Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: bigdog on July 20, 2013, 06:02:18 AM
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A thread for all things "drone."
To begin, two articles on the Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta case pending in federal court:
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/07/judge-troubled-over-drone-killing-powers/
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/a-recap-of-fridays-oral-arguments-in-al-aulaqi-v-panetta/
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obamas-new-drone-policy-has-cause-for-concern/2013/05/25/0daad8be-c480-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html
From the article:
President Obama’s decision also came down to a determination that the CIA was simply better than the Defense Department at locating and killing al-Qaeda operatives with armed drones, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the deliberations. Even now, as the president plans to shift most drone operations back to the military, many U.S. counterterrorism officials are convinced that gap in capabilities has not been erased.
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321
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This is an interesting discussion on the use of drones and the impact on civil liberties.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-05-30/domestic-drones-privacy-faa-uavs/55288498/1
"Trying to recover liberties after losing them is like trying to regain your lost virginity." The difference I notice is that most people try really hard to lose their virginity.
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Good work BD. Is there anything from the Privacy/4th Amendment thread that you would like to bring over here as well?
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/19/faa-warns-americans-dont-shoot-at-the-drones/
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/07/22/if_trayvon_were_pakistani_signature_strikes_profiling
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/07/22/if_trayvon_were_pakistani_signature_strikes_profiling
Because he won a Nobel Peace Prize !
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/26/fbi-tells-sen-rand-paul-weve-used-drones-us-soil-1/
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/26/fbi-tells-sen-rand-paul-weve-used-drones-us-soil-1/
How many times have they used aircraft the pilot sits inside?
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/funding-schemes-in-congress-could-ground-drones/
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http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/01/kerry_says_drone_strikes_in_pakistan_will_end_spokesperson_takes_it_right_back
At least the message is consistent.
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Despite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars
By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER
Published: August 2, 2013
WASHINGTON — There were more drone strikes in Pakistan last month than any month since January. Three missile strikes were carried out in Yemen in the last week alone. And after Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis on Thursday that the United States was winding down the drone wars there, officials back in Washington quickly contradicted him.
More than two months after President Obama signaled a sharp shift in America’s targeted-killing operations, there is little public evidence of change in a strategy that has come to define the administration’s approach to combating terrorism.
Most elements of the drone program remain in place, including a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia that the Central Intelligence Agency continues to use to carry out drone strikes in Yemen. In late May, administration officials said that the bulk of drone operations would shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A.
But the C.I.A. continues to run America’s secret air war in Pakistan, where Mr. Kerry’s comments underscored the administration’s haphazard approach to discussing these issues publicly. During a television interview in Pakistan on Thursday, Mr. Kerry said the United States had a “timeline” to end drone strikes in that country’s western mountains, adding, “We hope it’s going to be very, very soon.”
But the Obama administration is expected to carry out drone strikes in Pakistan well into the future. Hours after Mr. Kerry’s interview, the State Department issued a statement saying there was no definite timetable to end the targeted killing program in Pakistan, and a department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said, “In no way would we ever deprive ourselves of a tool to fight a threat if it arises.”
Micah Zenko, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, who closely follows American drone operations, said Mr. Kerry seemed to have been out of sync with the rest of the Obama administration in talking about the drone program. “There’s nothing that indicates this administration is going to unilaterally end drone strikes in Pakistan,” Mr. Zenko said, “or Yemen for that matter.”
The mixed messages of the past week reveal a deep-seated ambivalence inside the administration about just how much light ought to shine on America’s shadow wars. Even though Mr. Obama pledged a greater transparency and public accountability for drone operations, he and other officials still refuse to discuss specific strikes in public, relying instead on vague statements about “ongoing counterterrorism operations.”
Some of those operations originate from a C.I.A. drone base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia — the continued existence of which encapsulates the hurdles to changing how the United States carries out targeted-killing operations.
The Saudi government allowed the C.I.A. to build the base on the condition that the Obama administration not acknowledge that it was in Saudi Arabia. The base was completed in 2011, and it was first used for the operation that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical preacher based in Yemen who was an American citizen.
Given longstanding sensitivities about American troops operating from Saudi Arabia, American and Middle Eastern officials say that the Saudi government is unlikely to allow the Pentagon to take over operations at the base — or for the United States to speak openly about the base.
Spokesmen for the White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment.
Similarly, military and intelligence officials in Pakistan initially consented to American drone strikes on the condition that Washington not discuss them publicly — a bargain that became ever harder to honor when the United States significantly expanded American drone operations in the country.
There were three drone strikes in Pakistan last month, the most since January, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which monitors such strikes. At the same time, the number of strikes has declined in each of the last four years, so in that sense Mr. Kerry’s broader characterization of the program was accurate.
But because the drone program remains classified, administration officials are loath to discuss it in any detail, even when it is at the center of policy discussions, as it was during Mr. Obama’s meeting in the Oval Office on Thursday with President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi of Yemen.
After their meeting, Mr. Obama and Mr. Hadi heaped praise on each other for cooperating on counterterrorism, though neither described the nature of that cooperation. Mr. Obama credited the setbacks of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A.Q.A.P., the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, not to the drone strikes, but to reforms of the Yemeni military that Mr. Hadi undertook after he took office in February 2012.
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espite Administration Promises, Few Signs of Change in Drone Wars
Published: August 2, 2013
(Page 2 of 2)
And Mr. Hadi twice stressed that Yemen was acting in its own interests in working with the United States to root out Al Qaeda, since the group’s terrorist attacks had badly damaged Yemen’s economy.
“Yemen’s development basically came to a halt whereby there is no tourism, and the oil companies, the oil-exploring companies, had to leave the country as a result of the presence of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hadi said.
Asked specifically about the recent increase in drone strikes in Yemen, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said: “I can tell you that we do cooperate with Yemen in our counterterrorism efforts. And it is an important relationship, an important connection, given what we know about A.Q.A.P. and the danger it represents to the United States and our allies.”
Analysts said the administration was still grappling with the fact that drones remained the crucial instrument for going after terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan — yet speaking about them publicly could generate a backlash in those countries because of issues like civilian casualties.
That fear is especially pronounced in Pakistan, where C.I.A. drones have become a toxic issue domestically and have provoked anti-American fervor. Mr. Kerry’s remarks seemed to reflect those sensitivities.
“Pakistan’s leaders often say things for public consumption which they don’t mean,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States. “It seems that this was one of those moments where Secretary Kerry got influenced by his Pakistani hosts.”
Congressional pressure for a public accounting of the drone wars has largely receded, another factor allowing the Obama administration to carry out operations from behind a veil of secrecy.
This year, several senators held up the nomination of John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director to get access to Justice Department legal opinions justifying drone operations. During that session, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, delivered a nearly 13-hour filibuster, railing against the Obama administration for killing American citizens overseas without trial.
For all that, though, the White House was able to get Mr. Brennan confirmed by the Senate without having to give lawmakers all the legal memos.
And, in the months since, there has been little public debate on Capitol Hill about drones, targeted killing and the new American way of war.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/opinion/how-to-generate-distrust-on-drones.html
From the article (written in May, 2013):
President Obama says he wants greater transparency for the clandestine killing of terrorists overseas, largely using missiles fired by drones. There has been little public action on this pledge, but if he is serious, he should consider many of the recommendations made this week by a former legal adviser to the State Department, Harold Koh.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/drone-safety-concerns-force-us-to-move-large-fleet-from-camp-lemonnier-in-djibouti/2013/09/24/955518c4-213c-11e3-a03d-abbedc3a047c_story.html
From the article:
Last year, the Pentagon was forced to suspend drone operations in Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, after two Reaper drones crashed on the runway at the main international airport, which serves half a million passengers a year.
The overseas accidents could have repercussions in the United States, where the military and the drone industry are pressing the federal government to open up the skies to remote-controlled aircraft.
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http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/german-chancellors-drone-attack-shows-the-threat-of-weaponized-uavs/
German chancellor’s drone “attack” shows the threat of weaponized UAVs
Dutch researchers warn that the next time, that drone could explode.
by Sean Gallagher- Sept 18 2013, 3:49pm MDT
Cyberwar
National Security
(http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Aeryon_Scout_In_Flight-640x427.jpg)
Small unmanned air vehicles like this quadrocopter could be turned into swarms of exploding flying robots, and Dutch researchers say there's not much that can be done right now to stop them.
Dkroetsch
At a campaign rally in Dresden on September 15, a small quadrocopter flew within feet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere, hovering briefly in front of them before crashing into the stage practically at Merkel's feet. Merkel appeared to be amused by the "drone attack," but de Maiziere and others on the stage seemed a bit more unsettled by the robo-kamikaze.
Enlarge / German Chancellor Angela Merkel smiles as a Parrot AR drone comes in for a crash landing during a Christian Democratic Party campaign event September 15.
EPA
The quadrocopter, a Parrot AR drone, was operated by a member of the German Pirate Party as a protest against government surveillance and the ongoing scandal over the Euro Hawk drone program—which failed because it could not get certified to fly in European airspace. In a statement, the deputy head of the Pirate Party, Markus Barenhoff, said, "The goal of the effort was to make Chancellor Merkel and Defense Minister de Maiziere realize what it's like to be subjugated to drone observation." The drone was harmless, aside from potential political collateral damage to Merkel's Christian Democratic Party, and the pilot of the drone was released after being briefly held by police.
While Merkel smirked off the drone in Dresden, even a small explosive charge or grenade aboard a similar drone would have been catastrophic—and defending against such attacks is difficult at best. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) researchers from TNO Defense Research, an organization in The Netherlands, recently showed the real risk of that sort of attack, demonstrating that terrorists and insurgents could effectively use current commercial and do-it-yourself drones as weapons in a number of scenarios, including one much like the Dresden event.
Video of the drone-hazing of German Chancellor Merkel, Defense Minister de Maiziere, and members of Merkel's Christian Democratic Party team.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a flying hand grenade!
In a paper published during the Unmanned Systems 2013 conference last month, Klaas Jan de Kraker and Rob van de Wiel of TNO Defence Research analyzed the threat posed by "mini-UAVs"—small remote-controlled and autonomous drones weighing less than 20 kilograms (44 pounds).
The research was in part prompted by two incidents in 2010—the crashing of a radio-controlled plane into The Netherlands' House of Parliament as a prank and the foiling of a plot to use explosives-packed, radio-controlled model airplanes to attack the Capitol and the Pentagon by the FBI.
TNO researchers found that small drones, especially those using autonomous navigation, could be stealthy, accurate, and potentially deadly weapons, and the probability of their use is rapidly increasing. The paper presented the following potential scenarios:
•During a large public event in a stadium, a terrorist launches a Mini UAV, which is equipped with a machine gun, from a building at some distance. He directs the Mini UAV into the stadium and remotely fires the machine gun. In the panic that occurs in the stadium numerous people are overrun and die.
•During a public speech by a VIP, the VIP is shielded from the audience by bulletproof glass. However, a terrorist deploys a Mini UAV equipped with an explosive, which flies over the shielding glass. The explosive detonates close to the VIP wounding him fatally.
•During an expeditionary mission, opposing forces launch a Mini UAV toward a compound. When the Mini UAV has reached the center of the compound, it releases a chemical agent. Luckily this only causes some minor physical effects on people that were present and unprotected. However this has caused significant fear among the compound inhabitants.
•During an expeditionary mission, an opposing militant group launches a small swarm of Mini UAVs, each equipped with an explosive, toward an airbase. The Mini UAVs fly toward the fighter jets that are parked on the airbase, and their explosives detonate just above the fighter jets. This significantly damages a number of jets and even destroys one of them.
Because of their size, their low flying altitude, and their relatively low speed, mini-UAVs are particularly hard to detect—especially in an urban environment, the researchers found. Even if they are detected, identifying whether they're a threat or not is still an issue, because it's difficult to determine whether they're armed or just carrying a camera. And because of the short range they're detectable at, security forces would have only seconds of warning to decide whether to attack the drone or not.
"Detection and classification are very difficult," de Kraker and van de Wiel wrote. "This is not only due to their small size but also to their very low flying altitude and speed, and to clutter that occurs from trees and buildings." Tests of a number of commercial and do-it-yourself mini-UAVs in TNO's anechoic radar room revealed that they had a "bird-size" radar cross-section, and their relatively low speed makes them hard to distinguish from birds under even more ideal conditions.
The TNO researchers looked at a number of other ways to detect micro-UAVs, including audio sensors, radio detection of control signals, continuous-wave radar, and infrared. The best results came from mixing radar and infrared—using radar for initial detection and infrared sensors for classification.
Burn them with lasers
Taking down potentially hostile drones once they're detected comes with another set of problems. While radio jamming can be used to interrupt remote-control signals for drones, it might not keep them from reaching their target and would be ineffective against autonomous drones using GPS or GLONASS satellite navigation. Jamming commercial navigation signals could cause autonomous drones to fail to find their target, but could cause other security and safety problems at the same time.
And just shooting down drones in a crowded urban environment could cause more damage than the drones themselves. "Missile systems with small missiles and a suitable guidance mechanism, (rapid fire) guns with suitable ammunition, and machine guns are considered as very effective means for neutralizing Mini UAVs," the researchers wrote, but "downsides may be that missile systems are relatively expensive and that these hard kill systems could generate collateral damage."
The best answer, de Kraker and van de Weil suggested, might be laser and high-power microwave "directed energy solutions," which could be used to heat the drones up until their batteries or electronics are destroyed. These weapons could be deployed in a truck to provide protection for events at public places with lower risk to people and property on the ground than a chain gun or small missiles.
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Unsettling implications there BD.
Unsettling implications here too. Too bad our Kitty-in-Chief did not authorize going in and getting it or blowing it TF up.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/07/watch-the-secret-video-iran-says-is-from-the-u-s-drone-it-captured-in-2011/
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/national-security/soon-drones-may-be-able-to-make-lethal-decisions-on-their-own-20131008
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/national-security/soon-drones-may-be-able-to-make-lethal-decisions-on-their-own-20131008
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zckJVQS6Vo8[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zckJVQS6Vo8
I'm sure there couldn't be any downside to this.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/nyregion/at-conference-on-drones-talk-of-morals-and-toys.html?src=recg&_r=1&
From the article:
It has been a trying period for defenders of the drone. Public perception has been shaped in large part by the Obama administration’s use of drones in counterterrorism efforts, and civil liberties advocates have long decried the drone’s seemingly boundless capacity to restrict privacy.
Then there was the blemish for local hobbyists last week, when a drone was said to have crashed near Grand Central Terminal, narrowly missing a pedestrian.
And so, at times on Friday, the forum seemed equal parts acknowledgment of the technology’s perils and a self-affirmation exercise for its proponents, who have cited the potential of drones to improve agriculture practices and monitor endangered species, among other applications.
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Much in the news about US drone usage globally: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/10/new-reports-on-drone-strike-casualties-in-pakistan-and-yemen/ has many links to reports and stories.
To contrast, the highly credentialed Kenneth Anderson's "The Case for Drones": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2047537
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Thanks for your continuing coverage of this subject for us BD.
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Thanks for your continuing coverage of this subject for us BD.
You are welcome, sir.
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/10/22/winston_churchill_military_technology_lasers_cyborgs_drones?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full
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http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/researchers-hack-government-drone-1000-parts?4gk4UskM6gv8jkWc.01
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http://jnslp.com/2013/08/06/a-drone-court-some-pros-and-cons/
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Killer Robots and the Laws of War
Autonomous weapons are coming and can save lives. Let's make sure they're used ethically and legally.
By Kenneth Anderson and Matthew Waxman
Nov. 3, 2013 6:33 p.m. ET
With each new drone strike by the United States military, anger over the program mounts. On Friday, in one of the most significant U.S. strikes, a drone killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the lawless North Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan. Coming as Pakistan is preparing for peace talks with the Taliban, the attack on this major terrorist stirred outrage in Pakistan and was denounced by the country's interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who said the U.S. had "murdered the hope and progress for peace in the region."
Recent reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also challenged the legality of drone strikes. The protests reflect a general unease in many quarters with the increasingly computerized nature of waging war. Looking well beyond today's drones, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations—the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots—is lobbying for an international treaty to ban the development and use of "fully autonomous weapons."
Computerized weapons capable of killing people sound like something from a dystopian film. So it's understandable why some, scared of the moral challenges such weapons present, would support a ban as the safest policy. In fact, a ban is unnecessary and dangerous.
No country has publicly revealed plans to use fully autonomous weapons, including drone-launched missiles, specifically designed to target humans. However, technologically advanced militaries have long used near-autonomous weapons for targeting other machines. The U.S. Navy's highly automated Aegis Combat System, for example, dates to the 1970s and defends against multiple incoming high-speed threats. Without them, a ship would be helpless against a swarm of missiles. Israel's Iron Dome missile-defense system similarly responds to threats faster than human reaction times permit.
Contrary to what some critics of autonomous weapons claim, there won't be an abrupt shift from human control to machine control in the coming years. Rather, the change will be incremental: Detecting, analyzing and firing on targets will become increasingly automated, and the contexts of when such force is used will expand. As the machines become increasingly adept, the role of humans will gradually shift from full command, to partial command, to oversight and so on.
This evolution is inevitable as sensors, computer analytics and machine learning improve; as states demand greater protection for their military personnel; and as similar technologies in civilian life prove that they are capable of complex tasks, such as driving cars or performing surgery, with greater safety than human operators.
But critics like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots believe that governments must stop this process. They argue that artificial intelligence will never be capable of meeting the requirements of international law, which distinguishes between combatants and noncombatants and has rules to limit collateral damage. As a moral matter, critics do not believe that decisions to kill should ever be delegated to machines. As a practical matter, they believe that these systems may operate in unpredictable, ruthless ways.
Yet a ban is unlikely to work, especially in constraining states or actors most inclined to abuse these weapons. Those actors will not respect such an agreement, and the technological elements of highly automated weapons will proliferate.
Moreover, because the automation of weapons will happen gradually, it would be nearly impossible to design or enforce such a ban. Because the same system might be operable with or without effective human control or oversight, the line between legal weapons and illegal autonomous ones will not be clear-cut.
If the goal is to reduce suffering and protect human lives, a ban could prove counterproductive. In addition to the self-protective advantages to military forces that use them, autonomous machines may reduce risks to civilians by improving the precision of targeting decisions and better controlling decisions to fire. We know that humans are limited in their capacity to make sound decisions on the battlefield: Anger, panic, fatigue all contribute to mistakes or violations of rules. Autonomous weapons systems have the potential to address these human shortcomings.
No one can say with certainty how much automated capabilities might gradually reduce the harm of warfare, but it would be wrong not to pursue such gains, and it would be especially pernicious to ban research into such technologies.
That said, autonomous weapons warrant careful regulation. Each step toward automation needs to be reviewed carefully to ensure that the weapon complies with the laws of war in its design and permissible uses. Drawing on long-standing international legal rules requiring that weapons be capable of being used in a discriminating manner that limits collateral damage, the U.S. should set very high standards for assessing legally and ethically any research and development programs in this area. Standards should also be set for how these systems are to be used and in what combat environments.
If the past decade of the U.S. drone program has taught us anything, it's that it is crucial to engage the public about new types of weapons and the legal constraints on their design and use. The U.S. government's lack of early transparency about its drone program has made it difficult to defend, even when the alternatives would be less humane. Washington must recognize the strategic imperative to demonstrate new weapons' adherence to high legal and ethical standards.
This approach will not work if the U.S. goes it alone. America should gather a coalition of like-minded partners to adapt existing international legal standards and develop best practices for applying them to autonomous weapons. The British government, for example, has declared its opposition to a treaty ban on autonomous weapons but is urging responsible states to develop common standards for the weapons' use within the laws of war.
Autonomous weapons are not inherently unlawful or unethical. If we adapt legal and ethical norms to address robotic weapons, they can be used responsibly and effectively on the battlefield.
Mr. Anderson is a law professor at American University and a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Waxman is a professor at Columbia Law School and a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Both are members of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.
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http://www.lawfareblog.com/wiki/the-lawfare-wiki-document-library/targeted-killing/
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http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/iran-unveils-new-attack-drone-it-claims-can-reach-israel?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Iran+unveils+new+Attack+drone+it+claims+can+%E2%80%98reach+Israel%E2%80%99&utm_campaign=20131121_m118026053_11%2F21%3A+Israel+Breaking+News+Video%3A+Iran+unveils+new+Attack+drone+it+claims+can+%E2%80%98reach+Israel%E2%80%99&utm_term=Iran+unveils+new+Attack+drone
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http://blog.ted.com/2013/11/20/drones-warfare-science-fiction-cybercrime-p-w-singer/
From the interview:
The interplay between science fiction and the real world is a force that has been there for centuries. At one point, it was through writers like H.G. Wells, because the novel was the main vector for entertainment. Then we moved on to movies and TV shows — think of how powerful Star Trek was in influencing where technology would head next. Now it’s gaming. It’s like what happened in those great old episodes of Star Trek, where they envisioned something futuristic like a handheld communicator and then someone watching in a lab would see it and said, “I’ll make that real.” And now that’s the same for gaming. I was a consultant for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and I worked on a drone concept for the game, a quadcopter called Charlene. Now defense contractors are trying to make Charlene real. So it flips the relationship. Previously, the military would research and develop something and then spin it out to the civilian sector. Now the military is faced with a challenge of how to spin in technology.
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http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/amazon-drone/
From the article:
The truth is that no one who buys discounted merchandise on Amazon today will have it delivered by drone, and such deliveries won’t happen for years — if they happen at all. It’s not just that the technology isn’t up to the task yet. It’s not just that federal regulations prohibit such flights over populated areas. It’s that drone delivery doesn’t make economic sense for Amazon, and it will never make sense unless the company completely overhauls its operation.
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Very thrilling:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwDEa0k40Uk[/youtube]
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military?CMP=fb_gu
From the article:
One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a bad image or angle.
...
And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
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As opposed to the pristine clarity other warfighters operate with? Really?
The author missed the boat. The left/MSM stopped caring about drones and collateral damage when Obama was sworn into office.
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2014/01/triton/
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http://www.navytimes.com/article/20131230/NEWS/312300005/Drone-hit-Chancellorsville-ruined-computer-center
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303848104579314520943017890?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond
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http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/28/first-american-gets-prison-with-assistance-predator-drone/
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second post
http://www.infowars.com/beer-drone-viral-prompts-slap-down-from-government/
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http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/02/are-armed-drones-anything-strategically-new/#.UvJLDrCYbIU
From the article:
Our conclusion is that, in conventional war on conventional battlefields, drones are largely just another remote weapon platform. In counterterrorism-on-offense, however, against transnational non-state actor terrorist groups, they do represent something new: first, an offensive, “raiding” capability—the lightest of the light cavalry, deployed against terrorist fighters who, as raiders on offense, have rarely had to confront a counter-raiding capability. But drones offer a very special kind of raiding capability—that is, a “persisting” raiding strategy, to use military historian Archer Jones’ terminology.
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http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/02/are-armed-drones-anything-strategically-new/#.UvJLDrCYbIU
From the article:
Our conclusion is that, in conventional war on conventional battlefields, drones are largely just another remote weapon platform. In counterterrorism-on-offense, however, against transnational non-state actor terrorist groups, they do represent something new: first, an offensive, “raiding” capability—the lightest of the light cavalry, deployed against terrorist fighters who, as raiders on offense, have rarely had to confront a counter-raiding capability. But drones offer a very special kind of raiding capability—that is, a “persisting” raiding strategy, to use military historian Archer Jones’ terminology.
No. Next question.
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http://news.yahoo.com/us-suspect-possibly-targeted-drone-attack-091333349--politics.html
From the article:
An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him, a task it hasn't completed.
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Too bad it's not a Tea party activist, as the Obama administration can target them without any concerns about due process, constitutional protections or the rule of law.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-suspect-possibly-targeted-drone-attack-091333349--politics.html
From the article:
An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him, a task it hasn't completed.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/curbs-shut-us-drone-makers-out-of-export-markets/2014/02/13/bda46332-9484-11e3-9e13-770265cf4962_story.html
From the article:
“China is positioning itself so that any country on the planet that, for political or financial reasons, is restricted from purchasing American or allied drones will be able to go to Beijing and get a comparable platform,” said Ian Easton, a research fellow at the 2049 Project Institute security think tank. He co-authored a recent report on China’s drones.
China’s $139 billion defense budget last year was the world’s second biggest, accounting for about 9 percent of global military spending, according to a report last week by IHS Jane’s. It’s leading a broader rise in regional military spending, with Australia, India and South Korea also hiking budgets that’s widens opportunities for defense contractors.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/drone-regulation-dianne-feinstein-104718.html
Ah, yes, here it is , , , http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/03/goes-around-comes-around-dianne-feinstein-complains-rights-violated/
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http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/20/technology/security/drone-phone/
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304117904579501701702936522?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj
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And Facebook is too.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304117904579501701702936522?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories&mg=reno64-wsj
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http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/04/17/dnt-drone-discovers-village-in-new-mexico.krqe.html
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http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/04/19/montana-state-senator-shoots-down-drone-in-new-video/
By the way, please consider this thread to be the proper venue for material related to drone vs. anti-drone.
Thank you.
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How would you feel if you were at the beach and spotted this thing eyeing you? It happened in Treasure Island, and it ended with police being called -- but they couldn't do anything about it.
STORY & VIDEO: http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/25186701/2014/04/07/drone-seen-on-beach
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How would you feel if you were at the beach and spotted this thing eyeing you? It happened in Treasure Island, and it ended with police being called -- but they couldn't do anything about it.
STORY & VIDEO: http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/25186701/2014/04/07/drone-seen-on-beach
Are we going to make laws based on feelings? Well, there is a political party that caters to that...
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http://www.alternet.org/drugs/thieves-uk-are-using-drones-locate-and-steal-cannabis-farms
:-o :-o :-o
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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141407/denise-garcia/the-case-against-killer-robots
http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2014/05/robot-soldiers-would-never-rape-un-packing-the-myth-of-the-humanitarian-war-bot.html
http://www.fpa.org/great_decisions/index.cfm?act=topic_detail&topic_id=34
http://www.ibtimes.com/drone-found-crashed-south-korea-day-after-north-korea-slammed-drone-investigations-south-1584026
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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141407/denise-garcia/the-case-against-killer-robots
http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2014/05/robot-soldiers-would-never-rape-un-packing-the-myth-of-the-humanitarian-war-bot.html
http://www.fpa.org/great_decisions/index.cfm?act=topic_detail&topic_id=34
http://www.ibtimes.com/drone-found-crashed-south-korea-day-after-north-korea-slammed-drone-investigations-south-1584026
How did the Pope's ban on crossbows work out anyway?
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http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141407/denise-garcia/the-case-against-killer-robots
http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2014/05/robot-soldiers-would-never-rape-un-packing-the-myth-of-the-humanitarian-war-bot.html
http://www.fpa.org/great_decisions/index.cfm?act=topic_detail&topic_id=34
http://www.ibtimes.com/drone-found-crashed-south-korea-day-after-north-korea-slammed-drone-investigations-south-1584026
How did the Pope's ban on crossbows work out anyway?
http://www.whiteoliphaunt.com/duckofminerva/2014/05/the-evitability-of-killer-robots.html
"MAC’s memo focuses on blinding lasers because of the diplomatic analogies between today’s meeting and that earlier CCW process, but there are even earlier examples of emerging military technologies being banned early and quickly for humanitarian reasons. In fact, the first weapon ever to be subject to a multi-lateral treaty ban was banned before it was widely deployed: the expanding or “dum-dum” bullet. Dum-dums were designed to flatten upon impact and thus created superfluous wounds. Exploding bullets, whose horrors were evident after the American Civil War, were banned even earlier with the St. Petersburg Declaration. Flattening bullets or “dum-dums” were developed in the late 19th century and were quickly banned outright by the Hague convention of 1899 before they were widely used on the international battlefield (though they had been used in British colonial wars). According to Robin Copeland and Dominique Loye, the ban has been widely adhered to, though according to Wikipedia they remain in use for hunting and (perhaps ironically) in police operations. At any rate, they too represent a case of an emerging military technology with clear utility that was abandoned through international declaration before they were widely used."
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And, if one has more than a superficial grasp of small arms and wound ballistics, you'd understand that the only reason why the world has abided by the hollow point ban. FMJ is superior in general for military use and law enforcement uses hollow points not for their lethality, but for reducing the risk of over penetration.
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The Limits of Armchair Warfare
By JACOB WOOD and KEN HARBAUGHMAY 20, 2014
Pravda on the Hudson
BOTH of us have a deep appreciation for the work of drone pilots. Whether patrolling the Helmand Valley with a sniper team or relying on drone-driven intelligence to plan manned aerial missions, we often prayed that the drone operators supporting us were cool, calm and collected.
But neither of us ever imagined that drones would do anything more than augment the manned systems that provide aerial reconnaissance and close air support for troops on the ground. We took for granted that humans on the front lines would always play the lead role.
That is why a series of proposed measures over the last year and a half by the Pentagon have us concerned. It is increasingly clear that our military leadership has become so enamored of the technological mystique of drones that they have lost touch with the realities of the modern battlefield.
Perhaps the most glaring example, especially for former snipers and pilots like us, is the Pentagon’s recent decision to scrap the A-10, a heavily armed close-air support plane officially nicknamed the Warthog but known to troops as the Flying Gun. This battlefield workhorse flies slow and low, giving pilots a close-up of what troops on the ground need. Those pilots are an aerial extension of the units below them, working in a closer relationship than a drone and its operator ever could. But the A-10 is not sleek and sexy, and it doesn’t feed the brass’s appetite for battlefield footage delivered to screens thousands of miles away, the way a swarm of drones can.
True, the A-10 fleet is more expensive than a drone program, and in this era of budget consciousness, it’s reasonable to argue for cutting it as a cost-saving measure. The problem is, the decision also fits a disturbing pattern.
In February 2013, the Pentagon announced plans to create a new award — the Distinguished Warfare Medal — for drone pilots and “cyberwarriors,” which would rank above the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. In other words, a drone pilot flying a mission from an armchair in Nevada might be afforded greater recognition than a rifleman wounded in a combat zone.
That is ridiculous. As much as we both came to appreciate the work of drone teams, we never once prayed that they be brave. Those on the front lines require real courage because they face real danger. But if a drone overhead gets hit, a monitor somewhere might go fuzzy, and its operator might curse his poor luck for losing an expensive piece of equipment.
After a public outcry, and under criticism from Congress, the Pentagon relented, and the award was canceled.
Still, these two episodes raise troubling questions about how policy makers view the longest wars in American history. Our most senior leaders in the Pentagon, civilian and military alike, increasingly understand warfare through the literal lens of a drone camera. And this tendency affects decisions much closer to the front lines than awards ceremonies.
If the secretaries and flag officers responsible for the Distinguished Warfare Medal spent as much time (or any time) in a sniper hide or an A-10 cockpit as they did monitoring drone feeds, they would not consider elevating a “Nintendo” medal above those awarded for true heroism and sacrifice.
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Winthrop Staples
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All this yet again suggests that we need to somehow get some of our elite's skin in the game. One could have a truly lottery draft with no...
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You are speaking of the best way to murder mostly innocent civilians who we terrorize daily with drones over their homes to kill mostly...
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All war is bad and for a Nation that prides itelf on "Exceptionalism" when will we find a nonviolent and less expesnive way to deal with...
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These leaders deserve some of the criticism, but they are not the only ones to blame. The American public, which has largely absolved itself of responsibility for sending nearly three million of its citizens to fight, neither knows nor cares to know the real price of war.
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The controversy surrounding the A-10 retirement and the Distinguished Warfare Medal should be a wake-up call, a reminder that after over 10 years of fighting, we still need to educate the broader American public about the true cost of the wars fought in its name. Lost in all the allure of high-tech gadgets is the fact that, on the ground and in the air, thousands of men and women continue to risk their lives to promote America’s security and interests.
When Americans venture into harm’s way, the last thing we should want is a fair fight. We both owe a great deal to the drones and operators that cleared routes ahead of us or provided intelligence for a manned flight. But while we appreciate their role, we know that they can never provide the kind of truly connected battlefield support that a well-trained pilot can. And when we recognize them, we do so for their skill, not their courage.
The moment we conflate proficiency and valor, we cheapen the meaning of bravery itself. Without a true appreciation of the cost of war, more sons and daughters will be sent to fight without the consideration such a decision deserves.
As events in Eastern Europe force us to rethink military assumptions and post-Cold War diplomacy, we will soon face the reality that future conflicts cannot be won by joystick alone. War is ugly, and attempts to lessen its horrors will put yet more distance between the American public and the men and women fighting on its behalf.
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Assassination Drones: A Tremendous Threat to Law Enforcement: This Technology Will Reshape the Meaning of “War”
Mike Adams
June 9th, 2014
Natural News
Comments (51)
Read by 2,443 people
Editor’s note: The following article from Mike Adams of Natural News delves into the topic of micro drone technology and how it will shape the future. We know that the U.S. military has been using drones to effectively kill scores of enemies (and innocents) in the middle east, and some local police departments have begun utilizing drone technology for surveillance here at home. On the commercial side, we’ve seen promotional videos that depict Amazon drones delivering boxes to customers and real estate agents using them to promote homes for sale.
But these implementations only scratch the surface of what’s to come. With advancements in drone technology now leading to smaller, faster and easier-to-control drone systems like quadracopters, it is only a matter of time before these robotic devices are used for other, not necessarily legal purposes.
As Mike notes, one of the first up and coming uses will likely include the ability to assassinate individuals remotely, either through launching a projectile at a target, or simply going kamikaze and blowing it up. This will undoubtedly spur new innovations in the self defense market as well, as high value individuals the world over rush to protect themselves against the possibility that they will be targeted by a swarm of deadly drone bots. It is an interesting topic to explore, because it will happen in the very near future. Micro-drones won’t just be able to kill us or protect us, they’ll be capable of watching us everywhere we go. In the next few years, when someone says “I wish I was a fly on that wall,” they may well be able to realistically make it happen.
There is no stopping this technology. It’s coming whether we like it or not. Counter technologies that can remotely shut down these systems would be the only plausible solution to those concerned about the threat. Portable non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse defense guns, anyone?
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Citizens strike back: Tiny, low-cost drones may one day assassinate corrupt politicians, corporate CEOs and street criminals
By Mike Adams (Natural News)
This is an important analysis article on what I believe will be a coming wave of “Kamikaze assassination micro drones” which will soon be affordable enough for everyday citizens to deploy against selected targets. Why is this discussion important? Because these micro drones have the very real potential to re-shape the distribution of power across our planet… and they may pose a real danger to public safety and security across society.
(As you read this article, please bear in mind that I do not in any way condone the tactical applications described herein. This article is a WARNING, not an endorsement, of this very dangerous convergence of trending technologies which may threaten us all.)
Tiny assassination drones must be understood as a revolutionary new kind of weapon, and there is firm historical precedent for dramatic sociopolitical shifts rising out of such revolutions.
For example, the invention of the gunpowder-based rifle radically decentralized military power, making firepower affordable and available to the masses. This caused a global wave of popular revolutions that ultimately lead to modern-day representative government, where those in power were suddenly forced to listen to the needs of their armed citizens. (Before the invention of gunpowder, kings simply deployed heavily-armored knights against citizens, forcing the peons into obedience thanks to a vastly superior weapons and defense system that was completely out of reach of the masses.)
Today we have large-scale militarized “drones” — unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV’s — enjoying widespread deployment by the Pentagon, which plans to spend $2.5 billion next year on these drones (1). These UAVs conduct mission reconnaissance, target acquisition and weapons delivery all on the same platform. For now, they represent a battlefield tactical edge for the United States of America, but that advantage is likely to be short-lived for reasons discussed here.
Drone miniaturization, facial recognition systems and kinetic kamikaze missions
From studying trends in drone development, both in terms of software and hardware, I am now predicting the development of facial-recognition “kamikaze micro drones” capable of carrying out targeted human assassination missions with remarkable precision and reliability. The four trends that will lead to this are:
1) Drone miniaturization: The development of mass-produced, affordable “micro drones” about the size of a common bird. These will likely be produced as hobby aircraft which will be easily modified to take on a more aggressive role.
2) Facial recognition systems: The miniaturization of facial recognition software / hardware systems which may be deployed on micro drones and powered by very small on-board power supplies.
3) Rapid advances in drone manufacturing efficiency, resulting in greater affordability of drone platforms by smaller and smaller groups, including corporations, smaller nations, universities, vigilantes and even activist groups.
4) Incremental improvements in the power density of on-board batteries, allowing greater flight time and more CPU-intensive on-board computations.
These four trends will ultimately result in the creation of “Kamikaze assassination micro drones” with the ability to search for, identify and terminate a specific human target.
It is likely, in fact, that many governments of the world are already working on this technology.
This technology will reshape the meaning of “war“ by allowing rogue nations like North Korea, for example, to simply ship tens of thousands of such drones into the USA via China, marked as “toys” on import manifests. Once in the USA, these micro assassination drones can be dropped from low-flying airplanes or released from vehicles in city parks to carry out their pre-programmed missions of targeted assassinations across U.S. cities.
Future Air Force battles may be carried out by palm-sized aircraft
The United States Air Force already appears to be developing such devices, by the way. As journalist Susanne Posel writes at OccupyCorporatism.com: (2)
Under the Air Vehicles Directorate branch of the US Air Force, research is being conducted to perfect remote-controlled micro air vehicles (MAVs) that are expected to “become a vital element in the ever-changing war-fighting environment and will help ensure success on the battlefield of the future.”
See this promotional video about MAVs under development right now:
How Kamikaze micro drones will work
Kamikaze micro drones do not need to carry conventional weapons or explosives of any kind. Instead, they may simply carry an on-board serrated puncture weapon such as a crossbow hunting broad tip, affixed to the end of a shaft in a spear arrangement.
As shown in the image on the right, these devices are commonly available right now on Amazon.com, where they are called “Killzone broadheads” and boast the following marketing claims:
* The new Killzone Crossbow is a 2 blade rear-deploying broadhead that packs a devastating 2″ cutting diameter
* 2″ cutting diameter for devastating wound channels & excellent penetration
* Heavy-duty, Razor-sharp .039″ blades
These crossbow hunting tips can also be purchased with cash at any sporting goods store.
Next, the Kamikaze drone’s on-board operating system is loaded with the facial imagery of the intended target, then released in an area the target is known to frequent (such as near their home, a restaurant, or their place of employment).
The micro drone expends energy to fly to a “perch” location from which it can conduct covert facial recognition surveillance without being spotted and without expending the enormous amount of energy needed to hover in place. From this perch location, the drone will observe faces passing by, comparing them to its intended target.
Once the micro drone spots the intended target, it can either “dial home” and transmit a picture of the target to a remote operator for a human kill decision, or it can be programmed to make that decision autonomously based on a threshold of certainty in the facial recognition match.
Once the kill decision has been made, the micro drone deploys its serrated spear and launches itself toward the target at high speed, aiming to thrust the spear into the neck of the subject. A two-inch-wide cutting pattern almost guarantees the blades will slice through an artery or possibly even sever the spinal column. Although the micro drone’s mass seems quite small, the human neck is especially vulnerable and can be easily penetrated by a serrated short spear carried with the momentum of a small object flying at high speed.
Once the attack is complete, the drone is simply abandoned, having completed its job. It can be pre-programmed to wide its own memory, erasing any traces of its programming code or flight history.
What if anyone could kill almost anyone else for about five thousand dollars?
In time, such drones could be purchased or built for less than a thousand dollars each. With an estimated mission success rate of 20%, that means the out-of-pocket cost to successfully kill someone with one of these drones might only be $5,000.
Before I explain why this matters, let me be clear that I am wholly against the use of violence to achieve commercial or political gain, and in no way do I condone the use of Kamikaze drones as described here. In fact, this article should serve as a warning to what’s coming in the hopes that we might achieve some globally-observed limits on drone deployment.
But until that happens, here’s where this is headed: At $5,000 per assassination, there is a very long list of corporations, politicians, activists and individuals who would be willing to deploy these drones to assassinate all kinds of targets: members of Congress, corporate rivals, political enemies, competing drug dealers, ex-wives or ex-husbands… and the list goes on.
These kamikaze micro drones could even be used as weapons of war. Imagine Iran or North Korea, for example, deploying thousands of such devices around Washington D.C. with the sole purpose of killing as many U.S. Senators and members of Congress as possible. Tactically, that’s a very low-cost war with a very high “return” in terms of “enemy casualties” from the point of view of the attacker.
But individuals and vigilantes could also use the technology for their own purposes at a local level. Ponder for a moment what happens when anyone with a mere $5,000 and a few photos of their intended target can simply release a small drone out of a backpack and set back while that micro drone locates and assassinates their intended target (using commonly available killing weapons, no less). The ease of operations is shockingly low, making such solutions readily available to anyone willing to surf the ‘net and download the operating system that carries out such activities. (Source code will no doubt be posted on many hacktivism sites.)
It’s not difficult to imagine local neighborhood watch groups pooling their funds and deploying drones to kill local drug dealers who terrorize the streets, for example. Even vigilantes who seek to protect their fellow citizens might see themselves as some sort of “drone superheroes” who deploy kamikaze drones to take out local crime bosses or dirty politicians who violate the law.
Everyday citizens would have the power to assassinate Presidents
What we are really looking at here — and again I must repeat and urge that IN NO WAY DO I CONDONE OR ENCOURAGE SUCH ACTS OF VIOLENCE — is the rise of a decentralized, affordable technology which could someday allow ordinary citizens to quite literally assassinate Presidents.
Which Presidents? Any that you can imagine, of course: Presidents of nations, Presidents of corporations, Presidents of universities and so on. It is very difficult to imagine how highly-visible people could be protected against such attacks based on present-day defensive tactics and weaponry. Handguns and rifles, for example, would be very hard-pressed to shoot down a fast-moving micro drone making a kamikaze attack.
The U.S. Secret Service, a group of incredibly well-trained and highly-dedicated individuals, probably has never faced a micro drone attack and very likely has no training for how to deal with such an attack. Clearly this is going to have to change in the very near future as such drones come within reach of everyday people. Every high-ranking member of every government around the world, in fact, is going to need to start thinking about how to be safe out in the open once these micro drones become a reality. (I have developed some detailed ideas on defensive tactics against such attempts, if anybody from the U.S. Secret Service is interested…)
The bottom line on this is that anyone who appears out in the open — giving a speech, taking a walk in the park, or pursuing a campaign trail — could be easily assassinated with one or more such Kamikaze micro drones. No one is immune from such attacks.
Another key “advantage” of this weapon system — from the point of view of the attacker — is that the attack is virtually untraceable. The person who launches the attack could be miles away by the time the drone actually strikes, and there’s no trail of gun registrations, ammo purchases or explosives to track down. In fact, the drone could be programmed to wipe its own memory clean after the attack is carried out, erasing any on-board evidence of the executable code, target images or operating system. The only evidence left behind would be the hardware platform of the drone itself, which is likely to be based on a readily available “hobby” drone chassis that’s impossible to link to any specific individual.
As you can see, this would create real nightmares for law enforcement investigators. And in a society that we all would like to see remain peaceful and safe, the idea that some individuals could operate deadly assassination drones with near-impunity should be downright alarming. Because many people would use this technology with some highly destructive intent.
A tremendous threat to law enforcement
As Natural News readers already know, I have worked closely alongside law enforcement in the past, engaging in fundraising, defensive martial arts training and more. One of my greatest fears with this kamikaze micro drone weapons platform is that it could easily be used by even a poorly-financed drug gang to eliminate local law enforcement personnel en masse, right before a major drug run activity takes place.
A small air force of such drones — say, 100 drones at just $1,000 each — could swarm a small town and kill any member of law enforcement spotted in public. That’s a mere $100,000 investment for a drug gang that might be making a multi-million-dollar smuggling run through a small urban chokepoint.
Similarly, an activist group committed to acts of violence could quite literally launch a war on the CEOs or employees of any targeted corporation. If some group didn’t like an oil company, or a factory farming operations, or even a weapons manufacturer, it would quite easily purchase and launch a swarm of micro-drones to kill employees as they walk through the company’s parking lot each day, for example. It doesn’t take very many casualties of key corporate scientists to derail R&D programs.
In all, the potential for a “micro drone Wild West” is very real and very concerning. And here’s why it could be even more wild than you might imagine…
Mass chaos because there’s no personal risk
The availability of low cost but highly effective kamikaze micro drones could unleash real chaos across society for a reason you may not have anticipated: the attackers do not put themselves at risk.
Allow me to explain: In a town where everybody carries a loaded gun, you have the widespread available of weapons, but each person puts their own life at risk by deploying any such weapon. That’s why an armed society “is a polite society,” as they say. Guns are everywhere, but nobody wants to die in a gunfight, so the guns stay in their holsters. In summary, you can’t deploy the weapon without the risk of getting killed in the process.
But kamikaze micro drones take the risk of personal harm out of the equation. The weapon is no longer attached to the person. They are physically far apart. Now you have cheap killing machines with zero personal risk of harm on the part of the attacker. If the drone gets destroyed, they’ve only lost whatever money it costs to replace it. Even if the drone gets captured, it’s not easy to link back to the attacker, so personal risk is minimized.
So with micro drones, we have a society where everybody can have a deadly assassination weapon without the risk that would traditionally accompany an attempted assassination. In effect, we now have “anonymous assassination weapons,” and as we’ve seen in online gaming, the results of anonymous actions are often disastrous: when their own real life isn’t at stake, people will behave in erratic, power-hungry ways that would never be pursued if their own lives were at risk. And because the micro drone does the killing for them, “killers” no longer have to do any killing themselves. They don’t even need to know how to use a knife, or a gun or explosives. All they need is to buy a micro drone, download the kamikaze software, load up a couple of pictures of their target, and let it loose on the sidewalk.
That makes killing frighteningly easy, affordable and accessible to the masses. For obvious reasons, this is not something we would ever want to see in a civilized society.
Drone anarchy?
In the minds of some people, this might in some ways be argued as a good thing. In a world where power is increasingly centralized in the hands of the few, the ability to easily acquire and deploy affordable, targeted killing machines might be called by some a “leveling of the playing field of power.”
Yet I would urge a careful review of all the implications of such technology before reaching any firm conclusions. The widespread availability of anonymous, autonomous killing machines should be treated with extreme caution. Because in a world where autonomous killing machines are readily available and affordable, those who already sit in positions of centralized power would also have access to these machines in very large numbers.
Anyone the authorities wanted to eliminate could simply have their face images fed into a network of micro drones deployed across any given city. A few hours later, they’re all dead, and the city didn’t even have to involve human police officers or court judges. The drone killings of citizens might even be sanctioned by the courts as a sort of “affordable justice” in a society increasingly burdened by runaway debt and bankruptcies.
Remember: President Obama has already built the “legal” framework for the drone killings of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Now it’s only a question of the technology catching up with the lawlessness that has already been embraced by the government itself (where due process is now considered ancient history).
When considering the implications of these drones, it’s important to look at all the various parties that might be tempted to use them (and for what purpose). It’s not difficult to imagine all the following groups wanting to deploy assassination drones: corporations, vigilantes, drug gangs, the military, the CIA, local law enforcement, federal law enforcement, terrorist groups, nation state enemies of America, anarchists and possibly even entertainment junkies who would stage drone killings just to post the “drone snuff films” on the ‘net.
How to hide from drones
All this means more and more people will someday need to hide their faces if they wish to venture out into the open world. This may soon include important political figures, celebrities, corporate leaders and almost anyone with a publicly-recognizable face.
A number of strategies are already being explored for this purpose. For example, artist Adam Harvey is currently working on the CV Dazzle project which explores face paint camouflage patterns that confuse facial recognition systems:
Here’s another face camouflage strategy that uses hair design and makeup to deter facial recognition systems:
See more patterns at CVdazzle.com.
Another inventor has also developed a printable face mask that he calls a Personal Surveillance Identity Prosthetic.
His company is Urme Surveillance, and he also has an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the project.
As the Urme Surveillance website explains, “Our world is becoming increasingly surveilled. For example, Chicago has over 25,000 cameras networked to a single facial recognition hub. We don’t believe you should be tracked just because you want to walk outside and you shouldn’t have to hide either. Instead, use one of our products to present an alternative identity when in public.”
With the rise of kamikaze micro drones, protecting your identity in public may be more than a privacy tactic… it may mean the difference between living and dying.
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/assassination-drones-a-tremendous-threat-to-law-enforcement-this-technology-will-reshape-the-meaning-of-war_06092014
*****
Molon Labe
*****
This technology already exists:
http://devour.com/video/quadrotor-machine-gun/
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http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-drone-memo-awlaki-20140623-story.html
From the article:
“At least where, as here, the target's activities pose a ‘continued and imminent threat of violence or death' to U.S. persons, ‘the highest officers in the Intelligence Community have reviewed the factual basis’ for the lethal operation, and a capture operation would be infeasible,” the killing would be considered a lawful act of war, the memo concluded.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/world/use-of-drones-for-killings-risks-a-war-without-end-panel-concludes-in-report.html?emc=edit_th_20140626&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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http://online.wsj.com/articles/drone-dogfight-big-defense-firms-versus-techies-1403891039?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
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Good for our troops, , , but likely to become a tool against American freedom
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/25/tiny-spies-next-big-war-us-army-developing-pocket-/
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Global Guerrillas
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Botageddon
Posted: 31 Jul 2014 01:23 PM PDT
I've been digging deeply into the future of bots and warfare for a booklet I'm putting out.
The more I dig, the more I believe that bots are more dangerous than terrorist attacks and global climate change, by a country mile.
I'm calling it botageddon.
It's a conflict that's both potentially devastating to the human race and less than thirty years out.
Less than thirty years? Yes. That's the point when the number of bots on the planet outnumber us 1,000 to one (or more, much more).
The way things are going right now, a conflict where bots take the central stage will happen so fast, nobody will be prepared for it or stop it.
Shoot, we've already put increasingly autonomous bots at the top of the violence food chain.
My advice: get ready folks.
The last generation had the cold war and the one before that had WW2. The botageddon is the confrontation everyone under 50 living today, was born to fight.
BTW: In this fight, a shotgun won't be of much use, despite what this ad suggests.
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A Bot in Every Garage and on Every Street
Posted: 03 Aug 2014 01:00 PM PDT
Here's an idea on how fast bots are going to roll out and why botageddon in some form is inevitable.
Morgan Stanley (with good reason) anticipates that 100% of all of the automobiles sold in the US will be self-driving by 2026.
That's only 12 years from now.
What's pushing this forward so fast?
Driving bots are already do a better job at driving than people do.
Based on the data so far, if 90% of the cars on the road were driven by bots, we'd have 14,000 fewer deaths in the US alone from traffic accidents. That figure alone means that the insurance rates for human drivers are going to be so high (driving by hand will be considered reckless), that few people will be able to afford to do it.
The reason this is interesting is that even if we restrict our analysis to automobiles alone, it means that there will be millions of bots on the road in a little over a decade.
Not only that:
most of these bots will be autonomous, which means that they can make decisions for themselves
almost all will have a large array of sensors and cameras onboard (from radar to range finding lasers to video to infrared...) that are constantly gathering the data needed to navigate the roads
Much of the collected data will be sent to the net wirelessly, so when one of these bots learns something new, every bot that connects to its network learns it too.
Ponder this idea for a while. Think about world where you are surrounded by bots in every location and in every role.
Is botageddon getting easier to imagine?
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History Will Be Written by the Bots
Posted: 06 Aug 2014 01:57 PM PDT
"History is written by the victors" Winston Churchill
Churchill was right.
In the case of humanity, our history is going to be written by bots. Bots aren't just mechanical. They are also made out of software.
Software bots already dominate trading on Wall Street and they are making inroads in nearly every knowledge-based profession.
They are also doing more and more of the writing being done online. For example, bots write nearly all of the earnings reports put out of the earnings announcements by the Associated Press. One Wikipedia editor has used bots to write over 3 million articles for the online encylopedia.
That's just the start. Bot writing will quickly outpace the writing done by human beings.
One reason is that all of the writing already online can be analyzed, parsed, cut, pasted, and repurposed by writing bots. Think about that for a second. We've already put billions of pages of written material online with much more to come. Billions of pages of the raw material bots need to "fake" articles on any topic, no matter how new it is.
From an iWar perspective, bot writing is very powerful.
Writing by bot makes it possible for people to manufacture discussion or controversy on a global scale, by writing thousands of articles and posting them to tens of thousands of sites in dozens of languages (and even voting them up on Reddit, Facebook, and Google to get them coverage).
Think of this as Yellow Journalism by bot. Select a topic, pick a political slant, pick the sites to troll/inflame, press the button and wait for the fireworks.
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Book Review: 'Unmanned' by Dan Fesperman
When a drone operator follows a strike order that kills 13 Afghans, he comes undone. Sounds like a plot from 'Homeland' or '24.'
By Howard Gordon
WSJ
Aug. 27, 2014 6:28 p.m. ET
Since antiquity, storytellers have cautioned us about the hazards of men using technology to trespass into realms where only the gods are allowed. For giving man fire, Zeus condemned Prometheus to an eternity chained to a rock with an eagle pecking at his liver. Daedalus's clever wings melted when his son Icarus flew too close to the sun.
Dan Fesperman's excellent and timely ninth thriller, "Unmanned," isn't quite so archetypal, but it does explore the ethical conundrums of the most potent new weapon in the American arsenal: the unmanned aerial drone. Watching our enemy from the sky is one thing, but what if those same eyes are looking down at us? And who is watching the watchers? "Unmanned" is a smart and thoughtful exploration of the unintended consequences of waging war by remote control.
While the technical details of this exhaustively researched book certainly contribute to its authenticity—the author is a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun—it is his sharply drawn characters that make the novel tick. Capt. Darwin Cole's transition from F-16 fighter jock to Predator drone operator is going smoothly: He conducts missions against terrorists thousands of miles away from behind a screen in the Nevada desert. "Each twitch of his hand," Mr. Fesperman writes of Cole's work, "flings a signal of war across the nation's night owls as they make love, make a sandwich, make a mess of things, or click the remote."
Everything changes when Cole receives a command via Internet chat from his mysterious J-TAC, or joint terminal attack controller, whom he has never met, to fire at a target in Afghanistan. The result is 13 civilian deaths, among them several children that he has become familiar with while monitoring the village of Sandar Khosh. Cole is especially haunted by the pixilated image of a young girl whose arm is severed at the shoulder yet who manages to survive the strike. She is, in the grim vernacular of drone warfare, a "squirter," a person who has escaped the strike and is "so called because on infrared they display as squibs of light, streaming from the action like raindrops across a windshield."
Cole is undone—or, if you like, unmanned. After being dishonorably discharged, his wife leaves him, taking their two children with her, and Cole becomes a recluse. His "memories, circling like buzzards," are his only company in his rundown trailer, except for Jeremiah Weed, which Mr. Fesperman tells us is the bourbon of choice among pilots, though the brand reference feels more like product placement.
Cole's chance at redemption comes when he is tracked down by a trio of journalists— Keira Lyttle, Steve Merritt and Barb Holtzman —who suspect that the faulty intelligence Cole received that day may have been intentionally disseminated. His unseen commanding officer, it turns out, was running a shadow operation on behalf of private military contractors and has now gone missing. Cole agrees to give them information—but only on the condition that they make him a full partner in the investigation, like "one of those embedded correspondents, tagging along with a combat unit." He discovers that Lyttle, too, is haunted by guilt (hers is over the death of her married boyfriend, who died in a plane crash). Yet Cole nearly destroys their incipient romance when he spies on her with a homemade drone.
As Cole investigates the mystery, he encounters Nelson Sharpe, a brilliant, half-mad designer of drones. Once a proselytizer, Sharpe is now a Cassandra about the hazards of a technology run amok. Contractors, he tells Cole, are using theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan as "glorified test labs, proving grounds, marketplaces for the barter of influence, and, most important of all, state-of-the-art technology. Those women and children at Sandar Khosh were guinea pigs in somebody's ill-advised experiment."
Sharpe introduces Cole to a group of amateurs who've built their own state-of-the-art drones for a few hundred dollars. They are mostly hobbyists, oblivious to the terrifying implications of the fact that this lethal technology is no longer the exclusive provenance of governments. "You could fly these things just about anyplace, right past security checkpoints and every metal detector known to man . . . a nightmare waiting to happen."
I have a particular appreciation for those nightmares—and for the unique challenge Mr. Fesperman is taking on by trying to dramatize a subject as topical and morally ambiguous as drones. On the last season of "24," a homegrown terrorist hijacked several American drones and turned them against innocent people in London. And in the first season of "Homeland," drones were crucial to the plot of the show. Why did the show's protagonist, Sgt. Nicholas Brody, a Marine held captive for eight years in Iraq, turn against his country? Spoiler alert for those who have yet to watch it on iTunes: It was all because of a drone. During his captivity, Brody became close to his captor's young son. One day at school, that child was killed in a U.S. drone strike—an attack the U.S. government covered up.
People accused "Homeland" of being morally squishy for the way we portrayed American drone usage and even more for the idea that such an attack could really make an American soldier sympathetic to the bad guys. I suspect some readers will accuse "Unmanned" of the same. But what Mr. Fesperman understands is that in the brave new world of modern warfare, there are complicated questions with no neat answers. The drone is a remarkable invention, much like Daedalus's wings. But what price will we pay for soaring so high?
Mr. Gordon is a television writer and producer whose shows include "24," "Homeland," "Tyrant"
and "Legends."
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http://justsecurity.org/14400/australias-collateral-damage-drone-pine-gap/
From the article:
In April 2014, the human suffering caused by the U.S. drone program was brought home to many Australians for the first time, with reports that the U.S. had killed two Australians in a drone strike in Yemen. In November 2013, Australians Chris Havard and Muslim bin John were killed in a US Predator drone attack on a convoy in Hadramout Province, Yemen. Their deaths were reported in Australia five months later.
The news of the Australian deaths was reported amid increasing concern that Pine Gap, a joint Australian-American facility located in the desert of Australia’s Northern Territory, is used to locate the targets of U.S. drone strikes. Pine Gap controls U.S. spy satellites that intercept communications across key parts of the globe including Pakistan and the Middle East.
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Why not just quote George Soros on drones directly rather than use the product from one of his astroturfed entities?
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Why not engage on the merits?
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-04/preacher-denies-australian-killed-in-yemen-was-radicalised-in-nz/5500604
Because it's totally lacking in merit. Aussies that become jihadists and ride in caravans with al Qaeda should expect to die violently. I doubt many in Oz give a wallaby's fanny about it either.
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Much better :-D
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx_WAfHLaKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ttSwYNspw
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhDG_WBIQgc
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The FAA, Drones, and Caltrops
Posted: 01 Dec 2014 12:17 PM PST
Here's one of the reasons that the FAA has seized control of all drones (including toys) and is slowing the development of automated aviation to a crawl. It's a dumb move, since it won't work, but they are doing it anyway.
The reason is that drones make disruption easy.
For example. Let's take a simple $1,350 drone like the X8 from 3D robotics. It's a good product, with solid duration (15m) and payload (.8 kg) numbers.
That's more than enough capability for significant disruption with a little innovation.
How so? With GPS auto-navigation and a container that auto-releases its payload over GPS coordinates (an easy mod), it can become the perfect delivery vehicle.
What could it deliver? Caltrops for example. A handful of caltrops can shut down automobile traffic on major highways for hours.
Combined with a drone, caltrops can shut down most ground transportation in a big city in less than an hour.
For example:
Flight 3 mi. Fly to target. Drop payload. Fly back. - 13 minutes.
Replace battery and refill cargo container - 5 minutes.
Flight 2 mi. Fly to target. Drop payload. Fly back. - 9 minutes.
Replace battery and refill cargo container - 5 minutes.
Iterate.
Recover vehicle and depart area. Potential for capture: very low.
Disruption potential? High.
The big question: Will the FAA effort to control drones protect against this type of disruption? No. It won't.
It actually makes the situation worse. It prevents the development of the safeguards an economically viable drone delivery network would produce.
Perversely, limiting drone use to big corps (that make political contributions) and government agencies, won't create the economic progress that will turn this technology into a beneficial innovation. It will do just the opposite. It will simply increase the level of economic corruption/stagnation we are already experiencing in the US.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/1/pentagon-seeks-speedy-autonomous-drones-urban-oper/
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http://www.tpnn.com/2015/01/01/video-filming-with-a-drone-in-dangerous-skid-row-has-an-ending-that-will-leave-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat/
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By
Jack Nicas
Updated Jan. 28, 2015 8:38 a.m. ET
3 COMMENTS
In response to the drone crash at the White House this week, the Chinese maker of the device that crashed said it is updating its drones to disable them from flying over much of Washington, D.C.
SZ DJI Technology Co. of Shenzhen, China, plans to send a firmware update in the next week that, if downloaded, would prevent DJI drones from taking off within the restricted flight zone that covers much of the U.S. capital, company spokesman Michael Perry said.
Mr. Perry said DJI also would update its firmware to disable drone flights across national borders. That later update, he said, is in response to separate news last week that authorities in Tijuana, Mexico, discovered a DJI-made drone that apparently had crashed while attempting to carry drugs into the U.S.
“We want to make sure people are being innovative and creative with the technology, but at the same time we want to make sure people are using it responsibly,” Mr. Perry said. “It’s a tricky balance … but we have to think more comprehensibly about how people are using it.”
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WASHINGTON — As Major League Baseball’s top players took the field at the All-Star Game in Minneapolis in July, a covert radar system scanned the sky above the 40,000-seat stadium for what security experts said was an emerging threat to public safety: drones.
Using finely tuned detection programs brought in by the Department of Homeland Security, “Operation Foul Ball,” as it was known, identified several small, commercial drones flying in the area. Some were similar to the quadcopter that crashed on the White House lawn Monday.
But the drone detection system, which was considered one of the most advanced in the country and cost several hundred thousand dollars to operate for just that night, had no way of actually stopping drones from flying into the stadium. There was even confusion about whether one of the drones belonged to ESPN.
Confronted with the system’s cost and limitations, baseball officials decided not to use it for the postseason. But those officials had no warning before a drone hovered over at least one playoff game.
A drone flew above the scoreboard during a game at Wrigley Field in September in Chicago. Confronted with the cost and limitations of drone detection, Major League Baseball officials concluded that using a detection system again made little sense.
The National Football League will not say what type of system, if any, it will have in place at the Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday, though the Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning this week that anyone flying drones over an N.F.L. game could be “intercepted, detained and interviewed.”
While drones have not been used in a terrorist attack on American soil, thwarting them is increasingly becoming a challenge for law enforcement and security officials who are charged with protecting large-scale events like the Super Bowl and high-profile public buildings like the White House. The officials have warned that the low-flying devices could be modified to carry explosives, chemicals, biological agents, guns or cameras.
This month, an analyst for the National Counterterrorism Center told a gathering of military, law enforcement and public utility officials in Arlington, Va., that extremist interest in “unmanned aircraft systems” had spiked recently. In the past 16 months, he said, the working group for unmanned aircraft systems threats had grown to 65 members from four, according to a participant at the gathering.
“Efforts by terrorists to use drone technology are obviously a concern for N.C.T.C. and the intelligence community,” said a spokesman for the counterterrorism center, who requested anonymity to discuss security matters. “Our focus remains on identifying these threats and supporting those agencies who are responsible for countering them.”
Officials at the White House said that the Secret Service’s air security branch had been working for years to find ways to deter low-flying drones that are too small and fly too low to be tracked by conventional radar, which was designed to pick up missiles and planes.
But Monday morning’s incident suggested that the systems in place around the White House were unable to prevent even a toy drone from flying over the wrought-iron fence.
More details of the incident emerged Thursday. The federal worker who has admitted he was operating the drone was in his apartment, a friend said, flying the drone out the window at 3 a.m., when he lost contact with the device and was helpless as it flew away.
“The whole thing just spiraled out of control when he lost contact,” said the friend, who asked not to be identified because of the legal issues involved. The device was later noticed by a Secret Service officer, but the officer had no way of stopping it before it crashed into a tree on the South Lawn.
Law enforcement officials said the person flying the drone, whom they have not named, did not pose a threat. And they said that most commercially available drones were unable to carry enough explosives to significantly damage the White House.
The vast majority of drones are purchased for nonthreatening, personal use, and businesses are expressing interest in using drones to speed deliveries, produce high-quality videos or improve management of crops.
But officials are not taking the threat lightly. A White House spokesman said Wednesday that the Secret Service was “constantly reviewing emerging technologies.” Law enforcement officials said that the government did not yet have a “silver bullet” that could stop a drone in its tracks.
At the gathering in Arlington this month, intelligence and law enforcement officials showed a widely watched YouTube video of a masked man demonstrating the effectiveness of a hobbyist drone equipped with a paintball gun and a remote trigger. The video showed the drone accurately firing on cutouts of human beings.
A spokesman for DJI, which manufactured the drone that crashed at the White House, said Wednesday that the company took security issues seriously and had issued updates to its software that would use GPS chips in the drones to block their use in much of Washington. The company has issued similar blocks near 2,000 airports worldwide.
“The platform will recognize when it’s a certain distance from those no-fly zones and stop itself,” said Michael Perry, a spokesman for the company.
Mr. Perry said that his company had been in contact with law enforcement about ways to develop protections against the misuse of its drones. But he said that the company would never be able to make sure that people only used the drones responsibly, for conservation efforts, firefighting, search and rescue, sports or recreation.
“Ultimately, it depends on how people choose to use the technology,” Mr. Perry said. “We can create 100 barriers to someone using this technology improperly, and someone will find the 101st way to use it improperly.”
For law enforcement officials, the question is whether they can develop systems that effectively detect, and eventually stop, drones approaching potential targets. Several companies, including DroneShield, advertise commercial systems that can detect and warn about drones.
“Our solution would have been able to warn people before the drone got over the property,” Brian Hearing, a founder of DroneShield, said this week after the White House incident.
The problem with the system that was used at the All-Star Game last summer was that even after a drone was spotted on radar, security officials had to find its operator on the ground before the drone was maneuvered over the stadium.
Jeffrey B. Miller, the chief of security for the N.F.L., said that the league was increasingly finding drones at stadiums and that it had banned them from team properties before the season. In the past year, though, 12 drones have landed around stadiums on game days, he said.
Mr. Miller said the league had adopted protocols for what to do if a drone landed on the field during a game. He said that play would be stopped and law enforcement officers who specialize in explosives would be called to determine whether it posed a threat.
“It’s always been hobbyists or enthusiasts,” he said, “never anyone looking to do harm.”
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http://www.wired.com/2015/02/white-house-drone/
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Some important things to reflect upon in that article.
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http://gizmodo.com/this-spherical-rescue-drone-is-straight-out-of-star-war-1684664519
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http://gizmodo.com/this-spherical-rescue-drone-is-straight-out-of-star-war-1684664519
Well,this is the 21st century...
I see things like this potentially saving a lot of lives.
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http://dailycaller.com/dc_polls/dcpoll2-2-poll-craft/?utm_campaign=DCEmailAcquisition&utm_source=Facebook_CRAFT&utm_medium=2_CNWS_DRNS1a
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http://dailycaller.com/dc_polls/dcpoll2-2-poll-craft/?utm_campaign=DCEmailAcquisition&utm_source=Facebook_CRAFT&utm_medium=2_CNWS_DRNS1a
Same answeras any aircraft.
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a) Other aircraft tend to have people on them;
b) At some point, doesn't the notion of trespassing come into play?
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http://theantimedia.org/new-crowd-control-drones-will-shoot-protesters-with-pepper-spray/
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https://www.facebook.com/veganoutreach/videos/10152858625736508/
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/no8zlkltuct0l5x/Gnat%20Warfare%202-HD%201080p.mov?dl=0
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https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153079439056939/
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http://www.wdrb.com/story/29650818/hillview-man-arrested-for-shooting-down-drone-cites-right-to-privacy
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Hillview man arrested for shooting down drone; cites right to privacy
Posted: Jul 28, 2015 9:38 AM PST Updated: Jul 29, 2015 6:22 AM PST
By Ryan Cummings
Connect
William Merideth (Source: Bullitt County Detention Center) William Merideth (Source: Bullitt County Detention Center)
William Merideth explains what happened the day he shot down a drone flying over his property. William Merideth explains what happened the day he shot down a drone flying over his property.
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Hillview man has been arrested after he shot down a drone flying over his property -- but he's not making any apologies for it.
It happened Sunday night at a home on Earlywood Way, just south of the intersection between Smith Lane and Mud Lane in Bullitt County, according to an arrest report.
Hillview Police say they were called to the home of 47-year-old William H. Merideth after someone complained about a firearm.
When they arrived, police say Merideth told them he had shot down a drone that was flying over his house. The drone was hit in mid-air and crashed in a field near Merideth's home.
Police say the owner of the drone claimed he was flying it to get pictures of a friend's house -- and that the cost of the drone was over $1,800.
Merideth was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment. He was booked into the Bullitt County Detention Center, and released on Monday.
WDRB News spoke with Merideth Tuesday afternoon, and he gave his side of the story.
"Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard," Merideth said. "And they come in and said, 'Dad, there’s a drone out here, flying over everybody’s yard.'"
Merideth's neighbors saw it too.
"It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off," said neighbor Kim VanMeter.
VanMeter has a 16-year-old daughter who lays out at their pool. She says a drone hovering with a camera is creepy and weird.
"I just think you should have privacy in your own backyard," she said.
Merideth agrees and said he had to go see for himself.
“Well, I came out and it was down by the neighbor’s house, about 10 feet off the ground, looking under their canopy that they’ve got under their back yard," Merideth said. "I went and got my shotgun and I said, ‘I’m not going to do anything unless it’s directly over my property.’"
That moment soon arrived, he said.
"Within a minute or so, here it came," he said. "It was hovering over top of my property, and I shot it out of the sky."
"I didn't shoot across the road, I didn't shoot across my neighbor's fences, I shot directly into the air," he added.
It wasn't long before the drone's owners appeared.
"Four guys came over to confront me about it, and I happened to be armed, so that changed their minds," Merideth said.
"They asked me, 'Are you the S-O-B that shot my drone?' and I said, 'Yes I am,'" he said. "I had my 40mm Glock on me and they started toward me and I told them, 'If you cross my sidewalk, there's gonna be another shooting.'"
A short time later, Merideth said the police arrived.
"There were some words exchanged there about my weapon, and I was open carry – it was completely legal," he said. "Long story short, after that, they took me to jail for wanton endangerment first degree and criminal mischief...because I fired the shotgun into the air."
Merideth said he was disappointed with the police response.
"They didn’t confiscate the drone. They gave the drone back to the individuals," he said. "They didn’t take the SIM card out of it…but we’ve got…five houses here that everyone saw it – they saw what happened, including the neighbors that were sitting in their patio when he flew down low enough to see under the patio."
Hillview Police detective Charles McWhirter of says you can't fire your gun in the city.
"Well, we do have a city ordinance against discharging firearms in the city, but the officer made an arrest for a Kentucky Revised Statute violation," he said.
According to the Academy of Model Aeronautics safety code, unmanned aircraft like drones may not be flown in a careless or reckless manner and has to be launched at least 100 feet downwind of spectators.
The FAA says drones cannot fly over buildings -- and that shooting them poses a significant safety hazard.
"An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air," said FAA spokesman Les Dorr.
Merideth said he's offering no apologies for what he did.
"He didn’t just fly over," he said. "If he had been moving and just kept moving, that would have been one thing -- but when he come directly over our heads, and just hovered there, I felt like I had the right."
"You know, when you’re in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy," he said. "We don't know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing."
For now, Merideth says he's planning on pursuing legal action against the owners of the drone.
"We’re not going to let it go," he said. "I believe there are rules that need to be put into place and the situation needs to be addressed because everyone I’ve spoke to, including police, have said they would have done the same thing."
"Because our rights are being trampled daily," he said. "Not on a local level only - but on a state and federal level. We need to have some laws in place to handle these kind of things."
Copyright 2015 WDRB News. All rights reserved.
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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/kentucky-man-shoots-down-drone-hovering-over-his-backyard/ar-AAdGg2x
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/10/this-fisherman-seemed-to-get-fed-up-with-a-drone-buzzing-around-a-pier-so-watch-how-he-decided-to-handle-it/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Firewire_Morning_Test&utm_campaign=Firewire%20Morning%20Edition%20Recurring%20v2%202015-08-11
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http://www.nbcnews.com/video/boeings-laser-gun-shoots-down-drone-515266115812
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/09/06/heres-the-video-irans-revolutionary-guard-took-while-tracking-a-u-s-aircraft-carrier/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20-%20HORIZON%209-6-15%20Build-SUN&utm_term=Firewire
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyuONwUKHQ
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a17802/cyber-capability-rifle-ausa-2015-demo/
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http://therundownlive.com/judge-rules-in-favor-of-man-who-shot-down-drone-for-spying-on-daughter-while-sun-tanning/
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How do you control Autonomous Weapons?
Posted: 13 Nov 2015 03:38 PM PST
How do you control an autonomous system?
This isn't an academic question. Some organizations already employ truly autonomous systems and these systems are getting very good very quickly.
Since these systems are already in use, I think this question is about as important as it gets.
Unfortunately, these systems are so new, very few people are working on the answer to this question. Worse, this question is devilishly hard to answer, because a truly autonomous system...
will solve problems that only human beings can currently solve.
will write its own "code" and build its own models for solving problems and making decisions.
will continuously learn/change/improve its code and its models as it gains experience.
Here's my early thinking on this.
You can't control these systems using the methods we built for controlling the human built software and machines we already have. If you attempt to control autonomous systems in the same way you control automation, you will fail (and fail badly).
A new method of command and control is needed. Here are some ideas for how to pull this off:
Human beings must be paired with these systems. These people must act as coaches, trainers, teachers to these systems. They must take responsibility for failures in their training.
These systems must be continually certified for use in way (largely qualitative vs. quantitative) that are similar to how we certify human beings. Put them through a series of real world exercises. If they can handle them and explain why they made the decisions they made (optimally, using natural language), they are certified for use.
We need to develop and deploy something I'm calling BIG SIM. This is a compliment to the BIG DATA that's used to bootstrap these systems to minimum capability. BIG SIM provides a massive real world sandbox that will allow autonomous systems to undergo extensive training and testing to suss out problems. BIG SIM can be completely virtual. It can also be accomplished through decentralized real-world testing as we are seeing with Tesla's crowdsourced "autopilot" or via a corporate solution like Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Sincerely,
John Robb
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Ultimately, we won't.
How do you control Autonomous Weapons?
Posted: 13 Nov 2015 03:38 PM PST
How do you control an autonomous system?
This isn't an academic question. Some organizations already employ truly autonomous systems and these systems are getting very good very quickly.
Since these systems are already in use, I think this question is about as important as it gets.
Unfortunately, these systems are so new, very few people are working on the answer to this question. Worse, this question is devilishly hard to answer, because a truly autonomous system...
will solve problems that only human beings can currently solve.
will write its own "code" and build its own models for solving problems and making decisions.
will continuously learn/change/improve its code and its models as it gains experience.
Here's my early thinking on this.
You can't control these systems using the methods we built for controlling the human built software and machines we already have. If you attempt to control autonomous systems in the same way you control automation, you will fail (and fail badly).
A new method of command and control is needed. Here are some ideas for how to pull this off:
Human beings must be paired with these systems. These people must act as coaches, trainers, teachers to these systems. They must take responsibility for failures in their training.
These systems must be continually certified for use in way (largely qualitative vs. quantitative) that are similar to how we certify human beings. Put them through a series of real world exercises. If they can handle them and explain why they made the decisions they made (optimally, using natural language), they are certified for use.
We need to develop and deploy something I'm calling BIG SIM. This is a compliment to the BIG DATA that's used to bootstrap these systems to minimum capability. BIG SIM provides a massive real world sandbox that will allow autonomous systems to undergo extensive training and testing to suss out problems. BIG SIM can be completely virtual. It can also be accomplished through decentralized real-world testing as we are seeing with Tesla's crowdsourced "autopilot" or via a corporate solution like Amazon's Mechanical Turk.
Sincerely,
John Robb
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Forecast
As infrastructure becomes more congested over the next decade, unmanned aerial systems will be increasingly used to manage supply chains.
This transition will occur in stages as regulations adapt to technology and technology adapts to regulation, making it unlikely that much-anticipated home deliveries will be among drones' first commercial uses.
Automated and unmanned aerial delivery systems will face congestion and chokepoint problems of their own, mostly caused by regulation rather than physical infrastructure.
Analysis
Moving goods from one place to another isn't always as simple as it sounds. Intricate supply chains are often needed to coordinate transit across different countries, incorporating various modes of transportation. Every so often, new technologies come along that revolutionize how we send goods to other places. In the 20th century, it was the advent of container shipping; in the 21st century, it was the rise of a global marketplace made possible by the Internet, which changed shopping behaviors in the developed world and increased the demand for rapid delivery.
Now, as existing infrastructure struggles to keep up with the rising congestion that comes with growing demand, new technological developments are on the horizon that could help relieve some of that burden and improve the efficiency of global supply chains. Within the next five years, drones could become widely used to help transport goods. But rapid advancement and keen industry interest aside, the realities of regulation and technological constraints will limit the role of drones in delivering goods to customers in the United States, at least in the short term.
Overcoming Regulatory Hurdles
In 2012 the U.S. Congress instructed the Secretary of Transportation to "establish requirements for the safe operation of [unmanned] aircraft systems in the national airspace system." Three years later, the Federal Aviation Administration responded by releasing its proposed rules of operation. The 195-page document, published in February, contained both laudable and questionable stipulations, but one overarching concern received the most attention: safety.
For any new airspace regulation, the FAA is required to consider three criteria: the safety of the aircraft, the efficient use of airspace and the protection of people and property on the ground. Based on the proposed regulations, FAA officials are going to great lengths to ensure drones can operate safely around other aircraft and people, even when pilots are far away. The new rules, if passed, would require operators to keep drones within their line of sight throughout the entire flight. (The regulations likely will not be finalized until late 2016 or early 2017 because of a lengthy commenting and revisions process.)
Both the U.S. airspace system and the Federal Aviation Administration that oversees it were built on the assumption that pilots control aircraft from onboard. The line-of-sight requirement reflects the FAA's long-standing rules on determining right-of-way in the air, which mandate that operators stay vigilant "so as to see and avoid other aircraft." In modern manned aircraft, cockpit and control tower technologies have advanced enough to enable planes to stay separated and avoid hazards without needing the pilot to maintain visual continuity. The development of technologies that provide an equal level of safety assurance, be they autonomous piloting, networked control or other advances, will be critical to making drone flight feasible in congested urban areas.
A Gradual Development Process
Since its February announcement, the FAA has been working with industry partners to test technologies that could satisfactorily overcome the discrepancies between current regulations and drones' potential uses. To this end, six test sites have been set up across the United States, where certain companies can look for ways to address safety concerns under three specific use scenarios in a controlled environment. Those scenarios are maintaining line of sight in urban areas where bystanders are present; operating in rural areas where observers extend the operator's "sight"; and operating in isolated areas beyond the operator's line of sight. In May, the tests led to the first FAA-approved drone delivery when a medical clinic in rural Virginia received much-needed supplies from an unmanned aircraft. And just this week, companies conducted the first approved long-distance drone flight in the United States and began testing a new avoidance system technology that will help operators "see and avoid" obstacles even when the aircraft are far out of their visual range.
Alongside these trials are, of course, the widely publicized tests that private sector behemoths such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Google are performing. Amazon is primarily focusing on developing technology to guarantee safe and quick home deliveries as well as the battery capacity to make such devices feasible. Wal-Mart is also hoping to someday use drones to make home deliveries, but for now the retail giant is trying to figure out how to use unmanned technology to manage inventory at distribution centers and deliver goods from warehouses to stores. Google, meanwhile, has been working with NASA engineers to create an autonomous air traffic control system for drones while tackling — no surprise — the problem of unmanned home deliveries. All three of these companies have the ambitious timeline of bringing their drones into commercial operations by 2017.
The outcome of the various tests will determine how and where the first generation of commercial drones is used in the United States. So far, it appears very likely that drones will improve efficiency in warehouse operations in the near future. Deliveries in rural areas, especially to set locations such as warehouses, stores or lockers, also seem to be a real possibility. While these uses would not increase speed or efficiency in the final stages of delivery — bringing goods directly to people's front doors — they would improve other phases of the supply chain. In addition, they would give companies a controlled environment in which they could test even more advanced delivery systems.
Still, none of the trials have managed to simultaneously address the problems of bystander safety and maintaining line of sight — both of which are concerns in urban environments. Therefore, it is unlikely that urban deliveries will be among the first tasks of commercial drones. Instead, companies will first use drones to make warehouse and stockyard operations run more smoothly and then turn their attention toward rural deliveries. Urban operations will probably have to wait until the second or third phase of development.
Even when drones begin operating regularly in urban environments, a number of problems will confront the U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle network. The United States has the busiest and most complex airspace in the world, meaning congestion will still be a problem. The introduction of thousands of new airborne vehicles will put further stress on an air traffic control network that is already spread too thin and a national airspace system that is already at or over capacity in many places. Transportation and supply chain technologies allow countries to overcome their geographic constraints; in this, drones are no exception. But like their predecessors, unmanned aerial vehicles will not come without their own limitations, nor will the transition be seamless.
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http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/12/drone-strikes-are-creating-hatred-towards-america-will-last-generations/124327/?oref=d-river
From the article:
"... in the wake of the ISIL-linked terrorist attacks in Paris, four whistleblowers in the United States Air Force wrote an open letter to the Obama Administration calling for an end to drone strikes. The authors, all of whom had operational experience with drone strikes, wrote that such attacks 'fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like Isis, while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool.' They say that the killing of innocent civilians by American drones is one of most 'devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.'"
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So, the obvious question is presented:
What then to do instead about the Jihadis who are the target of the strikes? I'm guessing invading again would be even less popular , , ,
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Great to see Bigdog stop in! Some thoughts on this:
They are whistleblowers in terms of protection for criticizing policy, but it sound to me like they are 4 people entitled to an opinion. Having operational experience in the drone program would not necessarily make them knowledgeable on motivation for terror and joining ISIS. That said, that viewpoint seems valid.
Bombing from an unmanned aerial vehicle, to the bombed, is quite similar to bombed by a pilot bombing mission. Yes I can see the difference in perception. It appears cowardly that we want to protect our own loss of life, but that is a worthy interest IMOttt.
Our rules of engagement and other circumstances cause most of these bombing missions to not drop strike any targets. I think we go to great lengths to protect civilian loss of life, in the context that this is war that they declared on us.
ISIS and al Qaida leaders and terrorists kill in war and then hide among these civilians. Which side is endangering the civilians? Them. WHo gets blamed? Us. Israel knows how this works.
One alternative is not attack and then wait for them to end their grievance against us. Efficacy aside, we can measure the political power of that in Rand Paul's candidacy. Even Bernie says attack and destroy them. I doubt he would but that is beside the point.
The worst part is that we seem to be faking a war effort with our drone strikes. By having a half effort going to defeat them, they are surviving it and able to use it as said, to generate more enthusiasm for their effort. What we did in other war efforts was probably far more brutal, but it was part of a commitment to winning and therefore it had an ending to it.
On the political side, the newly elected Nobel winning President seemed unlikely to continue the drone strikes, yet he did. Some of us wondered what the outrage would have been had that been a Republican Commander in chief the last 7 years. Now it seems that Obama used this method of limited warfare for his entire term only to get it banned before we really try to defeat this enemy.
To Crafty's question: Obviously there is a ground component necessary to win when the free world decides to get serious. I believe there is a great urgency as they are literally breeding terrorists in their rape and pillage warfare. This reported effect strengthens the argument to act urgently and decisively, in my view.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/technology/a-silicon-valley-for-drones-in-north-dakota.html?emc=edit_th_20151226&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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https://www.facebook.com/verge/videos/1022225121147164/
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http://discover.economist.com/?a=21650071&cid1=d/soc/Facebook/dyn/21650071/20151222-00:00am/paid/social-LA/BR-TE/BRPII/n/subs/US/BR-LIT&cid3=UM
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https://www.minds.com/blog/view/538487741193658368?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb&utm_campaign=marchagainstmonsanto
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https://www.facebook.com/GlobalNews/videos/962560870458345/
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https://player.vimeo.com/video/107995891" style="color:purple;text-decoration:underline" href="https://player.vimeo.com/video/107995891" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" data-mce-href="https://player.vimeo.com/video/107995891" data-mce-style="color: purple; text-decoration: underline;">https://player.vimeo.com/video/107995891
Beautiful, but OTOH it looks like we are headed for a world where one can be on camera everywhere all the time.
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/09/pentagon-admits-has-deployed-military-spy-drones-over-us/81474702/
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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/09/pentagon-admits-has-deployed-military-spy-drones-over-us/81474702/
Life in the era of hope and change.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/defense/274293-playing-the-drone-playbook
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http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/WATCH-IAIs-answer-to-ebemy-drones-456226
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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/dallas-police-used-robot-bomb-kill-ambush-suspect-mayor-n605896
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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/dallas-police-used-robot-bomb-kill-ambush-suspect-mayor-n605896
First time using an explosive device, but I believe that bots armed with firearms have been used before, though I can't cite a case off the top of my head.
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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/dallas-police-ambush/dallas-police-used-robot-bomb-kill-ambush-suspect-mayor-n605896
First time using an explosive device, but I believe that bots armed with firearms have been used before, though I can't cite a case off the top of my head.
I think you're right.
It just occurred to me as to how bad people will defend against bots and explosives.... it's actually pretty simple.
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http://www.investigativeproject.org/5563/hizballah-uses-attack-drone-as-offensive
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http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/my-droneski-just-ate-your-ethics/
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:-o :-o :-o
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/65-year-old-woman-takes-out-drone-over-her-virginia-property-with-one-shot/
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The FAA vs. the Future
Posted: 30 Aug 2016 08:07 AM PDT
The new FAA rules (part 107) for the commercial use of drones are now in force.. Let me summarize them for you in a single picture:
The FAA rules (needed) are not only years late, they contain a major flaw.
It's a flaw so large, it's similar to regulating cars with the rules used for horse drawn carriages. You can see this flaw in the rules they are proposing:
Visual line-of-sight (VLOS) only; the unmanned aircraft must remain within VLOS of the remote pilot in command and the person manipulating the flight controls of the small UAS.
A person operating a small UAS must either hold a remote pilot airman certificate with a small UAS rating or be under the direct supervision of a person who does hold a remote pilot certificate (remote pilot in command).
No person may act as a remote pilot in command or VO for more than one unmanned aircraft operation at one time.
See the flaw yet?
The flaw is that the FAA's commercial drones require a pilot at the controls. A pilot!
Really?
The fact is, as a professional pilot, I can tell you categorically that drones don't need a pilot. Not inside the aircraft or on the ground with a controller. They can fly on their own.
You can see this in how they developed. Drones only became a disruptive technology the moment that low cost computer chips exceeded the intellectual capacity of insects in 2011. They didn't become disruptive due improvements in the batteries, motors, and materials used to build them. These new chips make drones smart enough to do everything insects (flies, bees, etc.) do. That means they don't need pilots to:
Stabilize themselves.
Take-off, land, and navigate.
Accomplish complex mission tasks.
As you can see, drones only become truly disruptive when they don't have pilots at all. Yet, the FAA is regulating them in a way that forces drones to have pilots.
Let me put this in terms of work. Drones without pilots make the following things possible (none of which are possible with pilots at the controls):
Tireless. Accomplish tasks 24x7x365.
Scalable. Billions of drones can be used at the same time.
Costless. The cost per minute for drone services would drop to almost nothing.
If these capabilities are unleashed, it's possible to do for drones what the Web/Internet did for networking.
What is needed is a ruleset that makes Dronenet possible, not a system designed for commercial dilettantes.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-dakota-becomes-first-us-state-to-legalise-use-of-armed-drones-by-police-10492397.html
One thing I found troubling, "However, the state's police union amended the Bill, limiting the ban to only lethal weapons..."
Since when do police unions have the power to legislate? That's news to me.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-dakota-becomes-first-us-state-to-legalise-use-of-armed-drones-by-police-10492397.html
One thing I found troubling, "However, the state's police union amended the Bill, limiting the ban to only lethal weapons..."
Since when do police unions have the power to legislate? That's news to me.
Probably poorly written. It probably means that the police union lobbied to have the bill amended, and was successful.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-dakota-becomes-first-us-state-to-legalise-use-of-armed-drones-by-police-10492397.html
One thing I found troubling, "However, the state's police union amended the Bill, limiting the ban to only lethal weapons..."
Since when do police unions have the power to legislate? That's news to me.
Probably poorly written. It probably means that the police union lobbied to have the bill amended, and was successful.
I think you're correct in terms of the bill. It still sets a precedent. The part that I take issue with, is Clinton (or anyone that doesn't believe in freedom), having access to better equipment, that is "too" effective... myself for example. I'm kind of a totalitarian guy, and if I was ruler, you can bet, I would be heavy handed, no two ways about it.
There is an almost virtual absence of any of the big five 1%er clubs here in Mexico, or any other international crime organizations, other than people that are native to Mexico. Why? We have tons of drugs, heroin, meth, marijuana; yet, they won't step foot here. They won't even come and visit. It's because law enforcement here (combined with the cartels' brutality), isn't what it is in other places. We are militarized, and in fact, work directly with the military on patrol, using the same weapons, because it's effective, but brutal.
I don't think it is in the interest of freedom to just open the gates on something, because it works. Freedom and human rights, and anyone interested in them, get lost permanently. I believe the use of drones, both as stated in the article, and the use of the bot in Texas, are the wrong way to go if you believe in freedom, and we've known each other here for years you and I. You already know what I think of BLM trash. I'd have them hung in the streets. It does bring an interesting point though... where do we draw the line between effective law enforcement, and freedom?
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Cognitive Dominance
Posted: 26 Aug 2016 08:46 AM PDT
I'll get some down and dirty insurgent thinking up tomorrow.
In the meantime, here's some of my thinking on a strategic concept that could direct the development of autonomous robotics. It's called cognitive dominance.
Cognitive dominance is the ability to make more and better decisions than the competition through the use of autonomous robotics. This scenario, written in pentagon speak, applies some of the ideas I outlined earlier.
_______
The war started when a peer competitor’s African client state invaded a weaker neighbor. The peer competitor had been investing heavily in this client state over the last decade in order to gain exclusive access to a massive tract of increasingly rare, arable land. To expand this precious resource, the client state (with the peer competitor’s backing) invaded a neighboring country to seize its arable acreage. This aggression created a massive humanitarian crisis, sending tens of millions of refugees north towards the safety of the European Union. The global response to this aggression was immediate and clear, but the demands to withdraw went unheeded.
To overcome this impasse, the US issued a stern call to the client state to withdraw and to back it up, US military forces were sent to to the region. This move prompted the peer competitor to decry US intervention in the “internal affairs” of Africa and that US forces would not be permitted within 1,000 nautical miles of the affected region. To back this declaration up, the peer activated a massive A2/AD defense system it had been building in the client state over the last decade. With this move, the situation became a direct threat to US and global security. Simply, if this provocation was allowed to stand, Africa and much of the rest of the world would be quickly divided into areas of control, defined by the effective range of A2/AD systems. To prevent this outcome, a combined US led Joint Task Force was assembled to remove the peer competitor’s A2/AD system from the region and force the client state to return to it’s pre-war borders.
This was the first major war since rapid advances in RAS inspired a revolution in military affairs transformed the US military. The fruits of this transformation were seen in the first days of the war when the Joint Force opened up its first front in the war with RAS platforms and weapons systems already inside inside the opponent’s territory and formations. In fact, much of this mix of cyber and robotic weapon systems had already penetrated the opponent years ago. These cyber side weapons had been built to slowly traverse the Internet on their own looking for target systems to disable when hostilities began. On the robotic side, there were long term underwater vehicles screwed in the sandy muck of the client state’s harbor, a critical pathway for the peer competitors long supply chain. Other robotic weapons systems were entrenched in the landscape in and around the peer’s installations.
These prepositioned systems had been gathering detailed information on the peer country’s order of battle in the client state for many years. In fact, some of these prepositioned systems were cognitively adept enough to actively retrieve [and analyze on the spot] the detailed information most needed by the Joint Force Commander. This information provided a critical part of the “big data” in the Joint Cloud that Joint Force autonomous systems used to construct detailed physical, organizational, and systemic models of the opponent. These models made it possible for the Joint Task Force commander to run the millions of simulated engagements needed to develop successful methods of attack and uncover the nasty surprises that could put the mission in jeopardy.
Based on this earlier work, the first major assault of the war was designed to stress the peer’s A2/AD system in order to gather intelligence on its operation, deplete its resources, and [if possible] reinforce the Joint Force’s prepositioned forces with new capabilities. The assault was composed of RAS swarms of smart air, land and sea platforms set to a high degree of variable autonomy. Given the risk of the mission, the human teams teamed with the swarms were stationed beyond the edge of the battle area. The RAS swarms were trained to deceive, jam, and confuse the active sensor network, on land and in space, the opposition’s defense systems relied upon for strike guidance. This worked. The defense system was lit up like a Christmas tree and fired multiple salvos of hypersonic missiles at the Joint Force assault. However, when these missiles reentered, they were unable to find the ships and aircraft they were expected to destroy. The second wave sent by the defense system was composed of thousands of low cost RAS platforms packed to the brim with lightning fast PGMs. The RAS platforms, manufactured in large volume over the last two decades, were expected to close on targets and overwhelm them with superior mass.
As these forces closed, it became clear that this wasn’t going to be a fair fight. The Joint Force personnel at the edge of the effective battlespace were not surprised to see that the cloud-based training system they used to train their RAS swarms up until the last few days had successfully exploited the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the peer’s A2/AD system. These swarms were able to systematically confuse, jam, outmaneuver, evade, and destroy the much more numerous RAS platforms of the opponent due to the far superior situational awareness, adaptability, and training of the traditionally developed systems deployed against them. The swarms that did make it through did run into a surprise when the anti-air mobile laser used RAS based cognitive capabilities to knock out a dozen Joint Force drones before it was taken out of action. Fortunately, the peer’s employment of RAS platforms that were cognitively dangerous, was limited to this this mobile laser. This allowed the surviving drones to successfully reinforce the prepositioned assets before departing for recovery.
One the second day, the Joint Force Commander decided, based on the high degree of success so far, to accelerate the battle plan and takedown the entire A2/AD system without delay. The takedown assault began with an attack by hypersonic MIRVed missiles launched by F-35s in the north and converted Aegis cruisers at the edge of the peer’s defensive envelope. These missiles released mesh networked MIRVs with the cognitive capability to rapidly evaluate their local situation and adopt the appropriate tactics during the handful of seconds available in the reentry phase. To their credit, the MIRVs worked as expected, and they were able to take out the mobile RAS lasers that had been so problematic the day before. Simultaneous with this, the forward deployed RAS forces sprang into action. Cyber weapons forced the systems they had penetrated into critical collapse and the RAS UUVs in client state’s harbor blew up two peer munitions transports, crippling resupply efforts. In few short hours, the entire defense grid, with tens of thousands of PGMs still unused, was down and Air Force and Navy continuous monitoring by flights of man/machine teams went into action to ensure it stayed dark.
The moment the grid went down, the third and final phase of the operation was launched. This phase leveraged the automation of the US military’s logistics system to rapidly stage a ground assault force to secure the area. Largely automated, this system was able to move men and material at and construct forward bases at an unprecedented pace. It was so fast, in fact, the Army and the Marines were ready to stage their assaults within a few weeks of the success over the defense grid. The men on the assault teams were armed with RAS weapons and able to find, identify, track, and engage multiple threats simultaneously. They were teamed with RAS attack dogs and RAS mules serving as the support base for the swarm of RAS drones constantly gathering information for the team.
The Army teams moving overland and Marine teams arriving by amphibious assault [in and around the harbor] traveled rapidly within self-driving RAS vehicles. Since these vehicles, and the drones above them, were all using decentralized movement protocols, thousands of robotics vehicles were able to maintain high speed forward advance without congestion. Mesh networks connected these ground assault teams with the reinforced prepositioned forces, the combat overwatch above, and each other. The ground assault’s RAS driven vehicles rapidly converged on the defended points identified by the prepositioned forces. Despite some hard fought engagement and a few attempted ambushes, the ground assault was over quickly. It was later determined that that due to the rapidity of the assaults, the peer competitor was completely unprepared for a ground assault.
Cognitive dominance achieved, the Joint Force Commander accepted the surrender of the enemy commander.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/eagles-snatch-hostile-drones-sky-125833672.html
http://www.livescience.com/56106-dutch-police-anti-drone-eagles-video.html
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http://www.easyreadernews.com/135574/redondo-beach-drone-ordinance/?utm_source=Daily+News&utm_campaign=b423
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http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/09/25/naked-mike-rowe-pulls-shotgun-on-drone-filming-his-bedroom/
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https://warisboring.com/piloting-drones-is-the-worst-job-in-the-military-8492289d8b8d#.sidbnbdsd
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Konrad Lorenz was very eloquent about how technology that enables killing from a distance makes it hard for the victor from seeing the defeated as real and by so doing enabled bypassing limiting behaviors.
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Konrad Lorenz was very eloquent about how technology that enables killing from a distance makes it hard for the victor from seeing the defeated as real and by so doing enabled bypassing limiting behaviors.
I'm cool with that.
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:lol:javascript:void(0);
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I would note that if one were to examine the historical record of genocides, humans are pretty good at overcome limiting factors of violent behavior.
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Indeed. Lorenz was quite clear on the limitations of the mechanisms in this regard.
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http://www.timesofisrael.com/gunfire-rattles-tehran-as-drone-buzzes-over-iranian-capital/
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-freight-its-just-truck-drivers-whose-jobs-risk-john-mcdermott
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https://www.funker530.com/abrams-tank-commander/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X27-2WDIZR0
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I had the chance this weekend to test drive the latest Tesla in 'self drive' mode. I'm not for self drive cars but the technology is amazing. Obviously, jumbo jets have this mode too. Connecting precise navigation with precise instrumentation and precise controls makes all kinds of things possible, like landing a plane at the point along a circular runway where wind direction and other factors are optimized.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39643292
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https://www.lawfareblog.com/chinas-employment-unmanned-systems-across-spectrum-peacetime-wartime
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Big implications!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddilMX3nvx8&feature=youtu.be
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https://www.fastcompany.com/3069048/where-are-military-robots-headed
From the article:
Future generations of military robots will almost certainly operate with more autonomy than comparable machines today—but will they be able to make life-or-death decisions?
“I can’t imagine a case where you’d want a robot to be autonomously making decisions about harming people,” says Endeavor’s Bielat.
But others are imagining that very thing and sounding the alarm, including the Vatican.
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https://www.fastcompany.com/3069048/where-are-military-robots-headed
From the article:
Future generations of military robots will almost certainly operate with more autonomy than comparable machines today—but will they be able to make life-or-death decisions?
“I can’t imagine a case where you’d want a robot to be autonomously making decisions about harming people,” says Endeavor’s Bielat.
But others are imagining that very thing and sounding the alarm, including the Vatican.
We may want to keep a human finger on the trigger, but then we operate at a disadvantage to nation states that don't. Will China or Russia be so restrained?
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WE NEED EMP RAY GUNS!!!
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second post
http://www.dronecommandlive.com/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fbad&utm_term=new&utm_content=fbad&utm_campaign=dclevent
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https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/07/stabilized-drone-with-machine-gun-and-grenade-launcher.html
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Robotic Systems Disruption in Practice
Posted: 23 Jul 2017 11:01 AM PDT
The Ukrainian SBU now believes that the destruction of arms depot at Balakliya in March that did a billion dollars in damage was carried out by a small drone armed with a thermite grenade. That's an ROI (Return on Investment) of $500,000 for every $1 invested (not bad relative to earlier comparatives).
This is a spot on demonstration of what I wrote back in February of 2016. Here's a recap of what I wrote in that article:
From a mechanical perspective, consumer drones aren't that impressive:
~1-2 pound payload
~20 min flight time
20-40 miles per hour flight speed
However, these drones are smart and the smarter the drone is, the better it can mimic the performance of the much more expensive precision guided munition (PGM). For example:
Drones can fly themselves. They can take-off, fly enroute, and land autonomously.
Drones can precisely navigate a course based on the GPS waypoints you designate.
Drones can now (a recent development) use digital cameras to find, track, and follow objects. Some can even land on objects they find based on a description of that object.
Even this basic capability is more than enough to turn a basic drone into an extremely dangerous first strike weapon against fragile/explosive targets. Here's a scenario that pits ten drones against a major airport:
1. Ten drones would take off autonomously in 1 minute intervals.
2. Each would follow a GPS flightpath to a preselected portion of an airport.
3. Upon arrival, a digital camera would identify the nearest wing of an aircraft.
4. The drone would land itself in the middle of that wing.
5. A pound of thermite in the payload would ignite upon landing.
6. The thermite would burn through the wing, igniting the fuel inside...
7. Most of the airport and nearly all of the planes on the tarmac are destroyed.
Here are the takeaways:
Even the simple robotic platforms of today can be extremely effective as weapons. At current rates of improvement in machine intelligence, the situation will get much more interesting very, very soon.
It's possible to creatively trade inexpensive machine smarts for expensive mechanical performance.
We need to figure this out before the bad guys do. However, truly figuring this out requires a deep insight into the dynamics driving this forward.
Sincerely,
John Robb
PS: The Balakliya follows five earlier attacks on warehouses and even this facility since December 2016 using the same technique. They are getting better.
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http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a27511/russia-drone-thermite-grenade-ukraine-ammo/
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Bold Eagles: Angry Birds Are Ripping $80,000 Drones Out of the Sky
Australia’s wedge-tailed eagle uses sharp talons, crack aerial combat skills to attack and destroy pricey flying machines
Daniel Parfitt’s crashed $80,000 drone after an attack by a wedge-tailed eagle.
By Mike Cherney
Sept. 29, 2017 12:10 p.m. ET
Daniel Parfitt thought he’d found the perfect drone for a two-day mapping job in a remote patch of the Australian Outback. The roughly $80,000 machine had a wingspan of 7 feet and resembled a stealth bomber.
There was just one problem. His machine raised the hackles of one prominent local resident: a wedge-tailed eagle.
Swooping down from above, the eagle used its talons to punch a hole in the carbon fiber and Kevlar fuselage of Mr. Parfitt’s drone, which lost control and plummeted to the ground.
“I had 15 minutes to go on my last flight on my last day, and one of these wedge-tailed eagles just dive-bombed the drone and punched it out of the sky,” said Mr. Parfitt, who believed the drone was too big for a bird to damage. “It ended up being a pile of splinters.”
Weighing up to nine pounds with a wingspan that can approach eight feet, the wedge-tailed eagle is Australia’s largest bird of prey. Once vilified for killing sheep and targeted by bounty hunters, it is now legally protected. Though a subspecies is still endangered in Tasmania, it is again dominating the skies across much of the continent.
These highly territorial raptors, which eat kangaroos, have no interest in yielding their apex-predator status to the increasing number of drones flying around the bush. They’ve even been known to harass the occasional human in a hang glider.
Birds all over the world have attacked drones, but the wedge-tailed eagle is particularly eager to engage in dogfights, operators say. Some try to evade these avian enemies by sending their drones into loops or steep climbs, or just mashing the throttle to outrun them.
A long-term solution remains up in the air. Camouflage techniques, like putting fake eyes on the drones, don’t appear to be fully effective, and some pilots have even considered arming drones with pepper spray or noise devices to ward off eagles.
They are the “ultimate angry birds,” said James Rennie, who started a drone-mapping and inspection business in Melbourne called Australian UAV. He figures that 20% of drone flights in rural areas get attacked by the eagles. On one occasion, he was forced to evade nine birds all gunning for his machine.
The birds are considered bigger bullies than their more-docile relatives, such as the bald and golden eagles in the U.S. Wedge-tailed eagles are the undisputed alpha birds in parts of Australia’s interior but it’s not entirely clear why they’re so unusually aggressive towards drones. Scientists say they go after drones probably because they view them as potential prey or a new competitor.
“They’re really the kings of the air in Australia,” said Todd Katzner, a biologist and eagle expert at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho. “There’s nothing out there that can compete with them.”
The problem is growing more acute as Australia makes a push to become a hot spot for drones. One state, Queensland, recently hosted the “World of Drones Congress” and last year gave about $780,000 to Boeing Co. for drone testing. Amazon.com is expanding in Australia and could try using drones for deliveries, and the machines are increasingly favored by big landowners such as miners and cattle ranchers.
The eagles will often attack in male-female pairs, and they aren’t always deterred if their first foray fails. Sometimes they will come from behind, attack in tandem from above, or even stagger their assault. A drone operator may evade one diving eagle with an upward climb, but the second eagle can then snatch it, Mr. Rennie said.
“If you take your eye off that aircraft even for a couple of minutes, the likelihood is it will end up in pieces on the ground,” he said.
In late 2015, Andrew Chapman, a co-owner at Australian UAV, was mapping a quarry and landfill site near Melbourne, and figured it was close enough to the city that an eagle attack was unlikely. But when the drone was about half a mile away, an eagle “materialized out of thin air and knocked out the drone,” Mr. Chapman said. He spent two days looking for the machine, worth about $35,000 at today’s retail price, and had to ship it to the manufacturer in Switzerland for repairs.
More exotic defenses have been considered. Mr. Chapman said arming drones with pepper spray was discussed but quickly discarded, out of concern it could harm the birds.
“It’s a relief to be planning for jobs overseas because we know the wedgies aren’t there,” said Mr. Chapman, using the local nickname for the bird.
Rick Steven, a survey superintendent at the St. Ives gold mine in Western Australia, who uses drones to survey the pits, debated using something like a ShuRoo—a device mounted on cars that makes noise, which humans can’t hear, to keep kangaroos off the road. But he was concerned it would be cumbersome on the drone and may not ward off eagles anyway.
A YouTube video of an eagle knocking a drone out of the sky.
Instead, Mr. Steven and other drone operators make use of another weapon: time. The eagles are less active in the early morning, because the thermals—columns of rising air—they use to fly don’t develop until later in the day after the sun has warmed the ground.
In his first 2½ years flying drones at the mine, Mr. Steven said he lost 12 drones to eagle attacks, which cost his employer, South Africa-based Gold Fields Ltd. , some $210,000. During the past year, when he focused his flying in the morning, he has lost two—with two more close calls.
Any successes at deterring wedge-tailed eagle attacks in Australia could provide clues in how to minimize avian obstacles in other regions.
“Every time I go to a conference on birds and they’re having a workshop on drones, somebody tells me about this problem in Australia, about these wedge-tailed eagles,” said David Bird, a retired wildlife biology professor in Canada and founding editor of the Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems.
Mr. Parfitt, who began his drone business Aerial Image Works about three years ago, remains vigilant. Each of his last three jobs attracted an eagle attack.
Other birds will “fly at the drone and they’ll act in a very aggressive manner, but they don’t actually touch you,” he said. “I’m not scared of anything else attacking my drone except the wedge-tailed eagle.”
Write to Mike Cherney at mike.cherney@wsj.com
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second post
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X27-2WDIZR0
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/24/terror-skies-mexican-cartel-attaches-bomb-drone/
Terror from skies as Mexican cartel attaches bomb to drone
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Mexican police discovered four men carting a kamikaze drone equipped with an IED and a remote detonator last week, in what analysts say is an example of cartels figuring out how to weaponizing UAVs. The disturbing development is a manifestation of something top American security chiefs warned Congress about earlier this year, when they said they feared terrorists would begin to use drones to attack targets within the U.S.
Drug cartels had already been turning to drones to smuggle their product into the U.S., and had begun using IEDs in their turf struggles — but now at least cartel appears to have put the two technologies together, according to Mexican reports analyzed by Small Wars Journal.
“A weaponized drone/unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)/unmanned aerial system (UAS) with a remotely detonated IED allows for a precision strike to take place against an intended target,” Robert Bunker and John P. Sullivan, the authors of the new analysis, wrote.
The drone-IED combination was found in central Mexico, by federal police who did a traffic stop on a stolen pickup truck with four men in it.
Police found an AK-47, ammunition, phones and what the Small Wars Journal authors said appears to be a 3DR Solo Quadcopter, which retails for about $250 online. Taped to the drone was an IED, which could be trigger by remote detonator. Mr. Bunker and Mr. Sullivan said the “dron bomba,” as they labeled it, was the next step for cartels that have been using papas bombas, or potato bombs — a roughly shaped sphere with a core of explosives and nails and other shrapnel packed inside for the most lethal reach.
The analysts said several examples of potato bombs have been detected in Mexico this year.
Drug smugglers have long waged a technological war with authorities on the U.S.-Mexico border, with the cartels often boasting better night vision gear and tactics such as ultralights to carry drug loads over the border.
More recently, drones have become a tactic for smuggling hard drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine, which are light enough and lucrative enough to be carried by the expensive technology.
In August, U.S. Border Patrol agents nabbed a $5,000 drone and seized a $46,000 meth load in southern California, after one agent detected it flying overhead. Agents also apprehended the man assigned to pick up the load, who said he had made a number of such pickups and was paid $1,000 each time.
Meanwhile, the chiefs of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center told Congress last month that they are worried Islamic State terrorists who have pioneered weaponized drones in the Middle East will use the tactic inside the U.S. to spread a toxin or drop a grenade.
“Two years ago this was not a problem. A year ago this was an emerging problem. Now it’s a real problem,” Nicholas J. Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
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Please post in Homeland Security as well.
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http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2017/10/welcome-to-my-nightmare.html
This does not bode well for national security, or personal security for that matter.
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Still not on people's radar screens are the nano and insect sized drones , , , :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
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Still not on people's radar screens are the nano and insect sized drones , , , :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
Well, those are only bleeding edge technology available to some nation-states at this time. The above technology is 200 bucks on Amazon right now.
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http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2017/10/yunfakh-min-allah-wind-of-god.html
Yunfakh Min Allah - Wind Of God
Ahmad checked his watch as he listened to the American baseball game on his earpiece. It was about an hour past sunset, with growing darkness as he watched from his vantage point, and listened to the announcer describing Game 6 of the World Series. Ahmad didn't understand the details of the game, just enough to plan the mission, but he knew he had at least another hour before it would end, more than enough for his purposes. From where he was situated, he could see down into Chavez Ravine, a couple of the nearby freeways, and the panorama of lights glistening in the growing nighttime scene of downtown Los Angeles.
In various places throughout the city, his teams waited. They were all his men, though few of them knew that, and he was the only one that knew all of them. His subordinates were all cutouts, few knowing anyone but him and their 2-4 teammates.
Ahmad had arrived some time prior to the operation, but was the necessary link to get it off the ground - so to speak. He chuckled at the memory. He had been delivered to America by the Americans themselves. He was actually Pakistani, and his real name wasn't even Ahmad, but that had been the Afghani name he'd adopted as an officer in the Afghan Army, shortly before he'd been selected to lead this operation in the heart of the Great Satan. The stupid Americans, he'd thought, had flown him to the United States for training. Once his contact was in place, he'd gone out one weekend on leave, and never come back. Even in this he blended with a hundred others, most economic opportunists, but more than a few, like himself, hand-picked to infiltrate and run operations like this one. The Americans hadn't been eager to broadcast that fact, which made his further movements all the easier to undertake.
His phone buzzed; the message let him know the game was back on live TV.
On his other phone he texted the codeword inshallah, which set in motion all that followed. Within a minute or two, motorcycle pairs entered all the surrounding freeways in both directions, dumping several pounds of metal caltrops on the freeways. In short order, tires were deflated or blown out, accidents ensued, and the legendary Los Angeles rush hour traffic snarl began an inexorable descent into a biblical amount of gridlock.
Simultaneously, four small drones lifted off east of downtown. They approached from different directions, but all were to converge on Piper Technical Center, a drab block arising several stories above and apart from the downtown skyline, upon the roof of which sat a dozen LAPD helicopters, at their otherwise-safe HQ high above the surrounding streets. When the drones arrived over their targets, they began their bombing drops. Two had homemade napalm: half aviation gasoline, half liquid dish soap, blended with aluminum flakes, contained in a pint glass bottle, and with a simple wick on the outside.
Ahmad recalled their maker pleased with himself for devising a way to re-purpose a simple automobile cigarette lighter to ignite the wicks, which were threaded under rubber bands holding the bottles, placed over foil-protected legs on the drones. The operator flipped a switch, and the igniters clicked on. When the wicks ignited, the bands would burn through and the bottles would drop; when they impacted, they'd create little fireballs that would stick to whatever they splashed, creating an instant inferno. Targeting was fairly simple on a windless night, requiring only hitting within a few feet of straight down for the helicopters, from a near motionless drone.
The other two had pint-sized soda cans, containing a mixture of iron oxide (essentially simple rust powder) and elemental aluminum powder. When the igniter set off a magnesium ribbon fuse, just like the napalm the payload would freefall. Once the magnesium ignited the thermite, oxygen bound in the rust would provide the air for the combustion that would take place. Its normal use was to weld railroad rails, and in the military to destroy things like howitzers, tanks, and radios. Once ignited, it burned hot enough to do either, at a temperature of around 4,000 degrees F., and the liquid molten metal produced would burn through anything as fragile as a fuselage in seconds.
Which they did, working exactly as they had when tested in the desert some weeks earlier, and helped along by fuel tanks with aviation gasoline on the parked aircraft.
The two napalm drops splashed all over the two target helos, setting them aflame immediately, as did one of the thermite drops. The other missed, but the ensuing plume of molten metal consuming itself on the concrete threw a shower of flaming embers that would prove hard to corral, even as the other targets combusted spectacularly.
They had bought all the drones and all the payload materials for less than $10,000, over the internet, using cash cards, over a span of some months, and sent to places in several states all vacated months before they operation began. And nothing they bought, and nothing they did, was illegal per se until the payloads ignited and began dropping.
As soon as the first four drones had dropped, a second wave was launched in seconds, and approximately a minute later two more helicopters were gloriously aflame. By the time the third wave struck a minute after that, nine helicopters and some ancillary equipment were fully-involved flaming junk heaps, and though there were several units airborne throughout the city, the LAPD's Astro Division would be hard-pressed to do much for the next few months, as several millions of dollars worth of high-priced ashes consumed themselves in plain view of the stranded commuters on the 101 freeway through downtown.
As he watched the second wave begin its attack on the police department's airbase, Ahmad texted the main attack to commence. Another dozen drones lifted off from all points of the compass, headed for the sellout crowd in Dodger Stadium watching the game. Each man had a section of the stadium assigned, including both outfield pavilions. All of them carried the napalm bottles. The drone bodies had been painted black so as to be far less visible to those on the ground, and with the blaze of nighttime lights illuminating the game, no one would see anything until their flaming payloads began to fall. They fell randomly, hither and yon all around the seats, bursting immediately into flaming gasoline balls, the stuff of nightmares, and sending more than 65,000 people fleeing in all directions in a stampeding panic to escape. One, by design, was dropped in front of each of the team dugouts, sending players scrambling onto the field or down the tunnels to escape the conflagrations. All of it was captured on live TV and broadcast around the world in seconds.
Originally, the plan had been to use a football game as the target, but dwindling audiences for those, and the draw of a World Series broadcast had led Ahmad and the planners to select the baseball game instead.
As soon as the first wave of drones dropped its payload, they were program recalled to a central spot, and landed in an industrial park, next to a garbage truck driven by one of two teams also organized for the purpose. Their only job was to collect the surviving drones, load them into the truck, and depart. All useable data and serial numbers had been meticulously removed long before the missions, and given their cost, the drones themselves weren't critical. But Ahmad had learned, just as some of his former colleagues, not to underestimate the thoroughness of American investigations and intelligence gathering after the fact. The less they were left to work with, the better.
His pilots each rode in on motorcycles and scooters, the better to thread their way through traffic and exfiltrate afterwards. Each had pulled up to one of several vans, or vice versa, some hours beforehand, been handed his drones and controllers, and the empty vans departed. Once they had launched their second waves and dropped, they plunked controllers into backpacks or saddlebags, and drove off, helmeted, invisible, and nondescript.
The second wave of drops went as well as the first, with several set to land amongst the main exits, surveyed beforehand, and now awash in a sea of people. Now, with no small number of flaming people, furiously trying to roll, or batter the flames out, and in a few cases, running faster, which only intensified the flames for the few seconds before they succumbed amidst hundreds of their fellows in screaming agony, and a horrible gasoline and flesh-stenched barbeque from hell. This last was mainly for effect, but the bulk of the second wave was still directed inside the stadium at alternate points not already hit, because that's where the TV cameras would be focused. And were, as millions of people across the country watched in speechless horror the spectacle before them.
Ahmad waited until a minute or so after the second wave had completed, then texted the signal for all his teams to depart, which they did. The cell monitoring the television broadcast and internet news sent him the best news of all: the response was off the charts, both on TV, and internationally. He whispered a brief thanks to Allah, then kicked his motorcycle into life, and rode off sedately into the night.
He had given the infidel Americans a Halloween to remember with dread for decades.
On Wednesday at 3AM they did the same thing over the refineries near the harbor, mainly with thermite bombs. 30 giant fuel and oil tanks, widely dispersed, had set 24 more adjoining ones on fire, in an inferno that would take two weeks to extinguish, and send the price of gasoline locally to the moon.
On Friday night, they hit crowds at Disneyland with napalm during the nighttime fireworks.
The exodus out of state began with a vengeance.
Early Sunday morning, they hit 25 separate power distribution complexes, and blacked out most of the state of California, and parts of Arizona and Nevada for a week and a half.
On Monday morning, martial law was declared in all three states.
"There." thought Ahmad.
"See how you like fighting a war in your country for a change."
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More than a little scary :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o :-o
There sure seems to be a lot of specifics in there , , , hope no one gets any ideas , , ,
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=9CO6M2HsoIA
Coming soon.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/2/drones-fly-drugs-us-no-border-patrol-detection-tec/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWm1KbFptVTNNamRrTURkbSIsInQiOiJ5SVlKckpuRW1OOGNPOExKWWdIXC9nMCthVkVmV3lTSzlQVEpGTlVvQ0FSNXBZSTZOdU9NMVFXWGJRMHlnR2hCdks3OVBFWEpXTDRicUFRaWhhUHI3ZXVrMmhaTFFMMHpmZVg1WnRuSzV5ZWxEeGtPREpCZHVLT3VsaitGR0dvWnAifQ%3D%3D
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Drone Swarm vs. Russian Base in Syria
Posted: 09 Jan 2018 11:00 AM PST
The Russians have been using drone swarms against the Ukrainians to good effect (blowing up ammo dumps). Here's one being used against a Russian base on the coast of Syria.
Recount as reported by the Russian MoD reported it this morning:
Security system of the Russian Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval CSS point in the city of Tartus successfully warded off a terrorist attack with massive application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) through the night of 5th – 6th January, 2018.
As evening fell, the Russia air defence forces detected 13 unidentified small-size air targets at a significant distance approaching the Russian military bases.
Ten assault drones were approaching the Khmeimim air base, and another three – the CSS point in Tartus. Six small-size air targets were intercepted and taken under control by the Russian EW units. Three of them were landed on the controlled area outside the base, and another three UAVs exploded as they touched the ground.
Seven UAVs were eliminated by the Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile complexes operated by the Russian air defence units on 24-hours alert. The Russian bases did not suffer any casualties or damages.
The Khmeimim air base and Russian Naval CSS point in Tartus are functioning on a scheduled basis. Currently, the Russian military experts are analyzing the construction, technical filling and improvised explosives of the captured UAVs.
Having decoded the data recorded on the UAVs, the specialists found out the launch site.
It was the first time when terrorists applied a massed drone aircraft attack launched at a range of more than 50 km using modern GPS guidance system. Technical examination of the drones showed that such attacks could have been made by terrorists at a distance of about 100 kilometers.
Engineering decisions applied by terrorists while attacks on the Russian objects in Syria could be received from one of countries with high-technological capabilities of satellite navigation and remote dropping control of professionally assembled improvised explosive devices in assigned coordinates. All drones of terrorists are fitted with pressure transducers and altitude control servo-actuators. Terrorists’ aircraft-type drones carried explosive devices with foreign detonating fuses.
The Russian specialists are determining supply channels, through which terrorists had received the technologies and devices, as well as examining type and origin of explosive compounds used in the IEDs.
The fact of usage of strike aircraft-type drones by terrorists is the evidence that militants have received technologies to carry out terrorist attacks using such UAVs in any country.
Some NOTES: The swarm used what appears to be off the shelf tech. It was a small swarm (only 13), and it was divided (two targets), which made it impossible overwhelm defenses. It didn't fly low enough to avoid detection by anti-air. The swarm also appears to be remotely controlled, likely as a means to provide target acquisition and terminal guidance. This allowed defense units to hack them.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/game-of-drones-mexicos-cartels-have-a-deadly-new-weapon
Good thing we have a secure border!
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/05/criminal-gang-used-drone-swarm-obstruct-fbi-raid/147956/
A Criminal Gang Used a Drone Swarm To Obstruct an FBI Hostage Raid
Melanie Richter controls the Yuneec selfie drone 'Breeze 4K' with a smartphone at the IFA 2017 tech fair in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2017
BY PATRICK TUCKER
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
And that’s just one of the ways bad guys are putting drones to use, law enforcement officials say.
DENVER, Colorado — Last winter, on the outskirts of a large U.S. city, an FBI Hostage Rescue Team set up an elevated observation post to assess an unfolding situation. Soon they heard the buzz of small drones — and then the tiny aircraft were all around them, swooping past in a series of “high-speed low passes at the agents in the observation post to flush them,” the head of the agency’s operational technology law unit told attendees of the AUVSI Xponential conference here. Result: “We were then blind,” said Joe Mazel, meaning the group lost situational awareness of the target. “It definitely presented some challenges.”
The incident remains “law enforcement-sensitive,” Mazel said Wednesday, declining to say just where or when it took place. But it shows how criminal groups are using small drones for increasingly elaborate crimes.
Mazel said the suspects had backpacked the drones to the area in anticipation of the FBI’s arrival. Not only did they buzz the hostage rescue team, they also kept a continuous eye on the agents, feeding video to the group’s other members via YouTube. “They had people fly their own drones up and put the footage to YouTube so that the guys who had cellular access could go to the YouTube site and pull down the video,” he said.
Mazel said counter surveillance of law enforcement agents is the fastest-growing way that organized criminals are using drones.
Some criminal organizations have begun to use drones as part of witness intimidation schemes: they continuously surveil police departments and precincts in order to see “who is going in and out of the facility and who might be co-operating with police,” he said.
Drones are also playing a greater role in robberies and the like. Beyond the well-documented incidence of house break-ins, criminal crews are using them to observe bigger target facilities, spot suss out security gaps, and determine patterns of life: where the security guards go and when.
In Australia, criminal groups have begun have used drones as part of elaborate smuggling schemes, Mazel said. The gangs will monitor port authority workers. If the workers get close to a shipping container that houses illegal substances or contraband, the gang will call in a fire, theft, or some other false alarm to draw off security forces.
Andrew Scharnweber, associate chief of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, described how criminal networks were using drones to watch Border Patrol officers, identify their gaps in coverage, and exploit them.
“In the Border Patrol, we have struggled with scouts, human scouts that come across the border. They’re stationed on various mountaintops near the border and they would scout … to spot law enforcement and radio down to their counterparts to go around us. That activity has effectively been replaced by drones,” said Scharnweber, who added that cartels are able to move small amounts of high-value narcotics across the border via drones with “little or no fear of arrest.”
Nefarious use of drones is likely to get worse before it gets better, according to several government officials who spoke on the panel. There is no easy or quick technological solution. While the U.S. military has effectively deployed drone-jamming equipment to the front lines in Syria and Iraq, most of these solutions are either unsuitable or have not been tested for use in American cities where they may interfere with cell phone signals and possibly the avionics of other aircraft, said Ahn Duong, the program executive officer at DHS’s homeland security, science and technology directorate.
The most recent version of the FAA reauthorization bill contains two amendments that could help the situation, according to Angela Stubblefield, the FAA’s deputy associate administrator in the office of security and hazardous materials safety. One would make it illegal to “weaponize” consumer drones.
The other — and arguably more important — amendment would require drones that fly beyond their operators’ line of sight to broadcast an identity allowing law enforcement to track and connect them to a real person.
“Remote identification is a huge piece” of cutting down on drone crime, Stubblefield said. “Both from a safety perspective… enabling both air traffic control and other UAS [unmanned areal systems] to know where another is and enabling beyond line-of-sight operations. It also has an extensive security benefit to it, which is to enable threat discrimination. Remote ID connected to registration would allow you to have information about each UAS, who owns it, operates it, and thus have some idea what its intent is,” said Stubblefield.
But even if both amendments pass as part of the re-authorization, it will be some time before they take effect, so it will be the Wild West in America’s skies a while longer.
Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, ...
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-new-robot-army-1523455200?Paid&nan_pid=1863905825&ad_id=7946620
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https://www.popsci.com/china-drone-planes-aircraft-carrier?CMPID=ene051018&utm_source=battelle-enews-aerospace
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https://www.lmtonline.com/news/article/Stadium-and-team-owners-see-drones-as-major-12906538.php
Serious problem.
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When Drones Attack: The Threat Remains Limited
By Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Scott Stewart
Scott Stewart
VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor
Payload limits and other factors make commercial drones more effective as surveillance platforms than a means of attack.
(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Commercial drones have become widely available, not only to hobbyists but also to those with more nefarious purposes.
To date, attacks by non-state actors using drones have involved dropping military ordnance from commercial models.
The difficulty of obtaining military ordnance or fabricating improvised drone munitions will serve as a limiting factor for such attacks.
A drone attack in the West by a terrorist is likely to cause more panic than outright damage.
A series of recent events has me again thinking about the security threats posed by unmanned aerial vehicles — commonly referred to as drones.
The Big Picture
As more sophisticated drones become commercially available, concerns are rising about their use by terrorists to conduct attacks outside of war zones. However, drones can be used for other purposes — such as surveillance that — enables ambushes and armed assaults. The use of drones for intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition purposes could exceed the simple effect of dropping an improvised munition.
See Terrorism/Security
On July 3, Greenpeace activists crashed a drone they had draped in a Superman costume into the exterior wall of a spent fuel rod storage building at a nuclear power facility in Bugey, France. Security officials indicated that Greenpeace initially had launched two drones, but police intercepted one. The "direct action" stunt was not intended to cause damage, but instead to draw attention to what Greenpeace claims is lax security at French nuclear facilities.
On July 10, a drone bearing two hand grenades crashed outside the home of Gerardo Manuel Sosa Olachea, the secretary of public security of Baja California state. This incident also involved a second drone, but it was unknown whether that one was also armed or if it was just being used to observe the attack. An analysis of photos of the crashed drone shows it was carrying South Korean fragmentation grenades, a popular weapon among Mexican cartel gunmen, but did not reveal the intended triggering mechanism for the grenades. The drone involved in this incident was a larger, six-rotor model of a type that previously has been used to smuggle small bundles of narcotics across the U.S. border from Mexico.
That same day, Italian authorities announced that carabinieri in the southern province of Potenza had arrested a Macedonian grassroots jihadist who they believe was preparing to conduct an attack using a drone. During a search of the man's apartment, police reportedly discovered that he'd downloaded jihadist videos that covered a number of topics, including how to arm commercial drones. They also seized an unspecified number and type of commercial drones, along with military clothing, but they did not find any explosives. Either he had cached them elsewhere or, more likely, he was still very early in the attack cycle and had not yet acquired weapons for his drones.
A Forecast Confirmed
That we are seeing non-state actors use or plan to use drones in attacks is not a surprise. Indeed, the 2018 forecast produced for Stratfor's Threat Lens service indicated that such incidents would likely occur:
It seems that the world is ripe for an attempted drone attack against a civilian target ... such an attack will not necessarily come from a jihadist. Just like the vehicular attack tactic was popularized by Hamas and the Islamic State and adopted by others, the idea of using drones in a terrorist attack has been widely distributed. Now, it is just up to a radical or unstable individual to carry it out.
Attacks involving drones likely will only become more common and will eventually pose a global concern. On July 11, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published a study of the Islamic State's drone program by Don Rassler that detailed how the group was able to obtain commercial drones and components that it used to conduct both surveillance and attacks. Rassler's study traced how an array of companies owned by a pair of Bangladeshi brothers in the United Kingdom, Bangladesh and Spain bought drones and parts and shipped them to Turkey to be smuggled into Islamic State territory. The complex, transnational supply chain that enabled the jihadist group's robust drone program could be replicated elsewhere.
However, an individual or a small terrorist cell wishing to obtain a drone or two for an attack does not have to go to such lengths. Commercial drones are readily available around the globe. Most can carry relatively small payloads — the popular DJI Phantom 4, for example, can bear just over a pound. Heavy-lift drones available for commercial sale that can carry over 20 pounds are far more expensive, and their purchasers will face more scrutiny. However, as the technology matures, and drones become more common, it's likely that payloads will increase while prices decrease.
Limits of the Threat
Obviously, non-state groups armed with military-grade drones provided by state sponsors — such as those supplied to Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen by Iran — pose a far greater threat. The recent cases in Mexico and Italy also highlight the limits of the threat posed by commercial drones, including the fact that obtaining one may be much easier than arming it with a functional weapon. In the case of the Islamic State, it had access to a wide variety of ordnance in Mosul that it could then use or modify for delivery by drone. It used manufactured military ordnance such as grenades, small mortars and bomblets salvaged from cluster munitions in the hundreds of drone attacks it conducted. The failed attack in Mexico, where cartels have ready access to military-grade weapons, followed this pattern. In other places where such ordnance is available, such as the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and even Sweden (where organized crime groups have conducted an alarming number of attacks involving grenades), drone attacks using military munitions are more likely.
But in many parts of the world where military weapons are less widely available, a would–be attacker would have to somehow acquire munitions. In recent years, there have been many cases in which grassroots jihadists reaching out for help in buying more powerful weapons have instead blundered into government sting operations. An attacker intent on delivering weapons with a drone could try to build some sort of improvised munition, which would also entail creating the explosive filler for it. However, that may be easier said than done. In several cases, grassroots jihadists have struggled to fabricate even simple explosive devices and viable homemade explosive mixtures, much less a drone-borne device capable of inflicting significant damage.
Obtaining bomb components, assembling them, testing them and then testing them with the drone all add complexity to the terrorist attack cycle, increasing the chances of the attacker being discovered in the preparation stages. But even if an attacker manages to conduct a direct attack using a drone, the physical damage that can be inflicted by home-brewed munitions, whether simple low-explosive pipe bombs or some sort of improvised fragmentation grenade using a more powerful explosive such as TATP, would simply not be as effective as a piece of purpose-built military ordnance.
The Terrorist Attack Cycle
Nevertheless, as demonstrated by the Islamic State's attacks in Iraq and Syria, the small pieces of military ordnance that drones are capable of delivering would inflict more psychological than physical damage. Indeed, even had Sosa Olachea been at home when the drone carrying grenades crashed outside his residence, and even had the grenades detonated as intended, the chances of his being wounded, much less killed, are small. Although it failed on an operational level, the attack still clearly sent a message.
In the event that an armed commercial drone were used to attack a large crowd, the psychological effects would likely cause more harm than the device it delivers. A stampede of panicked people, for instance, could inflict more injuries than an explosion. Thus, it is important that people realize the limits of the drone threat so as not to overreact and multiply the impact of an attack with trampling damage. Because drones at this point are likely to be more successful in instilling fear than causing actual physical damage, they could be categorized as a true terrorist weapon.
It is also important to keep in mind that the misuse of drones is not confined to direct attacks. The devices, which are quite effective surveillance platforms, can be used to gather intelligence on facilities, residences or the comings and goings of potential human targets, facilitating the planning of attacks by other means. The effectiveness of drones as surveillance tools should be a particular concern for corporate security and executive protection teams, which should take steps to look for them in addition to watching for traditional surveillance conducted by human operatives or static cameras on the ground. From a target's viewpoint, the use of drones for surveillance can alter the appearance of the attack cycle. But since attackers still must follow the cycle, the points of vulnerability that it exposes them to remain the same.
Scott Stewart supervises Stratfor's analysis of terrorism and security issues. Before joining Stratfor, he was a special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years and was involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations.
Beyond the Buzz: Assessing the Terrorist Drone Threat Mar 23, 2017 | 15:03 GMT
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https://www.cnet.com/news/drone-assassins-are-cheap-deadly-and-available-in-your-local-store/
https://warontherocks.com/2018/09/the-coming-swarm-might-be-dead-on-arrival/
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https://www.patreon.com/posts/23454701
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https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-anti-drone-technology-brings-an-end-to-Gatwick-Airport-chaos-575054?jnid=dPL03B9Az7&utm_source=Jeeng
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https://www.justsecurity.org/62304/nypd-spy-drones-fly-privacy-headwinds/
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https://www.justsecurity.org/62304/nypd-spy-drones-fly-privacy-headwinds/
Thanks for posting this BD. Many privacy issues raised. Strange that they have no oversight or apparent accountability.
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We've looked at this before, but it has been awhile and maybe the technology has improved:
How can drones be brought down?
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We've looked at this before, but it has been awhile and maybe the technology has improved:
How can drones be brought down?
Many ways. None are legal in the US.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/02/23/kalashnikov-assault-rifle-changed-world-now-theres-kalashnikov-kamikaze-drone/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.acd7bd518ac2&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/pentagon-is-scrambling-as-china-sells-the-hell-out-of-armed-drones-to-americas-allies.html
Cheap and sold globally, it gives both state and non-state actors plausible deniability for lethal drone strikes CONUS.
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If memory serves, the Iranians hijacked a really big serious drone during the Obama administration. Surprise! He failed to go get it back! Any chance anyone can dig this up?
https://gellerreport.com/2019/02/iran-hacks-centcom.html/
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If memory serves, the Iranians hijacked a really big serious drone during the Obama administration. Surprise! He failed to go get it back! Any chance anyone can dig this up?
https://gellerreport.com/2019/02/iran-hacks-centcom.html/
https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/18/world/meast/iran-drone-replicas/index.html
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As always, you are the master in memory hole excavations!
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https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/04/17/the-army-wants-to-give-soldiers-new-suicide-drones-to-take-out-enemy-and-light-vehicles/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Army%20DNR%2004-17-19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Army%20-%20Daily%20News%20Roundup
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Everyone, and I mean everyone else will have them.
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/04/17/the-army-wants-to-give-soldiers-new-suicide-drones-to-take-out-enemy-and-light-vehicles/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Army%20DNR%2004-17-19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Army%20-%20Daily%20News%20Roundup
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The Skynet is coming! :-o
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The Skynet is coming! :-o
In many ways, it’s already here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA
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:-o :-o :-o
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/05/diu-helping-army-put-more-backpack-sized-drones-battlefield/156724/?oref=d_brief_nl
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/05/us-drones-may-soon-run-open-source-software/156699/?oref=d_brief_nl
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https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iranian-backed-Houthi-drones-target-Saudi-Arabia-report-589645
Don't expect the CONUS to be immune to this. In fact, this may be the preferred way for both state and non-state actors to strike the CONUS. High potential for lethality and plausible deniability.
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http://www.ncmedicaljournal.com/content/80/4/204.abstract?etoc
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http://www.ncmedicaljournal.com/content/80/4/204.abstract?etoc
Wow. Fly the equipment needed to the EMTs instead of carrying so much equipment that no one can afford to call an ambulance.
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/07/how-ai-will-help-radar-detect-tiny-drones-3-kilometers-away/158641/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://futurism.com/new-gun-can-jam-signals-and-take-down-drones-from-more-than-a-mile-away
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https://futurism.com/new-gun-can-jam-signals-and-take-down-drones-from-more-than-a-mile-away
Only the Feds could use this currently under US Code. A felony for everyone else.
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https://futurism.com/new-gun-can-jam-signals-and-take-down-drones-from-more-than-a-mile-away
Only the Feds could use this currently under US Code. A felony for everyone else.
https://jrupprechtlaw.com/drone-jammer-gun-defender-legal-problems/
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/09/time-harden-international-norms-armed-drones/160039/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/09/time-harden-international-norms-armed-drones/160039/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl
95 countries now have military drones.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-drones-now-common-to-nearly-100-nations-report-finds-11569403805
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/09/us-deploy-anti-drone-defenses-along-us-mexico-border/160247/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/30/20940921/us-interior-department-drone-grounding-china-spying-cybersecurity-risk?fbclid=IwAR1CnJbs_XK3eC2zrtuygt0ur0dfFpQSB-FBKT8sFBeiLxuaXxdcYwU1yi0
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https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/thieves-favor-drones-for-casing-homes-of-targets-in-mexico-city/
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https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-selling-autonomous-killer-drones?fbclid=IwAR0TWPhiVWiJYQeThyd01zXFNePdtKp-Mtc9e_W78Rbqfqr-SQcNox1jyPU
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/11/us-moving-too-slowly-harness-drones-and-ai-former-socom-commander-says/161306/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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Meet Israel's New MAGNI Micro-Drone: A Game Changer?
by Seth Frantzman
The National Interest
December 7, 2019
https://www.meforum.org/60081/meet-israels-new-magni-micro-drone
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/03/ca-city-to-use-chinese-night-vision-drones-banned-by-us-army-to-enforce-coronavirus-lockdown/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/03/ca-city-to-use-chinese-night-vision-drones-banned-by-us-army-to-enforce-coronavirus-lockdown/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
Nice of them to provide real time intel feeds to the PLA.
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https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/social-distancing-enforcement-drones-arrive-in-the-u-s.html
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https://www.funker530.com/attack-drone-40mm-grenade-launcher/
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/03/ca-city-to-use-chinese-night-vision-drones-banned-by-us-army-to-enforce-coronavirus-lockdown/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email
Nice of them to provide real time intel feeds to the PLA.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/big-brother-in-the-sky-police-use-chinese-drones-to-enforce-social-distancing/
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:x :x :x
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/network-of-surveillance-drones-would-deter-beijings-aggression-in-pacific-report_3313378.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+Newsletters&utm_campaign=26cd88d414-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_19_08_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4fba358ecf-26cd88d414-239065853
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https://www.meforum.org/60713/iran-shows-off-drones-that-can-reach-israel?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=ab2eb63c6a-MEF_Frantzman_2020_04_22_01_00&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-ab2eb63c6a-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-ab2eb63c6a-33691909&mc_cid=ab2eb63c6a
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https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night-the-way-the-gorgon-stare-did/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare
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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
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https://www.meforum.org/60917/firefly-israels-loitering-munition-or-kamikaze-drone?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=0c7c1bccc9-MEF_Frantzman_2020_05_15_05_50&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-0c7c1bccc9-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-0c7c1bccc9-33691909&mc_cid=0c7c1bccc9
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https://www.overtdefense.com/2020/05/21/us-army-orders-more-black-hornet-nano-uavs/ But they are mostly gray.
FLIR Systems have announced an additional order from the US Army for their Black Hornet III Personal Reconnaissance Systems (PRS) Nano-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). The deal, worth a reported $20.6 million, is in addition to last year’s $39.7 million order for the Army’s Soldier Borne Sensor (SBS) programme and a 2018 order for 60 Hornet IIIs worth $2.6 million.
The SBS programme is designed to improve the situational awareness of infantry squads and platoons, providing a surveillance and reconnaissance platform that can offer a ‘quick look’ over or into impeding terrain. The programme has tested the Black Hornet III in all-weather environments and the UAV can operate in darkness, fog or low-light.
The programme’s eventual objective is to equip every infantry squad within the US Army with its own PRS. The Black Hornet offers both live video and high definition still images (including thermal) and has an operational flight time of 25 minutes out to two kilometers from the operator. As can be seen from the accompanying images, the platform is remarkably small at just under 17cm (6.7in) and weighs only 33g (1.16oz). It has a low sound signature making it ideal for covert reconnaissance of structures.
The PRS can be operated semi-autonomously by plotted way points or live by an operator with imagery received via handheld tablet little bigger than an iPhone. It also offers GPS-denied operation through vision based navigation, allowing the Black Hornet to be flown into structures even whilst under GPS jamming.
More than 12,000 Black Hornets are in-service globally including with the Australian, Dutch, French, German and Norwegian armies. A number of special operations organisations have deployed the platform operationally in Syria including America’s Joint Special Operations Command and France’s COS Special Operations Command. The British Army deployed 160 earlier variants of the Black Hornet in Afghanistan but prematurely retired the system in 2017, citing a “diminished requirement”. 30 Black Hornet IIIs have since been procured at a cost of $1.8 million. The platforms will be used in testing by reconnaissance platoons.
Report to moderator 75.191.186.169 (?)
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/05/medical-delivery-drone-service-gets-us-approval-amid-coronavirus/165683/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/06/04/vertical-lift-drones-brigades-are-assessing-fly-quieter-with-more-survivability-soldiers-say/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Army%20DNR%206.4.20&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Army%20-%20Daily%20News%20Roundup
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/05/ep-70-robotics-esports-and-future-national-security/165620/?oref=email
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Swarms of these things could turn a lot of existing tech into a Maginot line.
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/inside-irans-massive-drone-army-630623?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign&utm_term&utm_content
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/07/build-national-counter-drone-network/166675/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/raytheon-technologies-downing-a-drone/
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/
The nuclear plant may not be the most vulnerable target for a drone but the need to deal with drones everywhere in the hands of the enemy, foreign and domestic, is a certainty.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/07/30/drone-swarm-invaded-palo-verde-nuclear-power-plant/
The nuclear plant may not be the most vulnerable target for a drone but the need to deal with drones everywhere in the hands of the enemy, foreign and domestic, is a certainty.
Exactly. Drones bearing IEDs will be seen domestically as things intensify here. Plan accordingly.
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https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/08/usmcs-new-guide-for-mitigating-signature-under-uas/
No worries. This probably won't be an issue until February 2021.
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https://getpocket.com/explore/item/omniviolence-is-coming-and-the-world-isn-t-ready?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA&feature=youtu.be
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something straight out of some nightmare movie
:-o
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https://www.meforum.org/61442/israels-new-tactical-drones?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=3c8f630ae2-MEF_Frantzman_2020_09_01_04_03&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-3c8f630ae2-33691909&goal=0_086cfd423c-3c8f630ae2-33691909&mc_cid=3c8f630ae2
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/09/pics-iran-claims-its-drones-stalked-us-carrier-group-in-strait-of-hormuz/?utm_campaign=DailyEmails&utm_source=AM_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Master+List&utm_campaign=cbdef3c447-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_24_09_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9c4ef113e0-cbdef3c447-61658629&mc_cid=cbdef3c447
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https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/video-shows-black-mirror-robot-dog-patrolling-da-street
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Black mirror
that is a riot! 8-)
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https://futurism.com/the-coming-age-of-the-micro-drone
This material will be on the final.
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https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37062/china-conducts-test-of-massive-suicide-drone-swarm-launched-from-a-box-on-a-truck?fbclid=IwAR3d3WSMTnJSAuOLsHZqjMcgj_gXucunxJvllJtcZtPW8VN8qN8RcMQmRpw
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https://webmail.earthlink.net/wam/index.jsp?x=357518133
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https://www.popsci.com/choose-right-drone-for-you/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=email&tp=i-1NGB-Et-SKF-1CSH6b-1c-16U2a-1c-1CRBTe-l5RBuE8W4T-20JN0i
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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/nypd-deploy-robotic-dog-combat-criminals
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https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/07/29/these-marines-just-published-how-guide-hiding-enemy-drones.html?fbclid=IwAR21sbOx7qI3vywxSl1nRz3kYzUrXqQUBa1XrkFHtGaPLpNXzHft5oJesaI
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From roadside bombs to UAVs, drones are the "most concerning tactical development" for the U.S. military in the Middle East since IEDs began killing across Iraq 15 years ago. That's what Central Command Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie said at a virtual event Monday — echoing a speech delivered last summer at the Middle East Institute.
"Right now we're on the wrong side of the cost-imposition curve because this technology favors the attacker, not the defender," McKenzie said. "But we're working very hard to fix this and flatten the curve. We have a variety of systems in the field already."
As far as solutions (beyond what we've previously covered at Defense One), Military Times reports that "Long-term, the Army is pushing for a networked approach, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to find and track possible threats." What's more, "The Army's Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, is also expected to build a school for the joint force focused on fighting small drones by 2024." Read on, here.
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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/nypd-deploy-robotic-dog-combat-criminals
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/spots-rampage-event-awakens-us-reality-dystopian-world-ahead
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https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvx48m/how-to-defeat-a-boston-dynamics-robot-spot-in-mortal-combat?utm_content=1614438018&utm_medium=social&utm_source=VICE_facebook&fbclid=IwAR19SRzZlGnudYqMzH9bhz93fo2NGrwpyr6mhRU3FgVYnylLCI9OFrHWEJI
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https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/robocop-las-vegas-apartment-complex-deploys-human-sized-robot-fight-crime
I know this area. It's horrible. You need ED-209.
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/03/drones-could-one-day-make-40-carrier-air-wing-navy-says/172799/
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/26/inside-the-global-race-to-build-killer-robot-armies/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-tested-french-army-field-training-exercise
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/nypd-deploy-robotic-dog-combat-criminals
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/spots-rampage-event-awakens-us-reality-dystopian-world-ahead
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https://futurism.com/outcry-video-robodog-patrolling-nypd
Embrace the anarcho-tyranny distopia we now live in.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-tested-french-army-field-training-exercise
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/nypd-deploy-robotic-dog-combat-criminals
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/spots-rampage-event-awakens-us-reality-dystopian-world-ahead
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https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/04/25/exclusive-photos-cartels-in-mexico-weaponized-drones-to-drop-ieds/
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/terminator-style-kamikaze-drone-hunted-down-human-targets
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The day we knew was coming has arrived. Deep implications here.
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June 21, 2021
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Open as PDF
Iran’s Drone Strategy
Drones have become a critical part of Iran’s grand strategy for the Middle East.
By: Ridvan Bari Urcosta
In recent weeks, U.S. Central Command has been warning of an increasing threat to U.S. troops in Iraq from drone attacks launched by Iranian-backed militias. The warnings come as concerns mount about the increasing sophistication and coordination of the drone attacks. Indeed, over the past several years, Iranian drones have been deployed to Tehran’s allies across the Middle East including in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Thus, drones have become a key part of Iran’s strategy to expand its influence throughout the region and weaken its biggest rivals – namely, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States.
A New Type of Warfare
Drones are changing the shape of warfare as we know it. By relying on technology instead of foot soldiers, they enable nations and militias alike to attack targets using fewer troops on the ground and with a level of precision that wasn’t possible through traditional combat. It’s no surprise then that militaries around the world, including Iran’s, are increasingly relying on this emerging technology.
Iran’s drone strategy has been decades in the making. The program began during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s but gained serious momentum in the 2000s. In 2018, Tehran announced that its drone program was completely independent, meaning it could manufacture all necessary parts at home.
For Tehran, one key advantage of drones is that they can help Iran overcome certain barriers that might otherwise prevent it from expanding its regional influence. Mountainous terrain, distance and limited manpower have long placed a ceiling on Iran’s reach beyond its own borders. (Notably, Iran has also used drones to control its own restive populations, particularly ethnic minority groups like the Kurds and the Baloch.) Thus, drones have become a critical part of Iran’s grand strategy for the Middle East.
Iran's Path to the Mediterranean
(click to enlarge)
Iran’s drone program has four main goals. First, Tehran is hoping to suppress Kurdish separatist groups in Iraq, Syria and Turkey as well as at home. Second, it’s trying to undermine the positions of the U.S. in northern Iraq and U.S. allies throughout the region. Third, it’s hoping to muddle the long-standing conflict in the Palestinian territories. (During the recent bout of unrest in Gaza, Israel repeatedly accused Iran of providing military assistance to Hamas, including by providing it with so-called kamikaze drones.) Lastly, it hopes to destabilize one of its main regional adversaries, Saudi Arabia.
There are four main types of Iranian drones. The most common type is the Shahed-129, a combat drone armed with precision-guided munition. The Fotros, introduced in 2013, has similar capabilities, though not much is known about it. The Saeqeh 1 and 2, first announced in 2016, have similar properties to the United States’ RQ-170 Sentinel drone. In 2018, they were reportedly used in Syria against anti-Assad insurgents and Israeli targets. The last type is the Qods Mohajer series. They are tactical combat drones that have reportedly been acquired by Hezbollah and Venezuela. The latest addition, the Mohajer-6, has a range of about of 200 kilometers (125 miles) and is able to carry 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of arms.
Targeting the Kurds
The Kurds have been one of the main targets of Iran’s drone strategy. Their close relationship with the United States in Syria and Iraq irritates Tehran, which has been cooperating with Ankara since 2018 in joint military operations against the Kurds. Iran targets the Kurds both by supplying drones to its proxies and by launching its own drone strikes.
In 2015, Iranian kamikaze drones were used in an attack on the headquarters of Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, an adversary of pro-Iranian militias, in Syria’s Idlib province. In 2018, Iran reportedly carried out a drone strike in Iraqi Kurdistan targeting a Kurdish militant training camp there. Last April, Iranian-backed militias fired a drone carrying explosives at a U.S. military base near Irbil International Airport. It was the first time militants had used drones in an attack on Irbil, likely a message to the Americans and the Kurds that Iran, through its proxies, can strike anywhere in the country. It was later reported that the drone targeted a secret CIA hangar containing anti-drone equipment, showing a certain level of sophistication in Iran’s planning and execution of the attack.
This display of intelligence and precision was deeply concerning to Washington. The same month as that strike, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps published drone footage of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate Iran’s technological capabilities and American vulnerabilities. Indeed, the drones are small enough to be loaded onto a ship and positioned to reach any number of targets from the Persian Gulf.
According to U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, this is the first time since the Korean War that U.S. forces have operated without complete air superiority. Noting the difficulties of countering small off-the-shelf drones that have undergone modification, he said it will take time for the U.S. to develop and field a capability to detect and destroy such drones. Small, low-flying drones are not typical targets for air defense systems, and thus they can sneak past defenses undetected. This is precisely what happened in late 2019 when Houthi rebels slipped drones past Patriot missile defense systems to attack Saudi oil facilities.
Three things are clear from McKenzie’s remarks. First, Tehran is orchestrating a massive proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles throughout the region. Second, it prefers drones in the hands of its proxies to avoid state-to-state conflict. And third, it coordinates with pro-Iranian proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria to use them effectively in attacks.
In the near future, the role of Iranian-made drones will increase in northern Iraq. They are key to Iran’s strategy to undermine U.S. positions and its ties with the Kurdish peshmerga. Washington provides safety and security to the Kurds, but intensification of drone attacks will drive a wedge in the relationship.
Iranian Proxies in the Levant
Israel is similarly threatened by drones emanating from areas controlled by Hamas and Hezbollah, and has been for more than a decade. In 2010, a motorized balloon believed to have been dispatched by Hezbollah came close to Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility before it was shot down. In 2012, an Iranian-made drone reportedly tarried in Israeli airspace for 30 minutes before it was brought down. The danger is growing by the year, as the drones available to Hamas and Hezbollah become more sophisticated.
Though Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system reportedly downed more than five explosives-laden drones assembled in Gaza during the brief May conflict, it would be premature to declare that they pose no threat. The Qassam rockets that Hamas typically launches at Israel are little more than glorified fireworks with no guidance. Palestinian Shehab drones, on the other hand, have longer ranges than the Qassam rockets, are highly accurate and can fly at unpredictable trajectories (well below radar coverage, for example, shielding themselves among civilian structures en route to their destination). The rockets can carry more explosive material, but the drones offer what the Palestinian groups have long lacked: precision.
It is too early to conclude that Palestinian groups are ditching rockets and missiles for drones, but during last month’s fighting, Hamas and other groups proved that, despite Israeli efforts, they had managed to accumulate massive arsenals of rockets and that they could coordinate to launch them in huge salvos. It is therefore possible to predict that Hamas could combine missile salvos with significant drone attacks to overwhelm Israel’s defenses.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has undergone significant transformations before. Prior to 2000, Hamas and other groups relied on suicide bombings to attack Israel. This strategy faded away in the 2000s, and in 2001 Hamas transitioned to using rockets. Signs of another change emerged in 2014, when the Palestinians started combining missile salvos with kamikaze or intelligence drones. Meanwhile, Israel has developed its own, highly sophisticated unmanned combat aerial vehicles, both tactical and strategic. In Gaza, Israel is searching for the perfect drone to conduct tactical special operations in an urban area while minimizing civilian casualties. This process of developing and deploying increasingly advanced drones – by both sides – will only intensify.
Iran’s part in this evolution, in Gaza and beyond, is crucial. The IRGC provides the weapons and trains and advises their users. It is easier to manufacture the drones in the insurgent areas than it is to ship heavy weaponry into blockaded enclaves throughout the Middle East. Iran’s power projection depends on its ability to support pro-Iranian proxies, especially in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria. These proxies cannot match the technological superiority of the regular armies fielded by Iran’s traditional rivals, but by supplying them with drones, Tehran can at least partly offset their disadvantages.
In the 2000s, missiles changed the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the 2020s, drones will do the same. Successful drone attacks against Israel won’t change the status quo in the same way that they did in Yemen, but they represent a new threat, and they can seriously escalate Israel’s conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
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One last thing about small drones: For at least the past year, CENTCOM's Gen. Frank McKenzie has been sounding the alarm bells over the disruptive and dangerous threat from unmanned aerial systems and armed small drones—not that there are a whole lot of countermeasures widely available, as we've reviewed in our podcast as recently as this past October:
"The UAS threat, the small drone threat, the quadcopter less than the arms length of a human being, is what really probably concerns me the most in the theater," he told reporters April 22. "I would note, those things concern me greatly because our air defense system and our patriots and our other radars, they're very good at seeing the larger objects, be it ballistic missiles or be it larger land-attack cruise missiles or larger drones. The smaller drone is a problem, and [the] smaller drone is the future of warfare, and we need to get ahead of that right now."
"I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical and it's unmanned, and I believe we are seeing it now," he said on June 10, 2020, at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. "And I'm not talking about the large unmanned platforms which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with as we would any other platform. I'm talking about one that you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for a thousand dollars, you know a four-quad rotorcraft or something like that that can be launched and flown and with very simple modifications it can be made into something that can drop a weapon—a hand grenade or something else. Right now, the fact of the matter is we're on the wrong side of that equation."
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About those UAVs: The 12- to 15-foot drones carry up to 30 kg of explosives, making them "a clear escalation by Iran — and a worrying signal to intelligence officials that the US no longer enjoys autonomy in the skies over Iraq," reports CNN's Katie Bo Williams. "Rather than being guided by a pilot from a remote location, some of these small, fixed-wing drones use GPS navigation, making them far less visible to US surveillance systems and impervious to jamming."
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https://summit.news/2021/07/01/watch-another-video-of-future-killer-robot-dogs-dancing/
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/07/israels-drone-swarm-over-gaza-should-worry-everyone/183156/
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/07/israels-drone-swarm-over-gaza-should-worry-everyone/183156/
I bet the PRC will totally adhere to any drone treaty they sign!
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https://internetofbusiness.com/future-of-iot-will-be-smart-dust-says-cambridge-consultants/
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/07/israels-drone-swarm-over-gaza-should-worry-everyone/183156/
I bet the PRC will totally adhere to any drone treaty they sign!
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3244994/china-top-secret-underwater-drone/
The PRC doesn't care what Dick1 says.
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https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/07/researchers-create-drone-swarms-can-detect-gas-leaks-other-threats/183811/
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Have not had a chance to watch these yet, but they come to me in a way that makes me want to do so so I put them down here so I can circle back to them when I do have the time to do so-- notes from anyone who gets to them before I do so would be greatly appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3jZ_7D9otc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G10E_eo7Q00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmnaVhAliPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYVpvXNiYi8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLc8V3TneqA&t=1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RipwqJG50c
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rxfXFzQ24g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-4Om_4n998&t=4s
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/09/third-revolution-warfare/185294/
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-agencies-buying-up-chinese-drones-previously-deemed-a-national-security-threat-report
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-agencies-buying-up-chinese-drones-previously-deemed-a-national-security-threat-report
Only a Chinese vassal state would do that, right?
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Dissidents accuse Iran of smuggling drones
Data shows sophisticated weapons
BY GUY TAYLOR THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Iran’s theocratic regime has ramped up its drone manufacturing operation in recent years and is now smuggling an increasingly sophisticated slate of the weaponized remote control aircraft to allied militant groups around the Middle East, according to intelligence gathered by a leading Iranian dissident group.
The Iranian military’s embrace of drones, or uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), has given Tehran an expanding edge in asymmetric warfare across the region while U.S. sanctions have otherwise crushed the capabilities of its conventional air forces, the National Council of Resistance of Iran said Wednesday.
The dissident group gave a presentation to journalists at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, revealing what it characterized as “newly disclosed information” about the scope and nature of the Iranian program, including a matrix of eight drone development complexes.
“The UAV program of the Iranian regime is the primary weapon used for terrorism and warmongering and destabilizing the region, and certainly this is supplying proxies in the region
with those UAVs,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the deputy director of the U.S. branch of NCRI.
The group has critics and followers in various countries and is known for openly supporting regime change in Tehran.
“There are two elements involved in the [drone] production. One is the Ministry of Defense, and the other one is the Aerospace Force of the Revolutionary Guards,” said Mr. Jafarzadeh. He circulated data obtained and compiled by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an NCRI-affiliated group with members operating inside Iran.
Mr. Jafarzadeh’s claims were not immediately verifiable and the MEK has a controversial history in Washington, but the group appears to have sources deeply embedded within the Iranian defense community. MEK members are credited with signifi cant revelations about Iran’s covert weapons activities, most notably its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The Wall Street Journal published an expose Wednesday that quoted U.S., European and Israeli defense sources as saying Tehran’s ability to develop and deploy drones rapidly is changing the security equation in the volatile region.
The components of Iran’s drones are widely available, although some designs mimic those of the Israeli and U.S. militaries. The Journal cited a confi dential assessment produced for the British government by C4ADS, a Washington-based think tank that says Iran has armed its Houthi allies in Yemen with drones using a network of commercial companies around the world.
Mr. Jafarzadeh’s presentation outlined a matrix of drone and parts manufacturers that he said are active inside Iran and are aligned with or directly controlled by the Iranian military or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Among those Mr. Jafarzadeh named are Ghazanfar Roknabadi Industries, Quds Air Industries, Fajr Industries Group, Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Co., Shahid Basir Industry, Bespar Sazeh Composite Co., Paravar Pars Co. and an unidentified special drone production operation in the Iranian city of Semnan.
Paravar Pars, according to documents circulated by the NCRI, belongs to the aviation research unit of the IRGC’s Imam Hossein University and “copies … and builds UAVs, ultralight planes, and drones and also installs cameras and other equipment on drones.”
Mr. Jafarzadeh outlined how the crux of the drone development program is tied to the “logistics directorate” of Iran’s elite Quds Force, a key branch of IRGC. He said the directorate manages the shipping of finished drones and drone components to militant groups allied with Tehran in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
“It is a very interesting and very important part of the whole operation of the Quds Force,” Mr. Jafarzadeh said. “They actually have a smuggling office, whose job is to basically smuggle, whether the finished product of UAVs or the parts [using] air, land and sea pathways to send these weapons to their proxies in these countries.”
Reports of drone strikes carried out by Iranian forces or proxies in recent months often have been vague and difficult to confirm. An attack in July targeted the Israeli-linked British tanker Mercer Street in the Arabian Sea.
A Pentagon investigative team announced in August that it believed the drone used in that attack was produced in Iran and was loaded “with a militarygrade explosive.” Details on who operated the drone were never clarified.
In late August, at least eight people were wounded in a drone strike that Yemen-based Houthi militants carried out against Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport. The Houthi forces have received considerable backing from Tehran in Yemen’s bloody civil war.
Similar strikes have proved vexing for U.S. forces based in nearby Iraq, where drone attacks carried out by Shiite militia groups with deep ties to Iran have added another layer of complexity.
After an early-September drone strike near U.S. forces stationed at Irbil International Airport in northern Iraq, Reuters reported that witnesses heard at least six explosions. That suggests the aircraft used in the attack may have been carrying multiple miniature missiles.
The news agency noted that the airport in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, had come under attack several times over the year leading up to the incident, including by drones carrying explosives.
Iran denies any involvement in the attacks in Iraq, but U.S. officials have blamed the strikes on Iran-aligned militias that have vowed to fight until roughly 2,500 U.S. military forces leave the country. The U.S. troops are in Iraq to support Iraqi military operations against the Islamic State terrorist group.
The Iranian drone activity was revealed amid speculation that the Biden administration may be preparing to ease sanctions on Iran as part of an effort to lure the regime into diplomatic talks toward restoring aspects of the Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal.
Mr. Jafarzadeh said the U.S. should be pushing to increase sanctions, not ease them. He said sanctions are “a significant tool in limiting the resources of the Iranian regime in making them pay the price.”
“If the regime is allowed to do such an extensive [drone] operation … without any consequences, they only get encouraged,” he said. “If they constantly hear that ‘We’re open for negotiations, let’s sit down and talk’ and repeatedly hear that instead of being penalized and feeling consequences for the terror and mayhem and destruction they have created in the region, that certainly is not helpful.”
Others have argued that sanctions may have little impact on an Iranian drone program that relies less on the procurement of sophisticated military equipment than on establishing networks for acquiring consumerlevel drone equipment and then militarizing it in clandestine facilities.
“Sanctions may not be able to affect Iran’s program in a way that improves security for local populations or U.S. citizens or military personnel working and living in the Middle East,” said Kirsten Fontenrose, a former top National Security Council offi cial focused on the Middle East.
Ms. Fontenrose, who now heads the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, noted in an analysis published by Defense One that a June attack on a U.S. State Department facility in Baghdad was carried out by a drone “built cheaply with off-the-shelf components, including a motor made in Japan and an inexpensive commercial Global Navigation Satellite System antenna with a built-in compass.”
“Other parts,” she wrote, “come from black-market salvagers of drone test and attack debris, who would not be affected by sanctions.”
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https://www.rt.com/op-ed/537330-us-sniper-rifles-on-robodog/
https://futurism.com/outcry-video-robodog-patrolling-nypd
Embrace the anarcho-tyranny distopia we now live in.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-tested-french-army-field-training-exercise
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/robot-reminds-visitors-about-safe-distancing-measures-in-bishan-ang-mo-kio-park
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xejjA2AFO5I
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/nypd-deploy-robotic-dog-combat-criminals
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/spots-rampage-event-awakens-us-reality-dystopian-world-ahead
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I'm thinking it is time for us to look into having a drone of our own.
I'm reading about the Feds buying Chinese made drones despite the security threat.
How to buy a non-Chinese drone?
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I'm thinking it is time for us to look into having a drone of our own.
I'm reading about the Feds buying Chinese made drones despite the security threat.
How to buy a non-Chinese drone?
Intended purpose?
How much are you willing to spend?
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Frankly not really sure-- roughly I would say the ability to know what is the other side of the hill in uncertain times , , , somehow it seems like a good idea.
Budget-- not really sure. Don't want to waste money on a toy, I'm guessing it should have pretty good range/flight time, pretty good camera capability, be relatively idiot proof to fly,
This seems pretty cool-- but is it Chinese?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1d_ptE6yrc&t=283s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGKZjk51B88
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Frankly not really sure-- roughly I would say the ability to know what is the other side of the hill in uncertain times , , , somehow it seems like a good idea.
Budget-- not really sure. Don't want to waste money on a toy, I'm guessing it should have pretty good range/flight time, pretty good camera capability, be relatively idiot proof to fly,
This seems pretty cool-- but is it Chinese?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1d_ptE6yrc&t=283s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGKZjk51B88
DJI Magic is a Chinese company
I know a PI who had used drones for surveillance, I believe that’s the drone he uses for some roles.
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Am I peeing into the wind looking for non-Chinese?
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Am I peeing into the wind looking for non-Chinese?
Quite possibly
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a couple weeks ago
we had a drone flying directly over my house and back yard
I could here it buzzing
then could see it .
we live next to a church parking lot
and after I caught it flying over us I could see it flying maybe ? 50 feet or so above the lot.
Of course if I bring it down I go to jail as per the FAA.
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a couple weeks ago
we had a drone flying directly over my house and back yard
I could here it buzzing
then could see it .
we live next to a church parking lot
and after I caught it flying over us I could see it flying maybe ? 50 feet or so above the lot.
Of course if I bring it down I go to jail as per the FAA.
Yup. Federal law.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32
Note that Federal laws are enforced or not based totally on the whims of TPTB.
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Is a drone an "aircraft" within the meaning of the statute?
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Is a drone an "aircraft" within the meaning of the statute?
(1) Aircraft .— The term “aircraft” means a civil, military, or public contrivance invented, used, or designed to navigate, fly, or travel in the air.
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if your lucky
you may be able to complain and get a disorderly charge against the operator
or perhaps an invasion of privacy - if you have a non see through fence.
otherwise you have NO rights:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2014/11/why_someone_can_fly_a_drone_over_your_house_in_nj_and_why_theres_nothing_you_can_do_about_it.html
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https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/089/081/067/original/b880616472b319de.png
(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/089/081/067/original/b880616472b319de.png)
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https://www.wired.com/story/drone-attack-power-substation-threat/
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Fk.
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Blacking Out Civilization With Robotic Terrorism
By Dr. Peter Vincent Pry Wednesday, 10 November 2021
My new book "Blackout Warfare" warns that drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to black out national power grids.
Now, according to an FBI and DHS memo recently reported in the press, in July 2020 a drone made a failed attack on the Pennsylvania electric power grid. The drone, trailing electrical conductors intended to short out high-voltage powerlines at a transformer substation, crashed on a roof before reaching its target.
The perpetrator has not yet been identified.
A similar attack using a small manned airplane blacked out Canada's Hydro-Québec electric grid in 2014. According to The Washington Post:
"Hydro-Quebec, Canada's largest electric utility, was hit with a crippling blackout at the start of the winter. Traffic lights went dark, and more than 188,000 customers lost power, including Montreal's McGill University Health Center. ... Power exports to the Northeast United States were cut. Industrial users were asked to slash production ... " (See "The Power And The Light," 2020.)
Military drones and armed unmanned aerial vehicles are in the process of revolutionizing warfare.
In 2020, for the first time in history, an Air Force of UAVs defeated a traditional army of tanks, soldiers, and manned jets, giving Azerbaijan decisive victory over Armenia in the long inconclusive Nagorno-Karabakh war, waged on and off for over 30 years.
An ongoing technological revolution in non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) weapons is making these more powerful, more miniaturized and lighter weight, and deliverable by drones or UAVs. The marriage of NNEMP warheads to UAVs, preprogrammed or equipped with sensors to follow high-power electric lines and to target control centers and transformers, introduces a major new threat to national power grids.
A nonexplosive high-power microwave warhead, for example, can emit repeated bursts of electromagnetic energy to upset and damage electronic targets. Such a warhead, attached to a programmable drone or UAV, could follow the powerlines to attack numerous transformer and control substations, until its energy is exhausted.
Relatively small numbers of NNEMP drones or UAVs — perhaps only one capable of protracted flight — could inflict a long nationwide blackout. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, according to a classified study by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, disabling just 9 of 2,000 U.S. EHV transformer substations could cause cascading failures that would crash the North American power grid.
Thus, NNEMP unmanned aerial vehicles might be able to achieve results similar to a nuclear EMP attack in blacking out power grids, though the NNEMP attack would probably take hours instead of seconds.
The technology for non-nuclear EMP generators and drones is widely available for purchase as civilian equipment which can easily be weaponized, even by non-state actors.
For example, one U.S. company sells a NNEMP device for legitimate industrial purposes called the EMP Suitcase that looks like a suitcase, can be carried and operated by one person, generates 100,000 volts/meter over a short distance, and can be purchased by anyone. NNEMP devices like the EMP Suitcase could become the Dollar Store version of weapons of mass destruction if turned against the national electric grid by terrorists.
A German version of the "EMP Suitcase" weighs only 62 pounds, easily deliverable by drone or UAV.
In 2020, Northeastern University's Global Resilience Institute (GRI) tested in an EMP simulator numerous electronic components vital to the operation of electric grids and other critical infrastructures. The GRI tests "confirmed the ability for non-state actors to outfit commercially-available platforms to conduct localized tactical EMI attacks against electronics that support critical systems ... identified the thresholds at which the functioning of representative electronics in common use across multiple infrastructures could become compromised, generating catastrophic outcomes.
"This includes, but is not limited to, disruption in cybersecurity safeguards for critical infrastructure to include key components of the electric power grid and telecommunications system."
GRI's tests of the non-nuclear EMP threat "confirm that a small EMI emitter that could be carried on a commercially-available drone or terrestrial vehicle, is capable of compromising electronic components, in common commercial use, at very low-energy levels from a considerable distance."
Most NNEMP generators have limited range, less than 10 kilometers. But if mated to a cruise missile or drone capable of protracted flight to target electric grid key nodes, the results can be spectacular.
For example, Boeing's Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) cruise missile can be viewed on the internet where CHAMP "navigated a pre-programmed flight plan and emitted bursts of high-powered energy, effectively knocking out the target's data and electronic subsystems." The U.S. Air Force has purchased CHAMP cruise missiles, deployed to Japan, reportedly to prevent North Korean missile attacks by "frying" their missiles, command and control, and power grid electronics.
Russia may still be the world leader in NNEMP weapons, as was the USSR during the Cold War. Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik (Storm Petrel, NATO designation SSC-X-9 Skyfall), now under development, makes little sense as yet another missile to deliver nuclear warheads, as advertised by Moscow.
The Storm Petrel's engines, powered by a nuclear reactor, theoretically will give it unlimited range and limitless flying time for crossing oceans and cruising over the U.S. The Storm Petrel could be a nuclear-powered version of CHAMP, able to fly much farther and longer and armed with a more potent NNEMP warhead, electrically supercharged by the nuclear reactor.
Iran has demonstrated sophisticated UAVs and drones, using over 20 to make highly precise and coordinated attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil processing facilities on September 14, 2019. Such delivery vehicles could easily be armed with NNEMP warheads to make a less sophisticated version of CHAMP.
Iran is the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard is the world's most powerful and sophisticated terrorist organization. The advent of Blackout Terrorism by UAV is inevitable.
The technological revolution in NNEMP weapons and UAVs threatens to become an electromagnetic Pearl Harbor for nations, like the United States, that fail to fully comprehend the threat and have not protected civilian critical infrastructures and military systems.
President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill spending trillions to "build back better" the nation's critical infrastructures proposes spending millions for more EMP protection studies. Someday, perhaps soon, the infrastructure bill will prove to be a tragic missed opportunity.
What is needed is not more studies, but a crash program to protect the U.S. electric grid, and 320 million Americans, from the looming existential threat that is Blackout Warfare.
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
https://www.newsmax.com/peterpry/military-drones-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-blackout-electromagnetic/2021/11/10/id/1044106/>
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https://mobile.twitter.com/byPeterParadise/status/1480268764964872194
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gYVpvXNiYi8
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U.S. Navy, Mideast allies plan joint drone force for region
BY ISABEL DEBRE AND JON GAMBRELL ASSOCIATED PRESS ABU DHABI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES | The U.S. Navy’s Mideastbased 5th Fleet announced Monday the launch of a new joint fleet of unmanned drones with allied nations to patrol vast swaths of the region’s volatile waters as tensions simmer with Iran.
Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the 5th Fleet, said in an interview that 100 unmanned drones, both sailing and submersible, would dramatically multiply the surveillance capacities of the U.S. Navy, allowing it to keep a close eye on waters critical to the flow of the global oil and shipping. Trade at sea has been targeted in recent years after the Trump administration torpedoed Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers signed in 2015.
“By using unmanned systems, we can just simply see more. They’re high-reliability and remove the human factor,” Adm. Cooper said on the sidelines of a defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi, adding the systems are “the only way to cover on whatever gaps that we have today.”
The admiral said he hopes the drone force using artificial intelligence would be operational by the summer of 2023 to put more “eyes and ears on the water.”
The Bahrain-based 5th Fleet includes the crucial Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil passes. It also stretches as far as the Red Sea reaches near the Suez Canal, the waterway in Egypt linking the Mideast to the Mediterranean, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen.
The high seas have witnessed a series of assaults and escalations in recent years, following former President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal and reimpose devastating sanctions.
A maritime shadow war has played out as oil tankers have been seized by Iranian forces and suspicious explosions have struck vessels in the region, including those linked to Israeli and Western firms. Iran has denied involvement in the attacks, despite evidence from the West to the contrary.
“It’s been well-established that Iran is the No. 1 in the primary regional threat we are addressing,” Adm. Cooper said. “There’s the ballistic missile, cruise missile and [drone] component, both in their capability and their mass proliferation, as well as well as the proxy forces.”
Iran backs allied militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that give it a military reach across the region. As Yemen’s 7-year-old civil war grinds on, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have dispatched bomb-laden drone boats toward Saudi waters that have damaged vessels and oil facilities, in response to the Saudiled military campaign against the Yemeni group. “What the Houthis are doing, it is an entirely completely different operation that’s offensively oriented,” Adm. Cooper said. “What we are doing is inherently defensively oriented.”
There has also been a recent string of tense encounters between Iranian and American naval boats in Mideast waters. The confrontations have underscored the risk of an armed clash between the nations.
Notably, however, Adm. Cooper said the U.S. has not seen such an episode in the past few months, as international diplomats — including some from Iran and the U.S. — attempt to resuscitate the tattered atomic accord in talks in Vienna.
“If you look back over the last couple of months, I would say it’s status quo,” Adm. Cooper said. “There have been some periods where they have had an uptick in activity. ... The overwhelming majority of these interactions are safe and professional.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The shared threat of Iran has prompted a rapid realignment of politics in the Middle East. In 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized ties with Israel in a series of U.S.-brokered accords, while Iran has been having talks with Saudi officials on neutral ground in Iraq.
Israel for the first time joined in a massive U.S.-led naval exercise in the region earlier this month, publicly participating alongside other Gulf Arab states with which it has no relations, including Saudi Arabia.
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Send in the Quadcopters: Arm Ukrainian Citizens with Simple Drones
Ukrainians are already using consumer-grade drones to spot Russian forces. We should send more of them.
BY ZAK KALLENBORN
MASTER COORDINATION DIRECTOR, PROJECT EXODUS RELIEF
MARCH 3, 2022 02:35 PM ET
In a recent Facebook post, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense called upon citizens in Kyiv to help monitor the city for Russian soldiers—and particularly people with drones. “Do you have a drone? Then give it to an experienced pilot! Or do you know how to fly a drone? Join the joint patrol with Unit 112 of the Kyiv City Special Brigade!” It’s a great idea with tactical and strategic implications—and the United States and allied countries should help by sending simple commercial drones and spare parts to Ukraine. It wouldn’t cost much either: cheap off-the-shelf drones available on Amazon can be less than $100 (though higher-end drones can easily run a few thousand dollars each).
Such drones allow defenders to put eyes in the air, to look above buildings, trees, and other obstructions that limit line of sight, providing priceless information about an enemy’s location and forces. Drone operators can track Russian troop movements and activities, revealing vulnerable units and supply lines.
All this allows defenders to better plan and execute actions—the time and place for an attack, and the best locations to erect or strengthen barricades and other defenses. Situational awareness also enables more complex tactics, such as seemingly spontaneous swarming attacks in which defenders attack Russian troops with Molotov cocktails, simple sabotage operations, or just thrown rocks from all directions, then quickly disperse. Drones can also sound alarms about approaching forces, to help know where and when to run.
Of course, the information coming from a drone is put to best use by troops and leaders skilled and equipped to interpret, evaluate, and add the information into the military’s broader operating picture. But any airborne eyes are better than none for even the civil defense units that are being hastily assembled in Ukrainian cities. As fighting moves into urban areas, such groups are likely to find themselves in narrow spaces. Most groups likely lack even the most basic intelligence and surveillance capabilities of a conventional military, such as dedicated scouting units or personnel.
As U.S. forces facing the Islamic State learned, drones can do more than watch: they can be modified to drop grenades or antipersonnel weapons. Indeed, much of the Ukrainian military’s existing drone fleet consists of modified commercial drones, the Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 being a notable, successful exception. (Ukrainian officials have said they have received more TB-2s since fighting started.) Armed drones would allow civil defenders to carry out attacks at much longer ranges. The use of waypoint navigation – a drone flying a predesignated path based on GPS – means defenders may effectively have fire-and-forget missiles. Of course, given limited drone payloads, the harm would be relatively small and focused on softer targets like infantry.
But once Ukrainians demonstrate that a tiny aircraft might be carrying a lethal payload, Russian troops must worry others do too. Even without explosives, simply harassing and buzzing about Russian soldiers may distract or interfere. The soldiers may wonder if it’s a random civilian or the Ukrainian military preparing for an attack.
And in a war that will be won as much by feeding narratives with images and video, footage captured by drones can become ammunition for the defenders’ messaging campaigns. Videos and pictures can be uploaded online easily to platforms like YouTube or Facebook. Civilian drone operators are already doing so. The larger strategic value is to encourage broader resistance to Russian forces, increase the costs for possible Russian occupation, and complexity the battlespace. (Russia’s own drones have been surprisingly absent from the conflict.)
Encouraging civilians to support the military effort necessarily puts them at risk. Civilians will typically not even have basic military training and may make simple mistakes like standing in the open when throwing a Molotov cocktail. Drones can help reduce that risk. High-end consumer drones can be flown from miles away. That allows defenders to operated them from positions of relative security. Drones could be flown from cars, trucks, or other vehicles to readily flee.
There is some risk that using certain Chinese-made drones could help Russian forces spot Ukrainian operators. But reportedly, technology used to locate DJI drone operators only narrow to a radius of a few miles. In a crowded city, that’s meaningless. Likewise, Russian counter-drone systems may allow the same, though again it’s unclear how useful the systems are. Of course, individuals have to make their own decisions, and decide whether the risks outweigh the potential benefits.
There are definite strategic benefits. One net strategic effect is to complexify the battlefield. While Russian forces worry about continued fighting with conventional Ukrainian forces and the inherent challenges of urban conflict, drones add one more worry. Even if the direct effects are minimal, Russia would need to devote some attention and resources, to potentially include air-defense assets. Depending on the Russian ability to respond, drones may also lower Russian morale, providing a clear illustration of the inability of Russian forces to pacify Ukraine. Enough drones could feed a belief among Russian forces of being in a panopticon in which they may be watched at any time, anywhere but never know exactly. The United States experience in the Middle East is illustrative. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, has frequently warned about how cheap drones have flooded American forces and contributed to casualties.
Of course, the mechanics of drone provision need to be worked out a bit. Simply handing out drones on the streets of Kyiv is not the best idea. Rather, the United States should work with and through the Ukrainian military, as the military already appears to be organizing and supporting irregular forces. The military may use those networks to distribute drone assets to areas in need. The United States and allies also need to consider the type of drone, and particularly whether they have geofencing. Generally, geofencing is a good thing – it prevents drones from flying over sensitive areas like military bases or nuclear power plants– but Russian forces may be occupying those locations.
Drone delivery should also be supported with training, perhaps pointing to publicly available drone tutorials. This should include basic flight operations, and safety issues. Advanced training could cover integration of drones within broader urban and civil defense tactics. In addition, the Ukrainian military may modify or provide training on how to modify drones to carry different payloads or resist jamming or other defenses. In limited cases, the Ukrainian military may even provide bomb-laden drones to civilians, provided they trust their safety and capability.
As everyday Ukrainians take up arms in defense of their homeland, that defense should take to the air. Send a thousand Ukrainian eyes buzzing through the sky.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/the-drone-warfare-revolution-is-here/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202022-04-08&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://breakingdefense.com/2022/04/electronic-warfare-and-drone-swarms-heres-the-armys-plan-for-edge-22/?fbclid=IwAR102RmsFAYO6LI6p_muqu-H3xVgR2VHEpe2SvG5XEHHwGyUeEzZWUH28F0
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https://nypost.com/2022/01/12/mexicos-deadliest-cartel-is-dropping-bombs-from-a-drone-onto-rival-camps-in-new-turf-war/?fbclid=IwAR2UWHkhq74XlCqKE81Zm4GhhxzFbOMB9U_Hc3k3g-m24V8TZFtquiDotu0
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn7Q4oIrP3I&t=2s
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUSxkpd-k9s&t=122s
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https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id/
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Drones Shooting Microwave Rays Could Be the Drone Killers of Tomorrow
Moving away from vacuum tubes is making microwave weapons smaller and smarter.
Patrick Tucker
BY PATRICK TUCKER
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
FEBRUARY 13, 2022
DRONES
CYBER
The military has been looking at a variety of ways to take down swarms of enemy drones, from hacking and jamming to lasers deployed on ships and trucks. Directed microwave energy has emerged as a promising option, but the bulkiness of conventional microwave weapons makes them a pain to lug around, and they aren’t as precise as necessary for an environment with friendly and enemy drones.
On Monday, California-based company Epirus announced their solution to this problem: a microwave-emitting pod that can sit on the bottom of heavy-lift drones and quickly down sudden drone swarms.
The Leonidas Pod, as they call it, builds off the company’s other, land-based microwave weapons, which use gallium nitride transistors to produce microwaves, rather than clunky magnetron vacuum tubes, of the sort that militaries have been using in radars for decades (and that likely create the waves in your microwave oven.) Gallium nitride microwave radar technology emerged as a research area around 2004, but didn’t make its way into counter drone technology until more recently.
That switch, from magnetron tubes to solid-state transistors, allows you to maintain a durable microwave beam with less power and in a much smaller container—small enough, in the case of the pod, to fit on the bottom of a heavy drone—Epirus CEO Leigh Madden told Defense One.
Contrast that with the Air Force Research Lab’s most cutting-edge weapon, the Tactical High Power Operational Responder— THOR—or the Army’s high-powered microwave weapon, both of which have performed well in tests but must be stored in 20-foot plus shipping containers.
And Madden says the new system has another benefit the current ones don’t: Because the handling is software based, the operator can better discriminate between friend and foe. “We can take sensor inputs from blue force trackers in the military, or IFF transponders on an aircraft, we can actually put a [protective sphere] around that friendly system and wherever that system goes, that [sphere] follows. That's driven by the software-defined ability of the system” he said.
Defense Department officials saw three demonstrations of the land-based version of the Epirus microwave last year. Madden says that they are working with the DARPA Warden program (developing algorithms for radio frequency applications) and the Army's Rapid Capabilities Office, among others, to bring the project to fruition.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/may/16/new-age-war-russia-ukraine-conflict-reshapes-battl/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=evening&utm_term=evening&utm_content=evening&bt_ee=%2FIXaPaPouCSznkDzokhAF1mxydYbDizPbefUB%2F9JJVnMwOPCVRVkjlEkRDhTZz5x&bt_ts=1652732729951
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/05/we-need-new-law-counter-domestic-drone-threats/367347/
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https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1540735137134018560
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(https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/089/081/067/original/b880616472b319de.png)
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https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1549615649567424512
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https://twitter.com/mdfzeh/status/1563850261956886529
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11165681/Moment-swarm-six-unidentified-drones-fly-Navys-advanced-surface-combatant-ship.html
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Drone Captures Images of Mexican Drug Cartel Camp
By Allan Stein September 1, 2022 Updated: September 2, 2022biggersmaller Print
This is the fifth and final article in a series on illegal drug and human smuggling along Arizona’s border with Mexico. (Read: parts one, two, three, and four)
ARIVACA, Ariz.—The first gunshots seemed to come down the mountain on the other side of Arizona’s border fence with Mexico, just east of Arivaca, where rival drug cartel factions battle to the death for supremacy.
Sam, my security guide, listened closely as more shots rang out.
They were hunters, no doubt, though not the kind you would typically expect.
“Where exactly do you think the shots are coming from?” I asked Sam nervously from the back seat of his pickup truck.
“I think they’re to the right,” Sam said, focused on the nearest mountain. “They could be on top of that big peak as well.”
It’s not as if we were invisible, clambering noisily up the winding dirt fire road in the border zone known as the California Gulch, part of the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona.
Our arrival in Sam’s gargantuan white Chevy Silverado on the sweltering morning of Aug. 25 was about as clandestine as a bullhorn in a public library.
“They could be warning shots”—for us, Sam said. “But this is where they’re coming. Right here.”
Sam is the pseudonym he uses to conceal his identity and that of his security company in Arizona. He’s been threatened by the Sinaloa Cartel for conducting border-watching activities. He now fears for the safety of his employees and family.
Epoch Times Photo
Actual drone still footage shows a Mexican drug cartel faction (red dot) camped out just over the U.S. border near Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Courtesy of a private Arizona security company)
Below our position, the unfinished Trump border wall and fence stretched east and west for miles, then abruptly stopped. On the U.S. side of the border, cattle grazed among dry clumps of grass or basked in the imperfect shade of sparse shrubbery, swatting flies with their tails.
The jagged peaks on the Mexican side of the steel-grated border fence loomed green and majestic. Strange, though, how nature doesn’t immediately reveal its secrets. Hidden among the Las Guijas Mountains are some of the worst elements of the Sinaloa Cartel, Sam said.
“How strong is your stomach?” Kyle, Sam’s security specialist, had asked me the day before.
The fact that I enjoyed watching gory horror movies was good enough for Kyle to share an actual cell phone video of a man being mauled by two pit bulls in a Mexican border town not far from us.
Unfortunately some things cannot be unseen.
Kyle said that kind of cartel brutality is common in cities and towns on the Mexican side of the border fence.
Epoch Times Photo
Kyle, a private security specialist in Arizona, operates a surveillance drone using an electronic console just east of Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
“These guys are battling for control of the Sinaloa Cartel. You have fights within fights,” said Sam, speaking both from experience and professional intelligence gathering.
Sam believes cartel mayhem eventually will spill across the U.S. border in military force, bringing death and destruction to Americans—but not if a coalition of private citizens, law enforcement, and security firms that he envisions has its say.
The real battle, he said, is not about winning hearts and minds.
It’s about matching intel with intel, using superior surveillance techniques and equipment to beat the drug and human smugglers.
For this purpose, Sam’s company recently acquired a $33,000 JTI-branded drone which they frequently use to conduct border reconnaissance missions for clients and law enforcement.
Epoch Times Photo
Close-up drone footage shows a rival drug cartel faction member talking on a hand-held radio in an enclose on the Mexican side of the border fence east of Arivaca, Ariz., on Aug. 25. (Courtesy Arizona private security company)
The drone is a beast of versatility equipped with high-definition and thermal cameras, and high-powered zoom lenses.
Kyle operates the drone from the pickup bed using a console and laptop computer for imaging purposes. The drone has a maximum range of five miles traveling at speeds over 48 mph hundreds of feet above the ground. Batteries are interchangeable and last 45 minutes on a single charge.
You can hear the drone yet rarely see it at higher altitudes housed in fortified gray plastic with four propellers to carry it aloft.
Epoch Times Photo
Closeup drone footage shows a heavily armed Mexican drug cartel faction member walking near Arizona’s border with Mexico on Aug. 25. Seconds later, the man took aim at the drone with his rifle hoping to shoot it down. (Photos courtesy Arizona private security company)
Sam and Kyle’s mission today was to seek out and photograph nearby cartel encampments on Mexico’s side of the border fence.
Kyle took the drone out of a suitcase, then placed it in the middle of the fire road as he prepared for take-off. With the push of a console button, the drone whirred to life, propellers spinning like a supercharged weed-whacker.
Up—up—and away the drone went with the turn of a joystick.
Kyle monitored the action on the console screen while Sam watched on a laptop computer. The rugged mountain terrain below seemed alien in both viewfinders, taking shape when Kyle maneuvered to a lower altitude.
“My guess is there are two factions here,” Sam said. “One is trying to keep [the other] from pushing east, the other west. We think they’re on the peak right below us—oh, there they are!”
One of the factions is Los Chapitos, whose founder is Ivan Archivaldo-Guzman Salazar, alias “Chapito,” a Mexican narco trafficker and son of imprisoned druglord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Guzman was head of the Sinaloa Cartel until his arrest and extradition to the United States in 2017.
Epoch Times Photo
An Arizona private security firm keeps high-tech equipment, including a surveillance drone, secure in heavy-duty suitcases in the back of a company pickup truck on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
The other faction is El Mayo, led by suspected Mexican drug kingpin Ismael Maro Zambada Garcia.
Sam said both factions currently are at war to control the entire Sinaloa Cartel on Arizona’s southern flank.
High above the nearest mountain less than a half mile away, the drone’s camera suddenly spied two blue tarps spaced about 25 yards apart. In one of the tents, a man could be seen talking frantically on a hand-held radio.
As Kyle zoomed in closer, the screen showed another man in body armor walking out of the bush, carrying what appeared to be an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle—definitely cartel.
“We found his [expletive]!” Sam shouted and gave Kyle a fist pump, but it was too soon to celebrate.
At that moment, the man looked up and saw the drone.
He raised his rifle, and took aim.
Epoch Times Photo
Sam, owner of a private security firm in Arizona, keeps watch with binoculars over the U.S. border wall with Mexico on Aug. 25. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
“He’s trying to find out where [the drone noise] is coming from,” Sam cried. “Whoah! Whoah! Get out of there!”
Kyle hit the joystick and the drone moved to a safe distance—just before the man could get off a shot.
He was now running in our direction. “He’s got a ways to go to get to the border wall,” Sam said.
But it was time to get out of there—fast. Though getting out would be harder than getting in.
Along the escape route were unforeseen twists and turns and a few dead ends that took us closer to the border fence and the rifle-wielding cartel member.
Finally, after many false starts and turns, we found our way back to the main fire road and out of danger.
Sam and Kyle had promised a “hot spot” of cartel activity today, and they delivered.
For Americans living near Arizona’s southern border wall, however, it keeps getting hotter every day.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18885/china-drones-dji-spying
National Security Threat: China's Eyes in America
by Peter Schweizer
September 12, 2022 at 5:00 am
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The Chinese company DJI controls nearly 90% of the world market for consumer and commercial grade drones.
The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user's contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.
Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.
DJI is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces.... DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.
Understanding these patterns is central to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well.... [through] many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail.
The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation... It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the "China Initiative" within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year....
China's strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so.
The consumer and commercial grade drones made by the Chinese company DJI account for nearly 90% of the market. These popular products are cost-effective, easy to fly and operate, and send every byte of data they gather to servers in China. Every DJI drone in the sky is as good as a hovering Chinese spy. Pictured: A police sergeant in Exeter, England pilots a DJI drone on May 25, 2021, as part of security preparations for the G7 Summit that was attended by US President Joe Biden and leaders of the other G7 countries. (Photo by Geoff Caddick/AFP via Getty Images)
Chinese intelligence gathering in the US takes many forms and has different purposes. Most Americans are familiar with some of their means and tactics, but not with how widespread and persistent they are.
Americans may know about the malware contained in that infernal TikTok app that their children use. They may know the Chinese military's cyber-intelligence service was likely behind many of the largest hacks of Americans' personal data that have ever occurred. They may know from the news how US defense and intelligence policy have sanctioned Chinese telecom giant Huawei, and counseled America's allies to reject Chinese-architected implementations of 5G networking, due to evidence that China has planted backdoors in commercial networking equipment designed to allow the Communist regime in Beijing to conduct surveillance and cyber-espionage anywhere in the world.
Do they know it extends to consumer-level drones?
Cybersecurity expert Klon Kitchen, writing for The Dispatch, recently detailed the problem with DJI, the Chinese company whose consumer and commercial grade drones control nearly 90% of the market. These popular products are cost-effective, easy to fly and operate, and send every byte of data they gather to servers in China. For this reason, they are banned by the US military and Department of Homeland Security, though still used by the FBI and increasingly by local police as "eyes in the sky" during crime events. FBI use of DJI drones is especially ironic considering bureau director Christopher Wray has warned often of the dangers to western commerce posed by the Chinese, most recently in London.
The excellent reporting on DJI by Kitchen tracks efforts by the company to lobby against passage of a bill called the American Security Drone Act (ASDA), now before Congress, to outlaw federal government use of DJI products entirely. What is the risk? Not only the data gathered by the drones themselves, but everything collected by the mobile app with which users control their drones and manage their DJI accounts. Like many other mobile applications, this includes a user's contacts, photos, GPS location, and online activities.
To repeat: Every DJI drone in the skies above America is as good as a hovering Chinese spy.
Like other Chinese government-controlled companies such as Huawei and Hikvision, makers of the artificial intelligence systems used in facial recognition and in the repression of China's Uyghur minority, DJI is adept at playing the Washington game. The company is engaged in a fierce lobbying effort to prevent passage of the ASDA bill. So fierce that they have enlisted police officers from local jurisdictions to come to Washington and lobby congressional staffers about how great DJI drones are for their cash-strapped local forces. As Kitchen points out, the ASDA bill is directed only towards a federal ban on these drones, but DJI lobbyists from firms like Squire Patton Boggs, Cassidy & Associates, and CLS Strategies are taking no chances. The company spent $2.2 million in lobbying efforts in 2020 and $1.4 million last year on lobbying activities, according to OpenSecrets.org.
These lobbyists are using the classic argument that it would be wrong to ban the federal government's use of our product because so many other people are using it. This is doubtless the dilemma currently facing the app stores of Apple and Google regarding the TikTok app, another Chinese product. The TikTok app has been identified by cybersecurity professionals as containing a keystroke logger, and both Apple and Google have been pressured by the Federal Communications Commission to remove it from their app stores. "Can we really ban something that so many people are happily using?" they must be asking themselves.
Therein lies the heart of the Chinese approach. TikTok was a mobile device application that no one was asking for, yet it became an overnight sensation in most western countries. We really must acknowledge, and grudgingly admire, the brilliant insight shown by the app's creator company, Chinese-government-controlled ByteDance, into the psyche of large numbers of young, western people. The TikTok app, pitched initially as a way to share and watch silly dance video clips, has been adopted by younger "woke" schoolteachers to "out" themselves as scheming, haranguing social justice warriors intent on smuggling sexual ideology into their classrooms and bragging about it.
This adds some context to Republican Sen. Rob Portman's (R-OH) exasperation at a Senate hearing about the ASDA legislation, where he said:
"Again, given what the FBI has told us, what the Commerce Department has told us, what we know from reports, I can't believe we have to write legislation to force US agencies to ban the use of Chinese-made drones, particularly where the servers are in China, where the Chinese government is a part owner and a supporter of this particular company."
The Chinese approach is to "capture" elite institutions and individuals in the US: politicians, leading universities, large pension funds, social media, and Hollywood among them. My latest book, Red Handed, documents this capture in the areas of politics, diplomatic and business consulting, Big Tech, academia, and on Wall Street. There is insight in the Soviet-era statement, attributed to Lenin, about capitalists "selling us the rope with which to hang them." Yet, it is the Chinese that understood how to sell the rope at a good price.
Much as they are doing with products such as solar panels, the Chinese realize that cornering the market in an area where reach equals access is critical to their long-term plans to dominate. Their pattern includes stealing technology they cannot create themselves and using any means available to aid in that theft. Therefore, every bit of access to information they can scour is of more value to them than the product used to get it.
Understanding these patterns is crucial to recognizing that the Chinese do this to their own people as well. As Gordon Chang's recent piece for the Gatestone Institute discusses, the Chinese Communist Party maintains tight control of Chinese people overseas through many different forms of what we may baldly call blackmail. The many stories of intimidation of Chinese students and academics in the US who speak up about human rights abuses by China, or in support for democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwanese independence, all demonstrate this.
Universities have put up with this in exchange for foreign funds for decades. They are only recently being confronted by the costs of this indulgence. For example, the former chairman of Harvard University's Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department was convicted by a federal jury for lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with the People's Republic of China's Thousand Talents Program and the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in Wuhan, China, as well as failing to report income he received from WUT.
The Wilson Center, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, reported in 2017 that a small community of PRC students and diplomats have engaged in intimidation tactics ranging from intelligence gathering to financial retaliation. "A Preliminary Study of PRC Political Influence and Interference Activities in American Higher Education" examines PRC influence in American universities.
It was just those sorts of concerns that led the Trump administration to create the "China Initiative" within the Justice Department in 2018. This effort generated plenty of convictions of Chinese nationals in the US for technology theft and other forms of industrial espionage. The Biden administration ended the program this year, citing concerns that a broader approach was needed and in response to lobbying by Asian American groups that it unfairly targeted scientists with connections to China. Further, Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen also said he heard concerns from the academic community that prosecutions of researchers for grant fraud and other charges was having a "chilling effect."
Be that as it may, China's strategy has for years hinged on infiltration by some Chinese scientists and researchers working abroad in the US and other western nations, with threats against their Chinese relatives as leverage for them to do so. This will remain a counter-intelligence problem regardless of what the effort to expose it is called.
It is all part of the pattern. Call it sabotage by remote control.
Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.
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https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2022/09/nato-readies-strategy-steer-use-autonomy/377300/?oref=defenseone_today_nl
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What Surprised One Drone Maker About Russia’s War on Ukraine
Swarmly updates its unarmed, jam-resistant drones as new information comes in from Ukraine's battlefield.
Patrick Tucker
BY PATRICK TUCKER
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE
OCTOBER 3, 2022 08:35 PM ET
RUSSIA
UKRAINE
DRONES
A family of drones designed to operate against extremist groups is proving effective against the Russian military, and their manufacturer is quickly working to upgrade them with information from the Ukrainian troops putting them to use. But even company officials caution that drones won’t serve as a substitute for the larger weapons Ukraine needs.
Cyprus drone-maker Swarmly has already sent about 50 drones to Ukraine, a company official told Defense One. The smaller is the Poseidon H10 with a 3.5-meter wingspan, two-hour endurance, and 8-pound payload. The larger is the Poseidon H6, a gasoline/electric propulsion hybrid with a five-meter wingspan, 7-hour endurance, and 50-pound payload.
All 50 were purchased with private donations.
“Certainly, the government of Ukraine never bought anything from us,” the Swarmly official said.
Swarmly’s drones represents the future of drone manufacture in a couple of important ways. They don’t come armed, which avoids a lot of legal and trade barriers, but they can rather easily be rigged to carry weapons (though this does void the warranty). And unlike hobby drones, they can even withstand some jamming.
“The design itself was built to work in low-intensity conflicts against enemies like ISIS, Boko Haram, or something similar,” the Swarmly official said. “Those organizations acquire pretty sophisticated weaponry and electronic warfare stuff, mostly from China. So basically, we designed our systems to withstand that. All these bad guys are buying [Global Navigation Satellite System] jammers on AliExpress for 500 bucks, and they instantly have satellite positioning denial within a 10-kilometer radius. So we basically designed all our systems to work in these kinds of environments,” he said. “What really surprised us is that Russians weren’t much more sophisticated than Boko Haram.”
But Swarmly is also improving their drones based on combat experience..
“We started getting information from the Ukrainian troops that used our systems and getting reports on the sorts of anti-drone techniques the Russians are using. We can see [the Russians] are using chirp jammers, which are actually pretty dangerous for those systems that were not designed to withstand them. We know exactly where they bought those chirp jammers. Maybe they added a power amplifier or something to make the coverage areas larger. But we immediately recognized what that is. And we know exactly which Aliexpress [online retailer] store they bought this from.”
The Swarmly drones remain susceptible to more advanced air defenses, such as missiles fired from S-300 or S-400 batteries, but the cost of such missiles is more than the cost of one of the company’s drones.
One Ukrainian combat veteran who now works with the company told Defense One, “There are two things that are really important for a tactical UAV in this war: standing up to the enemy and friendly jamming, and high-resolution optics. Poseidon has both of these.”
The company plans to put out a larger drone with a 200-pound payload in early 2023. And they’re expanding their Cyprus plant, which currently makes about 150 drones a year, to produce more than 350.
The company plays up its anti-jamming abilities, asserting in materials that data from the field shows that the “highest number of aircraft losses” are mid- and long-range consumer drones that lack such abilities.
But the official also warned that no relatively lightweight drone will be a silver bullet for Ukraine.
war“I think the use of drones as combat system in the high-intensity conflict is greatly overhyped because the payload capacity is not there to cause significant damage unless you create something like what the Iranians are using [with the Shahed-136]: a loitering munition with a 100-pound warhead to strike stationary targets,” the official said.
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https://notthebee.com/article/welp-the-chinese-have-figured-out-how-to-deploy-those-robot-death-dogs-via-drone-so-that-seems-like-pretty-bad-news
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From Matt Bracken:
This is the future of irregular warfare, as in, say, a hypothetical CW2 in "Pineland."
[Video at link]
An aspect of the current Ukraine war that is not getting much attention in the West is the heavy use, mostly by Ukraine, of "DRGs."
This stands for Diversionary Reconnaissance Group. Sort of like MAC-SOG guys in Vietnam hopping over into Laos and Cambodia to do recon and at times stir up trouble, and cause the NVA to reveal positions, for later exploitation by air assets and so on.
In this case, the DRGs are not flying into enemy territory on helos, but are infiltrating using civilian cars, vans and SUVs. Once behind enemy lines the vehicles can be hidden, and the DRGs perform ambush attacks, mine-laying, sniping, the usual stuff you would expect.
So the war is taking place not only at the cruise missile and armored battalion attack levels, but in the down and dirty world of infiltrating small DRG patrols. And so, counters are developed to find and take them out. In this case, small loitering drones. Getting out of the SUVs seems to be a very dangerous time, when the drone operator can see armed men, not civilian refugees. So when you think CW2, you had better be thinking of munitions like these hunting you down. Your enemies will be mass-producing loitering drones like the ZALA Lancet.
https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1580529456070131712
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Skynet approaches with increasing rapidity , , ,
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11317689/China-bombards-warships-drones-One-LANDED-deck-destroyer-near-Hong-Kong.html
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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11317689/China-bombards-warships-drones-One-LANDED-deck-destroyer-near-Hong-Kong.html
New war fighting technology was cool when we were the only ones that could do it.
Good that we're doing everything we can to attract the best and the brightest to our military, and doing everything we can to protect our country and defenses. [sarc.]
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https://sonar21.com/why-is-the-united-states-bombing-kiev/
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We noted the capture of our drone by Iran and Baraq's failure to snatch it back here.
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Here are two of our posts from 2011:
From 2011
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Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer
In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran.
By Scott Peterson, Payam Faramarzi* | Christian Science Monitor – 11 hrs agoEmail
Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.
Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.
Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."
The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.
The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.
Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites.
Western military experts and a number of published papers on GPS spoofing indicate that the scenario described by the Iranian engineer is plausible.
"Even modern combat-grade GPS [is] very susceptible” to manipulation, says former US Navy electronic warfare specialist Robert Densmore, adding that it is “certainly possible” to recalibrate the GPS on a drone so that it flies on a different course. “I wouldn't say it's easy, but the technology is there.”
In 2009, Iran-backed Shiite militants in Iraq were found to have downloaded live, unencrypted video streams from American Predator drones with inexpensive, off-the-shelf software. But Iran’s apparent ability now to actually take control of a drone is far more significant.
Iran asserted its ability to do this in September, as pressure mounted over its nuclear program.
Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile – a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone.
“We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems,” said Gholizadeh, such that “we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination.”
Gholizadeh said that “all the movements of these [enemy drones]” were being watched, and “obstructing” their work was “always on our agenda.”
That interview has since been pulled from Fars’ Persian-language website. And last month, the relatively young Gholizadeh died of a heart attack, which some Iranian news sites called suspicious – suggesting the electronic warfare expert may have been a casualty in the covert war against Iran.
Iran's growing electronic capabilities
Iranian lawmakers say the drone capture is a "great epic" and claim to be "in the final steps of breaking into the aircraft's secret code."
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Fox News on Dec. 13 that the US will "absolutely" continue the drone campaign over Iran, looking for evidence of any nuclear weapons work. But the stakes are higher for such surveillance, now that Iran can apparently disrupt the work of US drones.
US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can't explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”
Yet Iran’s claims to the contrary resonate more in light of new details about how it brought down the drone – and other markers that signal growing electronic expertise.
A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan."
“Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us … but it could be amazing for others,” deputy IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami said this week.
According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in a previously unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.”
More recently, Iran was able to hack Google security certificates, says the engineer. In September, the Google accounts of 300,000 Iranians were made accessible by hackers. The targeted company said "circumstantial evidence" pointed to a "state-driven attack" coming from Iran, meant to snoop on users.
Cracking the protected GPS coordinates on the Sentinel drone was no more difficult, asserts the engineer.
US knew of GPS systems' vulnerability
Use of drones has become more risky as adversaries like Iran hone countermeasures. The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.
Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."
Perhaps as easily exploited are the GPS navigational systems upon which so much of the modern military depends.
"GPS signals are weak and can be easily outpunched [overridden] by poorly controlled signals from television towers, devices such as laptops and MP3 players, or even mobile satellite services," Andrew Dempster, a professor from the University of New South Wales School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, told a March conference on GPS vulnerability in Australia.
"This is not only a significant hazard for military, industrial, and civilian transport and communication systems, but criminals have worked out how they can jam GPS," he says.
The US military has sought for years to fortify or find alternatives to the GPS system of satellites, which are used for both military and civilian purposes. In 2003, a “Vulnerability Assessment Team” at Los Alamos National Laboratory published research explaining how weak GPS signals were easily overwhelmed with a stronger local signal.
“A more pernicious attack involves feeding the GPS receiver fake GPS signals so that it believes it is located somewhere in space and time that it is not,” reads the Los Alamos report. “In a sophisticated spoofing attack, the adversary would send a false signal reporting the moving target’s true position and then gradually walk the target to a false position.”
The vulnerability remains unresolved, and a paper presented at a Chicago communications security conference in October laid out parameters for successful spoofing of both civilian and military GPS units to allow a "seamless takeover" of drones or other targets.
To “better cope with hostile electronic attacks,” the US Air Force in late September awarded two $47 million contracts to develop a "navigation warfare" system to replace GPS on aircraft and missiles, according to the Defense Update website.
Official US data on GPS describes "the ongoing GPS modernization program" for the Air Force, which "will enhance the jam resistance of the military GPS service, making it more robust."
Why the drone's underbelly was damaged
Iran's drone-watching project began in 2007, says the Iranian engineer, and then was stepped up and became public in 2009 – the same year that the RQ-170 was first deployed in Afghanistan with what were then state-of-the-art surveillance systems.
In January, Iran said it had shot down two conventional (nonstealth) drones, and in July, Iran showed Russian experts several US drones – including one that had been watching over the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.
In capturing the stealth drone this month at Kashmar, 140 miles inside northeast Iran, the Islamic Republic appears to have learned from two years of close observation.
Iran displayed the drone on state-run TV last week, with a dent in the left wing and the undercarriage and landing gear hidden by anti-American banners.
The Iranian engineer explains why: "If you look at the location where we made it land and the bird's home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude," says the Iranian engineer. "There was a problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird's underbelly was damaged in landing; that's why it was covered in the broadcast footage."
Prior to the disappearance of the stealth drone earlier this month, Iran’s electronic warfare capabilities were largely unknown – and often dismissed.
"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "Have you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied many-fold." When the Revolutionary Guard first recovered the drone, they were aware it might be rigged to self-destruct, but they "were so excited they could not stay away."
* Scott Peterson, the Monitor's Middle East correspondent, wrote this story with an Iranian journalist who publishes under the pen name Payam Faramarzi and cannot be further identified for security reasons.
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Iran claims its experts almost done recovering data from captured US drone
Nasser Karimi, The Associated Press Dec 12, 2011 13:45:00 PM
0
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday.
Tehran has flaunted the capture of the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret aircraft with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. was pressing Iran to return the aircraft, which U.S. officials say malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran. But a senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that the country would not send it back, adding that "no one returns the symbol of aggression."
Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for what he called the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.
Sorouri also claimed that Iran has the capability to reproduce the drone through reverse engineering, but he did not elaborate.
State TV broadcast images Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the drone. Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected and brought down over the country's east, near the border with Afghanistan.
Officers in the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, have claimed the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.
American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.
U.S. officials are concerned others may be able to reverse engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.
They are also worried adversaries may be able to hack into the drone's database, although it is not clear whether any data could be recovered. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.
Separately, in comments to the semi-official ISNA news agency, Sorouri said Iran would soon hold a navy drill to practice the closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which is the passageway for about 40 per cent of the world's oil tanker traffic.
Despite Sorouri's comments and past threats that Iran could seal off the waterway if the U.S. or Israel moved against Iranian nuclear facilities, no such exercise has been officially announced.
"Iran will make the world unsafe" if the world attacks Iran, Sorouri said.
Both the U.S. and Israel have not rule out military option against Iran's controversial nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear activities are geared toward peaceful purposes like power generation.
In another sign of the increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S., Tehran said Monday it has asked Interpol to help seek the arrest of two former U.S. officials it accuses of supporting the assassinations of Iranian officials.
Iran's state prosecutor, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei, told reporters that Iran has filed charges against retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane and former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht.
Ejehei said Iran sent a request to Interpol in Paris to help pursue the two Americans through its office in Washington.
Iran says the two men urged the Obama administration to use covert action against Iran and kill some of its top officials, including Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani commander of the Quds Force, the special foreign operations unit of the Revolutionary Guard.
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November 1, 2022
Ukraine is preparing for a "war of drones," including drones that can kill other drones in the sky. "This is the next stage in the development of ideas," the head of Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Development, 31-year-old Mikhail Fedorov, said in a lengthy interview published Monday by Forbes—and flagged on Twitter by Russia-watcher and drone enthusiast Sam Bendett of CNA.
Kyiv is racing to stand up its own "army of drones." According to Fedorov, "Now there are contracts for 1,033 drones," he told Forbes. "About 70% of them have already been received. The rest will be delivered by the end of the year." Ukraine already uses "about 20 FlyEye [UAV systems] that are quite important for our artillery," he said. And indeed, that was one of the primary uses for the systems early on—as we noted near the top of our most recent Defense One Radio podcast, which features an interview with Bendett and drone researcher Faine Greenwood.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine back in late February, "There has been a real professionalization of the use of commercial drones in both Ukrainian and Russian military forces," Bendett said, and noted a meeting between Russian officials in early September on this very topic. One former Russian general even said publicly, "The quadcopter is now the symbol of modern warfare," as Bendett explained. And so Russia's defense industry is "starting to kind of turn around," he said, "and churn out hundreds, perhaps 1000s of small UAVs, especially quadcopters" in the months ahead. Read more about that deliberate drone campaign from Moscow, here.
"The future of war is a battle between drones—not soldiers," said Ivan Tolchinsky, the Ukrainian-born CEO of a Latvian drone firm called Atlas Dynamics. The Kyiv Independent spoke to Tolchinsky in an interview published Monday. According to the 36-year-old CEO, "Atlas Dynamics has delivered over 200 small reconnaissance drones to Ukraine," and they're mostly being used for surveillance and artillery scouting. One of the bigger challenges for Atlas, however, is improving distance and flying time for their drones. But defeating Russian jamming has already been addressed by the company, according to Tolchinsky.
"We know exactly which electronic warfare systems Russia uses to intercept drone signals, so we made our vehicles more robust to their influence," he told the Kyiv Independent. They're also encrypted "so that no one can seize control of the drone or access its data if the drone crashes in enemy territory," he said. Read on, here.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KImirpG2Fk
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https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/23/drones-chinese-spy-threat-senate-00070591
:-o
send in the woke brigades .....
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The Dawn of Drone Diplomacy
Unmanned Vehicles Are Upending the Arms Trade—and the Balance of Power
By Erik Lin-Greenberg
December 20, 2022
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/dawn-drone-diplomacy
Iranian-built drones now routinely puncture the skies over Kyiv. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Turkish- and American-manufactured drones help Ukrainian forces target Russian troops. These operations demonstrate the growing role of remote-controlled weapons in battle. The conflict also showcases how drone exports have increasingly become an instrument of diplomacy.
With drone use on the rise, states have capitalized on drone exports to increase their global clout. To be sure, this is part of an established trend: governments have long leveraged arms exports as a diplomatic tool. Beyond filling state coffers and defraying research and development costs, arms sales help states advance their foreign policy agendas. Selling or donating weapons to like-minded partners can be used to extract concessions, exert influence, counter rivals, and strengthen military ties. A new era of arms trade is emerging, in which new exporters such as Iran and Turkey are displacing traditional weapons suppliers and are using drone exports to extend influence beyond their borders. These exports threaten Washington’s influence and the security of its partners. To keep ahead, U.S. policymakers should help allies build drone programs while developing approaches to counter the threat of rival drones.
GAME OF DRONES
Drone diplomacy is on the rise because it meets a growing demand. International leaders are increasingly convinced that their defense and foreign policy ambitions hinge on possessing remote-controlled weapons. Drones have changed the character of modern conflict by allowing states to project power while minimizing risk to friendly personnel. By keeping crews far from the frontlines, drones allow governments to undertake risky attack or intelligence-gathering missions that they might not otherwise launch. Russia, for instance, frequently uses drones instead of manned attack aircraft to strike well-defended Ukrainian targets. At the same time, drones offer air support and a bird’s-eye view to ground forces, which often tips the scale during battles. Moreover, drones are commonly cheaper and easier to operate and maintain than the missiles or inhabited aircraft they supplant, making it simpler for states to integrate drones into military operations.
Drone use in recent conflicts has proved effective advertising. Footage from Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh—a disputed territory fought over by Armenia and Azerbaijan—has showcased drones striking targets cheaply, prodding other militaries to add remotely piloted aircraft to their arsenals. Some countries have built domestic drone programs, but others have turned to international suppliers.
Traditional arms exporters such as the United States initially dominated drone production with systems including the MQ-9 Reaper. But export restrictions such as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a multilateral agreement the United States is party to, severely limited the sale of U.S.-built drones, even to Washington’s closest allies. Firms from countries that are not MTCR signatories, such as China and Israel, eagerly stepped in to fill the void and could engage in largely unregulated trade.
At the same time, other states that traditionally were not aircraft exporters ramped up drone production programs. Iran sold drones to other countries and made them available to its Hezbollah and Houthi proxies. Similarly, Turkey’s drone program—developed in part to reduce dependence on foreign arms suppliers—quickly made a name for itself with the Bayraktar TB2. Turkey first deployed the TB2 against Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. Soon, it was on the shopping lists of nearly two dozen countries across Africa, Central Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
SELLERS’ MARKET
Selling drones in a time of high demand increases a supplier state’s diplomatic power in three important, and often complementary, ways. First, exporting drones deepens ties with client governments. Selling a drone entails more than transferring a piece of machinery. Exports typically come with long-term training, logistics assistance, and maintenance agreements that have lasting effects. An importing state becomes reliant on its supplier state for upgrades and replacement parts. Exporters train drone crews in importing states, building relationships that endure as personnel climb the ranks. These connections produce new pathways through which a supplier state can sway policymaking. Indeed, one Iranian news outlet affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps proclaimed that Iran’s drone exports are “deepening its strategic influence” internationally.
Supplier states are increasingly cementing these relationships by opening overseas drone factories. Iran established drone production lines in Tajikistan and Venezuela, and Turkey plans to build a TB2 factory in Ukraine. Iran’s top general described the opening of the plant in Tajikistan as a turning point in relations between the two countries. Indeed, drones may serve as a gateway export that sets the stage for broader arms transfers by demonstrating the effectiveness of a supplier’s hardware and establishing processes for future weapons transfers. Russia, for instance, is now considering buying ballistic missiles from Iran.
Second, drone exports help supplier states compete with rivals. In some cases, exporting drones allows supplier states to challenge regional foes. For example, Turkish drone transfers to Azerbaijan contributed to Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, humiliating Turkey’s longtime rival and forcing it to cede territory. Similarly, Tehran armed its proxies with drones to attack targets in Gulf Arab states, Israel, and Yemen.
Selling a drone entails more than transferring a piece of machinery.
In other cases, drone transfers enable states to engage in proxy wars farther afield. When Iran sells drones to Russia, for example, it supports attacks on Ukraine, which is backed by the United States. At the same time, it shows off capabilities that Iran could use against the United States in a future conflict. To be sure, this involves political and military risks. Tehran’s drone exports triggered new sanctions and Iranian drone use in Ukraine is helping the United States and its allies develop countermeasures. But for Tehran, cementing ties with Russia seems to outweigh these risks.
As drone suppliers diversify production through overseas factories, their drone diplomacy will become more resilient and less susceptible to disruption from rivals. Israel, for example, has bombed drone production facilities in Iran but may find it too risky to attack Iranian factories in countries with friendlier diplomatic ties, such as Tajikistan.
Finally, supplier states use drone transfers to extract concessions from clients. According to Al-Monitor, a news website, Turkey’s sale of 20 drones to the United Arab Emirates provided Ankara enough leverage to sway Emirati officials to restrict the social media access of a prominent Turkish mafia boss turned whistleblower living in Dubai. And in December 2022, U.S. government officials announced that Russia is now providing Iran an “unprecedented level” of advanced military equipment—potentially including fifth-generation Su-35 fighter jets—in part because of Iranian drone transfers.
By deepening ties with client states, countering rivals, and extracting quid pro quo concessions, drone diplomacy threatens regional stability and challenges the influence of established arms exporters such as the United States. Indeed, drone suppliers such as Iran routinely arm states such as Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela that were otherwise unable to acquire drones because of sanctions and other political roadblocks. Newly acquired drones allow these states to reignite frozen conflicts, violate human rights, and undercut internationally led conflict-resolution efforts. In recent years, activists and lawmakers criticized Turkey’s sale of TB2 drones to Ethiopia for enabling strikes that reportedly killed dozens of civilians.
MORE THAN A WEAPON
As states increasingly use drones as a currency for interstate competition, policymakers will wrestle with how to respond. In some cases, supplier states will compete over the same customers. Whoever ultimately wins the contract may also secure a position as a preferred security partner, making it difficult for other states to exert influence.
In other cases, states may need to help allies and partners defend themselves against a rival’s drones. In the ongoing war in Ukraine, NATO members stepped up deliveries of air defense equipment to Kyiv after Moscow acquired Iranian drones. Many of these systems, however, involve launching costly missiles to take down drones that are far cheaper. Keeping ahead of rivals in drone diplomacy will likely require an action-reaction process involving the provision of low-cost antidrone systems to states under threat of rival drones.
The war in Ukraine has highlighted the growing significance of drones to international security. To maintain an advantage, the United States and its allies should limit rogue states such as Iran from exporting drones through sanctions and export controls. At the same time, the United States should export more drones and antidrone systems to allies to help them build their own drone programs, limiting the likelihood that these states will turn to other suppliers. Drones are no longer just a battlefield weapon but also a diplomatic tool.
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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170425-were-entering-the-next-era-of-drones
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Lots of photos in the original
Band of Barbers, Judges and Security Guards Uses Soviet-Era Guns to Repel Russian Drones
Ukrainian units are scrambling to intercept drones and missiles with aging weapons
An antiaircraft missile regiment in the Kyiv region of Ukraine in January.
An antiaircraft missile regiment in the Kyiv region of Ukraine in January.
By Matthew LuxmooreFollow
| Photographs by Sasha Maslov for The Wall Street Journal
Feb. 4, 2023 9:00 am ET
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KYIV, Ukraine—A unit of Ukrainian volunteers took aim as the drone passed through the fog at the end of last year, emitting its trademark growl. One member pulled the trigger of his modified Soviet-era heavy machine gun.
The drone—a Shahed-136 produced by Iran but launched by Russia—plummeted to the ground, the gun operator later recalled.
It was another success for a group playing a key role in a battle taking place far from the war’s front lines: protecting Ukraine from Russian drones and missiles targeting civilian infrastructure that keeps the country running.
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Ukraine’s government says civilian and military units now intercept about 80% of Russian missiles and drones, denting Moscow’s campaign aimed at demoralizing the civilian population.
Having failed to gain air superiority in Ukraine early in the war, Russia has turned to missiles of various speeds and sizes to deprive entire cities of power. Ukraine’s own arsenal of Soviet-era arms and the air-defense systems it has received from the West, such as Stinger portable missiles, proved a match for Russia’s air force in the war’s early stages.
The U.S. has since provided midrange Nasams and Germany has sent the medium-range Iris-T as well as Gepard mobile antiaircraft guns.
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The antiaircraft missile regiment plays a key role in a battle taking place far from the war’s front lines: protecting Ukraine's skies from Russian drones.
But Russia’s use of cheap drones acquired from Iran is undermining those defenses. Deploying Iris-T surface-to-air missiles worth up to $500,000 against cheap Shahed-136 drones would quickly deplete Ukraine’s defenses against Russian warplanes and cruise missiles.
In recent weeks, the U.S. and Germany have pledged two Patriot surface-to-air systems capable of downing ballistic missiles, but the cost of using them—$4 million for a projectile—means the country can’t rely solely on them for protection.
Jet fighters also struggle against the drones, partly because the slowest speeds at which they can stably fly are more than double the speed of the drones, said Viktor Kevlyuk of the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian security think tank.
Ukrainian pilot Vadym Voroshilov won fame in October after intercepting five drones in one sortie over the city of Vinnytsia, but his plane caught fire after debris from one of the drones smashed into it forcing him to eject from the cockpit and parachute to land.
That is where the volunteer unit with its MacGyvered Soviet-era machine guns come in. They soldered pieces of metal to create gun turrets for the weapons and built separate sections to hold ammunition.
Serhiy Sas, a retired constitutional judge who commands the volunteer antiaircraft unit.
“We could shoot those drones down with the Patriot or with S-300s,” said Serhiy Sas, a retired constitutional judge who commands the volunteer unit. “But from a financial point of view, using small arms to destroy them is justified 100%.”
The foundation of Ukraine’s air defenses is built on Soviet-era weapons like the Buk, Tor M, and S-300 systems. But Western support is coming slowly, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to drones, cruise missiles and ballistic rockets.
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Ukraine can shoot down certain projectiles, such as Kalibr cruise missiles. But ballistic rockets such as Kinzhal or Iskander have a speed and trajectory that currently outmatch the arms at its disposal. When they arrive, the Patriots will fill that gap.
Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian air force, said Russia was firing simultaneously from multiple locations from the air, land and sea, seeking to scramble Ukrainian air defenses. Russian ground forces fire MLRS and S-300 rockets, while Tu-22 jet fighters and warships fire cruise missiles from the air and sea.
Since Russia began launching its barrages last autumn, videos have proliferated showing Ukrainian soldiers celebrating after intercepting cruise missiles and drones. During an October attack on Kyiv, a clip of three policemen firing at a Shahed drone with Kalashnikov rifles went viral.
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A mobile unit of an antiaircraft missile regiment patrols in the Kyiv region of Ukraine.
Soviet-era weapons are the foundation of Ukraine’s air defenses.
Ukraine can shoot down certain projectiles, such as Kalibr cruise missiles. But ballistic rockets have a speed and trajectory that currently outmatch the arms at its disposal.
Volunteers scan for drones from the roofs of Kyiv's high-rises.
Ukrainian mobile air-defense units constantly change position to track the likely path of Russian missiles, as Russia makes its own adjustments in response.
Air-defense teams like Mr. Sas’s have become heroes. His volunteer unit includes barbers, small-business owners and security guards, who keep their day jobs alongside their military duties. Once an air-raid siren sounds, they climb to the roofs of high-rise buildings or drive into fields to monitor the skies and try to shoot down drones.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the Russians. Ukrainian mobile air-defense units constantly change position to track the likely path of Russian missiles, as Russia makes its own adjustments in response.
“First we need to detect them and then we need to destroy them,” said Mr. Ihnat. “Meaning that we need to be in the right place at the right time, always aware.”
Major Artem Moskalenko, the commander of a battalion operating several air-defense batteries and mobile teams equipped with Stingers and British-made Stormer HVM antiaircraft systems, dispatches his troops to locations with a 360-degree view overhead when he receives reports that Russia has launched an attack.
“Every day we change our positions,” said Maj. Moskalenko. After each attack, they analyze where Russia sent its drones and rockets and adapt their positions in the future.
Ruslan Feschuk, a 32-year-old serving under Maj. Moskalenko, spent New Year’s Eve in a pickup truck with a DShKM Soviet heavy machine gun in the back, scanning the sky for Russian drones. “Our team celebrated by downing a Shahed just hours into the new year,” he said.
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The teams have come a long way since Russia began deploying waves of cheap Iranian drones in October. At least six drones struck a military base near Kyiv that month, and less than two weeks later another batch killed four people in the capital.
What Attacks on Russian Air Bases Tell Us About Moscow’s Vulnerabilities
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What Attacks on Russian Air Bases Tell Us About Moscow’s Vulnerabilities
What Attacks on Russian Air Bases Tell Us About Moscow’s Vulnerabilities
Play video: What Attacks on Russian Air Bases Tell Us About Moscow’s Vulnerabilities
The Engels air base, a key aviation hub, was one of the targets of strikes inside Russian territory. WSJ explains what images and videos of the incidents can tell us about Kyiv’s tactics to destabilize Moscow far from the front lines. Photo composite: Eve Hartley via Planet Labs/Maxar
The drones are designed to explode upon impact, and shooting them down doesn’t completely neutralize them, although it prevents them from striking their intended target. After Mr. Sas’s unit shot down the drone over Kyiv in late December, emergency services rushed to the scene of the explosion, but no one was injured in the blast.
As a reward for the successful hit, the Ukrainian armed forces gave Mr. Sas’s unit a Soviet NSV machine gun that is a more modern version of the Maksim gun they fielded. But even when advanced Western air defenses arrive in Ukraine, the 65-year-old says older weapons may remain the best available solution to Russia’s drones.
The cost in ammunition used by the volunteer unit to down the Shahed drone in December was dwarfed by the cost of the drone itself, Mr. Sas said.
And “when it’s shot by a fighter who doesn’t get paid for his work, then for the state budget it’s an even better bargain,” he added.
Yevhenia Sivorka and Isabel Coles contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
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https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2023/02/china-gears-shoot-down-us-drones/382731/
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Why Spy Balloons Are the Pentagon’s New Secret Weapon
Air-tracking laser beams, swarms of support drones, and total dominion at 70,000 feet.
By David HamblingPublished: Feb 6, 2023
Editor’s note: China’s use of spy balloons over the U.S. has recently made global headlines, but few realize that the U.S. is developing stealthy surveillance and intelligence-gathering balloons of its own. Below, we review the history of spy balloons, from their first use in WWII to their current technological capabilities and development in the U.S. This article was originally published on November 11, 2021.
New long-range U.S. weapons will be able to hit tactical targets like missile bases and air-defense radar from a thousand miles away or more, but only if they have aerial scouts to pinpoint their targets. The U.S. military has used stealth drones as spies to this point, but now, experimental stratospheric balloons are becoming viable, capable alternatives that can go undetected by enemy air defenses. Balloons combine remote capabilities with stealth to perform missions impossible for other aircraft, and they’re graduating from tests and demonstrations to live military operations.
Near-space craft like stratospheric balloons lurk anywhere between 60,000 and 80,000 feet, far above normal aircraft flight paths. The balloons come in the tradition of those used for artillery spotting in the Civil War, but they’re so high-tech today that they are sometimes mistaken for UFOs. The Pentagon is advancing its spy balloon program to put better eyes on a post-Afghanistan world marked by near-peer threats in Russia and China, and locally, it’s possible balloons will surveil the drug trade and smuggling networks via their unique integrated sensors and communications.
Better Than Satellites
Reconnaissance aircraft like drones and balloons are limited by how long they can survey an area of interest—an attribute Justin Bronk, analyst for the U.K. defense think-tank RUSI, calls persistence. “Even with something like the Global Hawk [the U.S. main strategic reconnaissance drone] you only get about twenty hours over the area of interest, and less than that if they have to travel a significant distance to get there,” he says. The ability to keep eyes on an area for days at a time with a low-cost platform would mean a huge increase in the military’s intelligence-gathering capability.
a world view stratollite balloon seen through a telescope at the mt lemmon sky center in arizona
A World View Stratollite balloon seen through a telescope at the Mt. Lemmon Sky Center in Arizona.
University of Arizona
Satellites fill some of the persistence gap, but low Earth orbit satellites 100 to 1,200 miles from the Earth’s surface only catch infrequent glimpses of a specific area, while satellites in geostationary orbit—meaning they travel with the Earth as it spins, staying above one location on the ground—are only useful for strategic applications like spotting ballistic missile launches.
Balloons’ durability and carrying strength could help them cover the bases neglected by those craft. World View Enterprises, a private company which develops near-space technology for the Pentagon and NASA, calls their balloons Stratollites. These giant pumpkin-shaped aircraft measure up to 800,000 cubic feet in volume. Their gondolas can house daylight and thermal cameras, radar, radio frequency sensors, and solar panels.
With a newly developed sensor that can measure wind patterns, and a design that can execute flight changes efficiently based on those readings, a Stratollite can change altitude, catch winds, and maintain position within 12 miles of a specified target for four days. “We think this has the potential to be a game-changer for us: a great, long-duration, long-dwell surveillance platform,” said Admiral Tidd, Commander of U.S. Southern Command over Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.
The Ascent to the Stratosphere
Japanese scientists were first to harness intercontinental balloons for military purposes in 1944. Their ‘Fu-go’ balloons carried incendiary bombs at 30,000 feet in an unsuccessful attempt to ignite forest fires across the Pacific Northwest.
A range of high-altitude balloon projects between 50,000-100,000 feet followed during the Cold War. The USAF’s Project Genetrix released spy balloons disguised as weather balloons over the Soviet Union in 1956, their downward-pointing cameras intending to photograph top-secret installations. This was the only way to see inside the country before satellites, but as the unpowered balloons could only drift at random with the wind, they gathered little useful information.
japanese fu go balloon
A Japanese Fu-Go Balloon, January 1945. The U.S. Army shot this balloon down over California and then reinflated it.
Courtesy U.S. Army
a project genetrix launch in 1956
A Project Genetrix launch in 1956.
Courtesy U.S. Air Force
A solution to the navigation challenge appeared by way of accessing the stratosphere, a convection-less portion of the atmosphere in which higher altitudes coincide with warmer temperatures. Without convection, wind patterns stay consistent at a given altitude, so with enough weather information, a balloon can go in any desired direction by adjusting to the right altitude and riding the wind. Project Loon, run by Google parent company Alphabet, developed stratospheric balloons with this capability in 2017. Several of these balloons rode countervailing winds at different heights to stay over Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, providing internet access for 100,000 people.
Microwaves With Lasers
Both World View and Loon refined wind-prediction algorithms for their balloon projects, feeding weather reports and flight data into machine-learning processes to help their balloons find the right altitude at which to fly. But the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), developed a laser-based sensor to measure winds directly, rather than use a predictive model. Known as Strat-OAWL (Stratospheric Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar), the sensor is derived from a NASA instrument used to observe the atmosphere from space. The original tech was the size of a kitchen table, says Alexander Walan, program manager for the now-complete Adaptable Lighter Than Air (ALTA) project at DARPA, but Strat-OAWL is the size of a microwave oven.
Strat-OAWL uses a Doppler sensor to track air movement. It bounces a laser beam off particles in the air and gathers the return with a telescope in order to measure the changes in the laser’s wavelength and “read” the wind. It was a high-risk project for DARPA, with little precedent for the technology, but in a 2019 capstone experiment, the ALTA project equipped outside balloon programs with Strat-OAWL sensors to fly their crafts across America with reliable, precise navigation. “We showed we could maneuver a stratospheric lighter-than-air craft across the continent,” says Walan. “We travelled to specific points of interest that we chose ahead of time, and showed we could loiter in any area we chose.” A purpose-built turbo compressor helped the balloons change heights with speed and efficiency.
a nasa super pressure balloon launches in new zealand
A NASA Super Pressure Balloon launches in New Zealand, March 2015.
NASA
ALTA also gave valuable operational experience for stratospheric balloon flights. The developers learned they needed rugged electronics that could withstand the space-like conditions at altitude. The equipment had to withstand a low-pressure environment that often saw extreme temperatures. According to Walan, the balloons themselves might last up to a month at these altitudes, though weeks-long missions are a safer bet.
Later balloon generations might have more endurance, able to watch over a point of interest for months. Today, that persistence requires relays of drones, with ground crew members managing landings and takeoffs.
ALTA transferred its technology to the U.S. military for operational use, and though Walan cannot provide further detail, budget documents hint the tech could reach near-space platforms operating at the level of the experimental balloons.
COLD STAR’s UFO Problem
The Pentagon’s efforts to operationalize the stratosphere begin with the classified program COLD STAR (COvert Long Dwell STratospheric ARchitecture), a spy balloon that can lurk undetected in enemy airspace. COLD STAR’s balloon has autonomous navigation, high fidelity sensors, and on-board AI. Budget documents note it participated in joint exercises this year, so it might be the unnamed balloon seen in photos of exercise Northern Edge in Alaska, an “experimental balloon operation” with the USAF.
COLD STAR’s plastic balloon is transparent to radar, and its gondola can be made stealthy by eliminating the straight lines and sharp corners that produce strong radar reflections in aircraft design. “It still has to stay within certain bounds dictated by the payload and the need for solar cells,” Bronk says. “But it does open the doors to different ways of shaping to minimize the radar cross section compared to other aircraft.” The ideal shape might look more like an egg than a typical balloon basket.
Bronk notes that many older radars automatically filter out slow-moving objects more likely to be birds or insects, so even a non-stealthy balloon would be invisible to dated tech. Further, there are no hot jet engine exhausts or wing edges heated by air friction on a balloon—both shine like beacons when viewed in the infra-red.
No balloon is going to be completely invisible, however. Even at 80,000 feet an object the size of a Stratollite is visible as a bright blob if caught by sunlight at the right angle. Multiple balloon programs, including ALTA, have inspired reports of extraterrestrial aircraft. “We were placing bets on how long it would take us to start getting UFO reports,” says Walan.
When Balloons Attack
COLD STAR will “refine hypersonic and long-range fires kill chains to counter time-sensitive targets,” per the Department of Defense’s budget documents for the fiscal year 2022. This suggests balloons will spot targets like mobile missile launchers for weapons like the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, which is intended to hit targets from 1,725 miles away.
“Relaying back data from these assets in real time, especially in high-resolution, is a real challenge at present,” Bronk says.
Only a handful of specialized support aircraft, called Battlefield Airborne Communications Nodes, or BACNs, do this job now. Stratollites offer a solution as long-endurance communication relays, and COLD STAR is equipped with electronics for processing and disseminating information.
1st battalion, 6th field artillery regiment, 41st field artillery brigade fires a guided multiple launch rocket system gmlrs from a multiple launch rocket system during the thunder cloud live fire exercise in andoya, norway on sept 15, 2021 the gmlrs is a surface to surface system used to attack, neutralize, suppress and destroy targets using indirect precision fires up to 70 plus kilometers us army photo by spc joshua thorne
The U.S. Army fires a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System from a multiple launch rocket system during the Thunder Cloud live-fire exercise in Andoya, Norway, September 15, 2021. Thunder Cloud was designed to test out the targeting capability of high altitude balloons using long-range precision fires.
U.S. Army
brendan branick, electronics lead at raven aerostar, prepares a high altitude balloon for launch in support of the thunder cloud live fire exercise in andoya, norway, sept 15, 2021 thunder cloud was a sensor to shooter live fire exercise that utilizes high altitude balloons to gather and send targeting coordinates to firing assets within multiple domains for accurate and precise fires us army photo by spc joshua thorne
Brendan Branick, electronics lead at Raven Aerostar, prepares a high altitude balloon for launch in support of the Thunder Cloud live-fire exercise.
Courtesy U.S. Army
an engineering and electronics team from raven aerostar prepares to launch a high altitude balloon into the stratosphere as a part of the thunder cloud live fire exercise in andoya, norway, sept 15, 2021 high altitude balloons are filled with helium, tethered to solar panels, and released into the stratosphere where they collect targeting coordinates and information to relay to fire capabilities within other domains to deliver lethality us army photo by spc joshua thorne
An engineering and electronics team from Raven Aerostar prepares to launch a high altitude balloon into the stratosphere as a part of the Thunder Cloud exercise.
Courtesy U.S. Army
The military has also tapped stratospheric balloons for seeding areas behind enemy lines with thousands of tiny radio-frequency sensors meant for cyberspace situational understanding—mapping enemy positions through electronic signals like radio waves and wi-fi. Precision strikes can use these maps to take out otherwise invisible targets, with the sensors also able to confirm those strikes’ effectiveness.
The seeding project is likely to build on CICADA—‘Close-in Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft’—circuit boards folded into aerodynamic shapes like a paper plane. Each CICADA can glide from a balloon to a specific point on the ground. The balloon then acts as a communication node, passing data from the CICADA sensors back to headquarters, and distributing more sensors on areas of interest.
Other Army presentations indicate plans to release swarms of small drones from stratospheric balloons, either for detailed up-close reconnaissance and intelligence gathering, or for strikes on critical targets such as radar and communications.
The Future of Balloon Warfare
Another program, TRIPPWIRE—the Tactical Responsive Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Platforms and Payloads Watching Isolated Remote Environments—will include a Counter-Stratospheric Operations experiment in the next year. This apparently means balloon vs. balloon warfare.
Knocking out a balloon will probably require a hit on the gondola, which is more difficult than targeting a jet or drone because the gondola doesn’t have a pressurized cockpit, fuel tanks, munitions, or high-speed turbines. It’s hard to blow one up. “It’s a different target set,” Bronk says. “You would not create an explosive event as a hit on an aircraft might, but there’s still a good chance of taking it out of commission.”
It might be cheap to replace balloons relative to other aircraft—World View claims a month-long Stratollite mission will be “orders of magnitude” cheaper than, say, a drone mission of the same duration—so the Pentagon might rely on a combination of stealth and redundancy when approaching these aircraft for combat. If one is shot down, another could be nearby to take over.
President Biden indicated that after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S. will rely more on ‘over the horizon’ operations, in which there are no boots on the ground. This will place more reliance on remote sensors such as drones, meaning balloons might start to supplement and replace traditional varieties of drone. Theaters like the South China Sea, which call for persistent observation, might be a good fit for balloons. Closer to home, Southern Command has suggested using balloon technology to counter drug smuggling through surveillance.
Balloon technology is fast moving into practical use, be it in stealth use cases or combat. Expect more projects in the U.S. and among its competitors—and prepare for more UFO sightings.
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“While China has tested hypersonic missiles launched from balloons in the past, that isn’t a likely use for these airships,” Crespo told The Epoch Times in an email. “The biggest threat is sending one or more of these high altitude balloons over the U.S. with a small nuclear EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) device.
Epoch Times Photo
Illustration of the payload containing three hypersonic glide vehicles tested by China in 2018. (Epoch Times)
“Detonated at extremely high altitude, they could knock out power and communications across the US, wreaking widespread havoc for a year or more without firing a shot on the ground.”
That means at least 90% of the US population dies in that year.
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‘Silent Killer’: Inside China’s Military Balloon Program
Chinese home-made airship AS700 takes off for a test flight at Jingmen Zhanghe Airport in Jingmen, Hubei Province of China, on Sept. 16, 2022. (Shen Ling/VCG via Getty Images)
Chinese home-made airship AS700 takes off for a test flight at Jingmen Zhanghe Airport in Jingmen, Hubei Province of China, on Sept. 16, 2022. (Shen Ling/VCG via Getty Images)
Eva Fu
By Eva Fu
February 17, 2023Updated: February 20, 2023
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Years before a gigantic white spy balloon from China captured America’s attention, a top Chinese aerospace scientist was keenly tracking the path of an unmanned airship making its way across the globe.
On a real-time map, the white blimp appeared as a blinking red dot, although in real life its size was formidable, weighing several tons and measuring 328 feet (100 meters) in length—about 80 feet longer than a Boeing 747-8, one of the largest passenger aircraft in the world.
“Look, here’s America,” the vessel’s chief architect, Wu Zhe, told the state-run newspaper Nanfang Daily. He excitedly pointed to a red line marking the airship’s journey at about 65,000 feet in the air, noting that in 2019, that flight was setting a world record.
Named “Cloud Chaser,” the airship had been flying for just shy of a month over three oceans and three continents, including what appears to be Florida. At the time of Wu’s interview in August, the airship was hovering above the Pacific Ocean, days away from completing its mission.
Cloud chaser image
An illustration of Cloud Chaser. (Nanfang Daily)
Wu, a veteran aerospace researcher, has played a key role in advancing the Chinese regime in what it describes as the “near space” race, referring to the layer of the atmosphere sitting between 12 and 62 miles above the earth. This region, which is too high for jets but too low for satellites, had been deemed ripe for exploitation in the regime’s bid to achieve military dominance.
Despite having existed for decades, the regime’s military balloon program came into the spotlight recently when the United States shot down a high-altitude surveillance balloon that drifted across the country for a week and hovered above multiple sensitive U.S. military sites. That balloon, the size of three buses, was smaller than Cloud Chaser.
The U.S. and Canadian militaries have since taken down three flying objects over North American airspace, although President Joe Biden on Feb. 16 said those are likely linked to private companies.
Epoch Times Photo
The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, S.C., on Feb. 4, 2023. (Randall Hill/Reuters)
Wu is turning 66 this month. He has ties to at least four of the six Chinese entities Washington recently sanctioned for supporting Beijing’s sprawling military balloon program, which the U.S. administration said has reached over 40 countries on five continents.
As a specialist in aircraft design, Wu has helped develop the Chinese regime’s homegrown fighter jets and stealth technology during his more than three decades in the aerospace field, taking home at least one award for his contribution to the military.
He was the vice president at Beihang University in Beijing, a prestigious state-run aeronautics school, until he voluntarily gave up the title for teaching and research in 2004, and he once served on the scientific advisory committee for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Armaments Department, a now-dissolved agency in charge of equipping the Chinese military.
Public records show that Wu is well-connected in the aerospace field, with stakes in many aviation firms. He is the chairman of Beijing-based Eagles Men Aviation Science, one of the six firms that, along with its branch in Shanxi, Washington has named as culprits in the balloon sanctions.
Both Beihang and the Harbin Institute of Technology, Wu’s alma mater and dubbed “China’s MIT,” are on a U.S. trade blacklist, the former for aiding China’s military rocket and unmanned air vehicle systems, and the latter for using U.S. technology to support Chinese missile programs.
_the digital screen of balloon journey
A map that shows the journey of the Chinese airship, Cloud Chaser, in August 2019. (Nanfang Daily)
‘Silent Killer’
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long vied for dominance in near space, which Chinese scientists see as a region for a variety of applications, from high-altitude balloons to hypersonic missiles.
From high above, there’s a wealth of information that an aerostat, equipped with an electronic surveillance system, can intercept and turn into an intelligence asset.
“If you’re flying a balloon that is 100,000 feet up in the air, you’ve got … visibility on the ground of hundreds and hundreds of miles over several states, because it’s up so high,” said Art Thompson, co-founder of California aerospace company Sage Cheshire Aerospace. During his three decades in the aerospace industry, Thomspon has worked on the B-2 stealth bomber and was technical director for the Red Bull Stratos project that broke the record for the highest balloon flight and the largest manned balloon.
EpochImages-2006334279
Art Thompson, CEO of Sage Cheshire and president of A2ZFX, sits inside a model capsule he built for Red Bull Stratos in Lancaster, Calif., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
“Whether it’s phone data, radio data, transmissions from aircraft, as to what the airplanes are, who owns it, all that data is available,” Thompson said.
As early as the 1970s, efforts were underway at the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences to explore high-altitude balloons, according to a state media report. Lacking the aid of computers, Chinese researchers drew inspiration from German and Japanese aerospace books and cut up newspapers to piece together prototypes.
The result was a helium balloon with an aluminum basket, altogether about the size of a typical hot air balloon. The team triumphantly named it HAPI and flew it into the stratosphere in 1983 to observe signals from a neutron star.
For the Chinese military, there’s high strategic value in aerostats, a technology that was in use as early as the late 1700s by the French as lookouts. Compared to airplanes or satellites, balloons are cheaper and easier to maneuver, can carry heavier payloads and cover a wider area, and are harder to detect, two regular columnists wrote in a 2021 article for PLA Daily, the Chinese military’s official newspaper. They consume less energy, allowing them to loiter in a target area for an extended period. And critically, they are often not caught by radars, so they can easily evade an enemy’s air defense system or be classified as UFOs.
A jet flies by a suspected Chinese spy balloon as it floats off the coast in Surfside Beach
A jet flies by a suspected Chinese spy balloon as it floats off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, on Feb. 4, 2023. (Randall Hill/Reuters)
Indeed, that appears to have occurred. Biden administration officials said they were able to retroactively detect three Chinese spy balloons that traveled over the United States during the Trump administration, and another after Biden took office.
Both Taiwan and Japan have since identified several suspected Chinese balloon incursions in recent years and are now threatening to shoot down any suspected objects in their airspace.
Chinese military researchers have also touted the utility of these balloons during combat. Newspaper articles and research papers have pored over balloons’ potential to screen for missiles, planes, and warships in lower space, serve as a medium for wartime communications, drop weapons to attack enemies, conduct electromagnetic interference, and deliver food or military supplies over a long distance.
U.S. Navy participates in recovery of balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina
U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Assault Craft Unit 4 prepare material recovered in the Atlantic Ocean from a high-altitude Chinese balloon shot down by the U.S. Air Force off the coast of South Carolina after docking in Virginia Beach, Virginia for transport to federal agents at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek on Feb. 13, 2023. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ryan Seelbach/U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters)
“In the future, balloon platforms may become like submarines in the deep sea: a silent killer that invokes terror,” the Chinese military columnists wrote in the PLA Daily article.
Such statements are not hyperbolic, according to Thompson. Paradoxically, the slow pace of a balloon, when used well, is in fact its strength.
“It’s virtually invisible on radar,” said Thompson. While people may be concerned about an intercontinental missile flying over, which would take several minutes, a balloon could transport one discreetly without being detected.
“Now when you decide to release that missile, it doesn’t take several minutes—it takes only a matter of seconds,” he added. “We can’t respond fast enough … It would hit us before we’d know what happened.”
“It’s a scary scenario. It’s funny that one of the oldest technologies is potentially also very dangerous.”
A Thriving Industry
traveler 3 turtle xinjiang
A turtle is shown after returning from the stratosphere in October 2017. (China Internet Information Center)
Chinese scientists have made great strides in near-space technology since HAPI’s launch. In 2017, they sent a yellow-spotted river turtle 68,900 feet over the northwestern Xinjiang region, marking the first time an aerostat was able to bring a live animal into the stratosphere.
The following year, a high-altitude balloon dropped three hypersonic missiles in the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia. Last year, a balloon brought a rocket more than 82,000 feet above the earth, making China the first country experimenting with such techniques, according to state media reports.
While the Chinese regime claimed the spy balloon was a civilian airship used for meteorological purposes, meteorological officials in China have a history of collaboration with the military.
hypersonic missile
China tested hypersonic glide vehicles dropped from a balloon in 2018, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. (Screenshot via CCTV)
Meteorological officials under the PLA in 2013 coordinated with local meteorological bureaus to host a three-city military drill, according to state media outlet Xinhua. Such cooperation appeared to have deepened in the following years after CCP leader Xi Jinping ordered a major overhaul of the military. In 2017, the director of the China Meteorological Administration, the country’s national weather service, met with officials in the military and vowed to make a priority of “military-civil fusion,” a term for the regime’s aggressive national strategy to harness private sector innovations for military use.
The manufacturing of balloons has also flourished in the meantime.
Zhuzhou Rubber Research & Design Institute in China’s south-central Hunan Province, a subsidiary of state agrochemical giant ChemChina—which is on a U.S. blacklist over its ties to the military—is a dedicated supplier for the national weather bureau, producing three-quarters of the balloons it uses in nationwide weather stations, according to state media reports.
The company, sometimes described as a “made-in-China hidden champion,” was millions in debt in the early 2000s until it entered the balloon manufacturing game. It went on to become a leader in the industry, playing a chief role in formulating China’s national standard for weather balloons, and has around 30 patents under its name, a local government website shows.
In September 2017, Zhuzhou Rubber invested 30 million yuan ($4.38 million) in a key provincial-level lab for near-space sounding balloon research that it said aims to provide “security for national defenses on the near space front.”
It won a proclamation from the PLA’s General Armaments Department for designing a balloon for the return of Chang’e 5, the spacecraft used for China’s fifth lunar exploration mission, which was undertaken in 2020.
China Launches Chang'e-5 Spacecraft
A Long March-5 rocket carrying Chang’e-5 spacecraft blasts off from Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China, on Nov. 24, 2020. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
In March 2022, the China Ordnance Industry Experiment and Testing Institute—whose parent company, state-owned Norinco, is a major weapons producer for the Chinese military—inquired into prices for obtaining hundreds of sounding balloons from the firm, according to a tender bid on a Hunan provincial government site. It is unclear whether the institute made a bid after the tender.
The company’s website has become inaccessible since the recent spy balloon incident.
For the Chinese, these balloons are inexpensive tools for testing components for military equipment, Thompson said.
“They may be looking at as a particular piece of electronics that they want to put in a missile: is it going to hold up to the temperatures and altitude, or is it going to transmit,” he said. “So they might take that component that later is going to go on a piece of weaponry, and fly it to the altitude under a balloon to see how it handles it.”
‘China Speed’
Zhuzhou Rubber is but one player in the field. Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology has claimed dozens of patents related to stratosphere aircraft, including a maneuverable stratospheric balloon and lightweight high-strength aerostat material. Wu is the statutory auditor of Dongguan Lingkong and the director of Beihang University’s Dongguan city research institute, which owns the company.
China Electronics Technology Group Corp. (CETC), a massive state-owned enterprise whose 48th research institute was hit with U.S. sanctions in the aftermath of the balloon incident, once credited itself for helping China bridge the technological gap in aerostats.
In 2010, the company showcased a large white blimp. Through its high-definition surveillance gear that scans the ground nonstop, it could spot details of objects as small as a book over an area of more than a hundred square miles, according to a Chinese state media report republished on the State Administration of Science website.
Their latest, the JY-400 balloon that CETC’s 38th research institute unveiled in 2021, can meet both civilian and military needs, with the capacity to carry payloads for detecting missiles and eavesdropping on and interfering with communications, Chinese media reports said. The reports cited Russian media expressing surprise at seeing their country outcompeted by China at a breathtaking pace, dubbing it “China speed.”
Thompson was struck by the JY-400 balloon’s visual resemblance to a U.S. military design, called the “Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System.”
That system was an Army program designed in 1998 by Raytheon that provides 360-degree surveillance to track low-flying cruise missiles, unmanned aircraft, and other threats. The dirigible had a synthetic aperture radar attached to its bottom. The U.S. Army began investing in it in the 2010s but ultimately discontinued funding in 2017, two years after one of the program’s two blimps broke loose and caused massive power outages in Pennsylvania.
Previews At The China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition
A China Electronics Technology Group Corp. (CETC) aerial blimp hangs in display at the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, China, on Oct. 31, 2016. (Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Military Blimp Loose Over Pennsylvania
Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) personnel oversee the inflation of an aerostat at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., on Dec. 15, 2014. (U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Ronald Sellinger /Released)
Putting the two side by side, “you’d think they’re made by the same company,” Thompson said, noting that the only difference is one has the Chinese writing on it.
Thompson said it’s possible that the Chinese copied the designs of U.S. airships and adjusted certain parts, like the materials and size, to suit its needs.
Raytheon and CETC didn’t immediately respond to queries from The Epoch Times.
Wu’s Cloud Chaser airship was launched near Hainan, the island province that lies in the southern tip of China that U.S. officials have identified as a base for the Chinese surveillance balloon operations.
Considering China’s vast espionage program, those sanctioned by the United States represent only the “tip of the iceberg,” said Su Tze-yun, director of the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan.
But challenges abound for Western nations seeking to blunt the covert operation. The regime, as Su noted, could easily use front companies as a cover to steal or import Western technologies while attracting little notice. Under the civil-military fusion strategy, every private company could be indirectly supporting the regime’s military development, making it harder to draw the line and impose punishment. But that at least heightens the need to block Chinese entities from acquiring U.S. firms, he said.
While Western countries are also developing balloon technology, what differentiates the actions is China’s authoritarianism, according to Su.
“Democratic countries are bound by law from infringing other nations’ airspace,” he told The Epoch Times. “This is why the same technology, once it’s in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, would become a threat.”
Luo Ya and Dorothy Li contributed to this report.
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Discussion about the war in Ukraine has focused recently on whether the West will supply Kyiv with tanks and jets. But consider the humble drone. Even as Russia has used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukraine has repurposed cheap commercial drones for use on the battlefield.
Jury-rigged commercial drones typically carry small payloads over short distances, but they’re cheap and can take out heavy enemy equipment. Ukrainian fighters call it “delivering pizza.” In September in the northern region of Kharkiv, Stanislav Zorin, a 36-year-old drone operator for Ukraine’s 80th Airborne Assault Brigade, used a Chinese-made DJI Mavic 3 drone that costs a little more than $2,000 to destroy a Russian tank worth millions. Mr. Zorin describes it as “my ideal sortie.”
Ukraine also has used drones to improve the accuracy of low-precision artillery. “When the first shot goes in, you say, ‘Well, it’s 10 meters left, it’s 10 meters right,’ until you make it in. It makes a huge difference,” says Timur Khromaev, 47, company commander of the Territorial Defense’s 112 Brigade, who spent the summer flying drones over Russian positions in the southern region of Kherson. Russia has had vastly more artillery and missile systems than Ukraine. “Every shot counts,” Mr. Khromaev says.
“Drones are fundamentally a platform that lets you do one of two things,” says Fred Kagan, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project. “It lets you look at stuff, and it lets you shoot stuff.”
The West has helped Ukraine with intelligence, but Kyiv has also relied on drones to peer into Russian-occupied territory. Drones “let poor countries do stuff that otherwise only rich countries used to be able to do,” Mr. Kagan says. “The Ukrainians have used drones to offset their own gaps in capability at a much lower price tag than they would have had to pay if they were going to do it in the more conventional military way.”
Drones can also be used in psychological warfare. Samuel Bendett, a member of the Russia Studies Program at the nonprofit Center for Naval Analyses, says a pro-Kremlin account on Telegram recently featured a post by a Russian soldier who described how Ukrainians had used commercial drones to surveil his unit and attack its men when they tried to move between shelters.
“Movement is life,” the post said. “Especially in war. As soon as you are deprived of movement, you experience the difficulties with transportation and the evacuation of the wounded. . . . The fighter then gets the idea that he was driven into a trap and the brain offers options on how to escape. Morale then drops by an order of magnitude—this leads to soldiers abandoning their positions.”
This is dangerous work for the Ukrainians. The short flying range of commercial drones means operators “have to be on the edge of the frontline to do our work,” and “we can be reached by any means of artillery,” says Ihor Lutsenko, 44, a former member of Ukraine’s Parliament who has been flying modified commercial drones in eastern Ukraine. “This is the most dangerous job after being in the infantry, but compared to the infantry you’re a priority goal for the enemy.”
Fatalities and injuries are common. Russians often begin firing at operators within minutes after a drone takes flight. Sometimes “you can hear when it’s out, then you can expect something [is] going to fall on you, you can hide,” Mr. Zorin says. But sometimes “it just comes in, and you’re just standing there. . . . It’s like an immediate explosion.”
There’s a high burn rate for Ukraine’s drones, which are at particular risk of jammers that can commandeer or down them. Civil society is helping replenish the supply. “Drones have been probably the No. 1 target for volunteer fundraising activities throughout this war,” says Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister. These efforts are nimble because they’re decentralized and don’t rely on military bureaucracy. Volunteer groups communicate with soldiers about their needs, then crowdfund the purchase and figure out a way to deliver it fast to the front.
Chinese-made DJI drones are prevalent, with the Mavic 3 model considered the workhorse of the Ukrainian front. DJI didn’t respond to my queries, but in a statement in November the company said “we stand alone as the only drone company to clearly denounce and actively discourage use of our products in combat, including suspending all business operations in Russia and Ukraine to try to keep our drones out of the conflict.”
The Ukrainian Association of Drone Owners has about 18,000 members, including developers, hobbyists, photographers and farmers who use unmanned aerial vehicles for agricultural work like crop-dusting. The association’s chairman, Taras Troiak, says many members have donated drones to the war effort.
Soon after the war began, Ukraine learned that Russians were using AeroScope, a DJI drone-detection platform, to find Ukrainian drone operators and attack them. The U.S. considers DJI a “Chinese military company” and in 2021 warned that its systems “pose potential threats to national security.” Mr. Troiak says he asked DJI to help shield drones from AeroScope detection, but the company declined. So his team designed Olga—a device that “you can connect to the drone before takeoff” that ensures “AeroScopes can’t see you.”
“It helped Ukraine a lot,” Mr. Troiak says, “because we got many reports that the situation became stable, no such reports like before, when every day there were huge artillery strikes against the military or civilians who use DJI drones.” But “after a month or two, DJI discovered that we had hacked their hardware this way,” Mr. Troiak says. “Now the system Olga doesn’t work.”
The Ukrainians are less forthcoming about their current efforts to shield drone operators from Russian detection. But Mr. Troiak says Ukrainian volunteers are trying to develop their own drone technology, and he’s aware of some 100 volunteer teams “working like elves at night preparing for Santa” to build and modify drones for the battlefield and protect them from Russian electronic warfare.
Ukraine also gets help from Western drone developers. Seattle-based Brinc Drones has donated 30 drone systems and says the Netherlands purchased an additional 30 for Ukraine. Its drones are fortified against AeroScope and can be used for close targeting reconnaissance and search and rescue. Brinc trained Ukrainian operators and got the drones to Ukraine without the help of the U.S. government.
The company is using the battlefield experience to improve its product. “We can go to the open fields and deserts in America and fly our stuff around, but when you’ve got an aggressive enemy who’s trying to interdict or thwart you, you learn a lot,” says chief of staff Andrew Coté. “We are beyond fortunate for real-time end-user feedback as Ukrainian operators engage Russian armed forces.”
The Ukrainian government has called on its Western supporters to send more military drones, which fly farther, carry heavier payloads, and are better protected against countermeasures. “If you look at the military aid of the United States to Ukraine, you will see that the amount of drones is very limited,” says Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s internal-affairs minister. “We really need more drones.”
Ms. Melchior is a London-based member of the Journal editorial board.
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https://twitter.com/venik44/status/1634958954718695429
This will be on the final exam!
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Just shared that with someone with professional interest in these things.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORg-yaqFSYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwfI5UBrXw&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M0xRKt7jqE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vicl_f3eBWU&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfy-VoEXPvQ&t=1s
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Third
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO-kyVj1DJo&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSWqB3nxmew
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Fourth
https://whnt.com/news/national/drone-tracks-down-5-teens-caught-throwing-large-rocks-onto-highway-sheriff/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR1FIxjqXlSgVwtfzz3zu4L0FPGV1MA4AKABbyjcBcP7ewXTuUmgLKfKnhw
Drone tracks down 5 teens caught throwing ‘large’ rocks onto highway: sheriff
by: Rodney Overton
Posted: Feb 26, 2023 / 09:22 AM CST
MONROE, N.C. (WNCN) — Deputies in North Carolina used a drone Friday night to track down suspects they say were throwing rocks from an overpass onto the toll highway below it.
There were several reports of at least two people throwing “large rocks off a bridge” onto the expressway, U.S. 74, below, according to the Union County Sheriff’s Office.
“Deputies arrived and located a semi-truck and trailer that had been struck by one of the rocks causing significant damage to the roof of the truck and the front side of the trailer,” deputies said in a news release.
Deputies then launched a drone with infrared technology to search the area.
During the drone’s flight, deputies “located several distinct heat signatures hiding near the on-ramp to the expressway,” the news release said.
Two suspects were initially caught before a perimeter was set up and three more were captured.
The five suspects range from 13 to 15 years old, deputies said.
Mexican president posts photo of what he claims is an elf
All five suspects will now face criminal charges for their actions via petitions issued by the North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice.
“Throwing large rocks off of a bridge at commercial motor vehicles traveling on the Monroe Expressway could have seriously injured or killed one of the drivers who were just trying to work hard and provide for their families,” Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey said in the release.
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From our forum in 2011
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Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer
In an exclusive interview, an engineer working to unlock the secrets of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel says they exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran.
By Scott Peterson, Payam Faramarzi* | Christian Science Monitor – 11 hrs agoEmail
Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.
Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.
Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.
"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."
The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.
The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.
Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites.
Western military experts and a number of published papers on GPS spoofing indicate that the scenario described by the Iranian engineer is plausible.
"Even modern combat-grade GPS [is] very susceptible” to manipulation, says former US Navy electronic warfare specialist Robert Densmore, adding that it is “certainly possible” to recalibrate the GPS on a drone so that it flies on a different course. “I wouldn't say it's easy, but the technology is there.”
In 2009, Iran-backed Shiite militants in Iraq were found to have downloaded live, unencrypted video streams from American Predator drones with inexpensive, off-the-shelf software. But Iran’s apparent ability now to actually take control of a drone is far more significant.
Iran asserted its ability to do this in September, as pressure mounted over its nuclear program.
Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile – a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone.
“We have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning ‘deception’ of the aggressive systems,” said Gholizadeh, such that “we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination.”
Gholizadeh said that “all the movements of these [enemy drones]” were being watched, and “obstructing” their work was “always on our agenda.”
That interview has since been pulled from Fars’ Persian-language website. And last month, the relatively young Gholizadeh died of a heart attack, which some Iranian news sites called suspicious – suggesting the electronic warfare expert may have been a casualty in the covert war against Iran.
Iran's growing electronic capabilities
Iranian lawmakers say the drone capture is a "great epic" and claim to be "in the final steps of breaking into the aircraft's secret code."
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Fox News on Dec. 13 that the US will "absolutely" continue the drone campaign over Iran, looking for evidence of any nuclear weapons work. But the stakes are higher for such surveillance, now that Iran can apparently disrupt the work of US drones.
US officials skeptical of Iran’s capabilities blame a malfunction, but so far can't explain how Iran acquired the drone intact. One American analyst ridiculed Iran’s capability, telling Defense News that the loss was “like dropping a Ferrari into an ox-cart technology culture.”
Yet Iran’s claims to the contrary resonate more in light of new details about how it brought down the drone – and other markers that signal growing electronic expertise.
A former senior Iranian official who asked not to be named said: "There are a lot of human resources in Iran.... Iran is not like Pakistan."
“Technologically, our distance from the Americans, the Zionists, and other advanced countries is not so far to make the downing of this plane seem like a dream for us … but it could be amazing for others,” deputy IRGC commander Gen. Hossein Salami said this week.
According to a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies in a previously unreported incident that took place sometime in the past two years, when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.”
More recently, Iran was able to hack Google security certificates, says the engineer. In September, the Google accounts of 300,000 Iranians were made accessible by hackers. The targeted company said "circumstantial evidence" pointed to a "state-driven attack" coming from Iran, meant to snoop on users.
Cracking the protected GPS coordinates on the Sentinel drone was no more difficult, asserts the engineer.
US knew of GPS systems' vulnerability
Use of drones has become more risky as adversaries like Iran hone countermeasures. The US military has reportedly been aware of vulnerabilities with pirating unencrypted drone data streams since the Bosnia campaign in the mid-1990s.
Top US officials said in 2009 that they were working to encrypt all drone data streams in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – after finding militant laptops loaded with days' worth of data in Iraq – and acknowledged that they were "subject to listening and exploitation."
Perhaps as easily exploited are the GPS navigational systems upon which so much of the modern military depends.
"GPS signals are weak and can be easily outpunched [overridden] by poorly controlled signals from television towers, devices such as laptops and MP3 players, or even mobile satellite services," Andrew Dempster, a professor from the University of New South Wales School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems, told a March conference on GPS vulnerability in Australia.
"This is not only a significant hazard for military, industrial, and civilian transport and communication systems, but criminals have worked out how they can jam GPS," he says.
The US military has sought for years to fortify or find alternatives to the GPS system of satellites, which are used for both military and civilian purposes. In 2003, a “Vulnerability Assessment Team” at Los Alamos National Laboratory published research explaining how weak GPS signals were easily overwhelmed with a stronger local signal.
“A more pernicious attack involves feeding the GPS receiver fake GPS signals so that it believes it is located somewhere in space and time that it is not,” reads the Los Alamos report. “In a sophisticated spoofing attack, the adversary would send a false signal reporting the moving target’s true position and then gradually walk the target to a false position.”
The vulnerability remains unresolved, and a paper presented at a Chicago communications security conference in October laid out parameters for successful spoofing of both civilian and military GPS units to allow a "seamless takeover" of drones or other targets.
To “better cope with hostile electronic attacks,” the US Air Force in late September awarded two $47 million contracts to develop a "navigation warfare" system to replace GPS on aircraft and missiles, according to the Defense Update website.
Official US data on GPS describes "the ongoing GPS modernization program" for the Air Force, which "will enhance the jam resistance of the military GPS service, making it more robust."
Why the drone's underbelly was damaged
Iran's drone-watching project began in 2007, says the Iranian engineer, and then was stepped up and became public in 2009 – the same year that the RQ-170 was first deployed in Afghanistan with what were then state-of-the-art surveillance systems.
In January, Iran said it had shot down two conventional (nonstealth) drones, and in July, Iran showed Russian experts several US drones – including one that had been watching over the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.
In capturing the stealth drone this month at Kashmar, 140 miles inside northeast Iran, the Islamic Republic appears to have learned from two years of close observation.
Iran displayed the drone on state-run TV last week, with a dent in the left wing and the undercarriage and landing gear hidden by anti-American banners.
The Iranian engineer explains why: "If you look at the location where we made it land and the bird's home base, they both have [almost] the same altitude," says the Iranian engineer. "There was a problem [of a few meters] with the exact altitude so the bird's underbelly was damaged in landing; that's why it was covered in the broadcast footage."
Prior to the disappearance of the stealth drone earlier this month, Iran’s electronic warfare capabilities were largely unknown – and often dismissed.
"We all feel drunk [with happiness] now," says the Iranian engineer. "Have you ever had a new laptop? Imagine that excitement multiplied many-fold." When the Revolutionary Guard first recovered the drone, they were aware it might be rigged to self-destruct, but they "were so excited they could not stay away."
* Scott Peterson, the Monitor's Middle East correspondent, wrote this story with an Iranian journalist who publishes under the pen name Payam Faramarzi and cannot be further identified for security reasons.
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Iran claims its experts almost done recovering data from captured US drone
Nasser Karimi, The Associated Press Dec 12, 2011 13:45:00 PM
0
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian experts are in the final stages of recovering data from the U.S. surveillance drone captured by the country's armed forces, state TV reported Monday.
Tehran has flaunted the capture of the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret aircraft with stealth technology, as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States in a complicated intelligence and technological battle.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. was pressing Iran to return the aircraft, which U.S. officials say malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran. But a senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that the country would not send it back, adding that "no one returns the symbol of aggression."
Iranian lawmaker Parviz Sorouri, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Monday the extracted information will be used to file a lawsuit against the United States for what he called the "invasion" by the unmanned aircraft.
Sorouri also claimed that Iran has the capability to reproduce the drone through reverse engineering, but he did not elaborate.
State TV broadcast images Thursday of Iranian military officials inspecting what it identified as the drone. Iranian state media have said the unmanned spy aircraft was detected and brought down over the country's east, near the border with Afghanistan.
Officers in the Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful military force, have claimed the country's armed forces brought down the surveillance aircraft with an electronic ambush, causing minimum damage to the drone.
American officials have said that U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that Iran neither shot the drone down, nor used electronic or cybertechnology to force it from the sky. They contend the drone malfunctioned. The officials spoke anonymously in order to discuss the classified program.
U.S. officials are concerned others may be able to reverse engineer the chemical composition of the drone's radar-deflecting paint or the aircraft's sophisticated optics technology that allows operators to positively identify terror suspects from tens of thousands of feet in the air.
They are also worried adversaries may be able to hack into the drone's database, although it is not clear whether any data could be recovered. Some surveillance technologies allow video to stream through to operators on the ground but do not store much collected data. If they do, it is encrypted.
Separately, in comments to the semi-official ISNA news agency, Sorouri said Iran would soon hold a navy drill to practice the closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which is the passageway for about 40 per cent of the world's oil tanker traffic.
Despite Sorouri's comments and past threats that Iran could seal off the waterway if the U.S. or Israel moved against Iranian nuclear facilities, no such exercise has been officially announced.
"Iran will make the world unsafe" if the world attacks Iran, Sorouri said.
Both the U.S. and Israel have not rule out military option against Iran's controversial nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at making atomic weapons. Iran denies the charge, saying its nuclear activities are geared toward peaceful purposes like power generation.
In another sign of the increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S., Tehran said Monday it has asked Interpol to help seek the arrest of two former U.S. officials it accuses of supporting the assassinations of Iranian officials.
Iran's state prosecutor, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei, told reporters that Iran has filed charges against retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane and former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht.
Ejehei said Iran sent a request to Interpol in Paris to help pursue the two Americans through its office in Washington.
Iran says the two men urged the Obama administration to use covert action against Iran and kill some of its top officials, including Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani commander of the Quds Force, the special foreign operations unit of the Revolutionary Guard.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWDNBu9DkU&t=28s
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https://twitter.com/RWApodcast/status/1638205999377989634
In Russia, mine steps on you!
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/cops-mad-ron-desantis-because-100000169.html
:cry:
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Though the article is hostile to DeSantis, I heartily approve of his actions here. No reason for the Chinese to have access to this sort of data!!!!!!!!!!!
Let the market solve the problem!!!
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agreed
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Though the article is hostile to DeSantis, I heartily approve of his actions here. No reason for the Chinese to have access to this sort of data!!!!!!!!!!!
Let the market solve the problem!!!
Exactly
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/10/in-war-there-are-no-emotions-ukraine-drone-squads-bakhmut
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https://www.popsci.com/technology/thor-weapon-drone-swarm-test/?utm_term=PSCENE052523&utm_campaign=PopSci_Newsletter&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Final
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well I hope this has potential for hypersonics
you likely had seen this :
https://eurasiantimes.com/new-chinese-pla-sink-uss-gerald-r-ford-aircraft/
the rumors we lose in war games
and that hypersonics can sink carriers
is not just some silly rumor
according to this..............
we need Star Trek shields .....
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https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1666916447996485644
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etjzk4w3xHs&t=173s
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https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1666916447996485644
https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/141/448/205/original/5a96d3894798293b.gif
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1FNcNvboSg&t=123s
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https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/how-ukrainian-diy-drones-are-taking-out-russian-tanks/3912093C-EDC6-4EDE-806D-57C558C8E8DB?mod=hp_lead_pos9
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https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/07/defense-startups-team-defeat-swarm-drones/388909/
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https://news.yahoo.com/wrong-people-just-got-hands-083935506.html
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/russian-supersonic-bomber-destroyed-by-ukrainian-drone/
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https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-unveils-armed-drone-resembling-americas-mq-9-reaper-claims-could-reach-israel
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https://www.droneshield.com/products/dronegun-tactical
I am informed that it is ineffective.
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https://dronelife.com/2023/10/05/counter-uas-technology-in-warmaking-and-on-the-homefront-a-dronelife-exclusive/
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https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/10/us-army-scrambles-catch-rising-drone-threat/391014/
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ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jF9ljFACXM
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https://truebattle.org/global-conflicts/how-drones-are-changing-war/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzX2j552eAA&t=2s
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Small Drones Are Helping Israel Navigate the Urban Battlefield in Gaza
Cheap, agile devices can explore tunnels, break through windows and carry explosives
By
Dov Lieber
Follow
Updated Dec. 29, 2023 12:05 am ET
The Israeli military has tried a variety of methods to explore Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza: robots, robot dogs and real dogs. But what it has quickly learned is that the cheapest and most effective option for exploring the underground labyrinths—which are a potential death trap for soldiers—is a small quadcopter drone.
It isn’t just tunnels. In the dense urban battlefield of Gaza, the Israeli military has been flying these quadcopters—essentially small helicopters with four rotors—into buildings before sending in soldiers. The devices are also providing smaller units with aerial reconnaissance and being used as guided munitions.
The small drones are just one new piece of Israel’s unmanned aerial arsenal, which military officials say has played an essential role in minimizing their casualties as they rapidly advance through a densely populated, well-fortified and extensively booby-trapped battlefield.
Israel also operates a large fleet of fixed-wing unmanned aircraft, some as large as F-16s and others small enough to be carried on a soldier’s back, that carry out a mix of surveillance, reconnaissance and airstrikes—an ability it admitted it had for the first time last year. The largest aircraft can fly up to altitudes of 45,000 feet and stay airborne for nearly a day and a half, while the smallest flies at 5,000 feet and can stay aloft for a few hours.
Israeli military officials say those drones are still a critical backbone of support for the military. But it turns out that small, cheap quadcopter drones are in many ways more useful on some parts of the battlefield—like in tunnels.
About a decade ago, Israel’s National Security Council had deliberated whether quadcopter drones would have an impact on the battlefield and concluded they wouldn’t, said Jacob Nagel, a former Israeli national security adviser.
Now he said, “The air in Gaza is full of them.”
The increasing adoption of small, commercial drones is evident in conflicts around the world. Both Russia and Ukraine have relied heavily on quadcopters for surveillance and attacks, while Hamas used small drones as part of its Oct. 7 assault. Since then, thousands of commercial drones have made their way into the hands of Israeli soldiers on the battlefield and civilians looking to defend themselves.
The quadcopter has become a lifeline for Israel’s smaller, less-equipped units, such as those made up of reservists called into battle after the Hamas attacks.
The drones, however, weren’t expected to be used to explore tunnels. Israel originally used heavy robots connected to the surface through a cable to search the hundreds of miles of passages that Hamas has dug beneath Gaza. But the tunnel floors are often filled with trash, tripping up the robots, while some passageways proved to be too narrow for them to be operated.
Israel also tried using robotic dogs, but they are expensive and heavy.
The small drones can create 3-D maps of the tunnels, are completely untethered and can fit through small spaces. They can also create their own communications networks underground, with each small drone flying as far as it can before becoming a new relay node that will allow the next drone to fly further.
It wasn’t just Israel that failed to originally foresee how important quadcopters would become in war zones. The U.S. military had for years focused on building larger, more expensive drones before realizing only too late that it had ceded the small drone market to China.
Today, China’s SZ DJI Technology is the world’s largest maker of consumer drones, and its inexpensive quadcopters have become popular on the battlefield.
At the outset of the war in Gaza, when there was a rush to get small drones into the hands of Israelis, many of those sent were Chinese-made DJI drones, said employees at private drone companies working with the Israeli military.
In one video released by the Israeli military, soldiers could be seen lowering a DJI Mavic 3 drone into a tunnel below a hospital compound in Gaza City.
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Israel soon cracked down on the use of DJI’s drones inside Gaza, said the employees at the private drone companies. The operators of the Chinese-made drones, which aren’t designed for the battlefield, can be located using off-the-shelf hardware that Hamas could likely acquire.
China’s SZ DJI Technology is the world’s largest maker of consumer drones, and its inexpensive quadcopters are also on the battlefield. PHOTO: CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS/REUTERS
A senior Israeli military official said an effort had been made to standardize what kind of drones soldiers could use on the battlefield.
“One of the [Israel Defense Force’s] top acquisition priorities right now is indoor drones for use in hostage rescue operations in the Hamas tunnels and subterranean environments,” said Blake Resnick, CEO of the U.S. drone company BRINC.
Resnick said he was in Israel earlier in December and the Israeli military purchased some of the company’s LEMUR 2 drones, which are designed for search and rescue operations. The drones are being used primarily for hostage-rescue operations in the Hamas tunnels and subterranean environments, according to Resnick.
The Israeli military declined to comment on what type of drones it is using inside Gaza.
Aviv Shapira, the Israeli co-founder and CEO of drone company XTEND, first began working with Israel’s military several years ago to use quadcopters to take down incendiary balloons that Gazans, some at the behest of Hamas or other militant groups, were sending into nearby Israeli farms to start large fires.
Now, he said, the Israeli military is using the company’s drones for a variety of purposes inside Gaza. Some go into the tunnels. Some can break through windows and explore inside buildings. Others are equipped with robotic arms carrying a small payload, such as a small adhesive explosive that can blow a door open, fly in and drop grenades.
He said the military’s Yahalom, or diamond in Hebrew, which specializes in finding and destroying Hamas’s tunnels, uses the drones to drop things onto mines or booby traps usually found around the tunnel exits.
XTEND’s small Xtender drones, which can carry about 5 ounces, are equipped with cameras that can create real-time 3-D mapping, helping them fly indoors and underground in tunnels. The drones can work underground by operating as radio relays, helping the operator reach the furthest drone.
These functions, initially designed for indoor use, have now become essential for outdoor use in Gaza, said Shapira, because both Hamas and Israel are jamming Global Positioning Systems for navigation and radio signals for communications.
Multiple drones—sometimes called a swarm—can also be directed by one operator. Using a virtual-reality headset with picture-in-picture feeds, the operator can use one drone to break into a building through a window or a door, and land a second one at the entrance for additional surveillance. Meanwhile, a third can search the building for the target.
“We found that three is the magic number,” said Shapira.
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Of course they did:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/12/report-chinese-spy-balloon-used-u-s-internet-provider/
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A drone squad commander with the call sign Tulayne, meaning “Seal”, during an operation near Mala Tokmachka, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
A drone squad commander with the call sign Tulayne, meaning “Seal”, during an operation near Mala Tokmachka, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.
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Short on Shells, Ukraine Relies on Explosive Drones to Hold Russia Back
The drones are more accurate than artillery, but far less powerful. They are helping Ukraine to fend off Russia’s forces, at least for now
By Ian LovettFollow
| Photographs by Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Jan. 8, 2024 12:00 am ET
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A VILLAGE NEAR ORIKHIV, Ukraine—From a bunker on the southeastern front, it’s easy to hear how Ukraine’s supply of artillery ammunition has dwindled. For every five or six incoming Russian shells, the Ukrainians fire back once or twice.
As the war approaches its third year, Russia is on the offensive, backed by an economy on a war footing. Ukraine, meanwhile, is short on ammunition as additional aid from its main backer, the U.S., remains blocked in Congress.
With artillery shells running low, Ukrainian troops on the front lines are improvising and using explosive drones to try to hold the Russians back.
“We’re increasingly using FPV drones because we have a lack of shells,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation. But, he added, “drones can’t replace artillery completely.”
Ukraine’s growing reliance on FPV, or first-person-view, drones offers a preview of what the war might look like if the flow of Western weapons to Kyiv were severely curtailed.
FPV drones can’t match the speed of artillery or blast through a concrete wall, but they are cheaper and much easier to produce.
With additional aid packages from the U.S. and the European Union stalled, Ukrainian forces are running short on ammunition, money and manpower. Many brigades are depleted from the summer counteroffensive, which failed to make a significant breakthrough.
Now, the Ukrainians are trying to make do until more resources arrive. As in the first weeks of the war—before Western weapons flooded into the country—that short-handedness has led to unorthodox tactics and MacGyvered weapons to plug holes, such as substituting FPV drones for artillery fire.
The drones can’t fly as far or fast as artillery. They can’t carry as much explosive, or blast through a concrete wall. But at just a few hundred dollars each, the drones cost far less than artillery shells and are much easier to produce—volunteers buy drones from commercial vendors and deliver them to the soldiers, who rig them with explosives.
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Both sides have made increasing use of FPV drones over the past six months as they’ve shown their usefulness on Ukraine’s flat, open fields. They’re far more accurate than artillery, allowing the drone pilots to chase down moving vehicles and troops on foot. While artillery usually needs several shots to hit a target, FPV drones hit almost every time.
So far, they’re just about holding back Russian advances around Robotyne village to the south of the town of Orikhiv, since some artillery units in the area were sent to other parts of the front.
“They’re putting more and more hopes on us,” said a 33-year-old commander of an FPV drone squad, who goes by the call sign Tulayne, meaning “Seal.”
Tulayne said his drone team was operating short-handed in several ways.
The Wall Street Journal observed Tulayne’s team on a recent mission in the Robotyne area, where Russian forces have been trying to win back the territory Ukraine seized during the counteroffensive.
The four-man team brought 20 propeller drones, each about the size of a dinner plate, to a bunker a few miles from the front line.
The engineer attached different kinds of munitions to a few of the drones—one for hitting infantry, another designed to penetrate armored vehicles. Then he ran outside to set up an antenna, with wires running into the bunker to connect to the pilot.
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A surveillance team spotted at least a dozen Russians in a network of foxholes not far away. Tulayne, who was acting as pilot, slipped on goggles that let him see what the drone’s camera sees and grabbed a controller. Then the drone whirred into the air.
Tulayne maneuvered toward the entrance to a foxhole, then slammed the drone into it. He and his colleagues watched a live feed from a surveillance drone as smoke rose from the foxhole, waiting for Russians to run out. “They’ll come out,” Tulayne said of the Russians.
Ukrainian soldiers with FPV drones are able to chase down Russian personnel.
Soldiers from the Ukrainian drone squad walk toward a front-line position.
The deputy commander told an engineer to get another drone, armed with a different kind of munition, ready to take off and hit them again: “He’s bandaging him,” he surmised. “We need to fly there fast.”
Although the Ukrainians are relying on FPV drones out of necessity, soldiers operating around Robotyne said the devices are transforming the front line. Because large armored vehicles are valuable, easy-to-spot targets, both sides limited their use on the front line and instead began to rely on vans, or even motorbikes.
But using the FPV drones, the Ukrainians are now hitting even small vehicles, and chasing down soldiers on foot.
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The result is that the gray zone—between enemy trenches that neither side controls—has grown wider, according to soldiers in the area, making it tougher to advance.
“When we arrived a few months ago, the enemy was still bringing in people and ammunition with Jeeps,” said the 31-year-old commander of another FPV platoon working near Robotyne. “We’ve slowly destroyed all their logistics. Now, they have to bring boxes and evacuate the wounded on foot.”
Over the course of their 12-hour shift, Tulayne and his team launched 12 drones. One was jammed by Russian electronic warfare systems. Two failed to detonate. The rest slammed into the same network of Russian foxholes. The team believed they killed two and injured several more.
Tulayne said he had noticed an increase in the use of FPV drones by Russia.
Still, the FPV teams said they were operating short-handed in several ways, making their job tougher.
Tulayne’s platoon should be twice as large as it is, but he hasn’t been able to recruit new men, leaving the team overworked.
And even though the drones are cheap, there’s a limit to how many can be used. The team must request special approval to hit the same foxhole over and over. During their recent shift, they requested permission and never got an answer.
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Most of all, Tulayne said, the lack of artillery support is a handicap.
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Though the drones are effective against infantry and vehicles, they can’t carry enough explosive to destroy fortifications, which artillery can blast through. In addition, they fly far slower than artillery—about half a mile a minute. Sometimes, by the time they reach their destination, the target is gone.
A few months ago, the drones were supplementing artillery, swooping in after shells had crashed through fortifications and picking off softer targets.
“I’d just fly toward the clouds where artillery had hit,” Tulayne said. “It’s been a few weeks since that happened.”
Ukrainian front line
Map of the Ukraine front line, comparing Jan. 1, 2023 to Dec. 31.
Front line Jan. 1, 2023
Russian-controlled area Dec. 31
50 miles
50 km
RUSSIA
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Bakhmut
Dnipro
Orikhiv
Mariupol
Kherson
Sea of Azov
Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Andrew Barnett/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In addition to seeking foreign arms, Ukraine is working to beef up its production of FPV drones, including making some that are capable of carrying larger munitions.
“We will make a million drones next year,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the end of December. “I agree we have challenges. With amounts of aid, with artillery shells.”
Meanwhile, however, Moscow is trying to make the most of its resource advantage, and is building its own FPV drone army.
“In the last few weeks, their use of FPV drones has increased three or four times,” Tulayne said, though he added that Ukraine was still using more. “Their artillery is working well. They have an advantage in air reconnaissance.”
Though Tulayne said the Russians hadn’t gained any territory in the area where his platoon was working, Moscow has slowly been clawing back territory around Robotyne, according to open-source analysts.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzg0AigUnZw
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https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/ai-drone-that-could-hunt-and-kill-people-built-in-just-hours-by-scientist-for-a-game
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appears the page was taken off the net.
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I'm still seeing it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pEqyr_uT-k&t=162s
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https://mwi.westpoint.edu/welcome-to-social-science-of-war-a-new-podcast-series-from-west-points-department-of-social-sciences/?fbclid=IwAR38LoTxNUCTivkjAH6m2KvM0K1_O9L96bF4pzvwnJtR4G5GncEAwtHU34U
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-rCvj_2ST8&t=22s
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tens-of-thousands-of-drones-from-china-and-iran-flood-into-ukraine/ar-BB1ly2ut?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=e43bea62557043c3b899eed3b861a264&ei=5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2wZctmpH9o
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https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/fireworks-drones-swarm-danger-health-technology?rid=1FA7B4FB2708027C69DEB520E25B0DBC&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Daily_NL_Thursday_Science_20240704
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https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/congresss-plan-to-outlaw-chinese-drones-met-with-protest-c95cf1fe?mod=latest_headlines
By Heather SomervilleFollow
Aug. 7, 2024 8:30 am ET
The U.S. isn’t ready to wean itself from Chinese drones.
Search-and-rescue worker Kyle Nordfors flew a drone made by a Silicon Valley company into the rugged Wasatch Range in Utah. No one was lost in the backcountry—he was trying to make a point.
The drone couldn’t make it up the mountain. Its radio lost connection, causing it to turn around and fly back.
“I could not even physically get the American drone to the top of the mountain to begin the search,” he said.
Nordfors, head of air operations for Weber County Sheriff Search and Rescue, was trying to re-create a rescue he had successfully completed a few weeks earlier with a Chinese drone from SZ DJI Technology. He has tested dozens of drones in the mountains, and DJI works the best, he said.
Now he is worried Washington is about to hamstring his searches for lost climbers and hikers.
Enthusiasts like Nordfors have proven crucial in DJI’s fight against a proposed ban from Congress that would effectively outlaw new DJI sales in the U.S. Throngs of loyal users, from mountain-rescue squads to police departments and farmers, have drummed up resistance, calling their elected officials, writing opinion columns and signing letters in support for Shenzhen-based DJI.
A DJI drone aids in a mountain rescue by the Weber County Sheriff Search and Rescue team in Utah’s Wasatch Range. KYLE NORDFORS
DJI has been labeled a national-security risk by Republicans and Democrats, military officials and federal regulators. The U.S. government has placed tariffs on the drones and largely prohibited federal agencies from using DJIs.
Yet DJI accounts for around 70% to 90% of the American commercial, local government and hobbyist drone market. Real-estate agents, movie producers, firefighters, roof inspectors, utilities and law enforcement have all come to depend on the brand. The Secret Service bought more than 20 of them in 2022 just before restrictions were put in place, according to federal purchasing records.
DJI says a ban could cost the U.S. billions of dollars and impact thousands of jobs.
“It would also leave a vacuum in the U.S. drone ecosystem by removing the largest manufacturer from the market,” the company said in a letter to Congress.
Small drones have become essential tools in U.S. commerce and emerged as critical weapons in modern combat, handing the world’s largest supplier—DJI—enormous power. National-security experts say reliance on Chinese drones creates a dangerous dependency that China could exploit in a conflict.
Ukrainians have relied on DJI, while American models have often failed on the front lines—although soldiers have had to contend with security vulnerabilities.
The latest attempt to block DJI drones is a bill to prohibit new models of DJI drones from receiving the license necessary to fly on American communication networks. Drones that users are flying today would be allowed. The bill passed in the House.
“The United States must end its reliance on Communist China and build the U.S. drone industrial base,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), who sponsored the bill.
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York is sponsor of a bill to prohibit new models of DJI drones from being licensed to fly on American communication networks. Photo: Annabelle Gordon/CNP/Zuma Press
The Senate last week introduced its version of a Chinese drone ban, which also covers Chinese drone maker Autel Robotics and includes a grant program to help first responders buy American drones.
DJI said it has encouraged lobbying to block the ban and helped fund the Drone Advocacy Alliance, a collection of organizations that oppose Stefanik’s bill. Senators were inundated with concerns from public-safety representatives and farmers.
Filling the void
The national-security debate around DJI goes back years. Lawmakers and law-enforcement officials accuse DJI of aiding in human-rights abuses in the far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang, and say DJI drones can send sensitive data back to Beijing, although security reviews have had mixed findings.
Concerns have amplified in recent months after a government lab issued new findings on the security risks posed by DJI, according to people briefed on the findings. Federal officials have cautioned utility operators against using DJI drones to inspect dams and power grids.
DJI said it “categorically refutes” human-rights abuses allegations. Its users can fly the drones without an internet connection, the company said, and independent reviews have found its drones are secure.
The Lawrence, Kan., police department has used its fleet of 20 DJI drones, together with other Chinese brands, to find missing children and capture violent criminals trying to escape arrest, said Sgt. Drew Fennelly, drone-team coordinator at the department.
Top, a DJI M30 drone in training action; the Lawrence, Kan., police department says it has used its fleet of drones to find missing children and capture violent criminals.
“We just want the best technology that keeps our citizens safe for the most reasonable price,” he said. “The technology in the U.S.-made drones has not caught up with the Chinese-manufactured drones.”
Drone users fretting about the possibility of a DJI ban say American drones often can’t fly far enough, have inferior cameras and radios and can cost five times the price of DJI drones.
U.S. drone makers say they have closed the technology gap with China, and costs will come down once they have enough demand and funding to manufacture at a larger scale. Some U.S.-manufactured indoor drones are as good as DJIs, industry experts say.
Adam Bry, chief executive at Skydio—the maker of the drone that failed to reach the mountaintop in Utah—said his drones are used by more than 400 public-safety agencies, including for mountain rescues, because they are “easy to fly, hard to crash and capable.”
DJI accounts for 90% of the drones used by U.S. public-safety agencies, according to a 2020 data analysis by Bard College in New York.
Silicon Valley company Skydio says its drones are used by more than 400 public-safety agencies. Photo: Clara Mokri for WSJ
Skydio recently posted a video of a successful flight of its drone in an area near where search-and-rescue worker Nordfors’s test flight of a Skydio drone had failed.
In a blog post accompanying the video, Skydio said it had upgraded its communications system so its drones would perform better when flying behind obstacles or long distances.
“They are making good changes,” Brandon Karr of the Law Enforcement Drone Association said about American drone makers. “The one thing they cannot adjust for are supply chains.”
American drones are in short supply with long wait times. Drone buyers say they sometimes have to wait close to five months for a U.S. drone, while DJIs are available immediately.
“Are American drone companies ready to fill the void?” said Trevor Perrott, chief executive of Florida drone maker Censys Technologies. “No, we’re not ready. But DJI may very well be a Band-Aid we need to rip off for long-term gain.”
The Lawrence Police Department says its drones from Chinese makers are more reliable than some U.S.-made drones. Photo: Arin Yoon for WSJ
Cpl. Skyler Richardson does some maintenance on a DJI Mini drone. Photo: Arin Yoon for WSJ
At least seven states have passed bans on the use of Chinese drones for publicly funded agencies, as local politicians have moved to take action against DJI.
After Florida passed a law banning DJI drones last year, some counties that had come to depend on drones suddenly had none to fly. The Miami-Dade Police Department bought five American drones after losing its DJI fleet, a spokesman said. “We do not have the same capabilities with the American drones,” he said, although they have seen improvements.
In Kansas, the Lawrence Police Department welcomed Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the state bill that prohibited the use of Chinese drones by public agencies. Kelly said the restrictions would “end up placing significant burdens” on law enforcement.
“Ideally, we would like to be supporting U.S.-made drones,” said Fennelly, the drone-team coordinator. “But that is just really difficult for us right now to do that.”
Brett Forrest contributed to this article.
Write to Heather Somerville at heather.somerville@wsj.com
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-appears-using-wired-unjammable-180442633.html
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https://time.com/7010426/us-military-drone-force/?utm_campaign=Cultivation&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_dWodNgeSCmVc6WUQWkW9z3Gnm_2UgKnKriH1mVQGmN3Vv3Edm2S1LDijjHRJo7e8h297Mbk8aEdv3WuSqDnO5k8wnKg&_hsmi=321005010&utm_content=321005010&utm_source=hs_email
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/new-portable-device-shields-against-unwanted-drones/ar-AA1pbLOW?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=03aeae7a595e4e20b094e3008e1e76c9&ei=54
https://www.droneshield.com/c-uas-products/rfone-mk2
https://spaceanddefense.io/rfone-mkii-release-far-reaching-drone-detection/
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wwii-era-technology-boosts-lethality-of-ukrainian-drone-bomb-strikes/ar-AA1q3OGW?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=6bfc8069d0914440a95021d10fcb7049&ei=104
WWII-era technology boosts lethality of Ukrainian drone bomb strikes
Necessity is the mother of invention, and Ukrainian troops are proving it every day in the battle against Russia. One of the most recent ones that have surfaced is an old World War 2 era technique, which is making its drone bombs more lethal.
The invention is quite simple in nature – attaching a laser sensor to a drone bomb fuse. The laser sensor acts as a tape measure to find out the distance between the bomb and the intended target.
It then sets about the bomb fuse so that detonation can take place, increasing the lethality of the drone bomb.
The information about the same was revealed by a Russian blogger named UAV Developer on Telegram in a group named Military Hub.
In the post on the messaging app Telegram, originally written in the Russian language, the blogger states that the primary explosion sensor is LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which uses laser pulses to measure distances.
“Anyone who has had a laser tape measure understands what we are talking about,” UAV Developer stated in his post on Telegram. He then went on to add that it gives the bomb fuse the capability to get triggered at the desired distance from the target.
The bomb fuse also has a secondary push-button contact sensor, which is normally present on most bombs. It is designed to take over in case the primary laser sensor fails.
Related video: Drone or Dragon: Ukraine’s deadly thermite weapon (Dailymotion)
He then goes on to mention that this means that Ukrainians are “following the path of electrification of ammunition.”
Adding sensors to bomb fuse
Although quite a simple and time-tested formula, the addition of laser sensors can make the drone bombs quite effective.
Claims have also been made regarding Ukrainian troops using ‘Johnny‘ electronic fuse with anti-tank mines.
Typically, an anti-tank mine is triggered only when a tank or heavy vehicle passes over it and turns on the switch. However, the addition of ‘Johnny’– essentially a magnetometer – allows the anti-tank mine to detonate when a person or vehicle approaches it.
The metal on the individual or vehicle attracts the magnetometer, triggering the fuse and leading to detonation. Further, the addition of an anti-handling gyroscope prevents any attempt to move the bomb safely.
What is even more terrifying for Russian forces is that everyday items are also being converted into IEDs with the addition of Verba and are being left behind by Ukrainian troops.
Increasing lethality in the Russia-Ukraine war
The war between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the use of drones and other simple yet effective technologies.
Recently, there were reports of Ukrainian troops deploying drones equipped with thermite to burn Russian fortifications. Russia has also reportedly been using thermite bombs and drones to inflict damage on Kyiv and its troops.
The emergence of new anti-drone warfare technologies and tactics is escalating with each passing month due to the war, and both sides are resorting to increasingly lethal attacks to gain an advantage.
Now in its third year, the war has taken a devastating toll on the lives of people in the region. Most recently, a Russian attack using drones and missiles on Wednesday resulted in the deaths of seven people in the city of Lviv in Ukraine.
This followed an earlier strike on a military institute in the city of Poltava, which killed 53 individuals, according to Kyiv officials.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-asked-weapons-experts-to-review-ukraine-s-two-new-drone-innovations/ar-AA1q8puZ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0ea105a822004f22925c46701cd92644&ei=79
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He says this is how we transition from dependency on China!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/countering-china-with-chinese-uavs-backfires-us-military-faces-drone-shortage/ar-AA1rtThH?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6f4add6cf4574e2da2be3dd28d1bb30c&ei=6
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second
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/marines-to-receive-new-system-for-zapping-drone-swarms-out-of-the-sky/ar-AA1rtAFw?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=9bb7280669ac482daeb98c63fd7bcef0&ei=53
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/with-new-bullets-the-army-wants-to-turn-apaches-and-bradleys-into-drone-killers/ar-AA1sgbrv?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=85d6cb7e13654240be519c5c4f723a30&ei=7
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https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-825077
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https://x.com/ChanelRion/status/1846717767535202412
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https://united24media.com/latest-news/ukraine-sends-shahed-drones-back-to-russia-and-belarus-using-spoofing-technology-4041
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1864820415023190409
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/iran-s-new-massive-drone-ship-left-home-port-last-month-and-went-weeks-without-being-spotted/ar-AA1vPQVA?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=3168aa1ef9364809b94a39c3bd309bd2&ei=28
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nj-drone-invasion-just-time-congress-reauthorize-orwellian-law
This would seem to be a specific example contrary to ZH's assertions:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mystery-drones-forced-new-york-airport-to-shut-down/ar-AA1vRXHN?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=e9d5d3e0c0aa4491a3aede1401790626&ei=18
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Tin foil? Or is there something afoot to keep Trump from taking office?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14194229/Trump-insider-claims-drones-governments-Project-Blue-Beam-coming-days-not-good.html
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2024/12/15/attack-of-the-drones-n2649074
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/12/15/give-states-power-shoot-drones-homeland-security-mayorkas/
Why in the world would I not trust the Homeland Security Dept with such a marvelous man at the helm?
:roll: :|
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and don't worry - nothing to see (no pun intended) there:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-adviser-says-government-033724708.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
:roll: :wink:
We have been lied to for so long no one believes this is the whole story.
Once one establishes themselves as a liar nothing they say can be fully believed ever again.
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-marines-confirm-drones-spotted-over-camp-pendleton-airspace-in-california-5778715?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2024-12-18&src_cmp=gv-2024-12-18&utm_medium=email&est=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYvAqcwcVzc7PzLYPrHFRB710wA0AIj31kx5JTWZu9FddhEg4S8RP
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https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/hop-munitions-unveils-drone-stopping-bullets-electrically-disruptive-projectiles/
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Thought experiment: What if those drones over our military bases and other vital installations are Chinese? Taking advantage of President Biden's dementia? And are the next step after their weather ballon transversing the entirety of our country unchallenged? That is, what if they are taking data to identify our weaknesses?
And what if this is the threat as they go after Taiwan?
https://defence-blog.com/china-places-massive-order-for-kamikaze-drones/?amp
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(8) TAIWAN ACCELERATES DRONE DEVELOPMENT: Taiwan is dramatically expanding its drone capabilities ahead of new export controls by China, in hopes of becoming a primary drone supplier to the U.S. and its allies.
China controls roughly 80% of the world’s consumer drone market, with China’s DJI being the world’s largest drone manufacturer. In October 2024, the Defense Department added DJI to its list of Chinese companies working with or for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
China announced new export controls on drone components to the U.S. for 2025, prompting the U.S. Department of Commerce to organize a delegation of 26 defense companies to visit Taiwan to foster long-term collaboration.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry describes drone development and production as its “top priority” and sponsors initiatives like the Drone National Team (DNT), which is designed to stimulate Taiwan’s drone industry, fast-track development, and create a “democratic drone supply chain center” for the U.S. and its allies. DNT expects domestic drone manufacturers to produce 15,000 drones per month by 2028.
Why It Matters: The Biden Administration’s efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese-made drones, along with China’s retaliatory export controls, have created an opportunity for Taiwan to become a central node in the U.S. drone supply chain. Given its edge with electronics and semiconductors, Taiwan is poised to become a leader in drone technology and a primary source for U.S. drones, as the U.S. seeks to create “China free” supply chains. Additionally, collaboration between the U.S. and Taiwan is likely to accelerate in coming years, which will only increase Taiwan’s strategic importance to the U.S. as well as China. – M.N.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sLYCNcRQEE
Opening for US capacitation?
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1875273225569292641.html
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https://www.splinter.com/what-happened-to-the-new-jersey-drone-panic-did-everyone-just-go-inside
So what the heck was/is going on?
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View in browser
Tech Surge of the SMO: AI, Drones, EW, Countermeasures, and More of the Latest Advancements
Simplicius
Jan 4
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Paid
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The following is a premium article of a hefty ~4800 words in size, covering the latest technological developments on the frontline in the area of drones and AI tech in particular. The report is packed chock-full of exclusive videos and hard-to-find details that you won’t see anywhere else, which I’ve collated through tirelessly poring over obscure sources and channels. So if you’re interested in the technological aspect of the Ukrainian war in particular, this is another segment you don’t want to miss.
We haven’t had an update on the state of the war’s technological progression in a while and the new year brings the perfect time to do so. One of the reasons for that is because there have been a lot of predictions on the sweeping changes said to take root on the frontline by 2025, and so it’s appropriate to discuss how close these projections have been.
One of the notoriously contrarian predictions from many months ago was that 2025 would actually see not the supremacy of drones and FPVs, but rather their negation and decline. A French army chief made this curious claim in June of last year:
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/06/19/small-drones-will-soon-lose-combat-advantage-french-army-chief-says/
From the article:
The advantage now enjoyed by small aerial drones on battlefields including in Ukraine is but “a moment in history,” French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill said at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris.
While anti-drone systems are lagging and “leave the sky open to things that are cobbled together but which are extremely fragile,” countermeasures are being developed, Schill told reporters during a tour of the French Army stand at the show June 19. Already today, 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, the general said.
One must wonder if the French army chief knows what he’s talking about; the article further points to upcoming French vehicles which may include anti-drone ‘missiles’ and ‘40mm airburst grenades’. But these will prove useless against FPVs which are much too quick, ubiquitous, and undetectable in the frenzy of combat to really be reliably destroyed by such expensive countermeasures.
To prove his point, the French army chief compares FPVs to the Bayraktar drone, saying they will disappear just as unceremoniously from the field:
First-person view drones currently carry out about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine, when eight months ago those systems weren’t present, according to Schill. The general said that situation won’t exist 10 years from now, and the question could be asked whether that might already end in one or two years. Schill cited the example of the Bayraktar drone, “the king of the war” at the start of the conflict in Ukraine but no longer being used because it’s too easy to scramble.
But the article does make one powerful point: that Western armies are essentially paralyzed from committing too directionally in one weapons program because the possibility is too high that the albatross program can be obsoleted by a new development very quickly:
The pace of military drone development means that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.
Everyone is now focusing on one magic silver-bullet system to take on drones. But the real answer lies in a total, holistic approach with the understanding that losses from drones will simply become an inescapable reality of modern war. This is how Russia has now chosen to approach the situation, simply mitigating drone advancements as much as possible not with any one particular system aimed directly at combating them, but rather through the total synergistic strategic realignment of the armed forces as a whole. This includes everything from surveillance, EW systems, the tightening of the entire operational decision tree and OODA loop, direct personnel training, anti-drone prophylactic systems for vehicles, but also the actual combat tactics and strategies employed, like Russia’s now-famous ‘dispersion’ approach, better known as the ‘death by a thousand cuts’. In an interview last month, a Ukrainian soldier had remarked how it has become very difficult to hit Russian troops with drones on his front due to the ‘slow trickle’ method they’ve begun to utilize in accumulating at a forward position. When there are only tiny groups of two or three men at a time weaving into the position from a variety of random directions, the AFU drone teams become dispersed and paralyzed from lack of concentrated targets.
Ukraine’s famed drone king “Magyar” had quite the opposite prediction in September of last year, stating that by March 2025 drone pilots would already be old news:
https://www.unian.ua/weapons/bezpilotni-droni-madyar-zayaviv-shcho-piloti-droniv-vidhodyat-u-minule-12760995.html
"Currently, hundreds of artificial intelligence systems are being developed simultaneously, and they are being tested in experimental modes. After six months, the pilots will no longer be required. You will need people who will simply lift the drone a meter above the ground. And then the drone itself, depending on its development, will decide what to attack, how to distinguish a Zhiguli from a tank, and will definitely not confuse the Ukrainian with the enemy, "Magyar said.
This seems a bit premature, after all we’re already nearing his six-month limit and the battlefield is not overrun with artificial intelligence systems. But there has been more and more noise in this direction.
For instance, top Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhiy Flash found an uptick in Russian forces using AI targeting drones in the Kursk region, even showcasing pictures of the recovered electronic boards:
Russian drone with target acquisition and auto-following from the Kursk bridgehead.
Recently, there have been more and more such drones. Holding a moving target is far from ideal, but it works.
I remind you that a drone with auto-target acquisition completely neutralizes trench electronic warfare.
In the case of mass production, the auto-capture module increases the price of the drone by 100-200 dollars
Meanwhile, Russian forces on the other hand recovered some of the Ukrainians’ own parallel efforts, likewise showcasing a special Google AI CPU.
Report:
Ukraine and Google artificial intelligence!
Recently, the wreckage of a Ukrainian quadcopter (FPV) found on the battlefield uses an artificial intelligence (AI) control system. After opening the quadcopter, it was found that the Ukrainian uses the Edge TPU development board developed by Google.
The Edge TPU board is the computing core unit of Google's Coral platform, which can be purchased publicly at a price of about $130, and Coral is a platform that provides complete hardware and software solutions for artificial intelligence. Unlike GPU boards, TPU boards are much more optimized for large-scale parallel computing required by networks.
Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, previously said that because of the war in Ukraine, he is now a licensed arms dealer! which aims to help Ukraine achieve artificial intelligence technology. He also believes that the US military should eliminate useless tanks and replace them with drones equipped with artificial intelligence.
Ukraine hopes to use artificial intelligence-equipped drones on the front lines to help the country overcome Russian jamming systems that have become effective and enable drones to operate in larger groups. Since both sides of the Ukrainian war are using electronic warfare systems that can disrupt communication between the operator and the drone, the hit rate of FPVs has decreased.
At present, most FPVs have a hit rate of 30-50%, and the hit rate of novice operators may even reach 10%, but it is said that the hit rate of AI-controlled FPVs in the future could be as high as 80%.
Here are two such tests from Ukrainian units of auto-tracking FPVs:
And one actual hit on a Russian tank which appears to be using an automated AI tracker:
Here is the same Ukrainian drone master ‘Magyar’ who goes in detail about a captured Russian drone with AI “machine vision”:
Germany is slated to begin supplying thousands of AI-equipped drones to Ukraine as well:
Germany will massively supply Ukraine with kamikaze drones, which are called "mini-Taurus", - Bild .
▪️We are talking about Helsing company's shock BpLa, equipped with AI technologies , which give them higher autonomy in the conditions of EW means of operation;
▪️The flight range is allegedly 4 times (!) greater than that of typical Ukrainian kamikaze drones;
▪️They are compared with Taurus long-range missiles, which Scholz refuses to provide;
▪️U companies they allegedly ordered 4,000 such drones for Ukraine. Batches of several hundred per month may begin to arrive from December.
Besides that, there has been a series of reports regarding other major ‘shadowy’ American defense and AI labs using Ukraine as a test bed with increasing scale.
The Pentagon’s infamous project Replicator has reportedly been at the forefront of this:
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/11/newest-replicator-drones-proven-battlefields-ukraine/400997/
Replicator acquired and tested several Anduril systems. One of the most interesting and promising directions has been in AI swarm tech to combat EW jamming—from the article above:
For instance, the source said, Anduril has developed flying mesh networks to enable drone swarms to swap data even amid heavy electromagnetic warfare interference, “relaying that data along multiple UAS[es] so that they can have long data-chain links.”
The drones' high level of autonomy also helps them evade EW effects and interceptor missiles, the source said.
“Let's say that I'm relaying comms, and then all of a sudden, the Russians pop up an EW bubble. The drone can say, ‘OK, I expected that. I'm not even going to go to my fallback positions. I'm gonna fly over here. I'm gonna go into a place where their jammer—which I can triangulate—is not affecting my link anymore.’ So you get all these networks that physically reconfigure their geometry to be robust to jamming.”
Imagine a swarm of drones all interfacing their data together: when one drone falls into the cone of a disabling EW beam, the other drones can triangulate the affected drone’s position and send it appropriate waypoint data to get to reposition itself to safety.
In fact, OpenAI has now announced not only a partnership with the Pentagon in developing warfare AI but has also appointed Paul Nakasone to a top position within the company; Nakasone is former head of the NSA and US Cyber Command.
Here’s the President of OpenAI, to show you the kind of dark directions the company is headed into:
One of the chief issues the US and partners have gleaned from the Ukrainian war is the sheer importance of mass scale at a low cost. For example, the drones being produced for the US Marines turned out to be an outrageously unsustainable $94,000 each—this is just for the basic DJI Mavic reconnaissance analogues:
So now the Pentagon and DARPA have announced new programs to address this, which also include the concept of highly versatile and customizable production infrastructure which can redistribute manufacturing in order to lower the price of mass ballistic missile strikes on a large ‘centralized’ production hub:
The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA announced the concept of rapid deployment of military production within 2-3 days at the Freedom Forge 2.0 seminar. The concept is clearly borrowed from Ukraine and the" Army of Drones " of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. These should not be large factories that take months or years to build, but a network of decentralized, small, flexible production facilities with the ability to deploy anywhere.
Instead of machines, robots and 3D printing will be used. All the necessary equipment is planned to be manufactured on-site. Moreover, everything will be produced - from a drone to the barrel of a tank gun.
The DARPA initiative points out that the United States does not ignore the "industrial" component of the experience of the SVO and seeks to play ahead of the curve, coming out to the next conflict more prepared than any likely opponent.
In short, they want “pop up” factories that can be quickly relocated and set up to run as autonomously as possible, with highly modular capabilities of producing all kinds of different weapons systems. This is extremely ambitious to say the least.
The US also sees the success of the ‘mosquito fleet’ model against standard legacy surface fleets which are ‘giants with feet of clay’ against the modern drone-centric evolution:
NATO plans to create a fleet of sea drones to protect infrastructure in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas
▪️This was announced by NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Pierre Vandieu in an interview with Defense News.
▪️Drones would allow NATO to “see and monitor the situation on a daily basis.”
▪️They want to complete the project by June 2025.
RVvoenkor
Every nation continues to conduct various drone swarm tests
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/07/swarm-wars-pentagon-holds-toughest-drone-defense-demo-to-date/
China increasingly holds drone exercises to incorporate assault and recon drone usage down to the squad level:
But one gets the impression that Russia and Ukraine are both leagues ahead of the countries on the sidelines for the simple fact that real battlefield conditions create exceptionally nuanced use-cases and requirements for ad hoc improvisation that are simply impossible to anticipate or test for in ‘exercise’ conditions or as part of procurement proposals for these various labs like Anduril.
I’ll give a few examples of this.
For instance, both the Russian and Ukrainian sides endlessly modify and re-modify virtually every component on both the receiver and transmitter side of the drone equation, creating complex forests and hierarchies of electronic wizardry to deal with constant unexpected daily challenges, evolutions, and advancements.
Recall long ago both Russian and Ukrainian sides began to utilize a system of drone-dropped “nav” signalers on the ground—a kind of electronic waypoint beacon—which can direct drones to various waypoints in heavy EW-contested environments. Now, Ukrainian units report the advent of a new system on the Russian side:
These are FPV “traffic lights” being put up around various Russian main supply routes and arteries which show three lights like red, yellow, green that warn:
No FPV
FPV far away
FPV nearby
Thus, as you’re traveling along the road, the light with its automatic detector can immediately warn you when you’re potentially being hunted.
One Ukrainian expert’s reaction:
I was even surprised that my information about the enemy's anti-drone traffic lights caused such a reaction in the media.
What information is there and my thoughts based on it.
Putting a FPV signal receiver in each traffic light is expensive and risky, such an autonomous traffic light will be quickly stolen by the Russian military.
Therefore, the implementation is as follows: somewhere in the center there is a FPV signal receiver at a high point and under guard.
The traffic lights are spread out around the district and have a LoRa connection with the central control point. Thus, the traffic light itself is a cheap product that does not represent value.
So far, I do not know whether the information comes automatically from the receiver, or is processed each time by a person who, based on the FPV picture, makes a "friend or foe" conclusion.
Do we need this on front-line roads? What do you think?
Russian units also began to install video interceptors in their vehicles that intercept the unencrypted FPV video signals from enemy drones. Here is one example of a Russian official whose car has a built in screen with such an interceptor. Upon driving in a ‘hot’ area, the video receiver picks up a Ukrainian FPV hunting the road somewhere just above him, causing him to immediately back away and scramble.
As you can see, though, someone didn’t get away.
Another innovation on the Russian side is a networked series of solar-powered microphones which triangulate Ukrainian drone incursions, distributing the data to nearby brigade HQs:
Along the entire border with the Russian Federation and in the rear, our enemy uses a network of observation points for Ukrainian UAVs
based on special "microphones".
Such points are mounted on poles and mobile communication towers. They include 4 microphones, which, when recording sounds from UAVs, transmit information via radio channel or via mobile communication network to the command post.
Such an observation point has an autonomous power source and a solar battery.
Now with the advent of fiber-optic cable drones which are immune to EW jamming, new innovations have to be constantly thought up. Such a one on the Russian side are new strobe jammers which target the drone’s video camera sensors.
An example below, but warning for epileptics—major strobing lights:
Ukrainian units write of many other innovations on the Russian side. For instance, recently even Russian medium-class recon drones like Orlan, Zala, etc., have begun equipping video signal jammers of sorts. When Ukrainian FPVs get close, the Russian drone jammer automatically detects the frequency of the FPV’s video channel and then pumps that same frequency back to it, but at a much stronger dB. This overwhelms the FPVs video channel, causing it to go blind.
The impressive innovation here is that this detection, signal analysis, and redirection is all instantly automated on a small jammer placed on the winged recon drone.
That’s not to mention that Ukrainian units have been finding all kinds of new “interesting” things attached to Russian recon drones, like rare L-band radars to detect Ukrainian radar emissions along the frontline:
In the photo, a rare Orlan. It does not have a camera, but with its receiving antenna it searches for signals in the L range of our counter-battery radars and mini radars of a not very high frequency range.
And the last type of Orlan I have never come across. This is a flying VHF direction finder. I read that it exists and there are terrible rumors about it in the ZSU (they will find us all from the sky), but I have never seen it as a trophy, which means there are few of them, which means it is not so scary.
Both sides continue pioneering the “mothership drone” class, with Russian claims that new ones can extend FPV range to nearly 80km. That’s because the mothership first ‘ferries’ the FPV to long distance while acting as its signal repeater, then drops the drone over valuable targets, after which the FPV is remotely controlled by an operator.
Here’s a Ukrainian one in action:
Meanwhile Russian helicopter crews now use FPVs to take out Ukrainian naval drones:
If that wasn’t bad enough, those very same Ukrainian “Magura” naval drones have just achieved a ‘historic’ first of reportedly taking out two Russian Mi-8 helicopters over the Black Sea via guided Soviet R-73 air to air missiles adapted to be fired from the drone:
FighterBomber appeared to confirm the shoot downs.
That’s not to even mention those very same Ukrainian naval drones have already been armed with machine guns and were seen firing on Russian helicopters several weeks prior to this.
Ukraine also claimed to have conducted its first ever UGV or ground robot assault on Russian positions:
Meanwhile, Russia has begun mass producing the first fiber-optically controlled UGVs:
Both sides are beginning to mass produce all kinds of UGVs, here’s a recent Ukrainian batch:
Russians are even beginning to roll out EW-carrying UGVs to protect troops:
On the contact line, the most important task is to provide electronic cover for assault groups, ensure the safe evacuation of the wounded from the front line, as well as military equipment and ground-based robotic complexes. Among the new products developed for this purpose is the tracked jamming robot for covering assault groups "Reb Wall-e", which in August was first presented at the International Military-Technical Forum"Army-2024".
On this mobile platform, electronic warfare equipment is installed — jamming stations "Fumigator-FPV" and "Fumigator-UAV". They provide a circular cover from unmanned vehicles, including FPV drones: the first one suppresses enemy UAVs, the second creates a protective dome with a radius of about 150 meters.
And now even the heavy class ‘Baba Yaga’-style drones are coming in un-jammable fiber-optic varieties—note the big black cylinder underneath, where the huge fiber spool sits:
Similarly, Russian Kalashnikov Concern is testing a new tethered drone for prolonged sector surveillance as a kind of replacement for aerostats:
Russian brigades are designing their own DIY wearable helmet-mounted jammers:
The 114th brigade has its own helmet-mounted electronic warfare system! Report by Sladkov.
The opening of the video shows a Ukrainian FPV falling limp to the ground behind a soldier armed with the homemade EW helmet:
Before you express shock at the likely brain damage incurred from the signal, note that they state it should only be turned on when a drone has already been detected rather than running hot at all times.
In light of all the above, the transformation slowly taking place within the Russian armed forces is a holistic one under Defense Minister Belousov’s initiatives. The aim is to integrate all the various systems in an organic way through the different levels of the military structure such that the smoothly networked operation of these assets can effectively be carried out between various involved units.
An example is this new photo series from a Russian artillery academy which shows the cadets training on integrating various drone sensor data with networked battlefield ‘awareness’ software packages:
Footage of the educational process at the Mikhailovskaya Military Artillery Academy from the kindergarten "Military education. Taking into account combat experience."
Cadets are trained to work with artillery using quadcopters and various software, including the Glaz/Groza software package , designed to transmit information from UAV operators to tank crews, artillery crews and command posts.
To train the crews of the Msta-S self-propelled guns, the academy uses software for the Dilemma simulator using virtual reality technologies .
In the training of future leaders of the operational-tactical level, various software and experience of the SVO are also used, including that personally acquired by the officers-students of the academy.
"Currently, a non-member of the SVO cannot enroll in a master's program. Therefore, they themselves make their proposals on what to change in the educational process, what to give them, what they know and understand. And the program for them, naturally, also changes," - Deputy Head of the MVAA for Academic and Scientific Work.
Military Informant
Systems akin to this, demonstrated previously:
So, what does the future hold? More autonomous systems trickling in as prices for customized AI chips drop, as explained in this WSJ article from a month or two ago:
https://archive.ph/KKMTB
It states:
Now, an even bigger breakthrough looms: mass-produced automated drones. In a significant step not previously reported, Ukraine’s drone suppliers are ramping up output of robot attack drones to an industrial scale, not just prototypes.
Enabling the upshift is producers’ successful integration of inexpensive computers into sophisticated, compact systems that replicate capabilities previously found only in far pricier equipment.
“None of this is new,” said Auterion founder and chief executive Lorenz Meier. “The difference is the price.”
Kyiv is set to receive tens of thousands of Auterion’s miniature computers, known as Skynode, which should hit the battlefield early next year. Vyriy Drone, a top Ukrainian drone startup, said it would produce several thousand autopilot drones starting this month. Other companies are also ramping up production.
The problem with this is the current phase is still ‘terminal guidance’ only, rather than AI-driven “free range” hunt mode. That means a human operator still has to find a target first while the AI only takes over the last few hundred meters, should the signal get jammed.
Using terminal guidance overcomes those issues. Autopilot mode can be engaged roughly two-thirds of a mile from a target—well outside the short range of jammers. Drones with autopilot can strike objects behind hills as they don’t need to maintain a signal with the pilot in the attack phase.
As such, the latest AI ‘targeting’ FPVs are not as groundbreaking or ‘game changing’ as some would like because Russia has now adapted in increasing its force distribution to such an extent that doing the initial target acquisition is already the hard part. Russian troops now regularly trickle into positions a few at a time and by completely irregular means:
This puts heavy stress loads on drone operators that even AI cannot solve as of yet.
Furthermore, should AI drones begin proliferating there are arguably new jamming methods that could still prove quite effective against them: for instance, the earlier ‘strobe’ jammer. Since the AI targeting mechanism heavily relies on a clean video signal, once an activated ‘dazzler’ begins ruining the cheap CMOS sensors in the drone cameras, the AI algorithm will sputter and be unable to track the target. I can foresee a bunch of cheap strobe lamps attached to soldiers’ backs, helmets, vehicles, etc., which activate upon detection of an FPV nearby. There’s no way for the AI algorithm to bypass this, and the only ‘solution’ would be equipping the drones would far more expensive camera sensors which are resistant to the strobes, which would defeat the whole purpose of mass produced FPVs.
On the other hand, equipping oneself with huge blinking lights obviously gives away your position to every other surveillance drone for miles around—so there are quite some trade-offs.
Ultimately, in my opinion AI has been far more transformative in the ‘behind-the-scenes’ action of the war, rather than the dinky terminal guidance aspect for FPVs. AI data sorting and analytics is the real game changer which has already been used through various Google and Darpa programs like Project Maven to analyze and collate vast reams of satellite data to identify hidden Russian targets. This is where the true revolution is taking place, while the ‘autonomous drone systems’ mostly lag behind.
The reason probably has to do with the much faster advancement of language models which can be used for various data analytics purposes in a far more natural way compared to robotics and such, which is always a generation or two behind.
But once again, the nation which will have the edge in the future will be the one that can apply all of the various advancements in the broadest, most integrative way possible, up and down every echelon of the structure—from the general staff to squad level.
Just two weeks ago Russia had announced the creation of an Unmanned Systems Forces military branch:
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/12/20/russia-announces-plans-to-form-unmanned-systems-forces/
The creation of the 'Unmanned Systems Forces,' announced by Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov on December 16, follows the formation of several units armed with drones.
Those units require support of the ministry, including training, supply and staffing, Dmitry Kornev, founder of the Military Russia analytical portal, told Sputnik.
"One of the effective ways to solve this problem is to create a separate branch of the military, which will ensure the solution of the tasks that the armed forces face in providing and using drones and unmanned aerial vehicles anywhere," Kornev explained, suggesting that the branch will be part of the Russian ground forces.
As such, Russia is preparing to tackle this very challenge of integrating all the new advancements across the armed forces. Make no mistake, the West certainly has many advantages, and even the lead in certain directions of drone and AI tech, but there are likewise many areas where Russia has a huge headstart, particularly where it is simply impossible to make inroads without first hand battlefield experience in a modern peer-to-peer conflict.
This is why the West has flooded Ukraine with its secret operatives, but even they can only transmit so much latent knowledge directly to hundreds of thousands of their compatriots back home who will never experience it first hand.
But stay tuned for further future updates where we’ll continue to explore more of the latest technological developments from different aspects.
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Can an EMP be focused and aimed at drones?
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/241242/could-an-electromagnetic-pulse-be-made-directional
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/04/it-is-impossible-to-outrun-them-how-drones-transformed-war-in-ukraine
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1878965068471107694
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1878965068471107694.html
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https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2025/january/08/federal-government-seeks-input-on-foreign-drone-ban
Seems like a no brainer. CCP is preparing for war and we let them . Yes ban the drones and make them illegal.
Ban Tik Tok too. Surely CCP is using that against us like EVERYTHING else.
We have to stop importing anything Chinese - at least electronics. They can still make us underwear.
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https://www.foxbusiness.com/fox-news-military/autonomous-systems-weapons-company-anduril-announces-plan-build-massive-manufacturing-facility-ohio
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Though not discussed, there are some Orwellian applications implicit here:
This Autonomous Drone Can Track Humans Through Dense Forests at High Speed
SingularityHub / by Edd Gent / Jan 31, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Drones that fly themselves, and don’t crash, are improving fast.
Autonomous drones could revolutionize a wide range of industries. Now, scientists have designed a drone that can weave through dense forests, dodge thin power lines in dim lighting, and even track a jogging human.
Rapid improvements in sensor technology and artificial intelligence are making it increasingly feasible for drones to fly themselves. But autonomous drones remain far from foolproof, which has restricted their use to low-risk situations such as delivering food in well-organized cities.
If the technology is ever to have an impact in domains like search and rescue, sports, or even warfare, small drones need to become both more maneuverable and more reliable. That prompted researchers from the University of Hong Kong to develop a new micro air vehicle, or MAV, that can navigate challenging environments at speed.
The new drone, named SUPER, combines lidar technology with a unique two-trajectory navigation system to balance safety and speed. In real-world tests, it outperformed commercial drones in both tracking and collision avoidance, while flying at more than 20 meters per second (45 miles per hour).
“SUPER represents a milestone in transitioning high-speed autonomous navigation from laboratory settings to real-world applications,” the researchers wrote in a paper in Science Robotics introducing the new drone.
According to the authors, the inspiration for the project came from birds’ ability to nimbly navigate cluttered forest environments. To replicate this capability, they first designed a drone just 11 inches across with a thrust-to-weight ratio of more than five, which allowed it to carry out aggressive high-speed maneuvers.
They then fitted it with a lightweight lidar device capable of detecting obstacles at up to 70 meters. Given they were targeting high-speed flight, the researchers say they were keen to avoid the kind of motion blur that camera-based systems suffer from.
Most important though, was the navigation system they designed for the drone. At each route-planning cycle, SUPER’s flight controller generates two flight trajectories towards its goal. The first is designed to be a high-speed route and assumes that some of the areas ahead with limited lidar data are free of obstacles. The second is a back-up trajectory that focuses on safety, only passing through areas known to be free of obstacles.
The drone starts by following the high-speed trajectory but switches to the backup if the real-time lidar data detects anything in the way. To test out the approach, the researchers pitted it against two other research drones and a commercial drone in a series of trials, which involved flying at high speed, dodging thin electrical wires, navigating a dense forest, and flying at night.
The SUPER drone achieved a nearly perfect success rate of 99.63 percent across all the trials, which is nearly 36 times better than the best alternative the researchers tested. This was all while achieving faster flight speeds and significantly reduced planning times.
The drone also demonstrated excellent object tracking, successfully tailing someone jogging through dense forest. In contrast, the commercial drone, which used vision-based sensors, ultimately lost track of the target.
The researchers suggest that the development of smaller, lighter lidar systems and aerodynamic optimizations could enable even higher speeds. Imbuing SUPER with the ability to detect moving objects and predict their motion could also improve its ability to operate in highly dynamic environments.
Given its already impressive performance though, it seems like it won’t be long before fast, agile drones are buzzing over our heads in all kinds of places.
The post This Autonomous Drone Can Track Humans Through Dense Forests at High Speed appeared first on SingularityHub.
https://singularityhub.com/2025/01/31/this-autonomous-drone-can-track-humans-through-dense-forests-at-high-speed/
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https://www.livescience.com/technology/robotics/mit-builds-swarms-of-tiny-robotic-insect-drones-that-can-fly-100-times-longer-than-previous-designs
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https://www.twz.com/news-features/russians-erect-mesh-net-tunnel-over-a-mile-long-to-counter-ukrainian-fpv-drones
Russians Erect Mesh Net ‘Tunnel’ Over A Mile Long To Counter Ukrainian FPV Drones
Enclosing an entire roadway in mesh netting is the latest in an ongoing effort to protect against these highly maneuverable weapons.
Howard Altman
Russian troops have set up a 2km (1.24 mile) mesh netting “tunnel” on a road linking Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. The mesh netting is designed to protect Russian logistics against first-person view (FPV) drones that have become a ubiquitous attack weapon for both sides. The move comes as Russian forces are launching another major push against the town of Chasiv Yar.
“To cover the supply routes of the Russian Armed Forces from FPV drones, military engineers are installing protective nets,” a Russian soldier said on a video showing the construction of the mesh net tunnel. “Our group maintains more than two kilometers of anti-drone nets. The nets are placed on the most exposed sections of the roads to ensure the safe movement of our equipment. We strive to continuously expand the coverage area, enhancing the installation technology of the nets to set them up more quickly.”
The video shows Russian troops unrolling a spool of mesh netting, which they then attached to 15- to 20-foot poles spaced evenly along both sides of the road. The theory is that the netting will provide a buffer to keep Ukrainian FPV drones from directly striking vehicles.
“The expectation is that the FPV drone, on the final trajectory of its attack, will simply get entangled with its propellers in the taut net or go off course, even if it manages to break it,” the Russian Military Informant Telegram channel wrote.
Russian troops built a mesh net ‘tunnel’ to protect against Ukrainian FPV drones. (X screencap)
You can see how Ukrainian FPV drones have affected Russian vehicle traffic in the following video.
The netting is the latest iteration of the ongoing efforts by each side to develop drone technology and ways to counter it.
“A year ago, the enemy created roads covered by electronic warfare posts,” Ukrainian drone expert Serhii Beskrestnov, also known as Serhii Flash, wrote on Telegram about the mesh tunnel. “Now drones have so many frequencies that it is not realistic to close them with electronic warfare (EW). And plus, drones with [artificial intelligence] and drones on fiber optic [cables] have appeared.”
Yuri Podolyaka, an influential Russian milblogger, suggested that the anti-FPV drone netting is a creation by troops in the field on an ad hoc basis because the Russian Defense Ministry is providing insufficient EW equipment.
“This is the ingenuity of the fighters against the bureaucrats of the General Staff who are still unable to understand that today electronic warfare is more important than tanks,” Podolyaka wrote on Telegram. “And even more so than a bunch of different expensive junk that was created for war and which is absolutely useless now. But which is still being mass-produced by our factories (and often ahead of schedule).”
The anti-FPV drone system erected in Donetsk is not the first time Russians have tried to use netting on a grand scale to defeat these fast, highly maneuverable weapons. As we previously reported, the Russians used mesh nets strung between lamposts on a road near Bakhmut to try and break up and deter FPV drones. However, the Ukrainians quickly found a workaround, flying over the nets to strike targets behind them. That system, however, did not have side or top netting that would provide better, encapsulated protection. The following video shows how Ukrainian FPV drone operators overcame that netting.
“Similar initiatives to hang anti-drone nets along roads in the Bakhmut direction have been observed since 2023. But such an extended single structure is encountered for the first time,” the Russian Military Informant Telegram channel noted. “The downside is that such networks will need to be constantly updated, given the intensity with which the enemy uses its kamikazes against Russian logistics.”
Another potential downside not addressed by Russian sources is how these nets would hold up against Ukrainian drone-dropped munitions. Those could take out not just the nets, but the poles supporting them without exposing the drone to the mesh countermeasure. Even FPV drones with the ability to command detonate would also punch holes in these nets, allowing other FPVs to enter.
Given the vast number of deadly FPV drones deployed, however, even an imperfect solution could prove beneficial. One noted Russian milblogger suggests that is already the case in Chasiv Yar, a town Russia has partially held since last July and is making another large push to capture the rest.
“Now, along the road, supplies are calmly flowing to the units liberating Chasiv Yar,” Oleg Tsarov posited on Telegram. The city, as the following video shows, has been devastated by the fighting.
Still, creating a netted ‘tunnel’ of sorts will also confine Russian forces to a very narrow and well-defined corridor that can be bombarded by artillery and other means of attack. This could prove to be a far more ‘fatal funnel’ than what an open road plagued by FPV attacks would be.
It will be interesting to see how successful this tactic ends up being. We will likely know more in the near future.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
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https://mil.in.ua/en/news/explosive-devices-discovered-in-fpv-goggles-sent-to-russian-front-lines/
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/ukraine-s-drone-makers-are-turning-up-production-for-a-weapon-they-once-thought-would-never-work/ar-AA1z2zGe?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=42565932c9cd41e3e714e111cec337a0&ei=12
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Note the last sentence!!!
(2) NORTHCOM: DRONES POSE INCREASING THREAT TO U.S.: During a Senate Armed Services hearing yesterday, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) Commander Gen. Gregory Guillot said over 350 unauthorized drone incursions were detected over 100 U.S. military installations, and more than 1,000 unauthorized drones were detected along the southern border in 2024.
Guillot said drones pose an increasing threat to homeland security and military readiness, due to foreign adversary surveillance of U.S. military facilities, and the vulnerability of U.S. facilities and critical infrastructure to drone-borne improvised explosive attacks.
Why It Matters: Defense officials are warning that non-nuclear government facilities lack counter drone capabilities. Hobbyist drones are likely responsible for much of this unauthorized drone activity, however, these facilities remain vulnerable to foreign-backed drone attacks. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced the COUNTER Act, which would give U.S. military base commanders the authority to take down suspicious drones that approach facilities. - R.C
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/us-first-drone-killer-suit-that-zaps-uavs-4-mile-away-with-terminator-like-gun-revealed/ar-AA1zoI0Z?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=8ee1e40c7ef24ce8962b707fffa0fde3&ei=28
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https://fox17.com/news/local/tennessee-congressman-proposes-allowing-property-owners-to-shotgun-low-flying-drones?fbclid=IwY2xjawI9fg9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHQ1KDNiErAn5Vw0X2Z7MHX4SAYbMSbAC2T1wB8p1J-WCBgdMmfDykyRO3g_aem_7sARaxVz5YN4D3eA7tDAuw
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This will never pass.
Might work for someone out in the West with a large ranch but could you see this in NJ etc?