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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

#211

Post by ashtonkem »

jdhbbbhb wrote: post #110
Nextgrid wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put those on a mount with servos to control a PKM or M240 machinegun Leaving weapons unattended like that is a recipe for disaster. Even worse if they're network-connected (look at the tons of insecure IoT devices already out there).

What????? What he is describing already exists and is extensively used. CRAM - it shoots down rockets and artillery. Go watch a video of it

CRAMs are both several tons in weight, require a lot of power and special mounting, and are found mounted on a warship or in a military base; you're not really going to worry about some random insurgent carrying it off. Besides, they eat 20x102mm ammunition, which isn't exactly common stuff.

That is a far cry from the consequences of leaving a M240 around, which is both man portable and consumes the incredibly common 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge.

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

#212

Post by PeterStuer »

Yc4win wrote: post #97
anitil wrote: post #85

I actually work in the drone detection/jamming field. My only surprise is that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. We already see drones used for drug smuggling and privacy violations, as well as the use of drones to carry IED payloads. Drones are an amazing tool but as with any tool, they can be used in nefarious ways.

Has there been any progress with coming up with a system that can _reliably_ jam them?

Reliably jamming drone comms would also jam all other radio based systems in the area. You could try to narrow your beam, but that could lead to evasive pattern dodge manouvers, and would be harder against a swarm of the things. Even then, the drones could get by with extremely crude, near ballistic autonomy (erraticly fly 500m in that compass direction and detonate on the moving blob near the pool).

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

#213

Post by esturk »

Animats wrote: post #115
duck2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones are easy to jam. The communication link and GPS are most obvious targets.

Progress marches on. Autonomous visual navigation have been available for some time. Face recognition can be done with smartphone hardware. Inertial guidance for drones is available but still a bit pricey.[1] This is going to be a major problem for the golf industry. It's the ideal target environment - high-value targets, no place to take cover. [1] https://www.uavnavigation.com/products/ahrs-imu/polar-300

Nah, golf industry will be fine. If a technology is so advantageous, then it will eventually become the counter to itself. Imagine several drone swarming around you like a body guard and you would have several orbital layers for short/medium/long range protection.

Imagine a drone being so sophisticated that it can calculate the sniper shot gunning for you and can even deflect the bullet or take the direct hit for you. Same for suicidal bombs. If the enemy drone explode on impact, your drone can kamikaze theirs.

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

#214

Post by eunos »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #32
dathinab wrote: post #10

Man I knew it was just a matter of time for this to happen, to easy to do and to many intelligent people with no morals (or just desperate, threatened etc.). Anyway thinks like this make it more likely for unreasonable regulations, like even small drones being tracked when used or similar. But the bad joke is it's pointless as: - The "bad" people can always circumvent such measurements (it's illegal but you plan to d…

Is it unreasonable for small drones to be tracked? It's way too easy to get footage of private property or through otherwise obscured windows with drones. Regulation doesn't have to be unreasonable.

Next thing you know will be 3d printed drone for the body with the battery, microelectronics and propulsion(?) sourced from Shenzhen, or salvaged from 2nd hand drone and smartphone. For the software, with a few million dollars, probably, cartels might hire engineers to fork open source autopilot software to do the bidding. Everything done on darknet paid with cryptocurrency.

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

#215

Post by onion2k »

Spooky23 wrote: post #191
kumarvvr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

kumarvvr's point was that you[1] have to consider the collateral damage of shooting down drones. If you make an enemy drone crash there's a possibility that it could crash in to a school or a hospital. That would be bad.

[1] The person defending something, not you. Your comment makes it clear you believe in defence at any cost.

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

#216

Post by jojobas »

dron3r wrote: post #133
Yc4win wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any progress with coming up with a system that can _reliably_ jam them?

You can jam signals they rely on, like GPS and cellular, but there are already drones that are capable of flying on vision alone, so no.

INS chips providing enough precision for autonomous operation over last few kilometers are rather cheap nowadays too.

A small-ish plane frame could easily deliver a grenade from sleepy suburbs 10km straight to the Oval Office with only few minutes of warning (assuming somebody could actually detect it in time at all). We're just lucky nobody seems to be bothered to do that.

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

#218

Post by eunos »

No mention of the software?

What worries me is that in a close future they might develop their own autonomous Software to do the assassinations and sooner or later the software "leaks" to outside world. Then with a few thousand dollars you can program your own assassination tools. More sophisticated entities will develop the swarm version to do mass damage.

Will there be a proliferation fears of software similar to nuclear proliferation?

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

#219

Post by rl3 »

eunos wrote: post #218

No mention of the software? What worries me is that in a close future they might develop their own autonomous Software to do the assassinations and sooner or later the software "leaks" to outside world. Then with a few thousand dollars you can program your own assassination tools. More sophisticated entities will develop the swarm version to do mass damage. Will there be a proliferation fears of software similar to n…

The Black Mirror episode Hated in the Nation kind of touches on this.

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

#220

Post by chriselles »

Well, it will be 3 years next month since the first open source kinetic attack by non state actors using commercial off the self drones was conducted.

Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken 3 years for them to be used for kinetic attack by exceptionally well funded narcos.

Illicit use of drones has happened and will continue to grow.

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