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Comment on Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future

Drones currently outpace their countermeasurs. This will definitely not be a thing forever. I think the effectiveness of cheap drones will go down as be countermeasures are invented.

We already see new very effective military drone jammers starting to come out

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eleitl@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Onboard AI guidance is not difficult.

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- KeenFlame@feddit.nu ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes it is.
  
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  - perestroika@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Both of you are right.
    
    It’s difficult, but how difficult depends on the task you set. If the task is “maintain manually initiated target lock on a clearly defined object on an empty field, despite the communications link breaking for 10 seconds” -> it is “give a team of coders half a year” difficult.
    
    If it’s “identify whether an object is military, consider if it’s worth attacking, and attack a camouflaged target in a dense forest”, then it’s not currently worth trying.
    
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    KeenFlame@feddit.nu ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That was a good guess but unfortunately it is just difficult even in the scenario you proposed
    
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  - eleitl@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Realtime person detection and following it with a drone? Difficult for me, certainly, but there are enough people out there who have done it.
    
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- Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can’t be serious.
  
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  - eleitl@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Tracking a moving object in realtime with video is a standard task for a machine learning engineer. You can do it on an embedded platform with ML hardware support. I don’t know what hardware newer Lancets use but they can already do it according from developer reports from Teegram channels like e.g Разработчик БПЛА.
    
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    Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Honestly, I was just objecting to the use of “AI”. We’ve had both fire and forget and loitering munitions for decades now, neither of which use ML. Will it happen? Sure. For now, ML/AI is too unreliable to be trusted in a deployed direct attack platform, and we dont have computing hardware powerful enough to run ML models that we can jam in a missile.
    
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  - cynar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The US already has them.
    
    There are single shot drones, designed to be deployed into a building, or cave system. They then use cameras etc to navigate, while running face recognition. When they find their target, they fly just in front of it. The shaped C4 charge is designed to reduce their head to red mist, while not risking those close by.
    
    AI + cheap drones will completely change warfare. Probably on the same level as the tank, or machine gun.
    
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    threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    The US already has them.
    
    Do you have a source for this? These sound uncannily close to the Slaughterbots short film…
    
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    jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Imagine when they are long range and readily available. Any old despot could load on a rough GPS location and a face. Deniable foreign assassination becomes easy.
    
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  - d00ery@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    A combination of GPS, or even enertia based guidance to get them to the target area and then some simple vehicle object identification, I’d think those are possible.
    
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    turkishdelight@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    GPS is usually the first thing to be jammed in the battlefield.
    
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  - Diplomjodler@feddit.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You can’t be very knowledgeable on the topic.
    
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    Warl0k3@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I am, in fact, fairly well versed in the topic. You’re 30+ years away from being able to fit hardware powerful enough to run a ML model into a missle, though I cant see a single reason you’d ever want to. Look into the declassified, 30 year old design paradigms for missiles or other self-guided munitions and it’ll start to give you an idea of why the idea of “AI” guidance is so laughably stupid. There’s so very many reasons we use FPGAs, none of which are compatible with AI. Just fuck off with your smug, baseless superiority.
    
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- turkishdelight@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I will be very suprises if this isn’t already happening.
  
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  - ours@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s one thing detecting a person with machine learning in a test and an actual soldier with camouflage in a very imperfect environment. Also good luck telling friend from foe from civilian.
    
    This has all sorts of problems while making the whole system more complicated and prone to issues. Not the mention moral questions of autonomous weapons. I have no doubt it will happen but not yet, not here.
    
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    bradorsomething@ttrpg.network ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Why would the drone differentiate an armed person from a civilian? I mean, you’ll be asking to separate out children next, at that rate!
    
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  - eleitl@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I know it already does, at least in newer Lancets. Expect this in fpv type devices soon.
    
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cynar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The only reliable counter to a drone is likely another drone.

I suspect Peter F Hamilton got it close, in the Confederation series, with WASPs. They are space based weapon platforms. They carry a mix of offensive and defensive subsystems, and operate with swarm logic.

I could easily see a larger drone carrying a swarm of 1 shot micro drones. When close, some would be sacrificed to get better sensor data, others would go on the attack. Conversely, a defensive target would launch their own swarm. It’s goal would be to stop the attackers getting a good shot on a high value target. It might also counterattack, either against the mother ship drone, or backtracking to find the launch site.

Jamming would also be part of this. A jammer could easily cut off the swarm from external data sources. Live satellite or remote surveillance systems would be cut. Point to point lasers are far harder, as are burst transmissions. Local sensor drones could easily punch short range data back, or paint targets, until they are destroyed by defensive systems.

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- Doug7070@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are in fact a huge number of reliable counters to drones, including but not limited to anti-aircraft gun systems, anti-aircraft lasers, RF jamming devices (especially effective against cheap/makeshift drones), and several more. Drones are currently an emergent threat without a robust countermeasure scheme, but given their massive role in the Ukraine war that is not going to go unaddressed for long. From a purely mechanical standpoint, small drone munitions are also physically very vulnerable, making them readily destroyed by anti-air autocannon fire or even laser weapons if you assume RF jamming will not solve the problem.
  
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  - evranch@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Between GPS (jammable but likely gets you into the target area), dead reckoning, optical flow sensors and increasingly impressive onboard camera processing, RF jamming will soon be irrelevant.
    
    Almost a decade ago I was flying agricultural mapping missions that were 99% autonomous, and the parts that weren’t were problems a military drone doesn’t have (soft launch and landing)
    
    The clear counter is autocannons, likely fully automated themselves to manage large swarms. The other would be cheap anti-drone missiles that either are basically a drone themselves or a glorified model rocket. Possibly tiny, cheap and fast interceptors launched from fixed-wing drones. The weak point of drones is literally their physical weakness.
    
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  - cynar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It’s worth noting we are at the start of an arms race. It will iterate all over the place.
    
    For example, smoke and chaff deploying drones would make defensive fire harder. Anti air can be either baited (and so depleted) or rushed. Lasers can be shielded against, at least for a time. Jamming can be countered with line of site communications.
    
    In turn, each of these can be countered.
    
    A key thing of note is that your solutions are heavy. Fine for defending a static target, but problematic when dealing with defending a mobile unit etc infantry of transports. In those situations an extremely rapid, focused highly dynamic response would be required. The obvious way to deploy those fast enough is to have them automated and airborne, aka a drone swarm.
    
    I might be completely wrong, current drone warfare is akin to the invention of the smoothbore musket. How it will develop remains to be seen (for better or for worse).
    
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- dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr7ym1zkda8
  
  Anti-air guns are the countermeasure. RADAR good enough to detect drones + an aimbot and air-burst round to “shotgun” your pellets to damage those soft plastic bits.
  
  We’re going back to WW2 tech. AA guns were considered obsolete because Helicopters + Missiles had more range. But now we need to build cheaper AA Guns for the anti-drone role.
  
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  - tal@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They may both have a role.
    
    If you know that a given point is at risk of attack, using a static defense like AA guns is practical. Say you have some sort of specific, high-value target that you can put AA guns around. That may be a very sensible thing to do.
    
    But the problem is that there is then a concentration of force issue. The attacker can choose which point to attack; they get the initiative.
    
    Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.
    
    But, okay, say you try to go big with static defenses. Let’s say that you can obtain and pony up the resources to hypothetically stick an AA gun at every single point along the front line and border, and that your AA gun has the altitude to hit a drone. You have an unbroken line of engagement envelope all around a country. That’d be an extraordinary expenditure, but it could hypothetically be done. So a drone has to fly through defended airspace. The problem is that if the other guy expends an equivalent amount of resources, he can buy a shit-ton of drones and fly them all through a single gun’s engagement envelope. Even if he doesn’t even bother to try to attack the antiaircraft gun, your gun defenses are just going to get overwhelmed, because all of the attacker’s resources are engaged, whereas the vast bulk of the defender’s resources are not in the fight. Maybe you hit a tiny percentage of drones, but the rest are going to be able to simply fly through.
    
    The problem is that the cost of static defenses in that scenario grows at something like the square of the scale of the air conflict – you have to have enough static defenses to counter all of the attacker’s aircraft, and pre-place those defenses at all points that might be attacked, whereas the cost of the attack grows only linearly. It’s cost-effective to use static defenses only if the attacker is compelled to attack a limited number of points.
    
    If that’s not the case, then using some form of mobile defense is more important – say, I don’t know, you have a fleet of gun-armed, jet-powered counter-UAS UASes. Dollar-for-dollar, they might not be as effective as a static gun. But…you can route most or all of them in to meet any given attack.
    
    The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.
    
    For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.
    
    Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.
    
    Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.
    
    But if neither time nor place be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right, the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van. How much more so if the furthest portions of the army are anything under a hundred LI apart, and even the nearest are separated by several LI!
    
    – Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ~400 BC
    
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    dragontamer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    If you know that a given point is at risk of attack, using a static defense like AA guns is practical. Say you have some sort of specific, high-value target that you can put AA guns around. That may be a very sensible thing to do.
    
    Did you see the Youtube link?
    
    This is a lightweight AA Gun that can be mounted on a cheap pickup truck. This isn’t a “Static” defense, this system is more mobile than infantry.
    
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    perestroika@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Say you’re trying to defend against something like a Shahed-136. It can hit pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. You can’t stick an AA gun on everything that Russia might consider trading a Shahed-136 for.
    
    As far as I know, the routine in the current war is - the AA gun is on a truck that moves 80 km/h, the drone comes in 300 km/h, one or many truck crews position themselves on likely vantage points for intercepting, and the rest is luck.
    
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- VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s going up be interesting and scary when we see the first mega swarm of drones, a river of them just pouring through the sky and hammering from every direction at the defenses.
  
  Constant evolution of drone and antidrone, a production race with frontlines being slowly shifting walls of drone combat, them pouring out of factories as fast as they can be made with the front moving based on who can make more per hour
  
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  - cynar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I suspect it will be more subtle even if it’s only battery life limited. Huge swarms will also struggle against fixed defences. More likely it will be used in ambush. E.g. air deployed near an enemy convoy, or swarming from rooftops and windows onto an infantry unit. Counter deployment will have to be seconds to stop the lead elements. Potentially with heavier reinforcements flying in.
    
    I’ve personally got visions of a Boston dynamics dogbot with a harness full of drones. 1 button press and a few dozen micro drones swarm out, with larger ones launching as needed.
    
    I could also see facial recognition drones being deployed from a predator drone, like cluster bombs. A little akin to the bots used in the film minority report. They swarm a building or block, and try and identify all the faces they can find.
    
    The key thing however will be battery life. Multicopters are power hogs. You need around 40% battery to get maybe 5-20 minutes flight times (depending on how the manoeuvre). Longer times can be achieved , but requires larger systems with higher costs. Is 1 system with a 2 hour flight time worth 20 smaller systems only good for 10 minutes?
    
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- KeenFlame@feddit.nu ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You use the word easily so many times here where it becomes more and more apparent that you probably don’t think it means what it means
  
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  - cynar@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve worked with drones of various sizes. Bigger and more expensive ones are more capable, but hard to make bullet proof. If you can remote off their sensors and weapons into cheap, more disposable systems, it makes sense.
    
    A big drone, like a predator, drops a package into an area. Mid sized multicopters provide local computing power and coordination. Small planes provide fast loiter surveillance. Small multicopters with cameras give more accurate coverage. For attack, you have what amounts to a hand grenade with props. Protection takes the form of similar disposables. A flying strobe light to mess up optical tracking. Chaff bombs to mess up radar tracking. Smoke to obscure the high value units.
    
    A lot of these I could throw together myself, given a few weeks, and a few grand. What part wouldn’t be easy, for a large and well funded military r&d team?
    
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    KeenFlame@feddit.nu ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What part wouldn’t be easy? The hand grenade with props. The strobe light. The chaff. The software. The batteries and power supply. The reliability. The compute requirements. There is so many things that are easy sounding to you because you romanticise the idea but it’s not easily done at all
    
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t0fr@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I saw a YouTube clip explaining that they use a secondary drone to boost the signal to get around some of the jamming.

The game of cat and mouse continues.

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Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Jammers only work against remote controlled drones. Autonomous ones have no such issue.

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- Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That’s only one example
  
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