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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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181–190 of 454 posts

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stressed private might still have a bit of empathy and humanity. Meanwhile millions of drones can be programmed (or hacked) to kill millions of people without excluding civilians or anyone

We have had weapons which are autonomous for decades. You launch them consciously then you know that it will find and destroy weapons based on some "intelligence" (A homing missile with a radar you know is likely to hit the thing that reflects the radar waves, whatever that is. There are artillery shells which home in on vehicles and so on). The launch decision by the human means "I'm responsible for this thing hitti…

Don't forget there's a war on right now in which precision munitions are being used to specifically target hospitals full of civilians on the pretext that the enemy is allegedly underneath.

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

#182
post #99
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the person who presses a button that releases an autonomous kill-no-kill drone into a country going to jail when that drone razes an entire town of civilians? I doubt it. “Mistakes happen” etc. The visceral reaction is not there that would motivate the legal system to send the group that started a cascade of autonomous decisions by a robot to kill a bunch of civilians.

That depends on those two imaginary countries. Also, are you unaware of the many instances where people faced no accountability even when it wasn't a mistake, but deliberate?

This would make the accountability situation much worse.

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

#183
post #138
post #133

Earlier 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.

OpenCV and other onboard computer softwares can be trained to recognize shapes, 10+ years ago there was a demo of a NodeCopter controlled small drone following red flags. Stick the GPS coord, fly there, and once in a geofence look for a shape to crash into doesn't seem impossible given what was possible 10 years ago.

Given these are static targets, it might be possible to relay precise GPS information from that morning’s satellite data. No real time intelligence required. Just dead reckoning to the target coordinates.

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

#184
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun Tzu says it better: "A military operation involves deception." He could be telling the truth, he could be lying... A drone programmed to automatically boot up , check its location, and if it's at the right coordinates, take off and crash at some other coordinates (the airfield) is more satisfying to "fans" of automated warfare. For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but…

It's a military airfield, so no civilian 737 there. There seems to be a video from the drone, meaning some kind of connectivity was present with or without autopilot.

Reportedly it was just running over local mobile internet connectivity. The attack was over so quickly they would likely not even have time to shut it down.

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

#185
post #175

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_40_mm_Automatic_Gun_L/7... Immediate post-WW2 vintage. The classic design of AA gun. As far as I understand it from talking about Turkish drones, you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayraktar_TB2 style, aircraft size drones, rather than the quadcopter size ones? The latter can more easily hide in terrain.

Asisguard Songar drones.

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

#186
post #138
post #133

Earlier 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.

OpenCV and other onboard computer softwares can be trained to recognize shapes, 10+ years ago there was a demo of a NodeCopter controlled small drone following red flags. Stick the GPS coord, fly there, and once in a geofence look for a shape to crash into doesn't seem impossible given what was possible 10 years ago.

GPS is heavily jammed throughout Russia, and the ArduPilot overlays shown on the videos released directly show there was no GPS lock (might not have been equipped as I'm sure they'd be expecting this).

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

#187

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…

The US seems to have given up on the concept of being on the "good side" of anyone and retreated to the safety of bullying and threatening to invade Canada (as a "joke"?)

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over cellular modems in the drones with Russian SIM cards. The operation was prepared for months in advance. Getting a bunch of pre-paid SIM cards from the Russian equivalent to 7-11 (which might just be 7-11) was probably the easiest part of the operation.

Stores won't sell a SIM card without the buyer providing valid state ID, and SIM cards are disabled by carriers if they suspect you are using someone else's card and you can't provide an ID for it. This is one of the recent laws. Getting a phone number/data plan that isn't associated with your real identity (and instead registered to someone else, usually a homeless guy somewhere) isn't impossible, but those wouldn't…

They've been planning this for over a year and this is the SBU we're talking about. I'm pretty sure they could figure out a way to light up a data plan on a cell phone in Russia when needed.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over cellular modems in the drones with Russian SIM cards. The operation was prepared for months in advance. Getting a bunch of pre-paid SIM cards from the Russian equivalent to 7-11 (which might just be 7-11) was probably the easiest part of the operation.

Stores won't sell a SIM card without the buyer providing valid state ID, and SIM cards are disabled by carriers if they suspect you are using someone else's card and you can't provide an ID for it. This is one of the recent laws. Getting a phone number/data plan that isn't associated with your real identity (and instead registered to someone else, usually a homeless guy somewhere) isn't impossible, but those wouldn't…

I wonder if identity documents were taken from POW's captured at the front lines.

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

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of autonomy and decision complexity matters a lot. Autonomously making its way into a known area, recognizing the target and self-correcting to it is basically how every modern cruise missile works.

And now we know making an ersatz cruise missile in the garage is possible...

So the interesting question is to what extent the Iranian derived Hezbollah "garage rockets" (very poor guidance, CEP is basically "somewhere in Israel", but extremely cheap and require only smugglable parts) can be combined by some power with Ukrainian style precision guidance.
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