Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

thedrive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 128 posts

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#31

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

unanswered wrote: post #20
ericbarrett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a defense contractor imperiling their flow of money when they could certainly arrange to test at White Sands or some such. This kind of thing is straight to jail, do pass Go, do not collect $2 billion. LEO, same; perhaps they might play loose with the law, but around refueling infrastructure and airports? That brings the Feds in 100%. Again, straight to jail. What is the risk/reward here? A three-lett…

So the argument is "no one commits crimes except for terrorists"? I'm afraid I'm not convinced.

Also everyone is rational--but isn't it a happy surprise "nation-states" didn't come up again?

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#32

Post by OnlyOneCannolo »

showerst wrote: post #7
ericbarrett wrote: post #4

Is there any conclusion to reach here (assuming this report is correct) besides a hostile entity scouting U.S. infrastructure? See also: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/drones-swarmed-u-s-wars...

Could be any number of defense contractors, military, or LEO recklessly testing out a high end drone, then breaking the rules to avoid consequences. Is there any intelligence that a drone that size could provide that you couldn't get from a combination of satellites and just driving around a decent camera? It seems really risky for a foreign adversary for limited gain.

It could be probing the response to a drone intrusion for the purpose of using drones as weapons in the future.

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#33

Post by HideousKojima »

unanswered wrote: post #20
ericbarrett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a defense contractor imperiling their flow of money when they could certainly arrange to test at White Sands or some such. This kind of thing is straight to jail, do pass Go, do not collect $2 billion. LEO, same; perhaps they might play loose with the law, but around refueling infrastructure and airports? That brings the Feds in 100%. Again, straight to jail. What is the risk/reward here? A three-lett…

So the argument is "no one commits crimes except for terrorists"? I'm afraid I'm not convinced.

No, the argument is that the incentives aren't really there for other possible groups to commit this crime since they have legal alternatives to what was done. Doesn't make it impossible, just less likely.

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#34

Post by C19is20 »

bombcar wrote: post #29
toss1 wrote: post #14

It could be interesting that the 4-6 rotor configuration, range/time of around and hour and 50mi, and the 14,000ft+ performance strongly indicate a fuel-powered device, but that the night vision goggles couldn't see it. It didn't indicate if the NVGs were of the ambient-light-enhancing type or IR type. This probably tells us that the NVGs were the ambient-light-enhancing type as there would be very little ambient ref…

Would it be possible to have a gas-powered drone that has some amount of time it can run on batteries? I'm thinking similar to the old diesel submarines that would go on battery when they wanted to be stealthy.

Gas, gas? Or American Freedom Juice cough?

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#35

Post by mumblemumble »

fmakunbound wrote: post #12

Good thing the drone was fitted with the FAA-required GPS reporting and registration ID transponders.

Realistically, those are probably still useful in situations like this, because the authorities can more easily filter out compliant air traffic when they're trying to monitor/investigate something like this. Without it, they'd need to find the needle in a much bigger haystack.

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#37

Post by bilbo0s »

gpm wrote: post #24
jvanderbot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, this is why I'm confused. There's no play by any sufficiently advanced adversary that makes sense. Except domestic terrorism. A fairly rich / savvy domestic actor with bad intent might be interested in seeing if they can fly about with a fast / large drone. Prior to, you know, equipping that drone with something bad.

Why domestic? The US isn't lacking in international adversaries that would be interested in the ability to execute low cost attacks against critical infrastructure. If it was domestic terrorists it seems likely they would have seized the opportunity to do damage immediately instead of showing their hand like this. An "advanced persistent threat" (such as a foreign country) to borrow from the computer security world s…

Foreign states have the resources to build their own field tests.

But time will tell. In fact it already has. We just need to wait for the investigation to complete.

My own money would be on a terrorist organization. A bit less certain that it would be domestic, but domestic is still more probable than foreign in my mind. The past few years, and the past year in particular, has shown me that our domestic terrorists on the left and the right are bat$#!t crazy.

But as I said, we'll see.

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#38

Post by VectorLock »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #23
gpm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to test your ability to get physical payloads in place, e.g. in the future the drone could carry a bomb or something else clever (listening devices? Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Etc) You want low angle shots? You're not well funded enough to get good satellite photos?

> Dropping gallium on aluminum airplanes? Is there anything that building a delivery mechanism to carry and then drop gallium onto a plane does that an actual gun wouldn't?

Less visible bullet hole more structurally compromised Al.

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#39

Post by HideousKojima »

toss1 wrote: post #14

It could be interesting that the 4-6 rotor configuration, range/time of around and hour and 50mi, and the 14,000ft+ performance strongly indicate a fuel-powered device, but that the night vision goggles couldn't see it. It didn't indicate if the NVGs were of the ambient-light-enhancing type or IR type. This probably tells us that the NVGs were the ambient-light-enhancing type as there would be very little ambient ref…

I thought gas didn't really work with quad/hexa/octorotors because gas motors can't cycle up and down as quickly and reliably as electric, and fine-tuned control of rotor speed is essential to how a quadrotor works

EDIT: nope I'm stupid

Re: New Details Emerge on the “Highly Modified Drone” That Outran Police Helicopters

#40

Post by anticristi »

Wistar wrote: post #15
hluska wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the description “The quad copter was described as approximately 5 feet long by about 3 feet wide, with a single green flashing LED light.”

Odd that the creators of the drone bothered with a flashing light.

I can imagine the conversation in an evil war room: "We are doing illegal stuff, but still, let's not go as low as to remove the flashing light. We have morals!" :))
Post reply on HN