Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes I feel like the entire AI field just never watched The Terminator.
Whether it should is a different question. It certainly can .
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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
151–160 of 454 posts
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#152The latest attack deep inside Russian borders were apparently using ArduPilot [1], it is mentioned in the Atlantic article [2]. ArduPilot also has C++ source code in Github [3], also adding an article specifically about ArduPilot and Ukraine [4] [1]: https://ardupilot.org/ [2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/uk... [3]: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot [4]: https://www.404media.co/ukra…
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Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#153Earlier 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.
GPS can't be relied on in that heavily denied area. And indeed the screenshots show drones in failsafe mode.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#154I 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!
I think this oversimplifies the matter. At a micro level, sure, you could argue that kill/no-kill decisions are being made by frontline enlisted soldiers, but the stress, the exhaustion, and being able to see your enemy downrange add a degree of humanization and discretion. Wars are brutal. Some warring factions are incredibly brutal. But taking a human life can't be reduced to a `KILL? [Y/N]` decision made by some M…
If war is tragedy, where is the dramatic irony?
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing you're missing is that the decision isn't actually made by a machine. It's made by a person much much higher up across a much broader effective surface area. That is, historically to wage war you had to ultimately convince/coerce millions of people to wage that war for you -- continuously for years -- along with millions more to support the effort politically and economically. In the highly automated world,…
Yeah a single rich person might soon have the ability to, without coercing a soldier, decide who gets to die. He might just need to coerce someone to deliver the drones and put them on an (automated) truck.
The smart-ass answer is 'a single person already does, and he doesn't need to be rich, just able to build a time-bomb and send a package'. The Unabomber approach has its limits of course, including being hard to reach those who do not open their own mail.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#156India 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.
There hasn't been much coverage because it's not as sexy as drones but the degree to which AA tech that was formerly the domain of well funded armies has proliferated down the economic spectrum in recent years is really hard to overstate.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
They need to make a movie behind this one, that just looks like such a cyberpunk operation.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#158I 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!
When a stressed person mistakenly does something they shouldn't have, they typically stop doing it after only a small handful of mistakes. We get tired, or bored, or we wise up to our mistake. When a misconfigured computer does something wrong, it frequently does it over and over and over again until it is prevented from doing so by an external intervention. No tired private is going to mistakenly rampage through a p…
Very good principle but horrifyingly a drugged soldier might. Look up Larium, an anti-malaria drug potentially implicated in wartime rampages. Morally and ethically it raises some weird questions. Sure you can balance the probabilities of death from taking a drug vs not. All drugs have a lethal dose. But most drugs don't kill people who haven't taken them.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human soldiers kill civilians pretty much all the time. Then they brag to their friends how cool they are. Drones do not rape, soldiers rape (and yes they rape men too in case someone wants to make it about gender). All the bombs Russia thrown onto Ukrainian civilians were thrown by human soldiers.
> Drones do not rape Yet. Drones also don't get tired.
Neither do the defensive ones.
Re: How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now imagine that but with a shotgun shooting bird/buck shot at decent ROF. Way better. The problem with any point defense system is radiating any energy makes you a big target. So you would want a passive (EO/IR?) or triggered active/passive system.
Why nobody us building automated shotgun based solutions for anti-air defenses... maybe they need more than 100-150m reliable reach? Having 300 of those covering one airfield may not be ideal, nor cost effective, nor easy to manufacture and deploy and maintain in such numbers... we talk about russia after all, they let most of their strategic bombers arrogantly unprotected on runways with full gas tanks. I don't thin…
India had successfully used its age old L70, Zu23 guns to track and shot down 500+ turkish drones sent by pak. All these legacy weapons are modernised with passive drone tracking, locking, targetting and automated firing system.
https://theprint.in/defence/how-upgraded-l-70-guns-or-origin...