Could a drone this small kill? (Reuters: Benoit Tessier - file photo)
ABC News Online: Autonomous suicide drones the latest threat facing Australian soldiers, expert warns
Troops on the battlefield could soon face a new threat — swarms of autonomous kamikaze drones loaded with explosives.
That is the assessment of a leading Australian military thinker after claims "killer drones" were both deployed and defused over recent days in the Middle East.
Iran is accused of preparing to launch a squadron of drones, while Israel has been blamed after one exploded in Lebanon's capital.
Read more ....
Update: Swarms of 125mph kamikaze ‘bomber drones’ that dive at soldiers incoming, military experts warn (The SUN)
WNU Editor: The current #1 movie (Angel Has Fallen) has a scene where a swarm of killer drones are targeting the U.S. President (see below).
2 comments:
F18’s can drop swarms of drones as recently demonstrated in tests...imagine hundreds of f18’s dropping tens of thousands of disposable drones some for targeting and rest for suicide explosions... good cause it’s already developed
The thing is, they will come to cities too... and only rich cities will be able to afford counter measures.
The problem is that drones are widely available and are very easy to build even with first year EE Knowledge (they might not look pretty but will be able to fly based on live GPS! ). Counter measures are much more difficult to produce reliably. I'd say it's a 1:20 or even worse ratio for counter measures over a large area like a city that can be attacked at any time from its borderline+/- a few kilometres out based on drone type (I'm assuming cheap, commercially available low prosumer entry drones. .each less than $1000)
Singapore for years and years has had many anti aircraft systems installed to protect its financial center against militant Islamists..but they won't work on small drones and certainly not swarms.
You can buy a "swarm" -let's say 100 drones commercially from 50 vendors and no one will notice. At above price point that's like 100k or less. Each drone will carry a minute amount of shrapnel and explosives. Say total of 1 kilo. Enough to kill everyone at a large intersection within 10-20m radius. Easy. Likely injure many more. Depending on city and attack time,say NYC 830am... or at a sporting event (see black Sunday / but with drones).. you could kill perhaps 50-500 people / I don't think more without coordination/steering the drones personally or with AI
Flying such an amount of drones yourself is not feasible. And developing a narrow AI to fly all the way and do everything autonomously is overkill. But: you can use fly path programming and GPS. that is very very easy. You could set a fly path for every drone - sure tons of work but can be done for 100 drones over night. And in the morning at 830 of they go and most will reach their target and be able to decend on their own and explosion can be triggered based on altitude too. .based on blast diameter and say we stick with the 1kilo (includes maybe 800g shrapnel) you would detonate at maybe 6-14 metres for max effect..
Gps will be very lethal for cities but we depend on it. I think we need gps with gps keys and a signing authority (time stamps/limits and encryption)..but even that could be broken quite easily
At the moment it feels as if drones are the go to tool for terrorists. Easy. Cheap. Can be practiced over and over. Commercial/legal training and education widely available. I don't see a way to stop it.
$100k + 100*(almost free shrapnel=$1) + 100(200gr fertiliser style explosives and metal enclosementry at $10)=== $101,100
Likely cheaper if you buy bulk@drones from China and who will not report it, especially if they think US is target. Think you could pull it off for $75k.. and to my above point of counter measure ratio even if we aasume a 100k price point for the dome swarm, it would cost tens of millions to reliably defend. .so u see the ratio is much worse than I first thought
Something has to be done and fast
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