Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
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Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#2Fascinating. Does the Starlink antenna work well underwater? Or was this sub surfacing to communicate?
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#3This strikes me as not a very good technique. With minimal help from starlink law enforcement could find every sub out there. Anyhow, what does this buy you that an offline gps connected controller does not?
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#4This strikes me as not a very good technique. With minimal help from starlink law enforcement could find every sub out there. Anyhow, what does this buy you that an offline gps connected controller does not?
Remote tracking?
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#5Fascinating. Does the Starlink antenna work well underwater? Or was this sub surfacing to communicate?
Narco subs are mostly/entirely submerged to reduce visibility, but they almost all still operate at the surface
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#6This strikes me as not a very good technique. With minimal help from starlink law enforcement could find every sub out there. Anyhow, what does this buy you that an offline gps connected controller does not?
Remote tracking?
Just a simple radio transmitter could fulfil that function.
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#7This strikes me as not a very good technique. With minimal help from starlink law enforcement could find every sub out there. Anyhow, what does this buy you that an offline gps connected controller does not?
Because the cargo is high value and illegal, real time connectivity is needed. If it was on autopilot, how could they verify delivery? What if a third party was tipped by an insider and intercepted the shipment? What if it simply sank along the route?
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#8I thought drone delivery was years off, but I guess that only matters if the law is being followed.
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#9This strikes me as not a very good technique. With minimal help from starlink law enforcement could find every sub out there. Anyhow, what does this buy you that an offline gps connected controller does not?
If you have direct control you need far less automation and can potentially solve more problems at sea or change destination as needed or retrieve it faster if it breaks down by telling you exactly what is wrong, and it requires less skills to build all the hardware. Your entire radio communications setup is as close to plug-and-play as it gets and it both looks like "legitimate" radio signals and is far less likely to detected on the ground as a remote control link since it is using phased array antennas pointed at the sky rather than at the horizon.
You also have to remember its not like they are building tons of identical subs and moved an entire fleet over to starlink. They could have a dozen very different setups running with just a few guys tinkering around with whatever devices are easy to obtain under the radar, and it prevents single design vulnerabilities from collapsing your entire sub delivery supply line at once. Even if it only evades enforcement a single time by being novel, the cocaine it delivers out values whatever hardware and work it took to setup in the first place.
Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna
#10Just legalize it already. This is stupid.