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$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

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Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#261

Post by infinitewars »

tclancy wrote: post #38
redgridtactical wrote: post #13

The engineering is genuinely impressive for $96, but naming the repo "MANPADS-System-Launcher-and-Rocket" on GitHub is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don't want. ITAR implications aside, the interesting part is the mid-flight trajectory recalculation on a $5 sensor. That's the same basic problem military guidance systems solve with hardware that costs thousands. The gap between consumer electronic…

> The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking My friend's brother works in munitions and had, in his spare time, designed and prototyped a missile that could be built for about 10k. He pretty much was ignored by the contractor he works for. Shockingly, as of a couple weeks ago, they are all hot and bothered to talk.

If you build a tool optimized for human destruction, you are feeding a system where violence is the default currency

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#263

Post by kdheiwns »

dgroshev wrote: post #115
vidarh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be sweating, because if the other side can fire 100 rockets for $10k that are close enough to not immediately and obviously be off target, and you don't know whether a more expensive one with actual explosives is hiding within that barrage, you now have 100 targets to try to intercept, and suddenly your costs have gone up dramatically while the other sides costs has barely moved.

100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to sp…

If you think shelf life, QA, safety, blah blah blah matters when a rocket is 100 bucks, I have just three words: you will lose.

The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere. The US got their bases blown to pieces across the Middle East by cheap drones that gently float through the air like a paper airplane in comparison to absolutely any missile.

And let's not forget. The US had napalm, helicopters, bombers, incredible logistics, cutting edge equipment of all sorts. Vietnam had a bunch of sticks in a hole covered in poop. Those sticks sent Americans crying home and we still get movies and games with them crying about how bad it was.

In war between great powers, yeah, high tech works because it's scary and civilians don't want to have that kind of stuff coming home. In a war where civilians are being targeted by great powers who terrorize them by blowing up schools and hospitals, a lot of people are thinking about how many weapons they can make to defend their home and for cheap. If America thinks an invasion is a good idea, they're going to be bringing their 50 million dollar tanks face to face with a few $100 toy rockets. And those toy rockets will be picking off tanks like fish in a barrel while a drone streams it in 4K live to the internet. I really do not think American who support current happenings are ready for the absolute mental torment they're going to endure if this continues.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#264

Post by cuu508 »

dgroshev wrote: post #230
pjc50 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. I wonder how much of that Ukraine is bothering with. Or Iran. Certainly Hezbollah are building down to a budget.

Ukraine does bother with all of that when they can afford it. I'd even say that FPV drones are the main exception, and only because Ukraine was so pressed for immediate results and had stockpiles to repurpose. There are only so many old RPG warheads you can reuse with a detonator made of live wires, and maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day un…

> maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day

I was thinking about that. Wouldn't you be able to make it so the detonator gets armed by the operator remotely only once in the air and away?

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#265

Post by gos9 »

redgridtactical wrote: post #13

The engineering is genuinely impressive for $96, but naming the repo "MANPADS-System-Launcher-and-Rocket" on GitHub is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don't want. ITAR implications aside, the interesting part is the mid-flight trajectory recalculation on a $5 sensor. That's the same basic problem military guidance systems solve with hardware that costs thousands. The gap between consumer electronic…

AI slop comment

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#266

Post by jacquesm »

bluescrn wrote: post #254
jacquesm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a 3D printer and some 'ordinary household chemicals' to quote a certain movie you can do pretty scary stuff.

People can do very scary things with a knife, a car, or petrol+matches. We don't try to regulate those things out of existence like we do with new technology (drones and now 3D printers) Kind of ridiculous that a country with more guns than people and 45k firearms deaths per year wants to regulate 3D printed plastic. Yet collecting and shooting actual guns is still an acceptable hobby in many states.

Oh, I totally agree. I always see this as evidence that the terrorism threat is overblown, if it were really as large as we are led to believe the number of successful attacks would be far higher than it is.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#267

Post by dgroshev »

cuu508 wrote: post #264
dgroshev wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine does bother with all of that when they can afford it. I'd even say that FPV drones are the main exception, and only because Ukraine was so pressed for immediate results and had stockpiles to repurpose. There are only so many old RPG warheads you can reuse with a detonator made of live wires, and maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day un…

> maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day I was thinking about that. Wouldn't you be able to make it so the detonator gets armed by the operator remotely only once in the air and away?

That's entirely possible, but doing so reliably and safely is difficult and expensive enough that for a very long time Ukrainians were accepting the risk instead.

The risk appetite countries in existential conflicts have is quite different from what we're used to. For example, there are plenty of videos of Ukrainian soldiers angle grinding cluster munitions open to extract submunitions to put on drones, but that's not a strategy that western armies can rely on.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#268

Post by jacquesm »

tamimio wrote: post #208
jacquesm wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hate it, but at the same time, without it Ukraine would have been overrun by now and I think that trumps your feelings about your hobby.

That's not true at all, the success rates of these fpv drones are around 1 to 100, ie out of 100 failed attempt you get a hit, but you only see the successful ones, and those aren't my words, this is straight up from a Canadian soldier in Ukraine (1). And you can actually ask any hobbyist, they will tell you how prone to failure/crashes/loss these fpv small drones are, after all, they are meant to be for fun. (1) htt…

I wasn't talking about the success rate for any individual drone, but about the cumulative effect. And the success rate of individual missions depends very strongly on which part of the front you are looking at and what kind of missions are flown.

Just to give you one figure: estimates are that between 1000 and 1500 Shaheds have been downed by interceptors during last February. That's not a 100% kill rate but it definitely isn't 1% either. And they're getting better every week.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#269

Post by computerdork »

kdheiwns wrote: post #263
dgroshev wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability. Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to sp…

If you think shelf life, QA, safety, blah blah blah matters when a rocket is 100 bucks, I have just three words: you will lose. The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere. The US got their bases blown to pieces across the Middle East by cheap drones that gently float through the air like a paper airplane in comparison to absolutely any missile. And let's not fo…

You have a point - cheap drones have changed warfare - but you might be simplifying the issue. As some warfare experts online have discussed, it isn't that cheap drones are the only weapon that is used in Ukraine (or warfare in general), it is one option in vast array of options based on the situation (although, agreed, it is taking on a much bigger significance). Look at the war in Iran. They did a pretty standard playbook and use stealth jets and cruise missiles to surgically take out air defenses in order to gain air dominance. This would be very difficult with just cheap drones.

... but, do agree that cheap weapons are still becoming extremely important. Iran is terrorizing the middle east and strait of hormuz with cheap drones, so they are definitely important. Yeah, in the war of attrition, low cost, high-volume options are clearly very important.

Re: $96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

#270

Post by tzury »

tamimio wrote: post #239
tzury wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 inches drone cannot carry much of explosive at all. In order to dump 10 kg load of explosives, you need an “agricultural drone” one that can carry 45kg, since the additional mechanisms and their batteries (and the drone’s backup batteries) are heavy. Those are bigger and noisier. DJI ARGAS Series are good starting point. https://ag.dji.com/mobile

Last week I was flying the argas! But I think you are misunderstanding, these are suicide drones not dropping the payload kind, and 8in can very well carry a deadly explosive, mostly against personnel, vehicles ones you get it bigger but not by much, from 12-18in max.

I see.

Nowadays I fly nothing, but I do see them Iranian drones get intercepted from my porch in Abu Dhabi.

The fact I am watching it and not panicking anymore tells about how cooked I am.

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