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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

#361

Post by nostrademons »

ethbr1 wrote: post #333
GoatInGrey wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The "unique" part is two-fold. 1. It's cheap. 2. It's anonymous. The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility. And eventually terrorists catch up. (Probably after the Russia-Ukraine war ends and some skilled people from both sides are unemployed) It's infeasible to blanket every inch of civilian space with kinetic or EW anti-dro…

> The fact that we haven't had more drone terror attacks says more about the technological slowness of terrorists than its infeasibility.

Also motivation and incentives. The reason we haven't seen many drone attacks on civilians is that it is far more lucrative to get civilians to buy your product than to kill them, and the companies that actually have the resources to mount a credible drone attack are making a lot more money doing the former.

Terrorism in general has always been far more overhyped than actually a problem - the median number of terrorist deaths per year in the U.S. from 1970-2020 is 4, making your odds of being killed in a terrorist attack significantly lower than being struck by lightning. And the reason is simply that it's deeply irrational. What do you have to gain from killing a random stranger?

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

#362

Post by dyauspitr »

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…

Well you can’t just throw a Molotov because in that case you’re going to get caught. You can place a drone, go home and have it drop the Molotov the next day and no one would know who did it.

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

#363

Post by glitchc »

tguvot wrote: post #336
glitchc wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read your own article? It was developed last year and one of the weapons tested in February of this year as per the IDF post. The rest is Rafael marketing speak.

Did you read the article ? It starts with >In a historic breakthrough, the IDF on Wednesday announced that an unnamed laser defense system similar to the much celebrated Iron Beam laser system has shot down dozens of aerial threats during the war. >Already in fall 2024, The Jerusalem Post had learned that the IDF had used laser defense systems in operational situations but was barred from reporting on that at the tim…

> orders for iron beam were placed in january with deployment by the end of the year

Do you have a credible source from the IDF attesting to this?

And do you believe the IDF would conduct a demonsttation after it has already committed to a system?

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

#364

Post by tguvot »

numpad0 wrote: post #53
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the same thing. You don't even need to fully destroy the drone, if you manage to damage the camera sensors or the exposed lithium cell it's game over for the drone.

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.

https://www.twz.com/news-features/israels-iron-beam-laser-ai...

full blown deployment by end of this year

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

#365

Post by tguvot »

glitchc wrote: post #363
tguvot wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article ? It starts with >In a historic breakthrough, the IDF on Wednesday announced that an unnamed laser defense system similar to the much celebrated Iron Beam laser system has shot down dozens of aerial threats during the war. >Already in fall 2024, The Jerusalem Post had learned that the IDF had used laser defense systems in operational situations but was barred from reporting on that at the tim…

> orders for iron beam were placed in january with deployment by the end of the year Do you have a credible source from the IDF attesting to this? And do you believe the IDF would conduct a demonsttation after it has already committed to a system?

>Do you have a credible source from the IDF attesting to this?

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/laser-intercept...

it been all over Israeli news. not exactly "news"

>And do you believe the IDF would conduct a demonsttation after it has already committed to a system?

what demonstration are you talking about ? if you are talking about whatever was published in february, it's mostly for more tactical/mobile use i believe.

there is an issue that north of israel is very hilly, so it's possible to fly drones from lebanon below radar visibility range and then just to get them pop-up 50km away from border. it was major problem last year and the publicized trials a believe concentrated on sourcing systems to solve this issue.

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

#366

Post by lukan »

nostrademons wrote: post #359
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…

I'm also fascinated by the political implications on state formation, state size, and form of government. State formation tends to track the relative military effectiveness of large highly-trained standing armies vs. small distributed arms making. The Roman Empire collapsed when they ran out of money to pay their legions. The smaller tribes and kingdoms of the Early Middle Ages unified into the larger kingdoms of the…

"It's likely that the drone, being both cheap to produce"

If you can buy the parts, then yes, but producing a complete drone all on your own is not that easy I think.

Still easier than a stealth air plane or a cruise missile, though. So your predictions might come true, because I also see most state armies being really slow to adopt to this new reality.

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

#367

Post by netsharc »

nkmnz wrote: post #319
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…

fwiw, I think the car barriers never had the purpose to stop cars, but to show people that at least on some level someone cares about their perceived safety.

Feels chicken-and-eggy.

At the weekend, I was at a small town which had a half a mile long main road blocked off for a market day. They put up bollards to do so.

Chances are, there were 0 persons planning a car attack on it. So there was an element of "We don't think anything's going to happen, but if it were to happen, we're prepared.". A bit like having a fire extinguisher when there's never been a fire.

But would seeing the bollards also have the effect of discouraging the insane people of the idea of driving the car through the crowds the next time a market day is held?

Oppositely, if they didn't put up any barriers, a psychopath seeing this and the realization that cars can be weapons might give them the idea of "I know what I can do for my act of terrorism..."

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

#368

Post by toss1 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #318
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…

>Nets: Popular for defense, but it’s a matter of time before drones adapt by flying under the nets or changing payload to something to dissolve it. Worth noting here that the Ukrainian armed forces have already repeatedly deployed drones with the ability to spray pretty impressive amounts of napalm all over their targets from fairly high altitudes. Fittingly, they've been called "Dragon drones", and I wouldn't want t…

The "Dragon Drones" also drop thermite [0], a material with massively exothermic high temperature 2000°C+ redox reaction, which can melt through most metals. Thermite is often used to weld rail tracks [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttJet5WkTk

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

#369

Post by acdha »

wood_spirit wrote: post #174
acdha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t we receive millions of containers of cargo annually, not to mention having fewer internal movement restrictions? It certainly doesn’t seem implausible that someone could ship some drones around - the hardest part is avoiding explosives detector, but that’s a hard problem and the defense has the unenviable task of having to get it right millions of times.

Countries could be forward deploying these assets covertly in deniable ways in prep for future tensions?

I’d certainly plan for that if my job was physical security. It’s cheap by military standards and it’s not like we don’t have precedent with things like Russian deep-cover operatives. The commodification of the tech could make an adversary more confident in their ability to deny it if found, too, if everyone is using parts from China and open source software.

I think the key deterrent is that the U.S. has production capacity for the important systems and overwhelming capacity to strike back, so a rational foreign state isn’t going to think there’s a way they win by trying it. Terrorist groups might be a different story, so I’m really glad this wasn’t an option during Bush’s big adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan because however bad drone strikes are for military defense, they’re even worse for civilians.

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

#370

Post by fredthestair »

mattashii wrote: post #11
fredthestair wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely easy to make surfaces partly reflective and extremely hard to make lasers outside of labs more powerful.

More powerful than what? If StyroPyro can build handheld 200W+ LED laser device in his workshop [0], why wouldn't a sufficiently funded military be able to build an anti-drone laser with the same (or higher) power output? Note that his laser burns through various reflective materials, including mirrors, copper, aluminium, and steel. [0] https://youtu.be/UBVlL0FNbSE

If a drone is 90% reflective it doesn't need a weapon besides your laser.. (If the star wars approach weren't a scam to enter an ever more expensive race as the side with more money than sense.)
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