The Drone Wars Are Already Here (bloomberg.com) 73
The skies of Syria, Yemen, and Libya swarm with armed and dangerous unmanned aerial vehicles. And the technology is spreading farther and farther afield. From a report: Three decades ago, drones were available to only the most technologically developed state military organizations. Today they're everywhere, being used by weaker states and small military forces, as well as many non-state actors, including Islamic State and al-Qaeda. "We're seeing a cycle of technological innovation regarding the use of drones and associated systems, and that cycle of techno-tactical adaptation and counter-adaptation will only hasten going forward," says Raphael Marcus, a research fellow in the department of war studies at King's College London.
The diffusion of such technology is leveling the playing field, says Marcus, author of Israel's Long War With Hezbollah: Military Innovation and Adaptation Under Fire. He says that because armies no longer have the monopoly on the use of drones, surveillance technology, precision capabilities, and long-range missiles, other actors in the region are able to impose their will on the international stage. "The parameters have changed," he says. That's already leading to greater instability. For example, Hezbollah's thwarted drone strike in August and increasingly sophisticated and more frequent drone attacks by Hamas raise the risk of another war with Israel; meanwhile, Yemen's Houthi rebels made an impact on the global price of oil with a strike on Saudi Arabia, using 25 drones and missiles.
The diffusion of such technology is leveling the playing field, says Marcus, author of Israel's Long War With Hezbollah: Military Innovation and Adaptation Under Fire. He says that because armies no longer have the monopoly on the use of drones, surveillance technology, precision capabilities, and long-range missiles, other actors in the region are able to impose their will on the international stage. "The parameters have changed," he says. That's already leading to greater instability. For example, Hezbollah's thwarted drone strike in August and increasingly sophisticated and more frequent drone attacks by Hamas raise the risk of another war with Israel; meanwhile, Yemen's Houthi rebels made an impact on the global price of oil with a strike on Saudi Arabia, using 25 drones and missiles.
kind of concerning. (Score:1)
Re:kind of concerning. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or maybe most people in 1st world countries don't feel the need to resolve their problems with explosives?
The US government excluded, of course.
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most people in 1st world countries rely on the US government to resolve their problems with explosives.
FTFY
Re:kind of concerning. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or maybe most people in 1st world countries don't feel the need to resolve their problems with explosives?
The US government excluded, of course.
I read the first line and i was preparing my reply... then you had to ruin it with truth.
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ie their own special forces in place but doing civilian jobs until needed.
Until then they collect information and work with their nations experts/people of faith.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio [wikipedia.org]
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Most nations have their version of what the USA called a "Detachment A"
ie their own special forces in place but doing civilian jobs until needed.
Until then they collect information and work with their nations experts/people of faith.
Sleeper cells.
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Drones are the same as rockets or remote controlled airplanes which could carry payloads, we were playing with those in the 80s and some managed to carry tape-based handicams.
Obtaining or making, testing and launching explosives is hard. Way-finding, long
range and reliable remote control is hard without satellites especially in hostile environments. Waging war is hard and expensive. Obtaining reliable intelligence is really hard.
Anyone can strap a bomb onto something and blow something up. The world is more
Mass swarms [Re:kind of concerning.] (Score:1)
Indeed. It seems some kind of directed energy weapon may be the only practical defense, and we'd need a lot.
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How about a CIWS? Good luck getting a fast enough drone to avoid it.
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Military installations probably have those, but a small-bit "asymmetric" enemy would probably attack civilian areas, which are less protected.
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Indeed. It seems some kind of directed energy weapon may be the only practical defense, and we'd need a lot.
Nonsense. It's been proven repeatedly in Slashdot articles that a random guy with a shotgun can deal perfectly well with a drone. Militarily, drones are very soft targets. We already have the tech to spot the sound or flash of a sniper rifle and return fire while the bullet is still in the air. Adapting that to be a "mini-CIWS" would be easy, as drones are anything but stealthy.
But as most of these drones aren't autonomous, simply tracking their control signals and sending the origin a complementary fre
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Maybe helicopter style drones, but not airplane-style drones, which move faster and are less fragile. And nobody's going to have 50 shotguns ready for a surprise attack.
First, the signal may be coming sever
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Maybe helicopter style drones, but not airplane-style drones,
What matters is speed and range. If you want both to be something useful in an actual combat (vs a terrorist attack), you're getting into drones that are big and expensive, and still vulnerable to rifle rounds.
When you start talking about full-on unmanned military aircraft, then sure, they'll need real anti-aircraft weapons to take them down. But those aren't particularly cheap or plentiful, and are still soft targets by the standards of military aircraft.
First, the signal may be coming several miles away. By the time you get to the source, the drones' target would probably already be reached.
Artillery shells move much faster than just about
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No, it works on people also. It's relatively easy to train AI to track walking/running humans. And moving cars. I'm not talking military bases here, just regular shops, sports gatherings, and businesses. Those in the asymmetric chaos business target those.
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You can always improvise something, but the more of that you invent, the more expensive, less reliable, and less accessible you've gotten to. And taking out the antenna still neutralizes the drones, if they aren't autonomous.
Military use of drones assumes dominance of the air to begin with. In a real battle, it's likely at most one side will be able to use flying drones for long.
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So many people saying you can stop them with shotguns.
Go to youtube and search for "fast drones" or something similar. Here's just one amateur effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Note these things are insanely controllable over short ranges. Watch the guys racing them around fixed circuits. If you still thing you have a chance with your shotgun try a fixed wing drone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Skip ahead to about 2:20. Get your imaginary 12G out start leading that sucker.
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Forgot to add that the obvious vulnerable point is the communication link. Don't need frikken lasers or shotguns but powered up jammers.
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Might work the first time, after that they stick the antenna on the other side of a hill and run a long wire to it while sitting in a bunker. A line of site repeater on a couple hills over would be even better. And to "track" their control signal you would have to first isolate which frequency it's on, and then have the equipment in place to triangulate it. If they were doing something as simple as frequenc
Re: Mass swarms [Re:kind of concerning.] (Score:1)
Also, please don't attept this in a populated area lest you drop your complimentary artillery shell on children playing with their birthday present.
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You have to be joking. I would go with an automated shotgun, not firing solid pellets but compacted sand that will fracture pretty readily. It's not like you need to shoot them down at range, just far enough away so they detonate where they cause no harm. How far you space those auto-shotguns is the range limit. You really do not want directed energy weapons, the United States Navy is fucked in the head for deploying, reflections on water put any airborne craft on a plane of the point of impact on the water
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100 guys with rifles are also a virtually unstoppable way to attack a soft target, and in some areas of the world are not merely free, but there's a dangerous excess.
There's only one mission for which drones drones really offer anything new militarily: the ability to loiter (cheaply) for a long time observing an area. That's a huge deal in asymmetric warfare, no doubt, but it's a small part of the picture.
Military anti-drone technology is swiftly following drone technology, and drones are very soft targets
Re:kind of concerning. (Score:5, Insightful)
100 guys with rifles are also a virtually unstoppable
If you attack a target with rifles, you soon run out of soldiers. There are the killed and wounded, but also all those you fail to recruit because they don't want to see their lives recklessly squandered.
If you lose drones, you can buy more.
To the US military, a dead or wounded soldier costs about $2M.
A drone capable of carrying an explosive payload costs under $1K.
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You're looking at it form the US side. If you're ISIS, you have more guys with rifles than you know what to do with, and have various sub-groups of them that "recklessly squandered" is a feature, not a bug, as they might challenge your leadership.
It's also worth pointing out that, if you do have US military technology, a $1000 drone is very easy to shoot down with $10 in bullets.
Civilian drone defense is an entirely new area, and it's only this novelty that makes these sort of terrorist drone attacks viab
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It's also worth pointing out that, if you do have US military technology, a $1000 drone is very easy to shoot down with $10 in bullets.
Drones are NOT easy to shoot down. They are very different than shooting clay pigeons (or real pigeons) because those are a known size, start at a known place, and follow a straight line. A drone can fly 10' off the ground; or 100' off the ground; or 300' off the ground. It can dodge left or right; speed up or slow down; increase or decrease its altitude. In general, i
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I'm not talking about a human shooter. The automation to shoot down a drone is trivial these days, and while any weapon system the military buys will cost some obscenity, the actual bullets to shoot down the drone will be cheap.
Or just fly in at night, or in fog, where a human can't even see it. (And, no, night vision doesn't magically solve the problem.)
IR and mm microwave is what's used, not "night vision". Tanks see very easily through smoke, fog, etc because they're not afraid to illuminate the countryside. No reason to hide "drone CIWS" either.
Plus, it still doesn't help with a drone that comes in below the level of rooftops, blocking line of sight with your weapon system.
Anything you want to defend will have a clear zone around it for some distance. Yo
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Depends if they are part of a faith of war, Communist doing another Tet Offensive.
"Recklessly squandered" is not a consideration for a religion of war, Communists...
"you soon run out of soldiers" - most interesting nations would have their own special forces doing a "day" job in the area over decades.
Their security services buying up all information, maps, placing generations of trusted experts of the same politic
Re: kind of concerning. (Score:2)
This is going nowhere, a hundred mortars, a hundred ballistic rockets, a hundred drones with grenades attached, they're all cheap and almost unstoppable.
You can't just handwave them within range of their targets. If you can deploy a semi trailer worth of swarming drones to the field then you can deploy a hundred ballistic rockets or mortars from a truck bed with the same crew size, and less overall complexity.
Precision? Why would precision and hundreds of bomblets ever be in the same sentence? Hundred pr
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"Swarm" is a magic word. You can't have a swarm of mortar shells, but you can have a swarm of drones (well, maybe eventually). Somehow the swarm part makes it totally different.
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Agreed, it's just new, and people are following the usual "Oh my Gods!" routine.
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Cheap off-the-shelf drones are a bit of a pain because they're easy to jam, and controlling them might well mean broadcasting your position.
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controlling them might well mean broadcasting your position.
Oh, you couldn't be more blatant about your position. As a terrorist strike against a civilian target, I'm sure we'll see more of these to come. But against a modern military target? Finding the source of radio emissions and precise counter-battery fire are very mature technologies these days.
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But a small-bit enemy would probably broadcast from a civilian-populated area.
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Sure - we're kind of blending discussions about terrorist attacks with military use. Drones will certainly be useful for terrorist attacks until anti-drone defenses proliferate. Drones do not seem likely to radically change fights between two militaries.
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But a small-bit enemy would probably broadcast from a civilian-populated area.
Great point! They could just control it from an Afghan wedding party. We know from experience that there's no way the US would ever bomb an Afghan wedding party.
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Is that intended as some kind of partisan dig?
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Thats why the USA collects images, does a chatdown and tracks smartphone use around all military sites.
All US mil sites have defence in depth. Every new face entering an area is tracked well before they get near any location.
A lot of locations are kept as bait too....
Just like the UK mil/police did/do all over Ireland.
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Thats why the USA collects images, does a chatdown and tracks smartphone use around all military sites.
No, that was Strava.
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I'm sure there will be a few terrorist strikes just for the novelty, but I don't think it would be very effective, except maybe in very specific circumstances. Drones are obvious and have limited payload. Easier to hide some pressure cookers or rent a truck.
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Keep in mind your average ISIS terrorist is borderline illiterate and can't do math. He lacks the resources of a basement full of nerds, unless it's something pre-packaged he can be handed.
And using GPS in particular could have humorous results, as the military has the ability not just to jam consumer GPS, but to actually pick a new target for the drones by shifting things around. Remember GPS is a US military system, built with this exact scenario in mind.
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The trick is paying the expert who has seen to plans/maps.
Drones get one chance into an interesting area while that "soft" part is still soft.
In the USA the FBI has long lists of such experts and has invited them into a public-private partnership.
Homographs are a bitch. Bat a ball, vampire bat (Score:2)
Bat - a flying mammal
Bat - a stick used to hit a ball
Bass - a delicious fish
Bass - low tone, low frequency sound
Drone (military) - a remotely piloted airplane, such as the MQ-9 Reaper wingspan 66 feet, cost $5 million, range over 1,000 miles
Drone (toy) - a remote control quadcopter. Standard size 13.8 inches, cost $200, range up to 4 miles max
Obligatory dumb comment (Score:2)
The aggressor in oil strike is controversial (Score:2)
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It took Communists and people for faith decades but they slowly got to the top of the US and UK mil/police under the cover of political correctness and political non academic considerations.
No drone needed as the faith/Communist "guerrilla" units now work in the security services, police and mil.
Should have kept the once great security clearances in place vs the politics of gov/mil jobs for
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Guerrilla warfare AC is getting a job at the site for decades and waiting AC. No uncertainty of drone tech needed.
It took Communists and people for faith decades but they slowly got to the top of the US and UK mil/police under the cover of political correctness and political non academic considerations.
No drone needed as the faith/Communist "guerrilla" units now work in the security services, police and mil.
Should have kept the once great security clearances in place vs the politics of gov/mil jobs for all.
I'm sorry to announce that AHuxley shot himself in the head last night. He is expected to survive, but has greatly reduced the concentration of lead in his fucked up boomer brain.
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Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you...
I'm going to watch and see who's right.
Join me! (I have popcorn...)
The Diamond Age is almost here! (Score:2)
They just need to shrink the drones a bit.
Anti-Drone Tech (Score:2)
Anyone know how hard it is to knock these things down?
EMP?
Radio noise?
Giant "nets"?
Everything has a weakness.
An AK-47 for our times (Score:3, Insightful)
Say it right... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Generally known as, "war crimes".
Efficient, yes. But you invite every other nation to gang up on you.
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It was a regrettable thing to do, but thought necessary at the time. There is no way attacking civilian targets could be justified in somewhere like Palestine.
This is actually covered by international humanitarian law, which is part of the Geneva conventions and various other treaties and agreements. Basically targeting of anything with no military value is not allowed, and arguing that blowing up your opponent's tax base affects their military probably wouldn't stand up at a war crimes trial in the Hague.
h [wikipedia.org]
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Curtis LeMay posts on Slashdot?