
What can defend against off-the-shelf drone weapons? - pmoriarty
https://www.dw.com/en/what-can-defend-against-off-the-shelf-drone-weapons/a-44970742
======
nimbius
s/drone/guerilla tactics/ and the answer, speaking as a veteran, is nothing.

I expect to get downvoted for this, but after a tour in Iraq I firmly believe
theres no weapon or countermeasure thats going to be unilaterally effective at
arresting the concept of guerilla warfare and terrorism except negotiation.
Otherwise, you end up dividing your city into red and green zones, and pretty
soon even if a terrorist attack hasnt happened in a few months, terrorism is
pretty successful in making peoples lives outright miserable. smoking kills
more americans than terrorism in 2017, but we still have to take our shoes off
at the airport.

People just want equality, some measure of freedom, liberty, and prosperity.
Show up with tanks, rig an election in favor of your candidate, and
disenfranchise an entire segment of the population like we did in Iraq, and
you will find people will adopt all sorts of creative and clever methods to
not only sabotage your mission, but actively eliminate your high value targets
youve come to rely upon for 'nation building' or whatever geopolitical pursuit
du-jour is popular.

In Iraq, we called it "winning hearts and minds." doing things to fix problems
like providing clean water or just a few meals made incredible progress in
crushing the enemies ability to recruit anyone more sophisticated than an
angry goat herder. And he quit being angry once we fixed the sidewalk to the
mosque.

In maduros case, he is reviled by a sizeable _majority_ of his population. he
openly ignores major problems like starvation, he engages his people with
violent tactics, and he disregards basic human rights and living conditions.
Nothing, no technology on this earth, will keep you safe if your people turn
on you. There is no police or military force that can endure sustained
guerilla terrorist tactics indefinitely. Not even the US Military.

~~~
staunch
> _Show up with tanks, rig an election in favor of your candidate, and
> disenfranchise an entire segment of the population..._

I protested the Iraq invasion in 2003 but this is a revisionist and
historically inaccurate version of why it failed so spectacularly.

The U.S. didn't occupy a functional country and then destroy it. The outbreak
of mass murder and tit-for-tat violence wasn't motivated by political
grievances against U.S. policy. The U.S. removed a dictator that was keeping
the lid on religious sectarian infighting. It erupted immediately into a civil
war and that was further inflamed by third parties.

 _" The fall of Baghdad saw the outbreak of regional, sectarian violence
throughout the country, as Iraqi tribes and cities began to fight each other
over old grudges. The Iraqi cities of Al-Kut and Nasiriyah launched attacks on
each other immediately following the fall of Baghdad to establish dominance in
the new country, and the U.S.-led Coalition quickly found themselves embroiled
in a potential civil war. U.S.-led Coalition forces ordered the cities to
cease hostilities immediately, explaining that Baghdad would remain the
capital of the new Iraqi government. Nasiriyah responded favorably and quickly
backed down; however, Al-Kut placed snipers on the main roadways into town,
with orders that invading forces were not to enter the city. After several
minor skirmishes, the snipers were removed, but tensions and violence between
regional, city, tribal, and familial groups continued."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq)

~~~
BurningFrog
> _The U.S. didn 't occupy a functional country and then destroy it._

But they _did_ disband the Iraqi army and the whole Iraqi state!

> _" The fall of Baghdad saw the outbreak of regional, sectarian violence
> throughout the country, as Iraqi tribes and cities began to fight each other
> over old grudges."_

These are things the Iraqi Army and Police could have kept under control, had
they existed. Instead, unemployed soldiers made up much of the sectarian
fighting forces.

A country without a state devolving into anarchy shouldn't be that surprising.
But to the US, it apparently was!

~~~
mirimir
It wasn't surprising to the US. That was the whole point. To destroy the Iraqi
oil industry.

~~~
h4b4n3r0
Why would the US, the country dependent on oil prices being low, would want to
destroy the oil industry of a major producer?

~~~
freeflight
Depends on who you ask. There is a somewhat popular conspiracy theory out
there [0] that claims Saddam (just like Gaddafi) got "removed" for selling oil
in Euros instead of Dollars [1], which would have hurt the petrodollar in the
long term.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/If-Saddam-Hussein-and-Gaddafi-were-
ous...](https://www.quora.com/If-Saddam-Hussein-and-Gaddafi-were-ousted-from-
power-for-attempting-to-sell-oil-in-euros-gold-instead-of-US-dollars-why-is-
Maduro-still-in-power-if-he-recently-announced-that-Venezuela-will-sell-its-
oil-in-Yuan)

[1]
[http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.r...](http://edition.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/10/30/iraq.un.euro.reut/)

~~~
mirimir
Yes, that and what I said in another subthread.

Also, Sadam had outlived his utility.

------
stcredzero
I think there's a dangerous combination represented by the FPS Russia video
with the drone-mounted gun. But instead of going for automatic fire, mount
something like a TrackingPoint computerized rifle instead. This combination
could be made even more dangerous by emphasizing low noise and observability,
perhaps by using ducted propellers and fixed wings. If such a drone were
inaudbile from 3000 feet, it could amount to an undetectable assassination
machine, requiring rich and powerful people to have a 24/7 team of anti-drone
specialists.

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/17000-linux-
powered-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/17000-linux-powered-
rifle-brings-auto-aim-to-the-real-world/)

EDIT: Before you accuse me of making up fantasy weapons, you'd best read the
above link, and the one below. Computer aimed firearms that perform at "sniper
in a box" levels actually do exist.

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/trackingpoint-
shows-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/trackingpoint-shows-off-
the-mile-maker-a-smart-rifle-with-1800-yard-range/)

~~~
littlestymaar
With a drone, what's the point being 1000m away ? You can put a few grams of
explosive on a $30 nano-drone and detonate it right on the chest/head of your
target. The “Slaughterbots”[1] video gives a good idea of what it could look
like.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=191&v=9CO6M2HsoI...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=191&v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

~~~
bufferoverflow
Cause drones can be jammed/blinded up close. It's much harder to defend from a
bullet fired from a kilometer away.

~~~
tokyodude
Is it possible to jam the drones and not also end up jamming your own
communications?

~~~
uabstraction
Yes. In its simplest form, radio jamming is just tramsmitting junk on the same
frequency as the target. If you want to jam a couple kids using channel 10 on
their FRS radios, all you need to do is put your own radio on that channel,
ducttape down the push to talk button, and stick it in front of a laptop
playing a 10 hour rick-roll video. Jamming RC aircraft, or GPS, or any other
radio service is more or less the same in practice. The only difference is the
type of transmitter you need to emit the jamming signal.

Radio jamming can be as broadband or narrow band as you desire. The narrower
the band you target, the less power you need. The catch is, 1) you need to
know what frequency you are trying to jam, and 2) this is not at all legal, so
it would probably only fly in the middle of a warzone.

------
Throwaway452146
The drone with a machine gun is an ad for that years new CoD and is fake. That
the article didn't acknowledge it shows they don't do their own research or
are trying to mislead the reader.

[https://www.themarysue.com/fake-cod-
quadrotor/](https://www.themarysue.com/fake-cod-quadrotor/)

Edit: spelling

~~~
LeanderK
But I don't think they claim that it was real?

"Whether reality or simply show, these examples make it clear that a good
defense against drones is vital for both bodyguards and military in the
field."

------
KaiserPro
A number of things.

1) blocking GPS. 2) Electronic noise (mostly the same as blocking GPS, but
needs lots more power) 3) thin nets. (bonus points for barrage balloons) 4)
shotguns 5) flak (air burst anti-air shells 6) rain

Off the shelf quadcopters are fragile and not designed to cope with hostile
flight. Loose a motor and your falling out of the sky.

Loose a GPS track and you'll either hover, or descend. This could be hacked to
rely on dead reckoning, but that's inherently inaccurate. the sensors are
designed to tell you what way up you are, how fast you are deviating from
desired angle, they rarely have odometers.

A small > 250watt narrow band transmitter, Something with harmonics for
2.4gigs, or just a modified microwave magnetron with a decent directional
antenna will destroy most hardware.

A thin fishing net is thin, light, cheap and almost invisible. The hardest
part is keeping it in the correct place.

~~~
DougWebb
Before GPS, cruise missiles used photographs of the terrain they expected to
navigate and a camera. The photos were state secrets back then; today they're
easily accessible for the entire planet. Miniature computers are also far more
power and more capable of the processing needed for navigating using photos
and a camera. It'd take some R&D to develop, but it's certainly possible.

Also, "falling out of the sky" can still be an effective weapon if you plan
for it.

~~~
RealityVoid
While certainly possible, it would take the pool of people able to build it
down at least an order of magnitude. I can say so with the experience of a guy
who build drones and also tried working with some vision stuff for drone
indoor positioning. It simply is far harder to do. GPS guidance you can do it
in an slow evening.

Most of the measures intended to stop access to explosives, weapons and
generally dangerous things are not able to do so 100% but simply make the cost
of that access high enough MOST malevolent actors will simply not afford it.

------
spaecMonkey
Honestly, I think underground, subterrainian cities are quite possibly the
only silver bullet answer, as a correction for some of the emerging technology
we'll be forced to confront, if things get out of control with everything laid
out in the open.

There's this view, held by some, that with the atomic bomb, the cat's out of
the bag, and the escalation of weaponry hit the ceiling in terms of organized
conflict. But that there's also a non-linear side effect.

The outlook of this view holds that, if we indeed smacked into the ceiling,
harnessing the same natural power that fuels the sun's daily dose of daylight,
well, there's a whole vacuum of optional behavior between a floor of sharpened
wooden sticks or hurled rocks, and a maliciously used hydrogen bomb, and all
of human creativity to imagine interesting ways to negotiate that gradient
between a single hostile neolithic ape, and nuclear age, mutually assured ICBM
psychosis.

So maybe we got only a foot off the ground with primitive biological sabotage,
or fumigated battle trenches dug into former farm fields, before we catapulted
into the upper limit with the idea of multiple re-entry vehicles delivered in
waves, to target thousands of cities simultaneously.

And what was the idea for how to cope with all your favorite cities being
instantaneously incinerated?

That's right. Cave networks underneath mountain ranges. Going full dwarven on
the problem.

So, the bonus side effect of going full AD&D dwarf character class, is that it
also models well for self contained space stations.

Maybe closing the door to the biosphere, whilst certainly a tragedy of the
commons it may be, possibly opens a window to outer space?

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _And what was the idea for how to cope with all your favorite cities being
> instantaneously incinerated?_

> _That 's right. Cave networks underneath mountain ranges. Going full dwarven
> on the problem._

I've played Dwarf Fortress, and I know how those games typically end. I think
we have enough !!FUN!! on the surface.

------
petermcneeley
The economy does. There are no off the shelf drone weapons. To develop them
would require moderately skilled professionals. Moderately skill professionals
in good economies do not engage in guerrilla weapon production because they
have better ways of making money without the criminal liabilities.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Professional, singular. All it really takes is _one_ person with an
ideological axe to grind and a moderate amount of skill, and you have
instructions that others can use to turn off-the-shelf components into
weapons.

It's happened before. P.A. Luty wanted to make a point about British gun
control laws, so he built a submachine gun out of ordinary hardware store
parts and wrote a book ("Expedient Homemade Firearms") containing detailed
instructions. He got jailed over making these weapons, of course, but the
point stands.

~~~
angersock
And that's why Britain is _overrun_ with submachine guns to this very day!

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Mexico and Latin America are the main place these sorts of weapons show up,
and there was a noticeable uptick in these types of firearms after the book
was published. Most people aren't willing to flout the law and build
submachine guns, but once the knowledge is out there it's a thing that outlaws
can and will do.

~~~
mijamo
Which is nice because then you get a super easy way to arrest them. It's much
easier to arrest a gang member for having a weapon than catching them on the
act. It is very common in Europe.

------
merpnderp
In the end there's really no good way to electronically block against a drone.
Someone could preposition some infrared lasers pointed along the expected
flight path and the drone could use those to perfectly navigate to the target.
Or a single laser that tracked the drone by scanning the sky and the drone
acknowledging when the laser was pointed at it. Or I'm sure a dozen other
schemes. Someone willing to spend a year tinkering could come up with a drone
that is only stoppable by directly disabling it.

------
lazyjones
Many will not like this, but: off-the-shelf shotguns in the hands of competent
shooters, among other things.

~~~
Ibethewalrus
Check: Tom the dancing bug - Goodguy with a Gun

------
exabrial
Actually, simple off-the-shelf weapons are extremely effective against drones.
A 12ga loaded with #9 pellets can easily defeat any off-the-shelf drone. And
to boot, the pellets fall harmlessly back to the Earth if fired into the air.

~~~
nyolfen
but can it defeat a dozen of them at once? a hundred?

the big shift that drones represent is replacing trained soldiers with direct
industrial output. the future is swarms.

~~~
exabrial
"off the shelf" vs "off the shelf"

------
devoply
The fact that most people value their freedom and are not looking to commit
crimes. There are many many things that could be done, but if done mean
essentially destroying your life. Most people don't want to destroy their
lives.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
One griefer with a website that offers exploding drone swarms to a given
target? 'Most people' isn't everybody, and it only takes one. And the website
could be anonymous (bitcoin anyone?)

~~~
zipwitch
It's a problem of scale. Say 0.0001% (number pulled from my rear pocket for
illustration purposes) of the population want to engage in 'recreational
terrorism' or 'orc-work'. If you have a population in the hundreds of
thousands or low millions, there just aren't enough of them to have any direct
impact on the big picture. But once you get the population high enough, once
the _absolute number_ of evil idiots is high enough to cause real systemic
damage, even though they are a tiny percentage of the whole.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
One tiny group of people hijacked 3 planes, and we're suffering the fallout
decades later.

------
hinkley
I make a kidding-not-kidding joke about skill with bolas making a resurgence
as a counter to drone harassment.

------
gbuk2013
Something like this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_(electronic_warfare...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasukha_\(electronic_warfare_system\))

and something like this:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir_missile_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsir_missile_system)

(Not familiar with the western equivalents but the idea is the same.)

A small drone does not have the ability to carry the shielding required to
protect itself from interference, which can include jamming GPS and even
taking over controls of the drone to capture it.

A larger drone is easy target for AA systems.

~~~
gandhium
Those failed to protect Russian base in Syria even against low-quality
homemade drones.

~~~
gbuk2013
They have not failed - not sure where you get your information from. Maybe you
are confusing with the mortar attack earlier this year?

From earlier this year with pictures:
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-
east/russia-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/russia-
military-bases-drones-syria-armed-attacks-tartus-uavs-latakia-a8151066.html)

There were several attacks repelled in the last month also but I only have
Russian language sources (maybe South Front will have some more details in
English - coverage of Syria in Western media has been pretty sparse in the
last months with all the government successes in Daraa).

------
protomyth
I would imagine that defensive sensor drones would be the first priority. You
really need to detect enemy drones and having a swarm of sensor drones able to
follow potential targets would be really good. Radar and microphones are going
to be interesting when applied to drone detection.

Once the target is detected, a rather large cheap swarm deployed on the attack
vector to block projectiles and intercept the enemy drone would probably make
the most sense. The drones can absorb the hits and blow up when they reach
their targets.

ECM-based solutions do seem to have problems with also taking out the good
guys equipment and capabilities.

------
FollowSteph3
The answers I read here are classic over engineering. Sometimes the simplest
answer is the best answer, and you don't need to build a complex system. That
is to say the same methods that are used to defend against a gun, either
another gun to disarm the assailant (be it a person or drone) body armour.
Killing the GPS, etc. are all good methods too, don't get me wrong, it's just
that they may be more Factory.getFactory().getFactory().getInstance()... type
of solutions. Initially just the same methods should work.

------
falcolas
Anything that blocks radio control or GPS.

The same things that defend against off-the-shelf radio airplane weapons - a
risk that has spanned decades. A couple of dozen dollars and some foam core
creates an equivalent risk (or greater, since it has a longer range due to
being more efficient than multirotors).

~~~
chrisseaton
> Anything that blocks radio control or GPS.

Don't they have inertial navigation if they can't get a GPS signal, and pre-
programmed routes that don't need radio control.

~~~
KaiserPro
They give you what direction is up, but not really where you are and how fast
you are going.

You need odometry for that. There are opticalflow modules that will allow you
to do that, but they cost power.

~~~
dharma1
Power draw by a SoC like Nvidia tx2 (can probably do it with a cheaper chip
too) for camera based navigation without GPS is not a big issue, the motors
are far more power hungry

~~~
falcolas
Practically speaking though, a mortar would be cheaper, simpler, and more
deadly. Same(ish) range, high rate of fire, designed to be anti-personnel,
provides plenty of time to vacate the area after initiating a bombardment.

Bringing tech into the equation doesn't add much when you're talking about a
payload in the single-digit pounds region.

------
mjevans
Actual security by design. Hold events with high-value targets //indoors//
with no open roofed areas near by.

This might mean throwing a net over the inner alcove or erecting a temporary
tent to block the outside facing windows.

------
13415
A tactical nuke that emits a strong EMP.

~~~
subcosmos
Underkill

------
ebcode
Since nobody's mentioned them yet: Net guns.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_gun)

------
junke
NULL pointers

~~~
gruez
and after this decade:

    
    
        undefined is not a function

------
astebbin
I imagine a scaled-down version of the U.S. Army’s C-RAM, or Israel’s Trophy
system, could work quite well for VIPs. Some drones can be VERY fast (think
hobby-sized jet engine fast), so you’d need active radar and full automation
to stand any kind of a chance.

Perhaps you’d use shotgun shells loaded with rock salt, so any overshoot into
a crowd would be less-than-lethal.

------
staunch
The answer is obvious: anti-drone drones. Military units and major political
figures will need to have swarms of anti-drone drones patrolling their
vicinity.

Things like auto-targeting lasers might work too, but the way the way to fight
technology is with better technology.

------
GreenToad5
When we are talking about one-off drone attacks, sure there are counter-
measures. if we are talking about WW3 and China's capability to produce
millions of autonomous, AI driven drones per day? No, there is no effective
counter measure.

------
DenisM
Other drones, obviously.

Whoever has more money to purchase and deploy drones wins. Same as it's always
been.

------
geggam
Shotgun with birdshot.

------
memnips
Serious question: why is it hard to make small, anti-drone missiles? I assume
it needs to only be within X distance of target and detonate to disable a
drone.

~~~
ceejayoz
Automated missiles at every public building, gathering, and billionaire's
motorcade? What could _possibly_ go wrong?

------
Dowwie
If you haven't read Daniel Suarez's science fiction novel "Kill Decision", now
is the time

------
1001101
Directed energy with automated tracking.

~~~
facing_worlds
Also probably the same machines that are installed for crowd control already a
lot of military installations (microwave emitters) can do this already.

------
CraigJPerry
Explosives are heavy. Are drones a realistic delivery vehicle?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
The US military's current hand grenade - the M67 - weighs 400 grams, has a
kill radius of 5 meters, and a casualty radius of 15 meters. The DJI Inspire
2, chosen at random, can carry 790 grams.

Yes. It doesn't take that much explosive to kill someone.

~~~
dogma1138
It can likely carry nearly 3-4 times that but you’ll burn out your engines,
but on a short one way trip that is not a concern.

A claymore mine can be fitted to the bottom of most drones it’s much more
effective and it’s electrically triggered.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
More off the shelf drones? Seriously.

------
itronitron
concealing your location is probably the best defense

------
blhack
Nothing.

