
Venezuela President Maduro survives 'drone assassination attempt' - oska
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/venezuela-president-maduro-survives-drone-assassination-attempt
======
nickysielicki
I have to imagine it's keeping quite a few secret service agents awake at
night thinking about how on Earth they're going to safely and effectively jam
DC-6GHz in a large open outdoor area --- because it's absolutely inevitable
that they will eventually have to as this technology becomes cheaper and
better. Ultimately, I think we'll just see these types of political events go
away as the security risks are unable to be mitigated.

When you can see racing drones going 150+ mph on YouTube, and you can also see
videos of handguns attached to drones, it's really amazing that this isn't
occuring all the time.

Edit: maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty here. They really only need to
jam the ISM and cellular bands, everything else is hard to import due to FCC
regs, and thus doesn't get made in the first place. I don't think terrorists
will be able to make their own custom spread spectrum transmitters and
receivers for their drones. Then again, GNURadio and cheap devices makes this
pretty easy nowadays.

~~~
gonzo41
Easy, use the smae counter measure they used in Iraq against phone acitivated
road side bombs. They make man portable versions. Keep an eye out for
backpacks with big antennas

------
atombender
Note that some locals seem to disagree [1]:

    
    
      Firefighters at the scene of an explosion that Venezuelan
      officials call an attack on President Nicolas Maduro are 
      disputing the government’s version of events.
    
      Three officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because
      they were not authorized to discuss the case say th
      incident was actually a gas tank explosion inside an 
      apartment.
    
      Smoke could be seen coming out of a building window
      at the site of the incident.
    

[1]
[https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a](https://apnews.com/db760dac560840309cd320648ba12c9a)

------
barsonme
Crazy. Sort of related, this sort of thing doesn't seem to be terribly
uncommon in the middle east. There's plenty of footage on the internet of ISIS
attaching mortars and grenades to drones and using them to bomb vehicles and
buildings.

------
wcrichton
Can anyone in robotics/drones speak as to how far away we are from
Slaughterbots? [1]

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en)

~~~
dogma1138
depends on how you define "Slaughterbots" any micro drone with a small demo
charge can kill a person if it detonates on the skull. Intel has a drone kit
which can be pretty autonomous you should be able to train it to explode on
heads, you might have a pretty big collateral damage as far as soccer balls
and water melons go but it will definitely will detonate enough heads if
released into the wild (within it's flight range ofc ;)).

A practical completely autonomous weapon as in one that makes actual decision
is pretty far off, however with modern drones pretty much everything is
already automated even the weapon release and guidance is machine assisted
these days but that is just to help increase the accuracy of the strike as it
can compensate for the delay.

------
matte_black
Perhaps instead of using one drone in these kind of attacks, they will use
multiple in quick succession, each carrying an explosive payload.

~~~
mmirate
No, quick succession makes them easier to shoot down. Better to send them in
simultaneously, as many as possible in a single volley.

Maybe then, Venezuela will be free.

