealt with drones but has dealt with battery-powered devices): I can’t imagine auto-power-down being based on flight time: surely it would be driven by battery voltage measurements, since batteries vary somewhat to begin with and vary a…

> surely it would be driven by battery voltage measurements

No, it's driven by a battery management system that measures battery voltage, temperature and input/output current in order to get a more accurate estimate.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#78

Post by hansel_der »

sbierwagen wrote: post #57
fho wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am neither American nor a gun nerd, but from what I "overheard" on the internet a single Phalanx system should be able to take out drone swarms at incredible rates?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27440924 >>The Block 1A and newer (pneumatic driven) CIWS mounts fire at a rate of 4,500 rounds per minute with a 1,550-round magazine. >>Shells fired by the Phalanx cost around $30 each and the gun typically fires 100 or more when engaging a target.[14] >So it's about three grand to zap one drone, and you get 15 shootdowns before a human needs to shovel more ammo into the turret.…

and this is not even taking into account the difficulty to actually hit a target this small with a projectile weapon.

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#79

Post by bigiain »

winrid wrote: post #37

These drones are used for light shows. I'm guessing they tried to run the show too long. It looks like they all start attempting to land before their batteries run out, around the same time...

I can just imagine some guy telling his boss "I know how to make the show better, if we replace all our 2,500mAHr batteries with these 10,000mAHr ones I've found, we'll get 4 times the flying time! We could fly for 40mins instead of only 10mins!"

Then all the drones drop out of the sky after 2 minutes because the "10,000mAHr" cells only store about 500mAHr:

http://danyk.cz/test18650_en.html

Re: Drones Raining from the Sky in Zhengzhou

#80

Post by hansel_der »

jl6 wrote: post #45
narrator wrote: post #33

For those who like drone dystopia nightmare fuel, this video made me think of this disturbing modern weapon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STM_Kargu :/

What defence could, say, a traditional military base, mount against a swarm of, say, 1000 of these?

i guess adverserial attacks towards the employed ai-model or some form of physical obstacle (net) would be most efficient but emp or directed energy weapons are probably more reliable
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