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Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

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Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#291

Post by londons_explore »

pjc50 wrote: post #171
randomtoast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Great Britain just announced plans to deliver 100,000 of them to Ukraine. Ukraine lacks the manpower compared to Russia. It seems logical to strengthen their forces by deploying these flying mini terminators. I believe we are not far from large-scale drone warfare. In World War II, we had epic tank and aircraft battles; now, the time has come for autonomous drone battlefields.

Missed that news; https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/britain-p... I think we're already deep into large-scale drone warfare. Destroying a third of the enemy heavy bomber fleet is pretty substantial. It feels to me like that attack operated like Pearl Harbor, a marker that the old way of surface naval warfare / air attack was being replaced by a new one. Don't forget that Russia has their own drones. T…

Current warfare is drone Vs people.

Future warfare will be drone Vs drone, and we might see the main battlefield entirely devoid of people until one or other side runs out of drones.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#292

Post by londons_explore »

ponector wrote: post #256
randomtoast wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Great Britain just announced plans to deliver 100,000 of them to Ukraine. Ukraine lacks the manpower compared to Russia. It seems logical to strengthen their forces by deploying these flying mini terminators. I believe we are not far from large-scale drone warfare. In World War II, we had epic tank and aircraft battles; now, the time has come for autonomous drone battlefields.

100k kamikaze drones are not that many for the current stage of war. Millions are consumed annually.

Future children will walk through the forests collecting drone motors to make their next school project...

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#293

Post by lazide »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #274
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ultimately there's the cost factor. Drones can be mass produced for cheap, laser systems are specialized and expensive. Something I haven't seen yet (but is likely in development) is drone swarms, one operator directing a squad of a hundred drones like it's an RTS game. Only one grenade or kamikaze drone needs to detonate close enough to a laser system to take it out of action. Mind you, the system has a range of…

It seems like the power source required for a portable laser system makes it very cumbersome. Why not just use a fleet of very low cost anti-drone drones? They can be "AI-powered" to seek out enemy drones and try to damage them or throw a net on them. I do think we will see more and more laser systems installed on large naval vessels as an alternative to close-in weapon system (CIWS), which, in practice , has not bee…

The issue with anti-drone drones is that mid-air interception of a fast moving object by another fast moving object is an incredibly difficult problem from a physics perspectives - especially when one of those objects is actively trying to dodge.

The advantage of course is that the interceptor can position itself arbitrarily, and there doesn’t need to be ongoing line of sight from the initial detection point.

Lasers have the advantage that it’s essentially impossible to dodge a laser beam (speed of light meaning that for objects within the ranges we’re talking about are lazed the moment the laser turns on), so it’s purely an aiming/detection/line of sight issue. But they have the disadvantage that if the drone gets out of the line of sight, it’s completely ineffective.

Well, at least we know what shape the new arms race is taking!

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#294

Post by lazide »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #274
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And ultimately there's the cost factor. Drones can be mass produced for cheap, laser systems are specialized and expensive. Something I haven't seen yet (but is likely in development) is drone swarms, one operator directing a squad of a hundred drones like it's an RTS game. Only one grenade or kamikaze drone needs to detonate close enough to a laser system to take it out of action. Mind you, the system has a range of…

It seems like the power source required for a portable laser system makes it very cumbersome. Why not just use a fleet of very low cost anti-drone drones? They can be "AI-powered" to seek out enemy drones and try to damage them or throw a net on them. I do think we will see more and more laser systems installed on large naval vessels as an alternative to close-in weapon system (CIWS), which, in practice , has not bee…

The issue with anti-drone drones is that mid-air interception of a fast moving object by another fast moving object is an incredibly difficult problem from a physics perspectives - especially when one of those objects is actively trying to dodge. If you add in a requirement that the drone must be captured in a non-destructive way, it’s only going to be possible with the lamest consumer drones.

The way air-air missiles typically work is massive fragmentation warheads and proximity detonation. Even then, it doesn’t always work.

The pro however is that the interceptor can position itself somewhat arbitrarily, and there doesn’t need to be ongoing line of sight from the initial detection point. In some cases (theatre radar systems, standoff radar systems), they may not even need to be able to see the target drone until they’re within detonation range. (Think ‘hides behind a random bush until they’re within detonation range of the target drone as it tries to zip by, then explodes with no warning’).

Then of course the attacking drones will add randomness to their attack patterns.

Lasers have the advantage that it’s essentially impossible to dodge a laser beam (speed of light meaning that for objects within the ranges we’re talking about are lazed the moment the laser turns on), so it’s purely an aiming/detection/line of sight issue. But they have the disadvantage that if the drone gets out of the line of sight, it’s completely ineffective. So they’ll need to be placed at locations that overlook large areas and have good visibility towards the entire potential approach area, which makes them vulnerable to artillery, massed attacks, etc.

Well, at least we know what shape the new arms race is taking!

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#295

Post by 05 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #275
trhway wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drones smart enough to dodge bullets well, there will be similarly smart "predator"/defense drones. The humans will have no chances on such a battlefield populated by thousands drones per square kilometer fighting each other. >The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future. And i think removing people from the battlefield is a good thing. >or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing just…

About your last paragraph: High level, I generally agree, but when you dive deeper to look at the numbers, I doubt that you can have 1000 USD drones that can fly at 200 mph/320 km/h. One quarter of that speed, I could believe.

https://youtu.be/oG2GaSMlfdo

Off the shelf parts are available for 200mph quads (that’s without payload though)

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#296

Post by eternauta3k »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
bravoetch wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and so far it's much easier to drive a van into a crowd of people. Nobody has tried to mandate tech in cars that detects and prevents such malicious behavior.

Can you drive a van into a group of people without even being physically present though ?

The RAF guys tried this back in 1967 to attack the Iranian Shah...

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#297

Post by narrator »

The sci-fi novel I wrote sacrifices commercial art considerations to portray the future of war more realistically. All the robots are one-shot, one-kill and all action takes place faster than human reaction time. The most humans do is approve battle plans. This is already the case largely in the Ukraine/Russia war, and now we're seeing that human FPV operators will soon be obsolete. Realistic sci-fi movies are going to be not have much action in the future. Things will have to be about careful political maneuvering, like in totalitarian country politics. You can't win against robots unless you are using other robots.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#298

Post by dji4321234 »

stackedinserter wrote: post #262
dji4321234 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://x.com/sternenko/status/1770348417102819563 Rather, it is you who does not know what you are talking about. Here is a real frontline video characterizing these systems. Yes, it is all still analog FPV. The lock-on system selects a target and overlays the reticle on the analog video. As the FPV flies closer and encounters the jamming from the target, the lock-on unit ensures it is still a hit. These have fallen…

Your link literally says: > Технологія нова, потребує вдосконалення і масштабування. > Eng: "The technology is new and will need improvement and scaling" I don't understand what you're trying to prove. They do exist and I never said they don't. They keep popping up here and there, mainly working in demo conditions against static contrast targets. My point was that so far, these things are just curiosities with very l…

> My point was that so far, these things are just curiosities with very limited usage and there's no mass adoption.

Make that point, then! Nothing in your original comment suggested this, just hostile dismissal.

Now that you’ve written a more substantive comment I think we actually agree overall. Most operations in the Ukraine-Russia war are manual piloting. Autonomy is over-hyped overall so far. However! A large number of autonomous systems have still been deployed and interest in autonomy is only growing. Both things can be true at the same time.

> Oh gosh.

Come on, read the whole sentence please. Lock on targeting modules are absolutely being superseded by fiber optic as it becomes “easier” to acquire than it used to be.

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/battlefield-ai-rev... was posted by a sibling commenter and is a fairly accurate summary to my knowledge, including a substantiation of the notion that depending on how you look at it, lock on modules were a stop-gap before fiber became available or fiber is a stop-gap before good autonomy becomes widespread.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#299

Post by vbezhenar »

FPVs are the most distinctive element in Russian-Ukrainian war, changing many traditional war dogmas. So far AI in this war wasn't heavily used, FPVs are controlled by humans at both sides. I feel uneasy with more AI tech improving FPVs. It's inevitable, but it'll be utilised by military operations to kill more people, to conduct terror acts, controlled from afar. It allows weak players to have more leverage which is not always a good thing, and certainly disrupts power balance. Think about Al-Qaeda bringing a truck of explosive drones to Washington DC and unleashing them at White House, all autonomous, with cameras guiding the way.

Re: Autonomous drone defeats human champions in racing first

#300

Post by speeder »

dragonwriter wrote: post #231
trhway wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>drones smart enough to dodge bullets well, there will be similarly smart "predator"/defense drones. The humans will have no chances on such a battlefield populated by thousands drones per square kilometer fighting each other. >The tech industry is working hard to bring about the Terminator future. And i think removing people from the battlefield is a good thing. >or at least dodge out of where guns are pointing just…

> And i think removing people from the battlefield is a good thing. Drones don't remove people from the battlefield, they further the trend of there being no boundary to "the battlefield", putting everyone on it. They can , depending on how they are employed, reduce the casualties (total and particularly civilian) on both sides of a conflict for any degree of military impact (Ukraine's recent strike against Russian b…

Note for example, that Ukraine attack, although it caused no civilian casualties... it relied heavily on civilian infrastructure. Ukraine rented warehouses, common trucks, and hid the drones in normal shipping containers.

Thus indeed, this made the battlefield larger instead, now common trucks, warehouses and shipping containers are legitimate targets.

What Ukraine destroyed doesn't help either, for example they destroyed early warning airplanes intended to warn Russia if incoming missiles are nuclear or not. How Russia have to assume incoming missiles are nuclear, specially if they are flying in the regions where their land nuke detectors were destroyed too (I think 1 or 2 years ago Ukraine did that).

Thus Ukraine proved, that civilian equipment can destroy nuclear deterrence. Now common trucks and containers are a threat as big as many advanced military hardware out there. A truck with a bunch of drones can open a hole in your nuclear defense as much as stealth planes were needed for this before.

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