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Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

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171–180 of 275 posts

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#171

> I would have to imagine it was larger than a quadcopter, and I guarantee you it was nothing like a quadcopter from how long it was up - it has to be satellite-driven because there’s no line-of-sight, there’s no cell phone coverage that could have dealt with that, so it has to be satellite-driven, which is pretty freakin’ sophisticated.” So, setting aside this claim that there’s no line of sight, my bet is these guy…

Why even use drug mules if you can just drone everything over the border?

Because humans are cheaper than a drone.

Hell I live in a Western country and people are getting assassinated for just 10000 euro. Plenty of desperate losers out there to exploit for crime cartels.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#172

> I would have to imagine it was larger than a quadcopter, and I guarantee you it was nothing like a quadcopter from how long it was up - it has to be satellite-driven because there’s no line-of-sight, there’s no cell phone coverage that could have dealt with that, so it has to be satellite-driven, which is pretty freakin’ sophisticated.” So, setting aside this claim that there’s no line of sight, my bet is these guy…

>That's a full octave doppler-effect.

Per youtube comments. Impressive!

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, shielding electronics against EMPs is surprisingly easy. Just wrapping things in aluminium foil goes a long way.

Doesn't this also mean that they would not be able to receive comms?

Comms can also be laser, and the drones can be pre-programmed and self guiding. Though in either case, you can still always dazzle either the sensors or the comms (MEMS sensors used for inertial guidance are vulnerable to ultrasound IIRC). And I’m sure the military either have or are developing an anti-drone-drone.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#174
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't underestimate it, but if I wanted to play around with an expensive drone I could afford to lose, it would be during the day when I could see what I was doing or in a more interesting place. Dangerously flying a large/experimental drone near an air force base goes from "lose my $10k drone" to incurring the wrath of serious entities. Take down a chopper and if it's traced back to you, you're in some sort of tro…

> Dangerously flying a large/experimental drone near an air force base goes from "lose my $10k drone" to incurring the wrath of serious entities. Messing with the armed forces or police seemed to be part of growing up as a teenage boy for some of my friends. (I was tempted to write rite of passage here but that would imply that it happened once for each.) Of course they like me wasn't too well of so it was all about…

I know you're responding to the single point as a conversational thing, but it gives a collective theory of: teenagers mucking around, who have enough money that throwing away a $10k+ experimental drone is no issue, and they just happen to live near an air force base where there are definitely no actual experimental drones being tested. My issue then with that is that the modern teenager typically films things for credibility, and this sort of stunt isn't going to be very satisfying at night. (I fly drones. Flying at night, I try to get the footage I'm paid for and then land.)

IMO, either the story as reported has been exaggerated in many dimensions (altitude above the chopper, size of drone, time in the air, distance before landing) or it's something from the air force base that's not commercially available.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#175
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dangerously flying a large/experimental drone near an air force base goes from "lose my $10k drone" to incurring the wrath of serious entities. Messing with the armed forces or police seemed to be part of growing up as a teenage boy for some of my friends. (I was tempted to write rite of passage here but that would imply that it happened once for each.) Of course they like me wasn't too well of so it was all about…

I know you're responding to the single point as a conversational thing, but it gives a collective theory of: teenagers mucking around, who have enough money that throwing away a $10k+ experimental drone is no issue, and they just happen to live near an air force base where there are definitely no actual experimental drones being tested. My issue then with that is that the modern teenager typically films things for cr…

Thanks, both for your insight and the way you presented it :-)

And yes, you are right that I'm only talking about young people playing games with police/military and I don't have any idea if this is feasible or not.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#176
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always, there are starting to be some good digital systems. Analogue is just cheaper and lighter.

“Starting to”? DJI FPV is two years old and naked Vista is negligibly heavier than analog (and it mostly matters for micros, anyway)

Naked vista overheats, there's a reason it comes with heatsinks.

There's also been severe availability issues with the DJI gear.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#177
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most radar can't tell the height of an object unless it has a transponder reporting it's altitude.

It's not necessarily that they can't, it's that the precision in altitude is very poor unless the target is close to the radar. This happened with MH370, the data released in the investigation shows altitude values varying wildly by 10000 feet in a short time. Of course conspiracy theorists picked up on that as proof of lizard people involvement.

No commercial aviation radar system even tries to output non-transponder altitude infomation. Many are secondary only and don't even pick up targets without transponders.

Military primary radar, like the one that picked up MH370, obviously can.

But I don't think any of those are designed for really accurate altitude measurements. That job is usually done with targeting radar which (at the expense of not being able to see multiple targets) can lock a single target and get it's exact position.

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#178

> I would have to imagine it was larger than a quadcopter, and I guarantee you it was nothing like a quadcopter from how long it was up - it has to be satellite-driven because there’s no line-of-sight, there’s no cell phone coverage that could have dealt with that, so it has to be satellite-driven, which is pretty freakin’ sophisticated.” So, setting aside this claim that there’s no line of sight, my bet is these guy…

jesus fucking christ thats cool

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their carry weight is absolute shit and ferrying over 10 doses isn't really worthwhile

There is this confusion over the word “drone”. What you say is absolutely true about quadrocopters and octocopters. It is much less true about fixed wing drones. You don’t have to go all the way to a Global Hawk to get reasonable carrying capacity. Even hobby sized stuff could be used for this reasonably well. Parts are easy to acquire, they are easy to conceal, you can launch them with a catapult like setup, they ca…

iirc theres a fixed wing drone ccaught by lea at mexico(?) right?

Re: Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

#180

Quote: "... it has to be satellite-driven because there’s no line-of-sight, there’s no cell phone coverage that could have dealt with that, so it has to be satellite-driven, which is pretty freakin’ sophisticated." It baffles me how narrow minded people can become once the mainstream technology is ubiquitous on every corner, it's like thinking of other possibilities is a hard wall. If I would do that with a drone I w…

not really, the most advanced comercially available digital fpv video system can do at most 10km range (these systems are latency limited, sure there are 4g systems that can do more but you end up with hundreds of ms latency) also to maintain the high power draw these drones require you end up using lipo batteries that can give you at most 15 minutes of fight time, more typically somewere around 2-6 minutes. you can go with liion to get around 30 minutes but then you lose a lot of manouverability. this ofcourse assuming it was some sort of quadcopter. a plane can do more but is not as agile as the article suggests.
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