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How Ukraine’s killer drones are beating Russian jamming

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

#321

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

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.

Oof. Bad news for people like me who cops might not like

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

#322

Post by GoatInGrey »

vasco wrote: post #231
stego-tech wrote: post #226

Drone warfare has always been equal parts distressing (it’s impersonal, it’s too easy to leverage, and therefore too easy to abuse) and incredible (ultra-thin fiber as a kite line? Brilliant!) to me. These advances are no different. That said, I do fret we’re staring down a new age of guerrilla warfare. Drones are cheap, widely available, and increasingly autonomous. Their countermeasures are either impractical for c…

> 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…

It's going to be an analogue of the situation with firearms today where the assailant has an asymmetrical advantage over civilians but not the countermeasure (police).

Also, the US military has been stockpiling kinetic drone countermeasures for about four years now. The idea is you get a hardened, ~11 pound autonomous drone that slams into the target at roughly 90 mph and physically destroys it before returning home. Add on 1-2 year-old US EW technology that now disables autonomous drones (yep, even autonomous drones), and you can establish a very comprehensive defense. The point I'm making here is that the tech is not only possible, but it exists.

Is it perfect? No. Though defense against firearms and explosives today isn't perfect either. Namely because of response times of the countermeasure. So in that sense, we aren't entering a uniquely dangerous situation.

Edit:

I think what will happen is that the first time a UAS is used on civilians, flying drones around population centers will be banned without permit. That way, if a drone is seen flying without a permit, it gets taken down on sight.

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

#323

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

m4rtink wrote: post #180
masom wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenCV and other onboard computer softwares can be trained to recognize shapes, 10+ years ago there was a demo of a NodeCopter controlled small drone following red flags. Stick the GPS coord, fly there, and once in a geofence look for a shape to crash into doesn't seem impossible given what was possible 10 years ago.

There is often quite heavy GPS jamming or spoofing. Also in some of the published videos I think you can see a "no GPS lock" status message - but maybe they just did not bother with GPS if all the drones were manually piloted anyway.

I assume drone guidance builds on missile guidance. Old cruise missiles were loaded with mission-specific terrain maps to follow to their targets

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

#324

Post by seadan83 »

vasco wrote: post #231
stego-tech wrote: post #226

Drone warfare has always been equal parts distressing (it’s impersonal, it’s too easy to leverage, and therefore too easy to abuse) and incredible (ultra-thin fiber as a kite line? Brilliant!) to me. These advances are no different. That said, I do fret we’re staring down a new age of guerrilla warfare. Drones are cheap, widely available, and increasingly autonomous. Their countermeasures are either impractical for c…

> 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…

> How do you even defend against this in a terrorist use case?

You can't, and you don't. That is why it is called terrorism. Safety and freedom are sometimes antagonistic goals. This is an example. Terrorism is defended against by not changing society despite the terrorism. It is violence with a political goal, if the politics do not change, the terrorism fails. Not every soft target can (nor should be) hardened, there will always be soft targets.

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

#326

Post by scott_w »

pjc50 wrote: post #171
scott_w wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that software making these decisions can't possibly have the full context when making the decision because it was coded long before the decision point occurred. What does that mean in practice? Have you ever saw a flash in the corner of your eye, looked for a second, then realised it was just a reflection? For that split second, your brain identified a potential threat and was trying to quickly decide wh…

> Have you ever saw a flash in the corner of your eye, looked for a second, then realised it was just a reflection? For that split second, your brain identified a potential threat and was trying to quickly decide whether to hide, fight or run. But underneath that was a nagging of "it's probably nothing," that caused you to delay pulling out your gun and opening fire on a passing car. .. or vice-versa. The average war…

I’m not denying that awful shit like this happens with humans. I’m pointing out the moral hazard in turning it into a preprogrammed system. We’ve seen software bugs empty bank accounts simply because running that faulty system for 5 minutes iterates 100,000 times. Now give the power to decide who lives and dies and it’s only limited by the ammo it holds.

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

#327

Post by Oarch »

glitchc wrote: post #257
00N8 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 las…

The point is that a focused laser will put a hole through the drone, much like an armor piercing round, but that is often insufficient to disable the drone. A larger ballistic projectile (think a solid shell or a rock) is much more effective. Alternative energy weapons based on microwaves and SPL also work well.

Presumably hitting any rotor, even a small amount, could be enough to bring it down? They're finely balanced things

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

#328

Post by bamboozled »

oneshtein wrote: post #243
cmcaleer wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It's not a problem when Russia, Israel, USA, or other nations attacks civilians, because of a military reason. Why it will be a problem in this case?

Because the makeup men don’t like Ukraine

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

#330

Post by dang »

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…

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Wtf? You can't post like this to Hacker News and we ban accounts that do.

Worse, you've been posting similar things elsewhere too (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43848538).

I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things, but if you keep posting ideological and/or political flamebait, and especially religious or nationalistic slurs, we will. Therefore, if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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