Pizza Drones

[curlew]

This is the kind of thing you see in futuristic science fiction movies but it looks like the future has come to New Zealand.
Craig, have you tried this yet?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=11700291

I'm not sure if this will work in the U.S.A. Given the way we've been using drone technology in the middle east somebody named Mohammed might think of a way to give some payback.

[MachineGhost]

This is the kind of thing you see in futuristic science fiction movies but it looks like the future has come to New Zealand.
Craig, have you tried this yet?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=11700291

I'm not sure if this will work in the U.S.A. Given the way we've been using drone technology in the middle east somebody named Mohammed might think of a way to give some payback.

I can't wait until people start shooting at drones to get the goodies they carry.

[Kriegsspiel]

Equip those drones with something like a Q36 and chaff or deployable shotgunbots like in Kill Decision, add in Sand People shooting at technology, and this has the elements of a Star Wars episode.

The Drones Strike Back

[craigr]

This is the kind of thing you see in futuristic science fiction movies but it looks like the future has come to New Zealand.
Craig, have you tried this yet?

No that's not near me yet, thankfully!

I'm not sure if this will work in the U.S.A. Given the way we've been using drone technology in the middle east somebody named Mohammed might think of a way to give some payback.

Many years back I had considered writing a fiction novel and one of the assassination methods was going to be a swarm of drones with small explosive devices. It would basically be unstoppable with today's technology.

I actually think the future of anti-personnel warfare is likely to have micro-drones targeting people. Think of a truck going to the outskirts of a town. The back opens and out come tens of thousands of tiny drones with fragmentation devices attached. The drones have onboard cameras and AI and are programmed to fly over and explode on anything with two legs. Or maybe they are told to go into an area and land and watch for movement. When they see anything move, they activate and attack.

You could clear out a town of all inhabitants with virtually no risk to your own people.

That kind of stuff is coming.

[Kriegsspiel]

Many years back I had considered writing a fiction novel and one of the assassination methods was going to be a swarm of drones with small explosive devices. It would basically be unstoppable with today's technology.

I actually think the future of anti-personnel warfare is likely to have micro-drones targeting people. Think of a truck going to the outskirts of a town. The back opens and out come tens of thousands of tiny drones with fragmentation devices attached. The drones have onboard cameras and AI and are programmed to fly over and explode on anything with two legs. Or maybe they are told to go into an area and land and watch for movement. When they see anything move, they activate and attack.

You could clear out a town of all inhabitants with virtually no risk to your own people.

That kind of stuff is coming.

That's all in Kill Decision, by Daniel Suarez. Well, his were drones with shotgun shells that crashed into you to set them off, not explosives. His other books (Daemon and Freedom) have all kinds of crazy technology in them too. He consults for the Pentagon.

Wired For War by PW Singer is another good one. It was interesting to find out that the company that makes the Roomba makes a bomb disposal robot.

[Tyler]

I can't wait until people start shooting at drones to get the goodies they carry.

Who needs guns when computers work just as well?

https://www.wired.com/2016/03/hacker-sa ... mile-away/

[craigr]

That's all in Kill Decision, by Daniel Suarez. Well, his were drones with shotgun shells that crashed into you to set them off, not explosives. His other books (Daemon and Freedom) have all kinds of crazy technology in them too. He consults for the Pentagon.

Wired For War by PW Singer is another good one. It was interesting to find out that the company that makes the Roomba makes a bomb disposal robot.

Thanks for the book recommendations. I do think drone weapons are a significant threat going forward.

Yeah the Roomba company started out doing other things, but found out more people were asking about a robot to vacuum than get rid of bombs. Go figure.

[clacy]

As an aside, I have a relative who is very high up with one of major US aerospace/defense firms. He runs a division that sells weaponry to another part of the globe. Anyway, he said that swarming drones is the next big thing for warfare.

B-2's will drop 50-75 UAV's that will each contain a couple hundred micro-drones outfitted with explosives that will swarm dozens of targets at once.

It sounded like this will be operational in the very near future.

[MediumTex]

This is the kind of thing you see in futuristic science fiction movies but it looks like the future has come to New Zealand.
Craig, have you tried this yet?

No that's not near me yet, thankfully!

I'm not sure if this will work in the U.S.A. Given the way we've been using drone technology in the middle east somebody named Mohammed might think of a way to give some payback.

Many years back I had considered writing a fiction novel and one of the assassination methods was going to be a swarm of drones with small explosive devices. It would basically be unstoppable with today's technology.

I actually think the future of anti-personnel warfare is likely to have micro-drones targeting people. Think of a truck going to the outskirts of a town. The back opens and out come tens of thousands of tiny drones with fragmentation devices attached. The drones have onboard cameras and AI and are programmed to fly over and explode on anything with two legs. Or maybe they are told to go into an area and land and watch for movement. When they see anything move, they activate and attack.

You could clear out a town of all inhabitants with virtually no risk to your own people.

That kind of stuff is coming.

As I recall, there was a U.S. war games event involving Persian Gulf encounters with Iranian Navy vessels maybe 10 years ago.

The group representing the Iranians swarmed the U.S. ships with small boats coming from all directions and it completely overwhelmed the U.S. ships' defensive measures. Apparently, someone got in trouble for breaking the rules concerning the types of attacks that were allowed as part of the war games.

I can easily visualize remote controlled vehicles and boats to go along with the drones. You can't have an air force without an army and a navy, right?

[Kriegsspiel]

In a conventional military context, I don't know if drones are an omniscient force though. I thought I saw that Russia stranded the USS Donald Cook dead in the water with an electronic attack. The Iranians also hacked a drone. So to defeat a networked pack of drones you still only need to defeat one source.

I think their potential is much more potent in an undefended area, as a terrorist tool. Electronic countermeasures can be deployed on the Ukranian front or in a carrier group, but in Los Angeles? Or Chicago? A drone swarm deployed out of the back of a cargo van would be devastating.

[Pointedstick]

Carriers are definitely toast in the wars of the future. India and Russia have already developed and deployed operational supersonic missiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos). You can't put enough CIWS systems on a ship to protect against those things. Each missile costs $2.7m; the navy's latest under-construction carrier costs $13b. If they are ever deployed, the cost effectiveness of those weapons will be staggering. Carriers' main defensive strategy right now is using the carried aircraft to destroy anything that threatens the carriers before they get within weapons range, but that's really risky, especially against a modern adversary that's not multiple generations behind technologically and militarily.

After decades of slimming down the military with a lot of expensive high-tech toys (F-22s cost like 150 million apiece!), I hope we realize that a return to overwhelming numbers of what's "good enough" will win the day. Of course that type of conflict won't go over well at home unless it's truly dire. You can't fight a low-intensity anti-terrorism campaign with expendable troops and vehicles and expect the public to support it for long.

[curlew]

Interesting how this thread went from delivering Pizza to the challenges of modern warfare.

[Kriegsspiel]

Interesting how this thread went from delivering Pizza to the challenges of modern warfare.

That's what you get when you take pizza delivery to its logical conclusion.

LOL

[Mountaineer]

That's what you get when you take pizza delivery to its logical conclusion.

Nah, there is one more step. Hitler. Pizza is for Nazi drones. Now Godwin's Law is satisfied.

... Mountaineer

[MediumTex]

That's what you get when you take pizza delivery to its logical conclusion.

First the bit about the Indians using the whole cigarette, now this.

I am in awe.

[MachineGhost]

That kind of stuff is coming.

Soon we'll all be wearing personal firewalls to protect against assasination drones not just on our PC and smartphones.

I can't decide if this is good or bad, but one thing is for sure, the government will become increasingly irrelevant as a pretender of protecting the people.

[MachineGhost]

That's what you get when you take pizza delivery to its logical conclusion.

That's cause while capitalism has won the war, it hasn't won in the Middle East or Africa yet. RIFFFF's are our primary threat. I fear for the day they become sophisticated enough to implement their batshit crazy ideology technologically.

[Kriegsspiel]

Pentagon Confronts a New Threat From ISIS: Exploding Drones

Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State in northern Iraq last week shot down a small drone the size of a model airplane. They believed it was like the dozens of drones the terrorist organization had been flying for reconnaissance in the area, and they transported it back to their outpost to examine it.

But as they were taking it apart, it blew up, killing two Kurdish fighters in what is believed to be one of the first times the Islamic State has successfully used a drone with explosives to kill troops on the battlefield.

[Kriegsspiel]

Micro-assassination drones.

Would get ejected for targeting if it played college football.

[Kriegsspiel]

https://news.sky.com/story/caracas-dron ... t-11461738

Earlier, the information minister had said that "several" drones loaded with explosive charges "detonated near the presidential platform".

Mr Rodriguez said that while the president and his cabinet, who was standing next to him, were not hurt, seven members of the Venezuelan National Guard were injured and are being treated.

He added: "Whoever carried out this attack, failed."

I'm sure the drones are suitably ashamed.


Hirsutably ashamed?

[Kriegsspiel]

Yemen's Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on the world's largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and a major oil field Saturday, sparking huge fires and halting about half of the supplies from the world's largest exporter of oil.

link