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Try writing to Caro and ask him about what faction to join in the middle east thunderdome.
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Jan 8, 2018 09:44
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so that means I can be a cheapskate and post about posting instead of having some wit or spending any more on comedy avs for people. Which I'm also incapable of. Comedy.
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Anyone who believes that flying IED's shaped out of cheap and readily available consumer grade electronics that almost any 20-year old with a technical interest is capable of tinkering together don't have the possibility of being a big deal is delusional. I don't think we're anywhere close to them being proper battlefield tools but their potential for sabotage, assassination and terrorism at a low-cost and extremely low risk the operator are going to make them appealing to any insurgency movements with the cash and man-hours to spare. ISIS has proven the potential of modern drones and as both the hardware and software available to consumers is still improving at a rapid rate I find it very hard to believe that someone won't at some point pick up the torch.
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Jan 8, 2018 10:25
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Surely if some technological innovation like a cheap, easy to produce weapon mattered it would've happened already because the american army has spent billions of dollars on guided missiles and bombs. And they're basically the same thing.
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Jan 8, 2018 11:56
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I mean honestly. How anyone can look at the advent of the budget and easily attainable version of America's last 10 years of big-bux drone warfare (which they've basically been escalating non-stop due to its cost and human-resource efficiency) and conclude that this means nothing is beyond me.
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Jan 8, 2018 12:07
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MiddleOne posted:I mean honestly. How anyone can look at the advent of the budget and easily attainable version of America's last 10 years of big-bux drone warfare (which they've basically been escalating non-stop due to its cost and human-resource efficiency) and conclude that this means nothing is beyond me. That's not the right way to look at it. Hobbyist Drone:  Big Bux Military Drone:  So the former shouldn't be looked as being the "budget and attainable version" of the latter. They're completely different things even if both are called drones. That means they have completely different uses, too.
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Jan 8, 2018 13:11
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drat I had no idea drones were so big
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Jan 8, 2018 13:32
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Kurtofan posted:drat I had no idea drones were so big That one is pretty darn big, but even the smaller drones (remotely piloted aircraft, really), are pretty big. This is the smallest weaponized armed drone the US military uses anymore, since the retirement of the predator. And excepting really specific use things like the swithblade. 
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Jan 8, 2018 13:53
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Not all drones are that big though. Some are pretty small, like this ScanEagle.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:12
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Sure, I was focusing more on armed drones. But there is the switchblade which is basically an RC plane with a small explosive inside and a camera on the front. It's just a much more special use kind of thing.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:29
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We had the raven, which is about the scale of what ISIS was making.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:34
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The switchblade is more like a tiny cruise missile. According to wikipedia the official term is "loitering munition". And to be fair the Global Hawk isn't armed either, and I believe that's the physically largest drone in US service.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:47
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When we talk about US drone warfare, we talk about the big things. They're valued for their long loiter time, which means, their ability to keep patrolling for 10+ hours. The remote pilots are working in shifts. With planes that are piloted from inside, you can't get fresh pilots after 16 hours of flight, so there's a limit imposed by human endurance, even with combat drugs (like Modafinil). Small stuff like the Switchblade or a Mad-Maxed quadcopter have very short endurance. They're carried into battle and launched when needed. The main use is for short-range reconnaissance, spotting, and optionally kamikaze attack if they carry an explosive charge and it makes sense in the given situation.
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Jan 8, 2018 14:48
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Cat Mattress posted:That's not the right way to look at it. I don't think budget version in any culture implies 'cheap and literally the same in form and function'. Yes, an IED and a commercial drone is not going to be able to accomplish even 1/100th of the damage of what the US's top of the line UAV's carrying hellfire missiles could do and in no existence is it going to be as versatile or reliable. It is comically outmatched in distance, running-time, reliability, toughness and payload. The catch however is that the budget version, while not of the same quality, costs several magnitudes less and can still deliver reasonably well on the same tactical goals be they assassination, sabotage, surveillance or terror. The budget version here requires very little technical expertise and no manufacturing capacity whatsoever. For the price of even one of the now retired predator drones you could launch literally thousands of commercial drones outfitted with IED's. It doesn't have to be very effective when it is a military tool capable of such verisimilitude at roughly the cost of what you'd get an AK for in Yemen or Syria.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:00
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What I mean is that it's like claiming a Segway is the budget version of a semi-trailer just because both are wheeled vehicles. They're completely different things with completely different uses.
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Jan 8, 2018 15:45
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I can't imagine commercial small drones being remotely useful against a modern military even a couple years from now, in the same way that the US's large UAVs are worthless against anyone with modern air defences (minus maybe those stealth UAVs). Commercial drones are incredibly slow, low-flying, and (I guess) must have obvious visual and heat signatures when compared against the sky from video tracking algorithms. Put that together with an automatically-aiming medium-caliber anti-drone weapon and I don't even see how swarms of them are going to get past even as something as basic as a couple M16's controlled by video processing algorithms.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:06
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Saladman posted:I can't imagine commercial small drones being remotely useful against a modern military even a couple years from now, in the same way that the US's large UAVs are worthless against anyone with modern air defences (minus maybe those stealth UAVs). Commercial drones are incredibly slow, low-flying, and (I guess) must have obvious visual and heat signatures when compared against the sky from video tracking algorithms. Put that together with an automatically-aiming medium-caliber anti-drone weapon and I don't even see how swarms of them are going to get past even as something as basic as a couple M16's controlled by video processing algorithms. Are these standard equipment anywhere? I mean, on paper sure its easy to deal with drones. If you're in a big open field then drones can be shot down. If a drone is hovering just over roof tops before dropping into an alley, not so much. They're so darn versatile, its hard to anticipate all they ways they'll be used. gently caress you could use quad copters as a sort of mine. Have the thing sitting inert somewhere, only to be activated when the enemy is fairly close, and then flown the short distance into them before they can respond.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:14
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US drone research has been into drone swarms of small, cheap, replaceable 'loitering munitions' style drones for a while. There's 100% a huge, well-funded interest in that tech. The US is also openly fielding like 2 dozen different drones and many more less openly. Counter drone is done by jamming the control frequencies and these devices were seen in Raqqa and around US SOF in Iraq/Syria. No one is shooting down a 1-2' wide drone that is erratically loitering at 800 feet with small arms. It's neither visible nor meaningfully audible. Hobbyist drone tech is a lot bigger btw than christmas quad copters. People are building 12' wingspan drone planes with 50+ mile ranges . If the range needs are only a few miles, then 2 kilos of batteries can be switched out for 2 kilos of payload. The bodies of these vehicles can be as simple as styrofoam or simple plastic casting/3d printing. Every piece of equipment necessary can be purchased on amazon or alibaba for a few hundred bucks. The real complexity is going to be dealing with jamming technology, the actual tech is dirt simple and drone swarm control software has already been developed by several different groups. Count Roland posted:Are these standard equipment anywhere? One of the solutions to jamming is fully autonomous drones, though that's either explicitly illegal or very strongly disapproved of as far as international norms are concerned. Autonomous drones are dirt simple and even easier than human controlled drones. Autonomous drones are seen as a pandoras box on a bunch of levels, the norm is that drones need to be human controlled for a variety of reasons, most subtantially: if it's autonomous, who do you hold accountable? Frankly, small disposable drone swarm tech was demonstrated by some DARPA projects several years ago, it's 100% the future. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuQIDEQx9Io https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW77hVqux10 From 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2la4pIyXOEQ Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 16:57
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I've long thought that autonomous battlefield robots are inevitable for that reason. Jamming is the clear counter to drones, and autonomous drones the counter to jamming. And yeah it's bad news.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:11
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Count Roland posted:
It's basically an air-deployed ground-based version of the Sensor Fuzed Weapon with a bunch of 40mm HEDP tacked on for added gently caress infantry. Someone not phone posting can link it. Edit: The quadcopter design sacrifices a lot of speed, endurance, and payload capacity in exchange for being really easy to control with cheap and simple electronics. If you've got the the software grunt for autonomous target detection, identification, and attack you don't need to use a gimped quad airframe. Also accurate indirect fire in terrorism isn't new. The IRA was depositing 10kg+ payloads of HE on targets with minute-of-barn accuracy back in the 80s. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 17:13
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Eventually war will just be autonomous drones fighting other autonomous drones.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:14
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Yeah the next generation's Brown Moses is going to be documenting drone atrocities. As someone who follows drone tech, if the Syrian conflict was just starting now, we'd see 100 times more drones in it. As it stands, the last two years saw a complete explosion of drone use by every side in the conflict. poo poo, there're drone videos of every major battle of the last couple years. It's amazing how fast drones achieved saturation in the conflict, though it makes perfect sense that real time info on enemy movements would be prioritized like that.
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Jan 8, 2018 17:15
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Collateral Damage posted:Eventually war will just be autonomous drones fighting other autonomous drones. 
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Jan 8, 2018 17:33
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Herstory Begins Now posted:US drone research has been into drone swarms of small, cheap, replaceable 'loitering munitions' style drones for a while. There's 100% a huge, well-funded interest in that tech. The US is also openly fielding like 2 dozen different drones and many more less openly This is my loving worst nightmare. If you can make an autonomous or semi-autonomous drone swarm then the only thing really holding someone back is manufacturing capacity; forget things like population or logistics or advanced military training. It would be the mother of all human wave tactics and there wouldn't really be any clear solution to deal with it.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:04
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:This is my loving worst nightmare. If you can make an autonomous or semi-autonomous drone swarm then the only thing really holding someone back is manufacturing capacity; forget things like population or logistics or advanced military training. It would be the mother of all human wave tactics and there wouldn't really be any clear solution to deal with it. Anything cheap enough to be one time use in a swarm isn't going to have a ton of endurance and air-breathing flyers are easier to shoot than rockets and shells. Where is the benefit in using small aircraft to do the job?
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Jan 8, 2018 20:10
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Herstory Begins Now posted:Yeah the next generation's Brown Moses is going to be documenting drone atrocities. As someone who follows drone tech, if the Syrian conflict was just starting now, we'd see 100 times more drones in it. As it stands, the last two years saw a complete explosion of drone use by every side in the conflict. poo poo, there're drone videos of every major battle of the last couple years. It's amazing how fast drones achieved saturation in the conflict, though it makes perfect sense that real time info on enemy movements would be prioritized like that. One of my volunteers is already making hobbyist style drones used by armed groups his thing, he's written a number of articles about how they are being used, and it currently looking into the latest claims about the attacks on Russia's airbase in Syria. Here's a few of his pieces: Death From Above: The Drone Bombs of the Caliphate Types of Islamic State Drone Bombs and Where to Find Them Iraqi Federal Police Using Weaponised Drones I'm just waiting for some nutter to fly a drone carrying containers filled with drain cleaner or a flammable substance over a crowded musical festival and drop it on the attendees.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:22
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Brown Moses posted:I'm just waiting for some nutter to fly a drone carrying containers filled with drain cleaner or a flammable substance over a crowded musical festival and drop it on the attendees.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:26
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Count Roland posted:Are these standard equipment anywhere? Video game style auto-aim has been a thing in civilian tech for a while, e.g. I remember: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/17000-linux-powered-rifle-brings-auto-aim-to-the-real-world/ off the top of my head. I'm not a computer scientist but I imagine adapting that to target drones would not be a huge leap in technology. But yeah you're right, I was just thinking along the lines of securing military sites. For street combat then self-targeting weapons wouldn't work nearly as well.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:40
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How feasible would it be to make something like a small shaped charge and drop that from a typical drone? As far as I know ISIS never tried something like that which is surprising given how potentially effective against armour such a top-attack could be were it to work properly. Or maybe put one in the nose of essentially an RC suicide plane with small camera on the front too.
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Jan 8, 2018 20:48
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Radio Prune posted:Or maybe put one in the nose of essentially an RC suicide plane with small camera on the front too. Strapping something like an RPG-7 or Panzerfaust-3 grenade to a UAV wouldn't be all that challenging, but it would probably be less effective than just using the weapon as intended.
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Jan 8, 2018 21:53
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Brown Moses posted:One of my volunteers is already making hobbyist style drones used by armed groups his thing, he's written a number of articles about how they are being used, and it currently looking into the latest claims about the attacks on Russia's airbase in Syria. Here's a few of his pieces: What are his thoughts so far on the Russian airbase attack? Obviously who the gently caress knows, but there's really zero reason to discard the possibility of a drone attack out of hand. If it is drones, then who did it becomes the really interesting question. The US has the ability to do something like that (and is almost certainly itching for the chance to field test it and while it would be a big aggression, it's insanely deniable on a lot of levels, especially considering that 99% of people have no idea how far weaponized drone tech is). Given current leadership, if Russians bombed some American interest-aligned group or hit some SOF guys, that attack could almost definitely get authorized. Worth noting too that Syria is literally the most actively drone saturated battle-ground in human history, meaning that if there's going to be a first drone swarm attack, it's likely going to turn up in Syria. A non-state level actor is possible, too: there is open source drone autopilot software out there that can be scaled up to a substantial number of vehicles. If hobbyists can almost trivially make drones that autonomously pilot themselves 20 miles out and back, there's no reason to think that IS is incapable of that. If anyone has pictures of the wreckage or video of the attack, that should tell the tale. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 22:44
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https://twitter.com/JosephHDempsey/status/950429242390704129
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Jan 8, 2018 23:03
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Brown Moses posted:One of my volunteers is already making hobbyist style drones used by armed groups his thing, he's written a number of articles about how they are being used, and it currently looking into the latest claims about the attacks on Russia's airbase in Syria. Here's a few of his pieces: Something I've wondered a lot about is that it is a pretty small step to go from the control and camera guidance systems being used in consumer drone aircraft to making more "conventional" precision guided munitions like shells, missiles, etc using cheap consumer electronics. Historically, the most difficult part of making a guided missile or glide bomb were the electronics and sensors used for control and guidance. A cheap katyusha type rocket, with GPS/INS + camera, software radio, general purpose microcontroller and some stepper motors could probably be cobbled together into precision guided munition with 5-10 lb payload and ~10-20 km range. This would be a lot more dangerous and capable than dropping 40mm grenades from a quadcopter, while being hugely cheaper and potentially harder to counter than an ATGM. I think that battery and propeller powered drone aircraft are pretty inefficient weapons in and of themselves, but they are a warning that control and sensor electronics have become cheap and commodified to the point that more conventional precision guided weapons may become available to irregular and terrorist militias.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:06
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Morbus posted:Something I've wondered a lot about is that it is a pretty small step to go from the control and camera guidance systems being used in consumer drone aircraft to making more "conventional" precision guided munitions like shells, missiles, etc using cheap consumer electronics.
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Jan 8, 2018 23:19
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OK for a cannon sure, but consumer grade electronics are more than up to the task of functioning during a rocket launch, or at the very least surviving and then being activated during glide. Plenty of arduinos and whatnot have functioned during launches of relatively light hobbyist rockets that, if anything, accelerate much faster than a heavier, weaponized rocket would.
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Jan 9, 2018 00:10
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While I think some level of SAA success against the rebels in Idlib isn't terribly surprising, the amount of progress they've continued to make in the last couple days has been pretty crazy, suggesting there's been a pretty massive rebel collapse. If the rebels aren't planning a counterattack pretty soon, it looks like a big chunk of eastern Idlib is going to be cut off entirely before too long, though obviously the length of this salient does mean the SAA has a lot of exposed territory to guard which can be attacked from both sides, so they risk envelopment themselves if they do overextend themselves.
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Jan 9, 2018 00:24
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Morbus posted:consumer grade electronics are more than up to the task of functioning during a rocket launch This isn't really the right thread for me to sperg about rocketry tech but suffice it to say that guided missiles are a huge technical challenge that even developed nations have trouble with. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 9, 2018 00:36
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Sinteres posted:While I think some level of SAA success against the rebels in Idlib isn't terribly surprising, the amount of progress they've continued to make in the last couple days has been pretty crazy, suggesting there's been a pretty massive rebel collapse. If the rebels aren't planning a counterattack pretty soon, it looks like a big chunk of eastern Idlib is going to be cut off entirely before too long, though obviously the length of this salient does mean the SAA has a lot of exposed territory to guard which can be attacked from both sides, so they risk envelopment themselves if they do overextend themselves. That is a complete non concern imo and it's already being addressed by the regime as it pushes east...I thought that the Idlib rebels would last through most of 2018 if not into 2019 but this has made me rethink that position. This is basically a repeat of when Aleppo fell when the rebels panicked and collapsed once their hardened defensive lines were pierced and they lacked the coordination to restore them or even put up a strong defense. Although I will say that what the SAA is seizing now appears to be mostly flat land with small hamlets that are completely indefensible and it would make no sense for them to fight hard for it. This is the real outcome of HTS seizing "control" in Idlib.
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Jan 9, 2018 02:18
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Cat Mattress posted:When we talk about US drone warfare, we talk about the big things. They're valued for their long loiter time, which means, their ability to keep patrolling for 10+ hours. The remote pilots are working in shifts. With planes that are piloted from inside, you can't get fresh pilots after 16 hours of flight, so there's a limit imposed by human endurance, even with combat drugs (like Modafinil). Er yeah you can. Big rear end bombers like the B52 and soviet counterparts had bunks, kitchens, and special shittin' buckets so someone could go off shift for 8 hours and sleep with some pills. They've done 34 hour long missions in "combat" (i.e. dropping buckets of bombs on Iraq during the late 90s) and likely similar length missions for those that were out on patrol in the Arctic waiting to be sent to wipe out Irkutsk with nuclear hugs. Now you need to be a superpower to afford to waste all the money doing such things and constantly refueling them, but can it be done? Yes and was done continuously for going on 6 decades now.
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Jan 9, 2018 06:43
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fishmech posted:Er yeah you can. Big rear end bombers Keyword here being big. Do that with an F-16 or a MiG-21.
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Jan 9, 2018 10:33
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Herstory Begins Now posted:What are his thoughts so far on the Russian airbase attack? Obviously who the gently caress knows, but there's really zero reason to discard the possibility of a drone attack out of hand. If it is drones, then who did it becomes the really interesting question. The US has the ability to do something like that (and is almost certainly itching for the chance to field test it and while it would be a big aggression, it's insanely deniable on a lot of levels, especially considering that 99% of people have no idea how far weaponized drone tech is). Given current leadership, if Russians bombed some American interest-aligned group or hit some SOF guys, that attack could almost definitely get authorized. One thing that's interesting to me is they appear to be using cheap DIY drones, likely made to be disposable, such as the one pictured here: https://twitter.com/JosephHDempsey/status/950429242390704129 Another example is seen here: https://twitter.com/IvanSidorenko1/status/949851984533782534 It looks like with these they're going for a disposable drone with more munitions, unlike the drones used elsewhere, which are DJI type drones with just a few munitions. I'm not sure if these have cameras on them as well. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots made an interesting Black Mirrorish video about micro combat drones that they put out late last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw
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Jan 9, 2018 11:18
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