Mini Drones as Weapons? Realistic or BS?

Hatcher's Armory
#21

We’ve had both the steady emergence of novel delivery platforms for decades and low-level demand for murders, assassination, and terror for a similar time span. Yet poisons tend to use compounds easily sourced from the market, explosives tend to be black powder TNT or bulky ANFO concoctions, and bio-weapons are vanishingly rare outside of the anthrax scare of more than a decade ago. And of these, none are used anywhere near as often as more conventional means.

Despite the media and fiction going nuts on the subject, Because Drones™ changes surprisingly little.

#22

orbital satellite lasers

Cool yes, multibillion dollar government contract to the person that can pull it off, yes. Internationally legal, oh hell f* not.

Ether way, who want’s to help build a Laser Transmitting Satellite solar collector for an energy project?

#23

just saying, those lipo batteries in every drone and phone are quite dangerous when over charged.

what you do with that intel is up to you and your responsibility.

#24

Apparently bio-weapons are extremely hard to disperse, which is why chemical weapons are preferred by terrorists. (I just listened to a podcast about Aum Shinrikyo)

I think my point in linking the Akira clip was that I don’t see “mini drones” as a viable weapon at this point.
They sure do piss off my dog though. I bought a mini quad a few years back and ended up giving it away because it distressed my pooch so much.

#25

Chemical weapons are surprisingly hard to use effectively as well. Short-term area denial seems to be their main military use.

The Tokyo attacks - in the somewhat ideal confines of a subway - were pretty fantastic terrorism but mercifully killed and injured few relative to how many people were exposed. Their difficulties producing sarin and low quantities used likely played a role.

Agreed. They’re movie-plot material and poor man’s overly-complex, long-odds assassination weapon at this point.

I gather that the types of motors commonly used in quads are incredibly noisy in the ultrasonic range, thus extremely aggravating to animals that can hear in that range. The noise is such that fight-or-flight is frequently triggered.

1 Like
#26

Article in IEEE Spectrum mag. Condensed version -
Saboteur/terrorist used high powered rifle to take out a major power substation in remote area of Calif.
Shots strategically located in the cooling fins of the transformers allowing cooling oil to drain out.
Strategic because failure is delayed. Transformers fail and large chunk of the area pwr grid goes down - stays down.
No surveillance. No traceable/usable evidence. Nothing.
Urban myth? Unlikely.

Bottom line: Never ever underestimate the ingenuity/creativity of your opponent. They think outside “the box”. Do you??

1 Like
#27

@artg_dms … here ya go

#28

G Gordon Liddy may well be the father of disaster porn; this piece was published nearly 30 years ago.

Electrical substations, water treatment plants, gas pipelines, long-haul fiber optic lines, most any remote telecom cabinet or buried vault, earthen dams, and doubtless other bits of critical infrastructure are quite vulnerable to attack and have been for decades.

Much of this is remote, there is rarely security beyond a perimeter or lock, often as not no alarms, and rarely cameras or monitoring. Save for water treatment plants in the example above there are typically no employees on-site.

Knowing just a few things about the nature of the telecom network one could probably knock out service to much of a city in a few hours with little risk of being caught, causing outages that could take days to resolve. No need for sci-fi EMP generators, movie-plot computer hacking, fancy telecom tools, nor even extensive knowledge of the network. Some hand tools, mildly proprietary sockets to open cabinets (for speed and convenience), and some of the most elementary of covering one’s tracks is all it would take.

There was an issue with long-haul fiber lines being cut in CA a few years back. Not sure if the perps were ever caught, but the precision of it stunk of an inside job … where someone makes a cut one night to scam overtime for a buddy who then returns the favor in the future.

My point is that despite all these possibilities, they happen infrequently and that the movie plot of this new thing - small consumer drones with steadily-increasing flight assist/autonomy - is but a rounding error in the threat picture.

#30

Well if i were to try and come up with a defense I’d start with something like a RTLSDR dongle to watch out for unusual or know control signals then I’d have something like a Hack RF and an amp along with a very directional antenna to either generate enough noise that they lose control or better yet capture the drone with my own control signal. More autonomous drones relying on GPS could also be spoofed. Easier than all of that though would be to have a large drone and a skilled pilot who can get above them and knock them out of the sky with their rotor wash.

#31

Automated shotguns would do wonders against small drones.

EMP pulse would knock down a swarm.

Bird netting would be a tough defense for them to penetrate. It is fine tough plastic net you protect your garden with. Dirt cheap.

#32

Gonna take a big pulse to transfer enough energy to the innards to reliably kill drones since the surface area is pretty small. I also suspect that a generator capable of producing such a pulse would be … hazardous to its surroundings … to put it mildly.

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#33

And bird pellets are not so bad?? LOL.

#34

birdshot is a surer and simpler hard kill. And assuming you’re not within city limits, likely permissible on your property.

1 Like
#35

https://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/defend-your-cubicle-nerf-sentry-gun

here ya go - simple sentry gun tech -

now I just need a metal storm cartridge auto-loader on a frame and I’m all set for drone defense - and of course every bird , squirrel, and airplane within sensor range would be brought down until the ammo ran out…

only thing is the ammo does always go faster than one imagines - especially with a 1,000,000 rds/minute caseless cycle rate…

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#37

Well lets see - where to start? - got a $500 million budget? - How about a gun range 100 nautical mile safe?
25 megawatts of power per shot? That’s enough to power 4000+ homes - per shot -
Na - rail gun’s neat - but I prefer metalstorm cartridges…

#38

Just shooting them down does have the potential for some lithium fires and/or setting off of explosive while raining down on your property.

#39

Don’t give Nick @Nick any ideas…

1 Like
#40

I think this type weapon is certainly being developed. How could it not be?

I can see this being a payload for a drone. The drone gets them on target and they sprint for 10-15 minutes.

There could even being a secondary “mothership” quad copter that has longer “on station” time. Only when there are designated targets would the killer quads be launched.

Think about stealth sensor technology. A drone drops a series of sensors that are ultra light weight, quiet, and virtually invisible. The goal of this is to gather intelligence. Facial recognition and locations of the “bad guys”. This system goes in 2-3 days before the strike. It feeds data back to a base. Now you know where your bad guys are and at what times.

When you are ready for a strike, i can see a major sensor net being part of the overall system. One drone flies a pattern that drops sensors over an area. As the data profile builds, a second drone drops killer quads or mini motherships that disburse the killer quads.

As far as that goes, remember the smart suitcase guns (Edit: Sentry Gun) from Aliens? Dropping the equivalent of those on the ground gives you area control and coverage on the ground because they are not flying. They do not have to have 10,000 rounds, if they had 100 rounds it would probably be enough. I think they could be effective for 24 to 48 hours. These would be supplemental to the killer quads and sensor net.

If you were a bad guy, it would be a very uncomfortable place to be.