Many UAVs Vulnerable To Directed-Energy Weapons

mask.of.sanity writes "A New Zealand researcher has detailed ways that UAVs can be crashed using cheap tools like Herf guns and GPS jammers, and could even be downed by flying drones with more powerful radio. The attacks (podcast) interfere with the navigation systems used by flying drones and are possible because security was not designed into the architecture of some machines."

Comments

Illegal

[Neil Boekend]

Yes, of course there are illegal tools that can down them.
Next up: "drones vulnerable to anti-air missiles"

Re:Illegal

[Neil Boekend]

Nope. That an UAV is vulnerable to extreme high power microwaves just doesn't surprise me.
There is a lot that would be destroyed with a blast from such a HERF gun. Wifi interfaces and bluetooth devices especially like it. That is why it is usually illegal (and stupid) to use a microwave oven with a damaged containment.

Re:Illegal

[gtall]

I don't know about all UAVs but the U.S. military ones are programmed to fly home if they get confused. Dunno how they find home if they lose GPS but at least they thought about the issue.

Re:Illegal

[budgenator]

The impresssssion I got was the article was talking mostly about hobby grade quadracopters, with perhaps a webcam controlled by a 2.4 GHz hobbiest remote controller, not military grade UAVs; a few may have been commercial grade units marketed for industrial or law enforcement use.

Firing up a transmitter powerfull enough to jam a military grade drone flying over a battlefield is the shurest way I know of to find out if Allah realy has 72 virgins waiting for you in the promised land.

Re:Illegal

[ImprovOmega]

I don't know about all UAVs but the U.S. military ones are programmed to fly home if they get confused. Dunno how they find home if they lose GPS but at least they thought about the issue.

Inertial Navigation Systems. Not as accurate as GPS, but good enough to at least not land in enemy territory. And hypothetically by the time you got within a few miles of the base, the GPS would be back online.

anti-drone warfare

[AndroSyn]

It was only a matter of time before anti-drone warfare came about. This happens with every new piece of weaponry, the quest for the anti-weapon. They don't call it an arms race for no reason.

Re:Directed energy weapons

[Sockatume]

The catch here is that these "directed energy weapons" were cheap trivialities bought off eBay and not military EW apparatus or gigantic celestial furnaces.

Re:UAV's vulnerable to directed-energy weapons?

[slim]

Beautifully put, and correct.

However:

New Zealand security researcher Stuart MacIntosh told delegates at the Kiwicon 7 conference in Wellington that some vulnerable drone technology designed in the hobby space had trickled down into use by police and commercial operators.

Which makes it notable. Before you use a consumer-oriented item for more serious use, you need to evaluate its fitness for purpose.

Of course, you might go ahead and use it anyway - that's what risk assessment is all about.

Also vunerable to bullets

[wonkey_monkey]

You could probably take a low-flying one down with a trebuchet.

Re:Also vunerable to bullets

[Chris Mattern]

The Soviet attempt to train anti-tank dogs was...less than successful. The Russians trained their dogs with their own diesel-fueled tanks, which smelled different from German gasoline-fueled tanks. In the field, they discovered that this meant they had trained the dogs to blow up Soviet tanks but not German ones.

Re:UAV's vulnerable to directed-energy weapons?

[Shoten]

Beautifully put, and correct.

However:

New Zealand security researcher Stuart MacIntosh told delegates at the Kiwicon 7 conference in Wellington that some vulnerable drone technology designed in the hobby space had trickled down into use by police and commercial operators.

Which makes it notable. Before you use a consumer-oriented item for more serious use, you need to evaluate its fitness for purpose.

Of course, you might go ahead and use it anyway - that's what risk assessment is all about.

Also true...but honestly, I can't recall the last time cops had to worry about crooks with HERF guns. It would be a lot easier, safer and cheaper for the bad guys to simply *shoot* at the drones in these situations. We're not talking about flights of Predators or Reapers flying thousands of feet up, backed by a Gorgon's Eye implementation. We're talking about what's basically a glorified RC copter flying at hundreds of feet.

I will now coin a new acronym..."KEDW," or "Kinetic Energy Directed Weapon," also known as a "gun," and go speak to a conference about how it is a much worse threat than this...because not only can it shoot down police drones, it can hurt people too!

Re:UAV's vulnerable to directed-energy weapons?

[bobbied]

Well, if you can get a drone within 50 yards of me, I could possibly hit it with the shotgun. Outside of that range, things get a whole lot more difficult and it's going to be impossible outside of about 100 yards. Trying to hit a drone using a rifle is about the best you can hope for beyond 100 yards, and those shots would be one in a million.

So, if the drone is flying higher than about 150 feet it is unlikely to be in danger from any kinetic weapon carried by the perp.