Slashdot Mirror
The Lithuanian Mob Was Smuggling Cigarettes Into Russia With a Drone
Daniel_Stuckey writes: "A homemade Lithuanian drone was reportedly being used to smuggle cigarettes into Russia, meaning that organized crime has beaten Amazon to the punch in the quest to deliver desirable products to customers aerially. Russia has 'detained' the drone, a spokesman with the Kaliningrad border department of the Russian Federal Security service told one of Russia's largest news organizations earlier this week. It's not the first time drones have been used to smuggle products — back in November, people tried to smuggle drugs into a prison in Georgia; the same thing happened in Sao Paolo back in March and in Quebec last fall. Basically, people have learned that drones are good at carrying things."
If the drones are cheap enough, then it probably doesn't matter. Send several and let them try and catch them all. If any product makes it, you win. And your own neck is never at risk since the drone isn't going to squeal on you.
Well, it probably is, though. It would be hard to cover all your tracks digitally. Hmm...
Still interesting though.
There's almost no cig tax in Russia, they're on the order of $2 a pack.
It can't be worth the hassle to save the... what, 25 cents of tax?
I guess if they were counterfeit or stolen it could be worthwhile, though.
Bringing them into Canada makes sense, with some of the highest sin taxes in the world, though. They're $14 a pack in this province.
Sent from my PDP-11
Cigarettes are much cheaper in Russia, so "drone" smuggled stuff in opposite direction.(I know for sure, i`m local.)
Here are some fancy pics on local news site:http://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/incidents/3689593-zaderzhany-litsa-upravlyavshie-bespilotnikom-v-kaliningradskoy-oblasti-video.html#pic3296056
Umm, I'm pretty sure it has to be the other way around. Why would they smuggle cigarettes INTO Russia.... They are much cheaper there compared to Lithuania.....
Unless of course this is another attempt at tarnishing the reputation of a country that is unfortunate enough to border Russia. They already claimed many of the key Maidan activists were prepared in special training camps in Lithuania, which seems unlikely.
People were using drones to smuggle diamonds back in the 1970s. Except they weren't called "drones" back then, just remote-control aeroplanes, so I guess that's totally different.
These are the cases we know about. I bet the detection ratio (captures / total attempts) is actually pretty small.
When drone trade become illegal, then they can smuggle themselves.
Would be more surprising if they shipped live body parts.
begun, the drone wars have
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It would be a money maker if a tiny drone could carry six ounces of heroin or cocaine across the border. The money is sufficient to cover the occasional loss of a drone and one need not pay a mule to smuggle the substance. It may also be a lot harder to catch and convict the sender of such drugs. That also means that chemical or germ warfare could be a huge threat. But now the rabbit is out of the hat. We could not regulate drones out of existence as many people could easily build one from scratch. Maybe we could have high altitude drones that strike any site launching a drone.
Holy mojibake, Batman! I don't know how :SÃf£o Paulo renders in your browser -- maybe it looks ok to you -- but at least I have a chance of figuring it out as "Sao Paolo" in the summary rather than the character salad Slashdot makes of your "correction".
I am not a crackpot.
Indeed, and I'd bet they deliver!!
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
It is curious that as soon as a general feeling is developed towards a culture, country, etc. we seem to attribute all its citizens the same perceived failing and vices we generally bestow on all our 'enemies'. Suddenly, everything Russians say is a lie, provocation, whatever. They are simultaneously devious enough to set this up to `tarnish Lithuania's reputation' and too stupid to build an undetectable drone. We cheer over their misfortunes just because one of their officials made a stupid remark over trampolines (not shared by most Russian engineers or even general public) which, in addition, was taken out of context. Everything they do is evil, stupid and inhuman. Ukrainian ethnic Russians killed in Odessa `deserved it' (sure, a Ukrainian official said this) while the same incident on the Maidan (just as tragic) is a `heroic act'.
To justify this attitude, we simply mirror our own perceptions in our interpretaion of their actions and put nonexistent meaning into their statements or simply ignore those statements and facts altogether.
Good job, Slashdot!
I think the article is confused about the direction of the contraband. In Russia, a pack is around $1, in Lithuania - around $4. Source: I'm a lithuanian.
The US-Mexico border is nearly 2000 miles, and the estimate for complying with the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" which builds 700 miles of fence, at $4.1Billion, greater than the budget for the Border Patrol ($3.6Billion). Attempts to extend this to a complete fence have failed multiple times in Congress.
At that rate a complete fence would cost at least $12Billion, and it would be completely useless against drug-smuggling drones that could probably be built for less than a thousand dollars, that could fly lower than radar coverage as for the "Virtual Fence," and would not be easily traceable to the origin or destination of the flights.
Drones that could carry humans would probably cost just a little more. Right now, about 500 migrants per year die crossing the US-Mexico border - drones could most probably be safer than that, but it's hard to speculate what safety features human smugglers would employ in illegal drones.
All of Amazons Drone Patents are worthless!
I remember, during the Cold War (and the start of the Drug War), when "cruise missles" first came out.
There were two designs - a short-range one, with an engine that destroyed its bearings during the run, and a long-range one, with better bearings so the engine could be stopped and restarted. They both used terrain-following, as well as inertial navigation, with onboard radar and a computer that could figure out the drone's location and path from the topography. VERY advanced computing for the time. They could fly at treetop level and thus avoid ground-based radar until it was too late to do anything about them.
The long-range one could carry a payload of about 2/3 ton (suitable for a substantial H-bomb). It navigated well enough that it could be flown into a larg doorway or window (though it would, of course, go out through the far wall...).
I remember thinking that the range was substantually longer than the distance from Columbia to the southwestern US and that 1,350 pounds is a LOT of cocaine. B-)
The downside, of course, was that if it WAS detected, it would look JUST like a cruise missile flying into the US over the Gulf of Mexico...
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Can someone describe the difference between a "drone" and a "RC helicopter" to me?
I was under the impression a "drone" was autonomous, but many of the news stories about "drones" seem to be just RC toys?
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Smuggle dead body-parts across the (northern) border, dump the cargo randomly, confuse the heck out of the local law-enforcement.
Not only does it not matter, the dictionaries already say you are wrong.
http://dictionary.reference.co...
You are absolutely right (on both counts) and I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing that out.
I must say: it makes me a little sad to have the popular press and "great unwashed" corrupt our specific technical language. But that just dates me -- obviously I'm a fossil.