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African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

bbc.com

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Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#11

Post by downandout »

For a mining (or any) company to buy this to control workers is reprehensible, and it's rather shocking that they would publicize this as their first order. They could have just as easily said that an undisclosed buyer has purchased the first 25 of them. It's as if they are trying to market this as a slave-control copter.

However, this makes me wonder why we don't have small military drones with guns on them. It seems like they only have the large missile carriers and tiny surveillance drones. Something in the middle that is armed would eliminate most soldier-to-soldier battlefield confrontations. They could just send several small armed drones out and fire at their opposition with near perfect accuracy for every bullet since a computer would control the aiming and firing.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#12

Post by mattgibson »

Surely these won't be too effective. They'd be easily brought down by getting anything at all (fishing wire, string, etc) fired from a makeshift catapult caught up in the rotors.

High tech crowd control that can be defeated with stuff you've got lying around in the kitchen doesn't seen too useful.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#13

Post by ChuckMcM »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #10
ChuckMcM wrote: post #9

I am surprised that anyone would be caught off guard by this sort of thing. After all it is going to be much more effective to fly over a crowd and shoot at them than to try to hit them from behind a riot shield. The Union outrage is interesting too, mostly because I agree that as your government (or companies) acquire tools for crowd control it certainly has a chilling effect on peaceful assembly. That said I don't…

>> That said I don't see why these folks don't have drones of their own There's some important historical context here. The client was a South African mining company (I assume - it said mining company, and the company is in South Africa). There were recent riots in South Africa between a miner's union and the mine, and the miner's got slaughtered (literally). Most likely not the same company, but miner's in South Afr…

The South African's aren't the only one, miners in the coal belt of the US, and in China today, have always been victimized by unscrupulous corporations.

In both those cases having documentation of the problems with video from a drone could have furthered the miner's interest in getting justice. That was what I was trying to say that with my comment about them (the miners) having drones of their own.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#14

Post by bmelton »

downandout wrote: post #11

For a mining (or any) company to buy this to control workers is reprehensible, and it's rather shocking that they would publicize this as their first order. They could have just as easily said that an undisclosed buyer has purchased the first 25 of them. It's as if they are trying to market this as a slave-control copter. However, this makes me wonder why we don't have small military drones with guns on them. It seem…

Define 'small'? Recoil and weight are the primary factors, I assume, in why no such beast exists.

Anything in the size of the average quad-copter is going to have to manage the fact that its flight trajectory would be significantly altered with each shot. The guys at Red Jacket invented something like that, and the way they mitigated the recoil was to have the barrel pointing straight down, which limits the effectiveness dramatically.

You're right, clearly, in that there's a lot of room between the missile and surveillance drones, but big enough to fire a rifle round might be a bit bigger than you suspect.

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#16

Post by MasterScrat »

jobu wrote: post #8

"Desert Wolf's website states that its Skunk octacopter drone is fitted with four high-capacity paintball barrels, each capable of firing up to 20 bullets per second." If they sell this in the US our company paintball outings might get a little more interesting.

Take a look at this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vICfKPoCubw#t=258

Re: African firm is selling pepper-spray bullet firing drones

#18

Post by downandout »

bmelton wrote: post #14
downandout wrote: post #11

For a mining (or any) company to buy this to control workers is reprehensible, and it's rather shocking that they would publicize this as their first order. They could have just as easily said that an undisclosed buyer has purchased the first 25 of them. It's as if they are trying to market this as a slave-control copter. However, this makes me wonder why we don't have small military drones with guns on them. It seem…

Define 'small'? Recoil and weight are the primary factors, I assume, in why no such beast exists. Anything in the size of the average quad-copter is going to have to manage the fact that its flight trajectory would be significantly altered with each shot. The guys at Red Jacket invented something like that, and the way they mitigated the recoil was to have the barrel pointing straight down, which limits the effective…

Agreed that a quad-copter wouldn't be able to handle the recoil, and that weight is a factor - bullets are (relatively) heavy. I was just saying that something the size of a Predator drone isn't necessary for close combat. I'm sure that there is some engineering magic that could be done to manage both of these issues in a relatively small package.
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