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."
May just be Putin beginning to set the stage for another invasion.
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
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.
Well, the Itar-TASS article repeats this phrase twice:
He did not rule out the drone could have been used for other purposes, including unlawful actions in Russia’s territory.
The Kaliningrad border service department is checking whether the drone could have been used for purposes other than cigarette smuggling, including unlawful actions in Russian territory.
Obviously the notion of "unlawful actions in Russian territory" is an important one, but the Russian Foreign ministry isn't quite sure how to spin this one. We'll know more later, perhaps in the days leading up to the elections in Ukraine.
When drone trade become illegal, then they can smuggle themselves.
begun, the drone wars have
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
According to the first google result on 'tobacco tax russia' the duty is about $25 per 1000 cigarettes. This is probably inte same order of magnitude as the profit you can make on smuggling cigarettes if you include costs of procuring, distribution and sales. Say a decent autonomous drone with some carrying capacity costs >$1000. That means you have to sell more than 40000 smuggled cigarettes for each drone you have confiscated by the authorities. I would say that you have to have a fairly decent success rate to 'win' when you are smuggling tobacco into Russia.
When asked why, the answer is almost always: "It's 2014".
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.
So, if you accidentally try to bring more than your personal quota into the country, is it a sin tax error?
I am not a crackpot.
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.
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!
It was being used to smuggle cigarettes into Lithuania by gangs operating in both countries, though the police claim that was not the only thing that was being smuggled.
More details and pics are in an Ars article . Seems pretty nifty, small gasoline engine, has all the control surfaces (rudders, ailerons etc.) , camera and an automatic GPS controlled route (making it a true autonomous drone rather than a remote controlled airplane).
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
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.