How to hide from killer drones • Hacker News Board

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#121

Post by nine_k » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #105

atoav wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until drones deploy counter-blinkenlights. As someone who has built a realtime people tracker art installation in a disco: Stroboscopes are highly effective at confusing these models.

Yes but you're trying to identify people. A military system is being launched at an area to destroy a target that is presumed to be trying to hide (hence AI). Absolutely nothing stops a secondary, much simpler identifier system of "home on bright flickering lights". Any system where you try to confuse an image recognition model by loudly doing something unexpected suffers from the fact that regular tracking systems h…

There's a limit to the number of targeting systems you can afford to deploy on a weapon, and there's the problem of reconciling their signals if their views of where the target is start to diverge.

"Counter-blinkenlights" are well-known as thermal flares, and more similar but as crude, [dazzlers] that blind the incoming rockets' sensors.

[dazzlers]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_(weapon)

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#122

Post by esseph » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

nujabe wrote: post #100

esseph wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CIWS can only fire at one direction at a time, so 2+1 drones has an extremely high chance of taking it out for around $2500 or less. CIWS is multiple magnitudes more expensive. Also can't use CIWS near troops and fpvs. P1-SUN and equivalent are the answer there.

I don’t think it’s a technical limitation that CIWS systems today only fire in one direction.

Wouldn't really improve things.

CIWS is just best for a different threat model.

We're moving into the "waves of drones with orchestration" phase and expensive directional systems won't survive that, and cost on the drone swarms is still drastically lower. Won't matter if you added ten ciws and ten fire-finding radars.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#123

Post by nine_k » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #26

joezydeco wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence seems to be coming out to support the latter. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-us... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o

Yes, media see a snapdragon running a YOLO and go off writing "AI apocalypse autonomous killer drones" articles. See it for yourselves: https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956 Some object detection and (human triggered) terminal guidance. It's essentially there to solve latency and control issues for a fixed wing platform with a spotty data link.

[dead]

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#124

Post by nine_k » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC

ponector wrote: post #112

einpoklum wrote: post #86

> The probable result will be an arms race pitting increasingly sophisticated machine vision systems against cleverer and cleverer methods for fooling them. FPV drones are a thing. In, fact, I suspect most drones in the NATO-Russia war are FPV rather than fully autonomous.

How is it a NATO-russia war of NATO is not taking a participation? You can call it NATO-Iran, or NATO-NKorea war as well. Ukraine-Nkorea war? At least there were direct contacts between their forces.

Indeed, the key low-cost mass-produced drone tech is Ukrainian, and NATO currently sorely lacks comparable capabilities.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#125

Post by girvo » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #107

tamimio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CIWS might be effective against fixed wing since they fly mostly in straight lines, it won’t work effectively against multirotors that can quickly change direction and maneuver around, now add swarm of them, and it will overwhelm CIWS. That of course, assuming it was detected which is a whole process by itself.

You’re talking about dodging bullets or shrapnel here. Source on that a multi rotor has that level of manoeuvrability while also carrying a lethal payload and enough battery for a viable engagement range?

/r/CombatFootage will show that even with strong explosive payloads the modern quads used by Ukraine are surprisingly mobile. They’re incredibly quick and manoeuvrable still, much to my surprise.

I do not actually suggest watching those videos, they are NSFL.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#126

Post by throwitaway222 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:02 PM UTC

ezekiel68 wrote: post #120

orthoxerox wrote: post #22

Dazzle camouflage doesn't work on killer drones. Even civilian LLMs recognize that the object on the photograph is a military truck, except they can't explain why it's been painted to resemble a zebra. Most dedicated machine vision models easily lock in on a boxy shape moving along a road. If anything, the stripes make the trucks easier to see. The real answer to killer drones is a CIWS that can cover 2pi steradians…

Well, not all killer drones run any kind of transformer model so...

Also "Civilian LLMs" use something on the order of 8 H200s, where a drone is effectively using a phone CPU from 2005.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#127

Post by XorNot » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:04 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #121

XorNot wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you're trying to identify people. A military system is being launched at an area to destroy a target that is presumed to be trying to hide (hence AI). Absolutely nothing stops a secondary, much simpler identifier system of "home on bright flickering lights". Any system where you try to confuse an image recognition model by loudly doing something unexpected suffers from the fact that regular tracking systems h…

There's a limit to the number of targeting systems you can afford to deploy on a weapon, and there's the problem of reconciling their signals if their views of where the target is start to diverge. "Counter-blinkenlights" are well-known as thermal flares, and more similar but as crude, [dazzlers] that blind the incoming rockets' sensors. [dazzlers]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_(weapon)

But it's not a separate system, it's just a separate algorithm - it's software.

"No target" by AI but "target" by the "engage light sources" recognizer is still successful targeting.

"No target" versus "aim at anything not green or blue" is as well.

It's also a question of the speeds involved: a dazzler on high speed jet versus a high speed missile might cause a near miss which means hundreds of meters of actual separation. Diving drone vs. truck? Not so much.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#128

Post by FridgeSeal » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #36

stefan_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, media see a snapdragon running a YOLO and go off writing "AI apocalypse autonomous killer drones" articles. See it for yourselves: https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956 Some object detection and (human triggered) terminal guidance. It's essentially there to solve latency and control issues for a fixed wing platform with a spotty data link.

If it works, who cares how it's made?

Because how it’s made and functions is useful information for dealing with it when they’re trying to attack you?

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#129

Post by robocat » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:24 PM UTC

esseph wrote: post #70

yogthos wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the drone is going on a one way trip, I imagine you'd want to use the cheapest hardware possible which would mean using the dumbest model you can get away with.

Your drone needs to be cheaper than what you're killing, so if your target profile is 50k+ USD and up, a $10000 even is fine (not that it would need to be even 10k).

Your oversimplification bakes in too many assumptions.

The relative financial cost to the enemy is almost irrelevant if they are much wealthier than you are.

What matters most is the intangible military value of the item.

In too many situations people think simplistically about dollars, when what matters is invisible or intangible values. The hyperfocus on money is especially egregious among people that don't have much.

Re: How to hide from killer drones

#130

Post by YurgenJurgensen » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 11:28 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #125

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about dodging bullets or shrapnel here. Source on that a multi rotor has that level of manoeuvrability while also carrying a lethal payload and enough battery for a viable engagement range?

/r/CombatFootage will show that even with strong explosive payloads the modern quads used by Ukraine are surprisingly mobile. They’re incredibly quick and manoeuvrable still, much to my surprise. I do not actually suggest watching those videos, they are NSFL.

There’s a pretty big gulf between “very quick” and “capable of dodging air bursting autocannon rounds without sacrificing forward momentum”.

Incidentally, modern drone footage is actually not nearly as bad as stuff from earlier in the war. Increased lethality of the FPVs means much fewer conscripts deciding to take a 5.45mm retirement plan.