

The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet - johnr8201
http://mashable.com/2013/02/19/most-terrifying-drone-video/

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gokhan
Cheap 3D renderings of hypothetical uses of not-so-technically-feasible
dronish things. Nothing to see here.

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eplanit
I'm wondering if you would have said the same thing about quadcopters 10 years
ago.

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dimitar
Quadrocopters are still unfeasible today, because their flight time is very
limited.

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GiraffeNecktie
These guys are claiming 4 to 8 hours, 4,000 feet etc.
<http://www.uniteddrones.com/aether-aero/> Heck even 10 minutes flying and one
day solar recharge would be awesome in an urban area for stealthy long term
observation.

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ck2
One day when the high school dropout in the TSA feeling you up at the airport
decides he doesn't like you or that you insulted him, he will be able to walk
over to a monitor and trace your past month as recorded on a series of drones
- all cataloged by license plate and origin addresses.

And I bet that day is by the end of this decade.

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qompiler
What's wrong with a high school dropout? You feel superior? Maybe you should
change your attitude towards your fellow man so they don't hate you. Maybe a
dropout was a drop because people like you looking down on others.

~~~
ck2
That's a valid point to challenge my thinking about some hs dropouts.

But if you feel there are any TSA workers who are thoughtful, intelligent
beings, you are way off. It has massive turnover for darn good reason. Think
about the lack of thought and care that has to go into taking a job like that.
I mean you would have to really enjoy people hating you, enjoy violating
people, or just not caring, and any of that make for a really horrible
personality.

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icoder
This stuff is science fiction at this point. Moreover, this article / video
describes this scenario, when it ever becomes technically feasible, as if it
would come without regulations, without (financial) restrictions and as if no
counter measures would be invented in the mean time.

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meaty
On the subject of countermeasures: I worked for a defense contractor over a
decade ago which was developing countermeasures for such things. On the basis
of supply/demand, they obviously weren't doing it for a laugh.

With a relatively unconstrained budget, access to technology which is quite
scary and secrecy regime, we might already be there behind closed doors.

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nnq
how would the countermeasures for such things look like, really? I can imagine
few things that would work: EMPs - nope, as they would be used most likely in
a heavily populated area with everybody relying on electronics; an array of
sensor systems connected to something like remote operated guns - too hard to
do this without serious damage in a heavily populated are. There's few things
that a team of "bad guys" operating in a heavily populated area can do to
defend themselves from this tech...

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meaty
Directed microwave weapons (fry RF circuits), guided high energy lasers
(physical damage), barrage nets (trap), radio jamming (kill ability to return
information), doping logical resting points with glue (trap), ASTOR radar
(finding source and destroying), honey traps (trap), building other drones to
physically knock them out (physical damage), flares (sensor overload).

That's what I came up with in a couple of minutes.

Plenty of ideas floating around.

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singular
I know it might sound a little bit unethical, but I find this coming
revolution (+ I really think it is a coming revolution) incredibly exciting.

Though there are endless evil creepy uses, there are also many very, very nice
ones too - finding (+ even rescuing in awful weather with a _big_ UAV) missing
people is an obvious one, courier delivery is another (not with micro uavs
though!)

Having said that, I can't help but find the evil uses incredibly exciting too.
Like military weapons that are deadly and awful in practice, there is some
engineering loveliness there too (just _look_ at an F22 for an e.g.). Sue me.

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Flenser
_courier delivery is another (not with micro uavs though!)_

FedEx micro UAV delivery was in Vernor Vinge's 2004 short story Synthetic
Serendipity[1] and set in the same universe as his 2006 novel Rainbows End.

 _"Jerry was looking upward, at the FedEx shipment falling toward his
outstretched hands."_

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/synthetic-
serend...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/synthetic-serendipity)

~~~
singular
Awesome, thanks! I will check that out.

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mistercow
I still can't get over that perching bird drone which seems to have been
designed without any concept of basic physics. It takes off via a single
rotor, has no means of anti-torque, yet doesn't spin around uncontrollably
during take off. It's like they asked an eight-year-old to design a drone, and
then just prettied-up his drawings in 3D without talking to any engineers.

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mikk0j
The blogger who wrote this up as terrifying isn't really with the program.
With a friend of mine building laser-guided mosquito zappers in her backyard,
drones like these are relatively easy to deter. Of course it leads to an arms
race, but maybe we'll eradicate those mid-summer bloodsuckers while we're at
it.

Drone proliferation, military and civil, is unavoidable.

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dredmorbius
It depends on the cost of developing weapons, the cost of countermeasures, the
relative effectiveness of both, and target selection.

Shielding high-value targets from ultra-small drones would be relatively easy.
For someone bent on terror or softer targets, it's harder, and the attacker
need only succeed once (or a relatively small number of times).

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snogglethorpe
Of course, the bad guys are gonna get them too... oO;

"May you live in interesting times."

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mathieuh
'Bad guys' is very subjective. I would argue that anyone who wants a flying
death machine capable of killing people with a button-push from thousands of
miles away is a 'bad guy'.

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dredmorbius
The interpret the phrase as "your enemy".

The US and its allied forces presently have an overwhelming superiority in
drone devices (airborne as well as land and sea based). Other parties are
likely to catch up, even if only with more primitive devices and at smaller
volumes of production, relatively quickly.

The scenario which becomes ... interesting ... is where all parties have
access to technology of this type.

Criticisms of the US notwithstanding, the nation generally acts with some
level of conscience and oversight. The same cannot be said of all adversaries.
An Al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran, or African warlord with such weapons would
likely have far fewer reservations in their use.

Even conventional RC aircraft, radio and GPS controls, and small explosives or
other ordinance could be used to lethal effect.

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arianvanp
My math teacher worked on a MAV project in the US before he moved here to
become a math teacher. scary shit.

He also designed systems for heat-seaking missiles and underwater torpedoes.
He's amazing in a scary, lethal way

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pointernil
"The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer", Neal Stephenson

(as always ;) provides some additional "nice" ideas for this kind of future
warefare.

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maceo
There have been rumors for years suggesting that these types of devices
(unarmed) are already being used for domestic surveillance. It should be noted
that a google search didn't reveal any solid proof beyond eyewitness accounts.
<http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/insectdrone.asp>

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diziet
From what I understand in terms of weight vs battery life tradeoffs, flight
times are limited to about 10-15 minutes on helicopter like aircraft. That's
nowhere near enough for continuous operations like those illustrated in the
video.

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ohwp
Why not?

    
    
      Fly to destination within 15 minuted.
      Sit there for days using sunlight.

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jholman
It's worth reading the longer article linked from TFA

[http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/unmanned-
flight/ho...](http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/unmanned-
flight/horgan-text)

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disbelief
meh. "Most Terrifying" is a bit of hyperbole I suppose. I was expecting to see
actual Assassination By Drone footage or a drone "liquidation" on US soil or
something.

Did anyone really not see this coming? Pervasive, ubiquitous surveillance(+)
is fairly obviously in our current-to-near-future. The fact that others will
be able to build similar technology (aside from the US military/government),
while scary, might be better than the alternative (one power having a monopoly
on ubiquitous surveillance).

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ColinWright
Exactly the same video submitted yesterday, to extensive discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5245345>

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gatekeepr
I should start a company in portable EMPs.

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sheri
In all honesty, despite the scary-voice narrative, I think this is a boon for
urban war scenarios like Iraq. If I was a soldier, I would much rather see
this vision be realized, than be the person to conduct night raids or go door-
to-door to try to track someone.

Of course, this leads into being used in non-war scenarios (Minority Report
style), which is where I suspect most of the discussion will center around.

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alexlarsson
You assume you were the soldier in Iraq controlling the drone, not the one
that got shot.

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agos
The point about “using microprocessor technology” sure makes is sound like
real technology!

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locusm
A bit like "The most terrifying robot video yet" after seeing the Transformers
trailer.

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zarify
Well it was horrifying enough. I guess it's a small step to be terrified of
another Transformers movie ;P

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belorn
Why would a bird or insect design use Ornithopter design rather than
helicopter design?

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mmahemoff
So people think it's a bird or insect.

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InclinedPlane
Kinda stupid and short-sighted, I think. The technology won't work the way
it's shown, it's just not feasible. What happens when you send a thousand tiny
bombs or guns into a city? How do you make sure that they don't end up
accidentally killing civilians (through malfunction)? How do you make sure
that you don't accidentally end up arming your enemy since they can be
captured with a simple net? How do you handle MAV's being counteracted by
other MAV's and anti-MAV systems? How do you manage the torrent of data from
an MAV swarm?

This is just a half-assed fantasy.

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worldsayshi
You don't have them going on a shooting spree unguided. Even an evil military
superpower will have a human making the last call on pulling the trigger. Have
the drone sending a video stream as soon as it discovers a target that seem
remotely interesting. Let the operator choose what get to live another day.

Point being, a single operator can potentially control many drones spread out
over a large area.

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yk
What is the benefit of a human in the loop, if he is just trained to push a
button when the red light flashes? AFAIK this is essentially the situation
with current bombers, a computer locks the target, and another one calculates
when the bomb should be dropped. In such an szenario the 'human in the loop'
is just PR, since the protocols are specifically designed to minimize the
impact of said human.

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worldsayshi
Discerning between threats and civilians to a high enough certainty should be
a challenge. And throwing out a bunch of drones that goes about semi-randomly
doesn't have to be a liability unless they also shoot people and destroy
things semi randomly.

