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Defending Against Drones
theodp writes "The US has not had to truly think about its air defense since the Cold War. But as America embraces the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, Newsweek says it's time to consider how our greatest new weapon may come back to bite us. Smaller UAVs' cool, battery-powered engines make them difficult to hit with conventional heat-seeking missiles. And while Patriot missiles can take out UAVs, at $3 million apiece such protection carries a steep price tag, especially if we have to deal with $500 DIY drones."
Yeah, those USD500 drones aren't gonna fly across the pacific, atlantic or artic oceans anytime soon.
:).
Still cheap drones might be useful for attackers already in the USA. I wonder how many patriot (or similar) banks are deployed in the USA.
But if people are willing to die, it's going to be hard to stop them if they're not too stupid. The drone then is the human+payload+vehicle.
Maybe they should just spend a few millions getting those young angry guys laid... That should de-drone a few of them. A "bird" in each arm might be worth 72 houris in wherever-land.
Not like they used to. Air burst rounds will likely be the next iteration in the infantry arms race: Essentially a grenade that files in a flat trajectory and can detonate where ever you tell it to, such as "that line of sandbags, plus 1m" and then you aim above the sandbags.
They certainly will come in handy against your average "terrorist" armed with an AK-47, but once these types of guns are available to both sides of a conflict it will get real ugly. I certainly hope they remain a technology demonstrator only by some gentlemans agreement. But the next iteration of ground warfare is already in progress...
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that I can disable a $500 drone with little less than a portable radio, my laptop and a couple of bucks worth of radioshack equipment. Thing about the drones is that they TOO have weaknesses. And a safe, unbreakable, unhackable, wireless, remote control interface costs a LOT more than $500. And an EM emitter, or even just a remote jamming device, or in case of a wireguided or automated drone a laser to interfere with or destroy the optics seems like pretty easy to come by and cheap solutions.
And for those really high tech drones that can survive these kinds of odds. I'm sure we can spend a cheap stinger on. Why anyone would WANT to make the leap all the way to a patriot missile, made for smashing down objects the size of a spaceshuttle is beyond me.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
I don't understand: Drones are easy to take down. A couple of dragoons or zealots should do the trick nicely, or maybe a few marines instead. Heck, you can go at em with SCVs and have a fighting chance.
I am officially gone from
The idea of hundreds of citizens firing UP INTO THE AIR trying to hit a drone scares the hell out of me... what goes up must come down, and the law of conservation of energy combine to make me think that the damage to those of us on the ground would probably be greater then what the drone could do... particularly since the drone would likely be too far above the shooters for a bullet to have any hope of finding it...
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
The original article is talking about military drones. The $500 toy is a reference added by the editor. (I admit it could have some tactical survellance value, if you could launch it from nearby). While you could build a small piston engine + prop powered drone for a few thousand dollars, it would still have to be fairly big in order to carry a militarily useful payload and travel the necessary distance. Such a drone will not fly at tree top levels; and, if it did, you'd never see it before it was too late to do anything about it.
The best defense is a good offense. You know who said that? Mel, the cook on "Alice".
- Ed Gruberman
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
It's not about the cost of what you have to shoot down but what you have to defend.
Read about the history of air warfare during WWI, with the rise of airplanes. The situation is analogous to drones. Ultimately, drones will have defenses and counter-attacks. It's not been a big deal yet because we're fighting people who don't have access to the technology, but that will change.
Do you have ESP?
Seriously. If we can shoot down mosquitos with optically guided lasers for $50, surely we can shoot down drones?
Actually smells like the SDI that precipitated the fall of the USSR.. only in reverse.
As long as we give billions of dollars to the military/security interests, to protect us against marginal or very distant threats, they, and the terrorists, win.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Yea, a lot of people go a bit nutty in their old age. You may want to check out what else Butler said:
In November 1934, Butler told the committee that a group of businessmen, backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship. Butler had been asked to lead it, he said, by Gerald P. MacGuire, a bond salesman with Grayson M-P Murphy & Co. The New York Times reported that Butler had told friends that General Hugh S. Johnson, a former official with the National Recovery Administration, was to be installed as dictator. Butler said MacGuire had told him the attempted coup was backed by three million dollars, and that the 500,000 men were probably to be assembled in Washington, D.C. the following year. All the parties alleged to be involved, including Johnson, said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy.[43]
Care to name all of these conflicts we supposedly started? Please cite your sources to how we started them too. I think if you take the time to research this subject you're going to get a wicked eye opening.
Ok, since we are going to have a go of it...
1st: Iraq. We invaded Iraq ostensibly to depose a Dictator, but instead only ended up wreaking havoc on the most politically and socially stable country in the middle east. Anyone who believes Bush seniors decision to invade Iraq following the Kuwait fiasco, needs only come and see me about a bridge I have for sale. The reasons for the Gulf Ware were largely fabricated at the time by the Kuwaiti Royal family who by no co-incidence happen to be family friends of the Bush family. Whether knowingly or not, George Bush senior involved us in a war which gave the impression to the rest of the world to be an almost completely unwarranted US invasion of an OPEC nation, for what appeared to be monetary reasons.
2nd: Iraq again, Round two, had even less valid reasons, and smelled worse than the first.
3rd: Afghanistan. Once again, we invade another country, This time for supporting terrorists, but if you had asked any of the senior Russian military personnel about catching terrorists in Afghanistan, they would have told you to save your effort. Even without US interference, Afghanistan was difficult for the USSR to handle, but then the US provided them with weapons to kill Soviets (and one another) with, but was no where to be found when the killing was over, and it was time to rebuild. We shouldn't have to wonder why the Taliban (who we actually supported at one time) think we're slime.
4th: Bay of pigs. You can look that one up on your own time.
5th: The Spanish American war. The US on the path to empire takes on those who are in the way.
There is plenty more, that was just what I came across in a 10 minute trek through Wikipedia.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
A 500 buck drone, capable of carrying 250g of c4, with a range of 5 km and an endurance of 30 minutes, could bring a country to its knees.
Targets?
Satellite dish LNBs, High Tension cable insulators, refinery pipework, radar dishes on weaponry, etc etc etc.
use two, the first the blow an access into a window, and EVERY important computer is a target, bank computers, traffic control computers, air traffic control, industrial process, etc etc etc.
Use 5, meshed together, and the fifth could be flown inside a rabbit warren, SCRAM control sensors in a reactor plant, you name it.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
In fact a private drone (from a university) has already done that years ago, across the Atlantic. It certainly cost a lot more than $500, but components have gone down in price quite a lot.
My crappy EasyStar ($60 of glorified styrofoam) can fly for almost an hour with a brushless motor on a 11V, 1200mA.h battery that costs around $30. It wouldn't be too hard in the near future to build a drone covered with lightweight solar cells, and enough batteries to stay airborne during the night. The EasyStar can already easily accommodate 200g of payload, for a total weight of one kg or two.
With an Arduino it's already super easy to build a drone with GPS guiding. But even if GPS is jammed it's not much harder to implement inertial positioning, and beyond that cell phone relay trilateration to lock in on a target. Each of those features can be had in a 1g integrated package.
Those are still vulnerable to military jamming, but at a significant cost to the target. There are other ways around this: sun tracking has not been done AFAIK but it shouldn't be too hard to do. We have *slightly* better clocks than mariners of the old time and that's what they used. At night, star tracking is also a possibility. Then some DIY drone people are experimenting with magnetic sensors, which is what migratory birds use.
In conclusion, drones are gonna be a problem, and I suspect states are going to try to ban them, to obviously no effect since all it takes are cell phone components (lithium batteries, microcontrollers, GPS receivers), some styrofoam and a few cheap power electronics components (brushless motors, controllers, and servos). Oh and duct tape. They better ban duct tape quick.
Sigh, just another attempt to turn some simple engineering problem into politics.
I happen to have some experience in this area and I can say for certain that if there are no creeps on the floor, any wave of drones is easy to kill. I would start by erecting a line of towers with simple pellet guns, upgrading the weak points to snipers as necessary. Squirt towers will provide a layer of depth to your defence, but ideally you want a fully upgraded bash tower to take out ground creeps quickly enough that your guns can focus on the drones.
If you'll excuse me, I feel the need for just one more try...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Why would you think it would actually be easier for a drone to get through?
Because you can afford to swarm them. Do you know how much a Tu-95 bomber costs? Divide by $500, and you've got the number of toy flying bombs you might have to contend with instead. If you're spending tens of thousands to shoot each one down you're losing the war even if you're not taking any direct damage from the drones themselves.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
http://www.mikrokopter.de/
For 1250 (a bit more expensive than 500, ok) you can get the hexacopter, which:
- has 20 to 40 minutes endurance
- is fully automatic
- can fly to GPS coordinates without outside commands
- can carry over 1 kg payload.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Did you forget? September 11th was a declaration of war on us. We were forced to retaliate. There's a comprehensive 10 second video explanation here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
We gotta keep finding new threats. Otherwise defense contractor stock would drop! We can't have that!
Tinfoil hats should protect everyone from falling bullets. At least according to what I read here about these wonderful inventions.
Probably.
You might want a set of tinfoil shoulder pads as well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If you read more about the Business Plot, you'd find out that the Congressional Committee that investigated it thought that the allegations were credible. However, for some strange reason the investigation soon stopped after names like duPont and JP Morgan started coming up. The standard historical interpretation of the Business Plot these days is that there was something there, and some of those industrialists wanted to do what Butler accused them of organizing, but that they hadn't gotten anywhere near the point where they could actually pull it off.
For instance, journalist John Spivak was able to get access to the committee's report in 1967, and this is what he found:
"MacGuire denied [Butler's] allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made to General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principle, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various form of veterans' organizations of Fascist character."
I am officially gone from
Consider a small freighter, 200 km off New York. It launches a few hundred small unmanned planes, guided by a small computer autopilot. Each plane carries four thermite stick bombs, similar to the ones used in WWII. When the planes reach the vicinity of New York they climb to a few hundred meters altitude and start dropping the thermite devices. What was cutting edge tech 70 years ago is garage tech today.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
Let's say you engage in a behaviour like eating sugary things (like gobbling up a huge amount of the world's resources and supporting evil regimes) that attracts bees and Wasps (terrorists, drones, etc.). Sure, you can spend PILES of money on insecticides (patriot missiles, TSA, etc.), or, you could simply stop engaging in the behaviour that attracts bees and wasps.
Duh. But people like you are greedy, lazy, and stupid, and can't live without their SUVs, McMansions, and daily intake of beef, sugar, and Salads in February, and so rather than change your behaviour, you would rather ramp up the insecticide production. Tards. Keep it up, and expect people to bomb the crap out of you. It's really very simple, almost Newtonian in structure.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That is why the Soviets took over the world! Or at least control most of its finances, shove laws friendly to their business interests down the throat of pretty much every nation out there and have forward military bases in over 60% countries on the planet and spend more on offensive weaponry than the rest of the world combined ... oh wait!
The hysterical bullshit US war-mongers spew would be comical if it weren't so blood soaked.
Right after I finish watching the Ahmed Chelabi videos about the great big stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq all set to go off at 5 minutes notice.
On the contrary, I have pretty good idea, although the verbal feces here are all yours.
Oh so the Soviets invented the doctrine of "Disaster Capitalism". Clever Commie .... err... Capitalist bastards.
Hence the Great Tank Battle of Saigon where thousands of T-72 tanks of the Red Army squared off against the M48s of the US Armored Divisions with the sky above full of Soviet airmen dogfighting with US Air Force, with tactical nukes going off in the background ... uhm ... what?
Number of US Soldiers killed in the Vietnam War: 58,159. Number of Vietnamese killed: 1.3 million. Soviet citizens dead: 16 (that's six and ten since you are having obvious difficulties with numbers) ... who was invading whom, again?
Words of a religious fanatic. Capitalism is also a "poison" ideology that has been used to do countless acts of unspeakable evil.
So while I sometimes enjoy taunting raving lunatics such as you, I am not in the mood today. Go play by yourself in that delusional universe you've created for yourself.