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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#141

Post by [deleted] »

glitchc wrote: post #136
Oarch wrote: post #2

Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.

Lasers aren't effective. Most of the drone is just an empty frame. The control board is pretty tiny, as is the ordnance. Targeting those or the propulsion systems is quite difficult. Sure, you can punch holes in the chassis but it takes a lot of guesswork to hit something vital. It's the wrong weapon. Something with an area of effect, like a shotgun or a net is much better suited to stopping drones.

[deleted]

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#142

Post by dboreham »

koonsolo wrote: post #106
lenerdenator wrote: post #78

Hoping and praying someone in the administration is able to convince Trump to align closer to Ukraine (even if only slightly) because of this. The Ukrainians pulled off an absolute coup on Sunday. A third of a nuclear-armed country's strategic bomber fleet inoperable for the foreseeable future. Someone at NORAD probably said "they should have sent a poet" while looking at the satellite imagery. If middle powers like…

Other countries have hangars or bunkers to store their planes. That Russia doesn't, is really beyond comprehension.

Supposedly they had to be outside to comply with START provisions. But US keeps B-52s (and pretty much all fighters) outside. They might be under tin roofs in desert locations to keep cool. Not in bunkers.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#144

Post by sreekanth850 »

cenamus wrote: post #122
sreekanth850 wrote: post #111

India used oldschool L70 Guns, zu 23 and ZSU-23-4 Shilka against pakisthan's drone swarm attacks. They are modernized to track, lock, and fire automatically. But they are cheap.

What kinda targeting system do they use? Probably no significant IR signature and radar one's pretty small aswell?

We have multi-layered low signature and passive drone detection system, including radar, radio frequency (RF)-based systems, electro-optical sensors, IR, and video tracking. We also have Thermal imaging for all weather use. And all are integrated into a single command and control system. These upgraded Old school system proved to be worthy to shot down more than 500 turkish drones sent by Pak.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#145

Post by tgv »

lenerdenator wrote: post #78

Hoping and praying someone in the administration is able to convince Trump to align closer to Ukraine (even if only slightly) because of this. The Ukrainians pulled off an absolute coup on Sunday. A third of a nuclear-armed country's strategic bomber fleet inoperable for the foreseeable future. Someone at NORAD probably said "they should have sent a poet" while looking at the satellite imagery. If middle powers like…

> If middle powers like Ukraine can do that to Russia, they can do that to countries like the US

Ukraine borders on Russia, but the US is separated by ocean from serious threats. Attack by UAVs of this sort seems nearly impossible.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#146

Post by faitswulff »

ivape wrote: post #133
ajross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, that's because Ardupilot is a really pretty routine UAV navigation project with obvious civilian/industrial/enthusiast application. People hack on Ardupilot because it's fun to see your drone fly around on its own. That you can also put a grenade on it is sort of an obvious extension, but the payload is very much a separate feature.

So what did they do, just stick GPS coordinates and the drones were that successful autonomously (talking of the Russian fighter base attack from the last 48 hours)? I'd be shocked if they didn't manually pilot these things.

You are correct:

> ...each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ld7ppre9vo

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#147

Post by Nasrudith »

Sporktacular wrote: post #126

“In the perfect world, the drone should take off, fly, find the target, strike it, and report back on the task,” Burukin says. “That’s where the development is heading.” That's the problem in a nutshell. A few years back, few would argue against keeping a human in the kill/no-kill decision chain. It just took one war to get pop tech authors writing on it without even a mention of the ethical considerations or autonom…

It highlights an awkward apparent fact that 'ethics' and 'honor' are luxuries to maintain when one is on top and they will be thrown out the door as soon as they face an actual threat. Not saying that it is right but that it appears to be the predictable response.

I suppose it highlights axiomatically the terribleness of ethics when they must be defined in a might-makes-right manner. All very high minded and complex questions which leave the awkward question unanswered: what are we supposed to do?

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#148

Post by xg15 »

dboreham wrote: post #143
xg15 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Death by Kubernetes... Technically that's already the case with the F16 I think.

Surely death by CP/M ?

https://www.cncf.io/blog/2020/05/07/with-kubernetes-the-u-s-...

Always wondered why defense manufacturers refer to computer controlled fighter jets as "platforms". Now I know. It's meant exactly as it sounds.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#149

Post by sfn42 »

lawlessone wrote: post #92
flave wrote: post #15

I really don’t get all the fretting about drones making kill-no-kill decisions. You’re telling me that you’d rather this was done by a stressed, emotional, tired front-line private? Reminds me of the debate about a self driving car that might need to mount the curb to avoid hitting a car - and therefore endangering a pedestrian. It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person!

>It’s not an easy decision but I’d rather a machine made it than a stressed person! A machine also can't be held responsible. Who do the surviving relatives of the crush pedestrian sue? No longer the driver i guess

The thing that gets me about this autonomous car thing is that it shouldn't really happen. When a car has to swerve to avoid an accident it is typically because the driver was speeding and/or not paying attention.

Autonomous cars wouldn't speed and they are always paying attention. Maybe you could argue that it happened because the other driver was drunk or for some other reason swerved into your lane but this is still an incredibly niche situation and if it does happen just sue that guy. The vast majority of car-to-car accidents happen when both drivers are irresponsible. Autonomous cars will significantly reduce accident rates just by following the rules of traffic and being constantly aware.

The whole who should be sued thing is asinine, just have a national insurance fund for it or whatever. Cheaper than all the accidents it prevents.

Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

#150

Post by mandevil »

originalvichy wrote: post #129
Ciantic wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this: https://www.404media.co/ukraines-massive-drone-attack-was-po... "ArduPilot can handle tasks like stabilizing a drone in the air while the pilot focuses on moving to their next objective. Pilots can switch them into loitering mode, for example, if they need to step away or perform another task, and it has failsafe modes that keep a drone aloft if signal is lost." So it is not fully autonomous.

Not for this task, but could be used autonomously. If they trusted that these planes were still in the same spot, and their GPS coordinates were accurate to 10 cm, then what they could do is just program the drones to fly a preset route at preset heights, stop over the plane's wing and then descend all the way to 0 meters.

Even with that level of target knowledge (I suspect the US has the investment in the sensor-targeting links to be able to use satellites to know within cm where planes were within a five minute window, but am not sure about other nations) you'd want to have some that were available for later re-targeting to handle misses. Nuclear weapons war plans solve this by relentlessly re-targeting again and again (declassified 1960's USAF war plans called for over 70 different missiles to hit Moscow alone) but with the smaller damage radius of conventional weapons you either end up with a second strike to make sure you get all the survivors of the first strike- or have a trained human who knows the targeting priority in the loop available to update targeting on the fly.
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