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Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

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Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#191

Post by Spooky23 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #183
sudosysgen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is. I came to this realization on the way back from a robotics competition, I was editing pictures I took with my new camera. I was reading articles about improvements we could make to SLAM, and editing pictures I took on the trip. When I realized that I had so much dynamic range that was able to completely remove haze and flaring from incredibly bright objects very close with a very middling lens, and comb…

You cannot have active measures against an intelligent swarm of drones. If drones are wired to explode in case of landing or power failure, active measures cannot be taken when the drones are over crowded areas or near high profile targets. The alternative would be to destroy them from far away areas. And that is really really hard. I guess we have to come up with special guns and ammunition that can create a wall of…

Of course you can. There’s always an escalation to beat the latest weapon.

There’s a myriad of possibility. Flak guns, modified chaff, glue, directed energy, hunter killer drones, etc.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#192

Post by nikkwong »

sudosysgen wrote: post #156
mdorazio wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of countermeasures, but they're all active countermeasures - ex. a couple guys with shotguns, trained falcons, or your own anti-drone drones.

Yes, but kinetic countermeasures scale really badly. The definition of "drone" is also quite flexible here, a couple guys with shotguns, falcons, or your own anti-drones work fine against a few slow drones, badly against a few dozen slow flying drones, not at all against a few hundred slow flying drones, are essentially useless against one jet-powered drone (microjet engines are very cheap!) don't have a hope against…

In my layman opinion the correct solution would be a directed-energy weapon. The most obvious one that comes to mind would be a laser (or an array of lasers, for your dozen-fast flying drone scenario). Imagine the large collection of lights that point multi-directionally behind rockstars at concerts; except, in the future, these are all defensive lasers to defend against a worst-case scenario. Ha, would probably be very impractical except for defending heads of state and the like.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#193

Post by phs318u »

asdff wrote: post #171
otoburb wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I also believe humanity’s chances of escaping the great filter is ~0% That turned dark, quickly. I was nodding my head up until that point. Things may look bleak now, but I live believing that humanity’s chances are higher than a measly ~0%.

I think we are fundamentally too tribal and violent as a species. I think there is nothing we can do against millions of years of natural selection favoring the furthering of your kin at the expense of your species. We aren't wired for civilized society, it has to be learned and ingrained and even then, we revert to our tribal tendencies at the slightest encounter with an unknown.

Without knowing what the actual answer to survive the filter might be, it's worth noting that across the entire universe, it's surely statistically unlikely that not a single species has made it through to the other side.

If they have broken through, and assuming that they would view as a positive the breakthrough of other species through the "great filter" (and hence the collective uplift of intelligent life in the universe) - there's an implication that maybe what is required for breakthrough cannot - by definition - be transferred (in a similar way that children have to learn some lessons for themselves no matter what your parenting style).

Either that, or they haven't gotten to us yet, or they're species-ist and quite happy to be the only ones past the filter.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#194

Post by Spooky23 »

DuskStar wrote: post #11
Moeg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know C4 isn't for civilians either..

Tannerite is, though. (And where it isn't, blasting charges for mining are. And where those aren't, fertilizer probably still is. Explosives are hard, yet also far easier than you'd think)

Buy those things and you’ll end up on a list and under surveillance quickly.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#196

Post by phobosanomaly »

renewiltord wrote: post #189
phobosanomaly wrote: post #33

I remember someone flying one full of meth into the side of the Tijuana Costco. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/border-baja-califo... I always thought drones would bring down the violence in Mexico, since it would be easier to keep your distribution network under the radar. If you don't have to recruit hundreds of people to actually drive the drugs across the border, and can fly it over the fence in the mid…

How come they don't use artillery to launch? Does it damage the product? Too hard to aim? Wonder if you could ship drugs by just mortar with radio transmitter embedded. Way greater capacity and practically undetectable at landing site unless you have the receiver.

I know they've used catapults.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/us/marijuana-catapult-trnd/in...

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#197

Post by praptak »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #35
nradov wrote: post #2

Short-range air defense (SHORAD) is going to be a huge growth area for defense contractors over the next several years.

I wonder if we can repurpose mm-wave 60GHz panel antennas and SDRs for cheap short-range radars. Then combine with a commercial infrared camera for multi-mode target acquisition. Put those on a mount with servos to control a PKM or M240 machinegun, and mount the whole setup on the roofs of buildings. Critical infrastructure anti-drone air defense guns at fairly low cost.

Firing a machine gun in a city is a huge risk. A free falling bullet can still kill a human.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#198

Post by nostrademons »

nikkwong wrote: post #192
sudosysgen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but kinetic countermeasures scale really badly. The definition of "drone" is also quite flexible here, a couple guys with shotguns, falcons, or your own anti-drones work fine against a few slow drones, badly against a few dozen slow flying drones, not at all against a few hundred slow flying drones, are essentially useless against one jet-powered drone (microjet engines are very cheap!) don't have a hope against…

In my layman opinion the correct solution would be a directed-energy weapon. The most obvious one that comes to mind would be a laser (or an array of lasers, for your dozen-fast flying drone scenario). Imagine the large collection of lights that point multi-directionally behind rockstars at concerts; except, in the future, these are all defensive lasers to defend against a worst-case scenario. Ha, would probably be v…

There're relatively easy countermeasures against that too: reflective paint and a rolling airframe. To be effective the laser needs to heat the airframe fast enough to cause structural damage before the energy is dissipated away. This is relatively easy when you're targeting a black plastic drone that remains stationary in the sky. It becomes orders of magnitude less effective when the drone is white or metallic and the point of contact moves all over the drone, particular because flying objects have natural air cooling to dissipate energy away.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#199

Post by tehjoker »

DethNinja wrote: post #113

As humanity gets access to higher and higher technology, more and more smaller scale, non-governmental actors will get access to weapons that can cause asymmetrical damage. We will definitely get to a point where a single determined person can destroy an entire city. I strongly believe this is basically the great filter faced by all intelligent species in the universe. Only way to overcome this great filter is by ado…

I'm just a bit surprised that it's drones that are getting you down when we have an exciting nuclear arms race going on that is barely reported in the media.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#200

Post by nradov »

sukilot wrote: post #95
phobosanomaly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To underscore your point, here's an example of how easy it is to get god-tier military hardware in Mexico from one of the many people breaking bad across the border in the US. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/arming... This fella in Texas was selling .50-cals and miniguns straight to the Cartels for years. There are likely many, many more like him. Mexican think tanks have spent years trying to f…

There was an absolutely trivial solution: send a few fighter planes to blow up the haciendas and spray herbicide on the plantations. But the US government prefers to profit and make political hay from the drug war.

In 2019 the Trump administration considered formally designating the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. They backed off on that approach, but had they gone ahead it probably would have led to drone strikes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50697635

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