Ukraine Opens Russian Drone, Finds Duct Tape and Canon DSLR Inside (petapixel.com) 265
Long-time Slashdot reader wired_parrot writes:
After the Ukrainian army captured one of Russia's Orlan-10 unmanned aerial vehicles, they decided to do a teardown of it. Their findings show a remarkable amount of jerry-rigged installations using off the shelf components, including the use of a Canon DSLR camera as the main image capturing sensor.
Petapixel notes it's a camera first launched in 2015 "with a retail price of $750 but which is currently worth about $300 to $400 on the used market... The camera is mounted to a board with a hook-and-loop fastener strip (commonly referred to as Velcro)."
The Ukranian Ministry of Defense posted a video showing one of one of its soldiers exploring the alleged Russian drone, and Petapixel shares more details and some screen grabs: The soldier notes how surprisingly low-tech the military drone is — observers quickly pointed out that certain aspects of it are more reminiscent of a hobbyist RC airplane project than a high-tech piece of military spying technology....
On the top of the drone, the fuel tank's cap suggests that it may have been made from some kind of plastic water bottle. Various parts of the drone are also fixed together with some kind of duct tape.
Petapixel notes it's a camera first launched in 2015 "with a retail price of $750 but which is currently worth about $300 to $400 on the used market... The camera is mounted to a board with a hook-and-loop fastener strip (commonly referred to as Velcro)."
The Ukranian Ministry of Defense posted a video showing one of one of its soldiers exploring the alleged Russian drone, and Petapixel shares more details and some screen grabs: The soldier notes how surprisingly low-tech the military drone is — observers quickly pointed out that certain aspects of it are more reminiscent of a hobbyist RC airplane project than a high-tech piece of military spying technology....
On the top of the drone, the fuel tank's cap suggests that it may have been made from some kind of plastic water bottle. Various parts of the drone are also fixed together with some kind of duct tape.
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is for use in an active war zone. Why would you want to use high-tech, expensive kit for something you probably expect to be shot down sooner or later?
Because the modern day active warzone depends on tech. Ask yourself why you expect it to be shot down. The answers may be any combination of the following:
- Crappy optics and imaging meaning you need to be that much closer to a threat.
- Lack of any kind of IR meaning your drone is flying around during times of high visibility.
- Lack of meaningful autonomy meaning it can be triangulated.
- Ducktape came loose and it just crashed.
Though we should be lucky it doesn't have some autonomy, if it did it may defect due to feeling neglected by its owners.
But jokes aside there's another reason you don't take something "expendable" and cobble it together from trash and things you find on ebay and that is the ability to build a replacement. If you need to re-engineer every single unit because your consumer DSLR has a different model, or you can't get that lens on the second hand market, or Coca Cola changed the dimensions of the fuel tank then you run a very real risk during a war of not being able to supply your army.
The word you're looking for is "platform". A platform doesn't need to be expensive, but it does need to be standardised and with a vendor agreement for parts.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or you run out of money on really expensive components and can't afford new parts for your multi-million dollar craft while your opponent is spending $2000.
If you ran out of money building your arsenal then you probably shouldn't have gone to war. I remind you how fresh this war is. This is not a multi year long drag like WW2 to see who will win economically. Russia rolled in to another country with garbage equipment on the onset. Maybe they were too poor to be fighting a war in the first place.
There's a time and a place for skimping on costs, while no one expects the entire world to spend stupid dollars on war like the USA, Russia is a massive country, a nucl
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
I read part of an interview with a former commander of NATO who was teaching the Ukrainians about how to run operations. He said that after a U.S. operation, there was a debrief and commanders would admit to mistakes and even apologize to subordinates for their screwups (I doubt this happened everytime). The response of the Ukrainians was that that would never work there because they had been trained in the old Soviet style of just lying to each other.
From various reports, the Russians are still using that Soviet style and hence even their FSB was lying to superiors about how the Ukrainians felt about Russians. Some of the FSB have been fired for unrealistic reports. Given the build quality of the equipment the Russians were using, the commanders running those units seemed to have lied about their capabilities, probably didn't want to lose their jobs by not telling their superiors what they wanted to hear.
My guess is that the Great Putini listened to his military about the state of their capabilities and readiness. Their morale appeares to be known to be suspect since some units were never even told they were invading Ukraine. Given the reports of atrocities, the Russian military appears undisciplined.
We'll see how they fair attempting to take over the eastern part of Ukraine. However, they put a general in charge whose only claim to fame is terror tactics in Syria. We'll see if he has any strategic chops. It might be the only thing he's good at is lighting off missiles against unarmed civilians.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's another thing that's still going on in Russia - corruption.
Officially, in the USSR, everyone was equal and, in turn, should earn equal salary. However, a General was expected to have a better life than a Private, even though they were both equal and should get about equal salary. Well, then how did this happen? Simple, it was the norm to steal from your workplace. The General got access to a warehouse and stole from it to "add" to his pay. So did the regular factory workers - jobs in a factory producing food were very desirable for this reason. So was being a warehouse manager.
Basically all things were either private (belonging to one person) or government's. It was morally OK to steal the things that belonged to the government.
This remains in Russia (at least in the military) to this day. Putin did give a lot of money to upgrade the army, but most of the money went to various pockets and was used to buy yachts instead of tanks. There are pictures of Russians having old and expired MREs - I'm sure Putin did give money for new ones, but someone thought, "the old ones are still edible, I'll find a better use for this money".
This does all the way down. Common soldiers would siphon the fuel and sell their optics. There were instances of Russians selling stuff like grenades (easy to explain their absence) to Chechens while fighting them.
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The Russian military's atrocities are not due to lack of discipline. They operate that way by design, to sow fear. They always have.
During World War II, Russian conscripts were more afraid of their superiors than the Wehrmacht - trying to desert was certain death, trying to fight the Germans you at least had a chance. There was discipline all right. But they still raped, murdered, and looted their way across Eastern Europe. The Russian high command never imposed their iron discipline to crack down on it. In
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I think in the West we call it terrorism
The idea is that if you kill enough civilians, the leadership will soften to the will of the people not to be killed and either negotiate or surrender
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
These are two ways of achieving similar but not identical things. Each has it's own pros and cons. You can have a real high-tech solution, with long range zoom, high maneuvrability, etc. Costs a fortune so you limit how many. But if any do get captured your high-tech stuff is now in the hands of the enemy, to be copied for their own use, and to devise counter-measures for.
Or, you have a cheap, cobbled together version that you can make dozens of. Doesn't matter if 80% of them get shot down. It's off-the-shelf tech anyway, so nothing the enemy can learn. There's loads of them, they won't get all of them. Limited in their uses, but quick and easy to make if needed in a hurry.
Nothing in this story tells us that the Russians aren't using both methods.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:3)
Re: Does it matter? (Score:3, Informative)
"Cheap" and "off the shelf" tend to materialize on their own when you have the world's largest industrial economy at your fingertips.
Remember folks, back in the 30s and 40s, it was almost all made in USA by burly men operating big smoke-belching machines in cities and towns built almost entirely to accommodate a factory or three. Kinda like China now.
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You forget the women the U.S. put in the factories because of all the men sent off to war.
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If those factories hadn't already been there, the binders full of women would also have been cobbling things together wirh duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Indeed. That's why the M1 rifles were manufactured by companies/divisions like Saginaw Steering Gear (GM), IBM,and Rockola (a jukebox maker). They already had the equipment to drill holes down the middle of a steel bar (e.g. for the horn wire in a steering column), mill complicated parts, and stamp or otherwise make high-enough tolerance fiddly-bit movin
Re: Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap, off the shelf components is how the US won WWII agains far superior German panzers.
Indeed. A German Tiger tank was superior to an American Sherman tank in a one-on-one engagement on the battlefield.
But the Sherman was superior to the German tank waiting for spare parts at the repair depot or stilling in the train yard waiting for fuel. And the Sherman was vastly superior to the tens of thousands of Tiger tanks that were never manufactured.
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the US won WWII
Of course you did. US help was vital to the team (allies) effort but you're the only one on the team taking sole credit 80 years later. Good job.
True. It's uncool of the US to take sole credit. But...
How were the allies doing before US "joined" the team? Jordan didn't win by himself, but I wonder if the Bulls would have won without him.
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And your people's lives may depend on it functioning consistently and correctly, every copy behaving as it did in training. You're going to lose more than a day's worth of vacation photos if things act up in the field.
The techs and engineers who put it together have my respect and sympathy, since they were obviously working with inadequate resources, but if this is typical of Russian "military" hardware...
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A purpose-built military drone camera module and a purpose-built prosumer camera are going to have a lot of the exact same considerations. They are going to need to handle shock, vibration, humidity, etc. It's unclear where this whole notion that military gear is somehow magical came from, but it's total and complete crap. I remember when I was a kid that even other kids revered the term "mil-spec" as if it meant something, and it does: it means it meets a specification devised by the military, nothing more
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I have an original digital rebel, it has clearly been mistreated before I owned it, and I have not treated it especially carefully, and yet it still works flawlessly. I have a somewhat newer but also still old Canon DSLR, admittedly it has been treated much better, but it's still way way out of warranty and still works great.
Canon knows how to build a quality camera.
Now that SLRs are all but completely going away in favor of mirrorless cameras, they will last even longer, because they won't have the fragile
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I suspect that, like the rotting and flattened tires on their abandoned equipment, that the cheap drone parts are a result of graft and corruption at all ranks as their emulate the oligarchs running the country and pocket as much money as possible while fielding a military that is reported as being modern and capable to their superiors
Actually... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of your arguments would cause me to prefer to spend less rather than more.
Canon has very decent optics even on the entry-level, and they're very widely available. The 750D takes EF-S or EF glass and that goes all the way back to 1987. It's all autofocus. Modern glass even comes with "image stabilisation" (though not in the body, natch). It's not very efficient to carry more than the glass and the imaging sensor, but if you have the room and don't mind the weight, this works fine too.
Sure it's only a
Re: Actually... (Score:2)
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Re:Actually... (Score:4, Informative)
Didn't Biden already predict that Putin would necessarily have to pack it in in a week or a month at most due to shortage of everything?
No, you imagined that.
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I'm not saying they're removing the IR filter from the cameras in these drones, and they probably aren't, but they certainly could be. That would get some low-grade IR functionality very cheaply. Changing filters is a hobbyist-doable task.
The camera is mounted to a carrier board that could be easily replaced if you needed to switch camera models. They probably have piles of these cameras stockpiled but let's discuss it anyway. The carrier (or maybe even just some shims on such) is literally the only thing t
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
There are other optical components on that board. And on some DSLRs, you can remove the near-IR filter over the bayer sensor. There's nothing that says it can't do IR.
I looked at it and thought the Canon mount looked like pretty good work. Also that the Canon camera encompasses a pretty high level of integrated complex functionality you can buy of the shelf for cheap, inventory spares and replace quickly in the field.
I see Russia's army folding like a tent in places, but I don't chalk it up to drones like t
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There are other optical components on that board. And on some DSLRs, you can remove the near-IR filter over the bayer sensor. There's nothing that says it can't do IR.
IR in this context is referring to far infrared emissions from blackbody sources.
Near IR at night (the only kind of IR your CMOS sensor can see) requires active illumination to work at all. It is utterly worthless for this application.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
Point taken, thanks.
I still don't think of this drone as clowny. Just not highest tech, but that's no sin.
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- Lack of any kind of IR meaning your drone is flying around during times of high visibility.
Uh...there almost certainly is one infrared camera among the three optical sensors on Orlan-10. The DSLR is there purely for high-resolution footage.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
All this and also, a trash drone costs supply truck time and fuel to haul it close to the front. These are limited resources in a war - it was costing $50 a gallon for the U.S. army to get fuel to remote bases.
When shipping costs are high in time and lives you should ship the premium stuff.
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The Russian military seems more focused on numbers than on superior weapons.
Their tanks are a good example. They have a lot of them, but they are getting killed at an alarming rate by high tech NATO weapons. The Russians don't have advanced countermeasures or armour upgrades, they just seem to be hoping they have more tanks than the Ukrainians have missiles.
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Everyone is fielding less and less tanks because of the existence of top-attack ATGMs like the Javelin. Cage armor is actually highly effective against tandem warheads like the one it carries, which otherwise tend to blow right through even reactive armor, but caging for the turret is quite a mess. But even advanced, modern tanks (and other armored vehicles) tend to be vulnerable to attacks from above, including even anti-air vehicles. As well, there are simply more and more man-portable anti-vehicle weapon
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
I don't think anyone's looking at Russia's war effort as something they wish to copy.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're missing is that these things cost around $100K each for maybe $2K of parts. And that's endemic throughout the Russian military, your APC costs $x but provides $x/1000 of value. Your body armour costs $x but provides $x/100 of value. Your MREs cost $x but provide $0 of value. All the way through, with all the gear you're using and carrying and working with.
The rest of the value of the gear that's supposed to be keeping you alive and winning a war is in Krasnodar Krai and impounded in foreign ports.
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Re: Does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
In some cases the U.S. military pays for expensive parts like $600 DSPs from TI designed 20 years ago. But yeah the total sale price of the unit has this stuff in it, the parts may be costly but they get what they pay for.
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A US predator drone costs about forty million. I doubt very much there are actually 20 million bucks worth of parts in it. A million doesn't seem out of the question.
Mass produced consumer stuff is usually marked up by a couple multiples by the time you actually get it. Militaries everywhere pay a few more multiples for diminishing returns and also because if they call for support and you pawn them off on a lowest bidder call centre script monkey they can actually do things the rest of us only dream of.
And
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4)
There is cheap, and then there is cheap. We have some excellent examples of low cost, COTS based drones that are extremely effective and show what a properly managed low-cost drone product looks like. Two examples are the Turkish Baykar Bayraktar TB2 and the Iranian HESA Ababil drone series.
They have both proven extremely effective in combat use because of their standardized construction are available in kit form. The Houthi rebels in Yemen have been assembling Ababil drones from kits and using them to considerable effect. The TB2 has turned the tide of battles and a war. They are sufficiently low tech that any parts that are not pure commodity items with many sources can be manufactured locally in Turkey and Iran. These systems have overseas sales or sales potential because of their utility.
It is reasonable to hold Russia up to the standards and capabilities established by Turkey and Iran. There is a reason that no commercial industrial product exhibits the kind of ad hoc hackery suggested by this tear down.
Now for sure it is possible to over-engineer a low end drone. A good example is the unsuccessful Aquila drone program that you U.S. bollixed from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, more than a decade spent trying to develop a small, simple battlefield drone that failed to produce a usable affordable
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One of the things we are seeing is that advanced hobby grade airframes are perfectly capable of operating in an extremely hostile air defense environment, COTS cameras are capable of providing effective surveillance and probably targeting so that leave weapons delivery as the exclusive domain of the military. War is certainly a lot more egalitarian than it used to be.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
Hobby grade airframes that use fiberglass are super stealthy lol.
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Came here to say pretty much the same. This is for use in an active war zone. Why would you want to use high-tech, expensive kit for something you probably expect to be shot down sooner or later? If it's effective and gets the job done cheaper is better.
Sure but Duct Tape?? It's a war zone not a MacGyver re-enactment festival.
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To sell the exciting, sexy new technology with new patents. It happens in my technology worlds all the time.
Soviet technolog is infamous for "nuts and bolts rather than rivets".
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
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Such stupid rules waste money and ressources instead of allowing for more flexible spending. The cost of current hardware and research methods go down, but new hardware and methods cost more. This should not be dumbed down at a yearly spending cap, but on a case-by-case basis for each request.
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Geez, some of you are fucking dumbasses.
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Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
A more interesting speculation is that it was a high cost design, which Russia paid high cost milspec money for, but actually received low cost out-of-spec junk and a nice yacht.
Re: Does it matter? (Score:4)
Sure. But does it? Russia hasn't exactly accomplished any of its goals in Ukraine yet.
They didn't manage to obtain air superiority. They didn't manage to land paratroopers in Western Ukraine. They didn't take the capital of Kyiv. Didn't take major port of Odessa. Didn't secure water for Crimea. Didn't take over the Donbas. Didn't take out the Nazi Azov Battalion.
Russia is just flitting about in a tantrum of rage and destruction, having lost sight of any goals they may once have had.
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They did secure water for Crimea but otherwise you are right.
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NATO didn't fill Ukraine with high tech toys, it gave them limited assistance and the biggest high tech toys NATO is still refusing to give the Ukrainians. It isn't clear the Ukrainians could handle those without years of training anyhow.
Tesla (Score:2)
Change Russian Military to Tesla and this entire comment section would be very different. Very strange. Tesla uses home depot quarter round trim to attach something and is ridiculed. Does it matter? Does the car not function? Oh now there's a difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Does it matter? (Score:2)
Hand construction and used parts make it difficult to make the drone reliable or to manufacture enough of them. This matters in a war.
It does matter... (Score:2)
If it does the job it is intended to do, does it matter what it's made from?
Your point about function is a good one...
However I would argue that it does matter - instead of each drone costing Russia a million dollars or more because it;'s highly advanced and over-engineered, instead Russia can field thousands of these for the same cost.
That is actually of some benefit to Russia I'd say...
And don't forget this also an information war, (Score:2)
it might not even be true.
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Alex, I'd like to buy "What WTF is a period?" for $500.
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The U.S. military doesn't suck, it succeeded in every major military operation it tried in the Iraq and Afghanistan. The problems though were not something that could be solved by military means. The U.S. used the wrong tool set. And maybe no tool set would have worked. The Afghanis appear determined to live under 7th century religious nutjobs, and Iraq is riven by the on-going war between the Shi'ites and Sunnis. Those are not military problems.
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> The U.S. military doesn't suck, it succeeded in every major military operation it tried in the Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes on the doesn't suck. But speaking of success, I need to limit what is meant by the part of the operations the military were meant to fulfill, while also discounting all the military operations that were successful but pointless (though that's more about politics and objectives than military performance, it's often not clear where to draw the line).
The rest of the non military 'operati
Still more sophisticated than an Australian drone. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Still more sophisticated than an Australian dr (Score:3)
If they both achieved their intended goal, then surely thatâ(TM)s what matters?
Spending lots of money is not always the right solution, especially if you can get creative with the technology.
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And this is why no organized military has ever won a guerilla war.
Re:Still more sophisticated than an Australian dro (Score:5, Funny)
Just an iPhone 1 crazy-glued to a boomerang for crying out loud.
Hey you joke, but unlike this drone that is now in the hands of the enemy at least a boomerang comes back.
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The US recently gave Ukraine small drone-detecting radar for operation in the field, and now Ukraine has shot down 10 of these drones in the last day alone. [twitter.com]
Surprised it wasn't a film camera (Score:2)
So ... (Score:2)
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Hey, don't let the MIC hear you.
10x cost and build two, minimum, and don't forget the campaign donations.
It's only taxpayers' hard-earned money!
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But does it do the job needed? The Ukranians captured it and Russia's intel game has been pretty poor so maybe they need more than cameras taped to RC planes
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It cost the Russian government $100k
Can vs Do (Score:2, Interesting)
It's one thing to make a migger-rigged device because you want to (for various reasons). It's quite another to do because you have to (for various reasons).
I think the implication here is that the device in question isn't that it is some kind of low-cost device, produced as a result of clever techniques and getting the most out of your dollar, but rather something that is produced because either the Russians can't do better at all, or under the current circumstances (sanctions, supplies, etc.), and that th
Re:Can vs Do (Score:5, Interesting)
OK I finally decided to buck the trend, RTFA, and even watch the video. And what I saw was the opposite of a jury-rigged device. It does indeed look like they've used a water bottle as a fuel tank, but without seeing underneath the cover there it's hard to know whether they've done a good job. If the bottle is made out of a plastic that's compatible with their chosen fuel, then there's no reason why this would be a bad idea.
There's a bit of repair tape used on the plane, some on the leading edge of the right wing for example, but I only saw one piece of tape that looked loose that I couldn't explain, but it was on a piece which had been removed so I don't know what it looked like before that.
These consumer-level cameras represent enormously good value for money, they are designed to be remotely operated through either the data connection and/or a shutter cable, many can provide full-frame video via HDMI, and some can also do it through USB. The camera is attached to a purpose-designed carrier which can be easily adapted to use other cameras. It has some clearly purpose-made PCBs attached to it. Adhesive-backed hook-and-loop tape is an excellent attachment method in typical conditions where Russia operates these drones. In hotter environments I'd imagine they'd need to strap the cameras down because the PSA can run or separate, but this is not an issue in Russia or Ukraine for certain.
All in all it's a much more professional looking thing than the summary implies.
Re: (Score:2)
then there's no reason why this would be a bad idea.
There are plenty of reasons why this wouldn't be a bad idea for a hobbyist, but an insanely bad idea for a critical piece of equipment. Bolting consumer level goods together shows ingenuity if done for fun, it shows a drastic lack of logistical forethought when done by a military, especially one that is supposedly one of the strongest in the world.
These consumer-level cameras represent enormously good value for money
You know what's not good value for money? Starting your engineering over because you can't get anymore DSLRs off ebay. This kind of lack of logistical forethought
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Bolting consumer level goods together shows ingenuity if done for fun, it shows a drastic lack of logistical forethought when done by a military, especially one that is supposedly one of the strongest in the world.
Spoken from a position of privilege. I'll explain in a moment but first I need more of your silly comment.
You know what's not good value for money? Starting your engineering over because you can't get anymore DSLRs off ebay.
First, as I've pointed out, odds are good they have many of these cameras stockpiled. Second, they can switch to another similar model camera with only trivial, minor changes. The same cables will connect to and the same on-camera software will run on multiple models. Third, there are way more compatible used cameras available used (if this was even a real issue) than they have drones. And anyway, camer
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When boeing uses duct tape to fix a plane, it's not duct tape, it's called SPEEDTAPE and it's SOP.
Oh but when russia uses duct tape, we laugh.
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When boeing uses duct tape
Boeing uses "speed tape". An aluminum backed adhesive tape. What is pictured on these drones is colloquially known as "duct tape". A cloth backed adhesive tape. Known in many other parts of the world as "gaffers tape".
Interesting note: Cloth duct tape is not suitable for use on air handling ducts. There is an aluminum backed tape (made to a slightly different spec than speed tape) that should be used instead.
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Here I have a flat, I drop it off at the mechanic and he fixes it for $25 and I pick it up the next day.
a) Some of our local tire shops fix flats for free.
2) You can buy a DIY repair kit for tubeless tires that push in rubber plugs. Much less than $25.
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I'm curious what they're going to use for their camera in their next-generation drone. It seems like they could save a lot of weight if they went with a 2-year-old Android phone with a decent rear-facing camera. They could probably also buy them in bulk from China (one of the few countries that will trade with them) at a much lower price point.
Who knows, they might even be able to add some features like lower-cost GPS/Glonass tracking since it's built into the phone.
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If China is going to be all buddy buddy with them then maybe they actually will get some purpose-built modules. But they won't be getting them because they're better than this, only because they're a bit lighter and quite a bit cheaper since they won't be paying for any functionality they don't need (except kill switches) :D
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or under the current circumstances (sanctions, supplies, etc.),
The war has barely gone on a month and the military is already resorting to this?
From Russia ? (Score:5, Informative)
Putting a Canon cam on a drone is lot of useless weight. Where to begin ? I mean .. the whole gizmo is a notch under amateurism. Betcha high school students will come up with something better. How embarassing for the Russians :(
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Also, the most expensive professional drone setups use a similar principle. E.g. this: https://camerajabber.com/dji-m... [camerajabber.com]
Well known Russian philosophy (Score:2)
Russian cosmonauts return in capsules that crash down on land (as opposed to splash down in sea). The footage showed ground support using simple garden chairs to transport the cosmonaut from the capsule. Same arguments ensued back then. Is this a good
Re:Well known Russian philosophy (Score:5, Informative)
The Russians never used pencils in their spacecraft, because of the previously-noted problems of graphite and wood shavings floating around and getting into things you don't want anything getting into.
As for the space pen, NASA didn't develop it. Fisher developed it privately because the existing ball-point pens all had the same problem: they needed the tip pointed solidly downwards to keep the ball inked. Fisher could already see a market for a pen that could write on vertical surfaces, NASA just bought it when it came out because it perfectly fit their requirements for working in zero-g.
More video (Score:2)
"Operator Starsky" also showed this off a couple days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
a hobbyist RC airplane (Score:2)
with a pound of C4 and some nails is nothing to sneeze at.
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These are observation drones, they do target spotting and provide situational awareness. They don't kill people directly.
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"These are observation drones, they do target spotting and provide situational awareness. They don't kill people directly."
That's in part because they don't have C4 and nails.
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It is truly a sad limitation.
Russians capture MacGyver . . . ! (Score:2)
. . . and are forcing him to MacGyver up military grade drones out of duct tape!
Russian cruise missiles crudely constructed out of chewing gum and women's bras have also been spotted,
Misdirection? (Score:2)
If I saw something like that, I'd be wondering if it was intended to be captured to give a false impression of capabilities.
But then, it does kind of fit with what we've seen from Russia recently...
Well you get what you pay for. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh shit! (Score:2)
They have a Russian MacGyver!
Yankee Thrift (Score:2)
Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and a whole bunch of others are rolling in their tombs at the thought of Yankee Thrift.
Ban Canon in Russia (Score:2)
This means that Canon tech is being used for making weapons in Russia. This should mean banning all imports of Canon tech into Russia and Russia friendly countries like China and Belarus.
They missed out the interesting bit.... (Score:3)
... what did the Russians use for the ground link?
Did they install an encrypted, frequency hopping, link which would be almost impossible to detect or interfere with? Or did they use some crappy fixed frequency commercial unit which could be jammed by a teenager with a signal generator and a Pringles can? Looking at the rest of the drone I know what I'd bet on.
The follow up question is whether the Ukrainians can rig a MAM-C to behave like an anti-radiation missile on the frequency used by Russian drone operators?. If so, as soon as he gets his drone in the air they can locate him with a couple of simple RDFs and send a Bayraktar to provide a (radio homing) Easter surprise.
Just my (rather evil) thoughts,
Keith.