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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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211–220 of 454 posts

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

#211
post #2

Beyond jamming, I imagine some kind of autonomous laser system could also be pretty effective at downing large numbers of drones within a given radius.

Lasers aren't effective. Most of the drone is just an empty frame. The control board is pretty tiny, as is the ordnance. Targeting those or the propulsion systems is quite difficult. Sure, you can punch holes in the chassis but it takes a lot of guesswork to hit something vital. It's the wrong weapon. Something with an area of effect, like a shotgun or a net is much better suited to stopping drones.

Are you sure about that? AFAIK effective laser drone defenses are not yet widely deployed proven technology, but I don't think small beam size is a limiting factor. Getting enough power onto the target to disable it is a big challenge, but part of that is fighting the natural tendency of the beam to spread out & be attenuated by the atmosphere - not that the beam affects too small of a spot on the drone.

Having a laser that spreads out to e.g. 30cm radius at 500m is not hard to do if you need an area of effect weapon & can push enough power (ie. your laser is powerful enough, but not so intense that it ionizes the air & blocks itself). Reflections seem like a bigger problem: If the most effective defense includes guys with shotguns &/or there are a lot of unprotected personnel in the area, how do you make sure stray reflections don't end up blinding them?

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

#212
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the final tally was 12 planes, but still, an impressive display

12 destroyed. Hard to tell if the others were only damaged, and of course, how badly. The first casualty of war is the truth. That being said, any sort of materiel loss on weaponry as important as strategic nuclear bombers is a massive problem for Russia. The logistics of repairing them, if possible, is going to be complex.

Do you know how many they still had operational? Not that many, somewhere between 50 (more realistic) and 100 (rather idealistic if the rest was fully gutted for equipment).

This was a massive damage, not directly interfering with war against Ukraine that much, but overall power projection. Plus a pretty good insult to russian's FSB and GRU services who had no clue, just like today's Crimea bridge blow.

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

#213

If your country is an adversary of China, I would be scared. I've seen videos on YouTube of how the drones from Chinese drone light shows take off and return to their launch areas. They have remarkable accuracy.

Eh that's easy enough with inertial or ground navigation and some kind of beacon on the charging bay, the hard part is in enemy territory under the fog of war, jamming, and spotting targets on the fly.

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

#214

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…

> For extra fun, add some other code to "look for plane-like objects to crash into", but now you're approaching dangerous territory of "What if a civilian 737 happens to be boarding at this airfield"... Civilian 737 boarding airfield where Russia keeps strategic nuclear bombings? Russians would shoot them down faster than any drone could get them.

>Civilian 737 boarding airfield where Russia keeps strategic nuclear bombings?

I'm not sure if the Tu-95 is hosted at any joint-use airports, but joint-use themselves airports are not uncommon. Pskov is joint-use, Ukraine launched a smaller-scale attack on some Il-76s there a couple years back. The scenario that an attack on legitimate target aircraft could be happening metres away from civilian aircraft is realistic.

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

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't AI do that? It's better than any human at this stuff.

Sometimes I feel like the entire AI field just never watched The Terminator.

Campy, low budget action movies are not a sound basis for forming public policy.

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

#216

If your country is an adversary of China, I would be scared. I've seen videos on YouTube of how the drones from Chinese drone light shows take off and return to their launch areas. They have remarkable accuracy.

These generally just use RTK and a base station; nothing interesting and extremely easily rejected by EW (since they need both accurate global positioning signal _and_ RTK signal).

Inside-out SLAM strategies and on-device ML are much more interesting and are starting to trickle into COTS drones. For example, the latest DJI drones all use SLAM for return-to-home even when GPS denied: https://www.facebook.com/reel/440875398703491 , and the latest Matrice 4 enterprise drones also have end-user ML model runtimes that can fine-tune flight plans using user-provided logic.

Inside-out last-second targeting is also very popular in Ukraine, with off-the-shelf "find the nearest car/person in analog video, lock to it on signal lost, and send Betaflight MSP stick commands to hit it" modules readily accessible on Aliexpress.

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

#217

If your country is an adversary of China, I would be scared. I've seen videos on YouTube of how the drones from Chinese drone light shows take off and return to their launch areas. They have remarkable accuracy.

If GPS geolocation makes you scared then don't look up what America did when we invented the JDAM...

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dead reckoning in a drone would be a nearly impossible feat considering how variable wind can be.

The wrong term, but I know there has been extensive research in maintaining accuracy without GPS.

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

#219
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One camera drone can see if another drone is on target.

lmao what? You want to loiter with a camera drone to guide other drones to target? How would that work if neither drone knows where it is (drones had no GPS lock, it's a fact, not a speculation)?

They knew where they started from. Know where the target is relative to the start point.

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

#220

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…

Maybe just tourist SIMs that let you roam into other countries? Buy a load of SIMs in Kazakhstan or somewhere like that, roam into Russia, now you have internet?
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