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

How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 454 posts

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

#301

Post by maxglute »

overfeed wrote: post #281
avereveard wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the drones are self-guided there's nothing to jam[1], and what can you do after spotting a swarm of drones? Shoot $5m missiles at each one of them?

Not to mention DJI has AESA radars on $8000 agricultural drones. COTS drones withsensors + sensor fusion on par with best smart munitions.

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

#302

Post by sach1 »

ljsprague wrote: post #297
vasco wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an engineer, I am fascinated by it all. As a human, I am horrified that we democratized violence on this scale. How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case? When a small drone with a grenade or homemade explosive is so accessible? Any Christmas market in central Europe these days is surrounded by car barriers to prevent mass run-overs, but what do you do when soon someone has the idea of dropping…

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#303

Post by nradov »

oneshtein wrote: post #273
nradov wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be naive. Aid programs are a great idea when practical, and I'm certainly not in favor of indiscriminate bombing. But unfortunately in many countries, including Middle East conflict zones, any foreign aid is just stolen by local armed groups and used to fund terrorist activities. How do you think the leaders of Hamas accumulated billions in foreign bank accounts?

Leaders of Hamas has no bank accounts, AFAIK. Did you mean cryptocurrencies? If so, it's unlikely that these funds are personal savings. Usually, locals doesn't steal from locals in conflict zones, because their throats, or throats of their families, will be cut by other armed locals in no time. Invaders and mercenaries often rob or kill locals in many, many cases.

Don't be naive. Leaders of Hamas have control of foreign bank accounts. Probably cryptocurrencies as well now. Those funds are the personal proceeds of theft and embezzlement. They steal aid money directly, or steal supplies and sell them for cash. The locals can't do anything to stop them because Hamas has all of the weapons: there are no other armed locals. Hamas violently suppresses the locals who even try to protest against theft of foreign aid.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/07/news/hamas-leaders-worth-11bn-...

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/palestine-hamas-mu...

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

#304

Post by numpad0 »

Retric wrote: post #132
numpad0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still takes few seconds per target with technologies available right now. That's likely the reason why an operational anti drone laser turret is not a thing yet.

> operational anti drone turret is not a thing yet. I’ve read about a bunch of these systems even if they aren’t in widespread deployment some are still being tested in real world conditions. What about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hunter_(laser_weapon) “The Silent Hunter has been used by Saudi Arabia to guard against Houthi drones and missiles.” “During the World Defense Show in Riyadh the February 05, 2024…

Again, it takes few seconds per target with current laser tech. Which means they don't have important simultaneous multi target engagement capability.

The targets, whether it's plumbing pipe rockets or lipo drones, come in at 100-1000 yards/sec, so you don't really have that many seconds per target.

They work in the demo in which you just shoot down the sole target as it fly perpendicular to the machine for both physical and career safety, but when it comes to deploying the thing around your bed, guns make a lot more sense.

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

#305

Post by jdietrich »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #201
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #183

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.

Operation in GNSS-denied areas is already a stock feature on many relatively inexpensive commercial drones. The manufacturers talk about it euphemistically for obvious reasons, but they're designing drones specifically for the Ukraine war. There's a huge amount of engineering effort going into building drones that can remain operational in an extremely hostile RF environment.

Compensating for wind drift is a fairly straightforward software problem when you've got a fast processor, a bunch of high-resolution cameras and a laser rangefinder.

https://www.autelrobotics.com/productdetail/evo-lite-enterpr...

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

#306

Post by glitchc »

tguvot wrote: post #195
glitchc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Israel published last week that it (trialed) deployed laser system to shoot down drones year ago at North. It had 40 intercepts or so. Full operational deployment scheduled for the end of this year

You mean the demo done recently? The article might be misleading. The IDF tested 20 different systems produced by their military OEMs. It wasn't just lasers, and lasers are far from being the clear winner. Here's the official post, it contains a demonstration video:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/israelimod_israel-mod-complet...

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

#307

Post by varjag »

tim333 wrote: post #287
stego-tech wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean…you can’t, at least not right now, not for civvies. Let’s consider some of the current countermeasures: * Flak/Shrapnel/Birdshot: An excellent last-minute defense if you’re calm enough to line up an accurate shot, but data shows that equipping civilians with these sorts of weapons en masse is a bad idea for safety and well-being. That’s a no-go. * Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before dro…

For civvies the protection is the same as stopping someone shooting you with a rifle - have the cops jail the perpetrator.

The perp can be a thousand miles away tho.

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

#308

Post by im3w1l »

tim333 wrote: post #287
stego-tech wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean…you can’t, at least not right now, not for civvies. Let’s consider some of the current countermeasures: * Flak/Shrapnel/Birdshot: An excellent last-minute defense if you’re calm enough to line up an accurate shot, but data shows that equipping civilians with these sorts of weapons en masse is a bad idea for safety and well-being. That’s a no-go. * Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before dro…

For civvies the protection is the same as stopping someone shooting you with a rifle - have the cops jail the perpetrator.

Shooting people with a rifle is not scalable and there is a high risk of getting caught. Imagine if school shooters could kill thousands instead of dozens, and at zero risk.

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

#309

Post by ahartmetz »

cenamus wrote: post #122
sreekanth850 wrote: post #111

India used oldschool L70 Guns, zu 23 and ZSU-23-4 Shilka against pakisthan's drone swarm attacks. They are modernized to track, lock, and fire automatically. But they are cheap.

What kinda targeting system do they use? Probably no significant IR signature and radar one's pretty small aswell?

The strength of a reflected radar signal generally decreases with the fourth power of distance: r-squared to the reflector, and r-squared back from the reflector (assuming more-or-less uniform backscattering). Which means that a low radar signature is usually still detectable, the object just needs to get moderately closer.

So being stealthy in the radar spectrum is pretty difficult, and I often wonder if stealth planes are mostly a means to transfer money from the state to defense companies.

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

#310

Post by JohnBooty »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #67
JohnBooty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we think slightly more broadly? Targeting a stationary Tu-95 bomber with no protective measures in place is probably the easiest possible identification task for a drone. A lot of kill/no-kill decisions are more subtle, or involve unknowns, possible nearby civilians, etc. Or look at this crazy FPV piloting job. You think AI could do this? Pilot maneuvers through an absolute maze of anti-drone nets to hit a moving…

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

You could certainly train AI to navigate that particular maze of netting, but I'm far from convinced you could train an AI to navigate a near-infinite variety of novel, hostile measures not present in the training corpus.

It seems trivial to confuse a Tesla's AI. I'm assuming they're fairly near the top of the game when it comes to that, yes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1MigIJXJx8

This sort of intentionally hostile pathological case is of course rare in real-world driving. It will not be rare in warfare.

And a drone has to operate fully in three dimensions, unlike a Tesla which is effectively operating in two dimensions.

An autonomous drone will also have extremely constrained computing resources relative to a Tesla due to size/weight/power constraints.

Post reply on HN