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How to Hide from a Drone

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111–120 of 121 posts

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#111

Whilst I’m sure there are opsec protocols that can do something to protect you from modern (military style) drones, it’s very very very hard to stop an adversary with a nearly unlimited amount of money and incredible technological superiority from keeping their eyes on you once you’re in their sights.

Yet, the US has pretty much been kept at bay from Irak and Afghanistan, go figure... In general, the US army is not equipped for guerilla-style warfare, and especially not on US soil. Local PD are another story on this point, but far less equipped.

For now...

See also training facilities in for instance Fort Polk, or the german Schnöggersburg, where that is only the largest, but not the only one.

Also things like https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/7/29/d... come to mind.

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#112
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few ways to detect radio receivers, some of them based on listening for incidentally radiated intermediate frequencies (which have to be a multiple of the received frequency) from the amplifier in the receiver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van It would be a heck of a trick to detect a GPS receiver that way, though. Probably be easier just to listen for the RF noise from the switching regulator…

Most of the methods listed there were listening for the EM of the TV being on, not the reciever antenna. Technically, it sounds like they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between pirated TV and watching a movie on the VCR.

I think the reasoning for those TV-sniffing trucks at the time were not what you watch, but that you could watch at all, i.e. you had a device capable of watching TV and to pay your damn dues for that "privilege".

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#113
post #90

I think a better approach for these asymmetrical power scenarios is to come up with ways to very cheaply and anonymously destroy drones. The approaches in this article seem like they would be quickly developed around. The visual cues only work temporarily until the software gets retrained and it’s dangerous to test if the drones are using updates to defeat the anti-AI t-shirts and whatnot. Drones are pretty expensive…

Where I live slingshots with armrests are forbidden(now). If you are cought with one it's a violation of current weapons laws, and you'll get fined and a record.

Funny thing is, crossbows and bows in general are not :) Maybe because they are larger and difficult to carry concealed.

Had much fun with a slingshot(without arm rest) as a kid, using steel balls out of old ball bearings and glass marbles at distances up to about 50 meters with very surprising results against brick and concrete walls. Made large parts of them simply chip off, or deep dents into trash bins, traffic signs, and similar things.

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#114
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video was taken from far distance because the drone had to operate unnoticed in enemy territory; pretty sure that they had much better optics and transmission capabilities even back then, but it had to be very far from action. The distance can be roughly measured, if the bullets speed is known, by counting the time between the shots audio (assuming it's properly synced) and when they're seen hitting the area. To…

One thing which bothers me is satellite imagery. In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. I often wonder, what if you had two distinct lenses, each with separate transmit? EG, both operating at once. Or multiple lenses? Now you could do things, potentially, such as use a high-fidelity lens to tag individuals. EG, license plates. Facial recognition. That sort of thing. Once tagged, anothe…

In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. Are you sure about that? I'm not even sure about that now. Any credible information on the net, somewhere?

I thought that was movie stuff, like in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

I'm aware that this is difficult to prove, because secrecy, national security and so on, but license plates from orbit? In the 80ies?

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#115
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing which bothers me is satellite imagery. In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. I often wonder, what if you had two distinct lenses, each with separate transmit? EG, both operating at once. Or multiple lenses? Now you could do things, potentially, such as use a high-fidelity lens to tag individuals. EG, license plates. Facial recognition. That sort of thing. Once tagged, anothe…

The future, imo, is sensor fusion. Cameras everywhere, in the sky and on the ground. Those cameras feed back to a large tracking system which is able to detect and track objects as they move between cameras. This information can be crosschecked against cell phone location data and could flag anyone travelling without a phone, or with the wrong phone, for further scrutiny. It sounds like paranoid delusions now, but I…

Where I live we already have cameras on larger street crossings for traffic management, and along every bus line, not to mention the ones in busses, metros and stations.

What is lacking is the fusion you mention. But with ubiquitous 5G it's only a matter of when, not if.

The smaller ones clipped onto the top of traffic lights look rather eyeborgian ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043844/ )

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#116
post #25
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. This is absolutely false.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-s... It was also known by the likes of William Safire that our satellites could "read the license plates on the cars of Kremlin officials." -- If untrue, please provide a counter source to many of the like statements as cited above. (You may be right, but it seems that many believe you are wrong)

Maybe better links:

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120429200224/http://www.canadi...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120108034640/http://www.nro.go...

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#117
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/12/top-s... It was also known by the likes of William Safire that our satellites could "read the license plates on the cars of Kremlin officials." -- If untrue, please provide a counter source to many of the like statements as cited above. (You may be right, but it seems that many believe you are wrong)

Maybe better links: [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20120429200224/http://www.canadi... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120108034640/http://www.nro.go...

Thanks for this. Especially the PDF link.

To anyone reading this:

Pages 100 onward, you get to see diagrams of how it was built, and pics of the retrieval system and info on methods.

Page 120 onward talks about that return unit in more detail.

Page 122 I found interesting, details about measures to prevent the return unit from falling into enemy hands.

Page 128 is a good summary image, with some details on the lower right.

Page 165 onward, especially 168 have actual shots. 168 looks better than the first Google Earth images, and you can easily make out and identify how many 'things' the enemy has.

Sadly I have no more time currently to read, and more sadly some details are still redacted. Understandable, when I ponder the nature of some of those redacted parts. EG, privacy, current contractors still employed, tech methods still used on newer gear, at time of declassification.

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#118
post #98
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=nugbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kFEE... Under 'twenty questions', second column, end of column, under highlights "Big Bird" satellite. Again, you may be right. However there are many claims that this capability existed in the 80s. Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time, including ones which worked on film, and jettisoned rolls of it for terrestrial pickup.

> Suggest you research some of the satellites of the time Suggest you do the same. Here's the "Big Bird" satellite you referred to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon > The cameras could scan contiguous areas up to 120 degrees wide, and achieved a ground resolution better than 2 ft (0.61 m) during the later phase of the project. The sources you cite are, to put it nicely, propaganda. The physics simply does…

LargoLasskhyfv added a link with an awesomely detailed PDF.

I'll say two things here.

First, I'll still say "post film manipulation and processing may have enhanced imagery, and they were constantly modifying this gear from what I've read in that PDF."

Second, "Big Bird" was decommissioned in the mid 80s.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3662/1

There's no way it wasn't replaced with something else. What was that?

An example, is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen system, which wikipedia says was launched in the 70s, has multiple iterations, and is still being used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen#Imaging_sensors_a...

Shows some of these versions, and blockIII seems to have very nice resolution. Launched in 92, supposedly.

And yet, as these all of the programs? I doubt it. For example "Big Bird" (KH-9) and KH-11 were used in parallel. I bet others existed too.

I'm going to say that throwing out "No, it couldn't be done" in the 80s is hard for me to believe. Was it done?

Well if not, it was very close to the 80s, as in the very early 90s.

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#119
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to top it off, Hillary literally put the idea on the table that it would be just fine to drone strike journalist Julian Assange: https://archive.vn/DrLRO So no, zero faith for things like laws to keep the government in check.

I would take this claim with a giant grain of salt. Assange was in an European city not on a farm in a middle eastern country. Ethics aside, this would be very difficult to operationalize even if it was seriously considered.

You can take it with whatever grain you wish, but it doesn't change the fact that the government will throw all rules out the window when they want to get their way.

A quote: “We came, we saw, he died!” she exclaimed."

- Hillary on the murder of Colonel Qaddafi

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hi...

(A NYT sourced article, just for you)

Re: How to Hide from a Drone

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like Tempest, and I somehow doubt that they actually showed him that.

It's not that Tempest was ever a secret, There was advertising for countermeasures (metal screens for Windows, just like you have in your microwave) in the mid 1980s.

Spy satellites aren't a secret either but it was big news when Trump revealed their resolution capability.
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