"Those six thousand ships you say they haven't got?"
"WELL,THEY'VE GOT THEM!!!"
Whether it's invasion fleets and Werner Pluskat's commander at Normandy, giant sharks and small-town mayors, or weaponized drones and drone experts, there's always somebody who'll tell you it can't happen.
More than a year ago, here and over at Peter's Bayou Renaissance Man blog, I and numerous other posters pointed out that drones were going to be successfully weaponized, and kick the ass of soft targets.
A self-proclaimed subject matter expert, who for decorum I shall not point at directly (you can figure it out yourself without too much effort) explained we had to be wrong, because using drones to attack, in my example from TWO years ago, oil refineries (among other targets) with explosives or incendiaries couldn't happen, ever, because they couldn't lift enough to ever get the job done.
It was simply UNPOSSIBLE!
Sh'yeah.
And the Titanic was UNSINKABLE.
Mea culpa. Weaponizing drones is unpossible.
Oops.
Looks like somebody forgot to tell the Yemeni rebels that this could never work.
But let's give the expert his due: they didn't stick with piddly little hobby drones with 1lb payloads. Hell no.
These guys have money.
The built big, long-range drones. Launched perhaps from 900+ miles away.
Y'know, like people with huge backing will do.
This time.
I would feign humility at being so right, if it didn't happen so frequently.
This isn't an accident, or blind guesswork. And nobody is right 100% of the time, including me. But this was Eddie Murphy-at-a-Klan-rally obviously going to happen.
I look at things, draw rational conclusions, and extrapolate data in what appears to me to be a reasonable direction and distance.
And I called this sort of thing in 2017. So did Peter. So did others.
Hell, Tom Clancy called a terrorist using a jetliner as a missile in 1994, seven years before 9/11, and he was just a well-read insurance agent with an active imagination.
But it was the guy who was sure it couldn't possibly ever happen because of his own expertise on drones that missed this by a country mile, 180° in the wrong direction.
Now cue the next round of "See? I told you no one could do anything with COTS drones from Best Buy!" Which will be true, until it isn't. Because not everyone who wants to bomb a refinery (or something bloodier) has the backing of Iran, and millions of dollars of assets to fund it. So when someone drops a soda can thermite bomb over the LNG terminal at San Pedro/Long Beach, and it looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud going off, remind yourself it's still unpossible.
Because who'd want to do that?
Oh, I mean, besides the jihadi on a tight budget.
Consider your ass bitten.
NOW can we close the goddam beaches and holler "Shark!"?
Or was this just a figment of our over-active imagination too???
Technology doesn't have a side.
It merely has applications.
49 comments:
The Russians blew up multiple Ukrainian ammo dumps with these methods. It's like a swarm of killer bees crossed with jihadi truck bombs.
Thankfully, there are counters to drones (particularly in electronic/cyber warfare). But those counters need to be readily available in order to work their magic.
Start at 31:00 for the drones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMby_WPjk4
Yep, he was wrong two years ago, and is even MORE wrong today... We went through this with IEDs too. Put in a counter after three-four months of work to ensure we weren't hurting OUR folks, the bad guys would counter in 30 days. Lather, rinse, repeat. There ARE counters out there, but not cheap or readily available.
Talk about normalcy bias
Drones carrying pistols already exist and can fire while flying. IIRC I saw with a video with a 1911A1 and that's a three pound payload on a commercial drone
Given there are so many soft targets out there, any clever insurgent force in the US has a plethora of soft targets before they have to adapt new strategies.
The only real way to prevent this though is to solve the problem is to prevent it which requires that we dial back the social forces causing the instability
Good luck getting that to happen.
The argument against weaponized drones was amusing. Somewhere in the mid 1990s, the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics) showed off a half scale light plane (faint memory says it was a model of a Cessna 172). Stick a GPS receiver and a laptop computer in that guy with a fair amount of explosives, and you have yet another cheap drone bomb. It won't be fast, but it could carry a fair amount of payload.
Bonus question for the naysayer: If weaponized drones ain't possible, what in hell is a cruise missile?
RCPete
"Stick a GPS receiver and a laptop computer in that guy with a fair amount of explosives, and you have yet another cheap drone bomb."
Laptop? How about a $5 PC on a board, like the Rasberry Pi Zero.
https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Zero-Camera-Version/dp/B01GEHPI0E/
The day has long since arrived that a smart person can make his very own mini cruise missile. All it takes is will.
People like Congressman Swallwell should take note, that neatly lined up flight line of AH-64 Apaches can be made into so much smoking ruin on a $1000 or less budget.
"See? I told you no one could do anything with COTS drones from Best Buy!"
Until they get someone familiar with a particular type of facility. Be it disgruntled former employee, or someone familiar with the workings of say, an oil refinery from a region of the world where that is common (gee, where would one of those be). Some one that knows to a target seemingly small and insignificant (to the outside observer) control box or shut off valve. (secondary exhaust port anyone?)
One reason that Nukes, particularly Tac Nukes, have been de-emphasized these past 25 years or so is that precision guidance has gotten cheap and good enough to deploy on almost anything, so you can hit close enough (or punch through to the inside) of targets that used to be on the "special" list. A lot of times if need be. See also Small Diameter Bomb and concrete filled MK-82.
Civilian tech has a little lag time but it's always catching up (and is sometimes ahead of the .mil). As has been pointed out, this stuff is cheap enough (particularly with a foreign .gov backer) that you can send a hundred of cheap COTS drones with small payloads in to make sure you hit that one critical point.
I was in Boston when the numb nuts in power decided to bring in LNG tankers. There was a magazine expose about the result if a containment vessel was breached. The heavier than air mass would spread all over before becoming sufficiently mixed with an oxidizer (air) to ignite rather rapidly and oh what a mess. Thanks for reminding me Aesop. I add the following:
Obviously nothing of the sort has happened. However statistics says that if something is possible given enough time it will happen. Especially if it has some assistance. But assistance will fall within the curve.
Here is a favorite of mine. All large electrical transformers need to be cooled and the cooling machinery is alongside and is never guarded. Not much is needed to take out the cooling and the transformer goes into shutdown. Three or four out and a big city is quiet as everything stops. The bubble machine is running and Lawrence is saying wunnerful wunnerful!
Watching YT channels that specialize in flying model planes, you can see one-third-scale and one-half-scale jets with miniature turbine engines and a decent payload capacity. Most of them have tiny video cameras transmitting to virtual-realty goggles for the pilot on the ground.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination,.....
Flame throwing drones for $1300 - ain't capitalism grant. The site is throwflame dot com until they take it down
People in the Pentagon and some of their people wargame this type of thing all the time. I would be surprised they haven't thought about every idea we or any group of foreign chowderheads can come up with. The question is always, "What are we going to do about it?"
The answer for a very long time had been, "Nothing much." Solutions to these problems exist, but they require the same thing that creating the problem requires, the will and the money. C-RAM, big UAS blasting flamethrowers, and trained guys standing around with ten gauge shotguns all take the will to employ them and the money. These aren't hard tactical problems to solve, they are hard social problems to enable the solutions.
This will take some sort of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 event to get any action. Same as always. We will remain soft until we are required not to be soft. At least half the population will never be on board with what is necessary. Aesop diagnosed many of the problems and has proposed many of correct solutions. But shutting down immigration, shutting down travelers coming from Africa, nuking Mecca and Medina, etc. will meet resistance from some segment of the population. I bet few members of the resistance are real Americans anyway....
Thanks for the backstory. Your person who proclaims the un-possibles you mentioned has probably never spent a nanosecond thinking like the enemy. On the other hand, someone who's spent time being paid good money to play in their imagination of 'un-possibles' can come up with target folders faster than you can order file cabinets for them online.
You know, I saw the report, and your articles on weaponizing drones were the first thing I thought of.
True story.
" . . . Here is a favorite of mine. All large electrical transformers need to be cooled and the cooling machinery is alongside and is never guarded. Not much is needed to take out the cooling and the transformer goes into shutdown. Three or four out and a big city is quiet as everything stops. . . . "
This has already happened in 2013 but without much effect. PG&E lost 17 transformers to a sniper in 2013 in Coyote, Calif. It was just dumb luck that this attack, the worst so far on the electrical grid didn't cause more trouble. PG&E is now in bankruptcy proceedings because (among other things) of the fires in N. California they were blamed for.
The LNG tanks in Boston right on the harbor are indeed a menace. The Coast Guard clears the harbor whenever an LNG tankers enters the port. For many years the LNG tankers originated in Algeria; a nice, stable, friendly country too.
NE Heretic
Heck, even Mike Rowe has been attacked by a drone back in 2016.
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/leave-me-adrone-early-this-morning-deep-in-the-middle-of-some-sort-of-strange-ga/1285580754785398/
Funny reading, but with the advances made in hobby drones and the price drop in said drones, what was funny 3 years ago could and will be soon a directed assassination. No need to go full-stupid at a Congressional baseball practice and get caught. Just send the drones in.
Now must be an even worse time to be a security guard or body guard.
And I still expect some loon to fly a small drone into some airline's engines sometime soon.
Along with all the other wonderful ideas we normal people have thunk up.
That underground bunker looks better every day...
Lack of imagination is one of the great failures of most "Intelligence Professionals". "Can't/Won't Happen" among the most arrogant of assessments. Proven time and again.
Boat Guy
Although with all that has come to light in the last few years, remember, it is entirely possible that the official story is BS.
FROM TWO F****** YEARS AGO, GENIUS!
NOW can we close the goddam beaches and holler "Shark!"?
No we will just do this instead https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/18/cubs-tom-ricketts-joe-ricketts-racist-emails-controversy/
We have become a nation of cowards and wimps who are ripe for overtaking..
See my comment below to see that it will be impossible with the people we have now...
When you add in cui bono, it's obvious that it wasn't Iran. There's only one country that benefits, the one that constantly whines to the US government for help, the one who is well funded by (((tribesmen))) in Europe and the US.
Neither Iran nor Iraq benefit.
What's the difference between a drone and a cruise missile? Less and less, every day.
Never say never.
Late to the discussion, but i have to tell my story.
I got my first drone five years ago - a little DJI Phantom 2. Loved it - still do, but don't fly very often these days. It wasn't long before I thought about that fact that someone could jerry-rig this thing to do damage, and had that conversation with a buddy. Yeah, we agreed, these things could really be harmful if bad folks knew how to use it for nefarious purposes.
I got my proof a few months later when i got a hexacopter. Man, was that thing fierce. I flew it once. Got it up in the air, started going forward, and promptly lost control. It crashed a couple of blocks away in a residential neighborhood, luckily in the middle of the street. The LiPo battery fire in the street scared the bejeebers out of all the residents. When I finally got there, I was scared crapless, but relieved that nothing happened except the complete destruction of my hex-drone. I have never been so scared/embarrassed as I was when i drove up to the crashed drone. I can't imagine what would have happened if it had crashed on the roof of a house, a backyard, or someone's car. Wow. Luckily one of the residents knew me and my hobby/vocation, and had my back.
Now, put that crashed drone with a LiPo fire in or on something - anything - and see what can happen. I'm surprised it hasn't happened more often.
And how long until the first use at a college football game?
https://spectator.us/drones-dramatically-changing-warfare/
Opie Odd
"And how long until the first use at a college football game?
Back in 1982 there was a great hack of a college football game by MIT students. This was a prank for laughs back in 1982 but today things are much worse. The "religion of peace" has a different sense of humor.
NE Heretic
Just goes to show ANYTHING can be weaponized. I'm surprised it took this long. Those who hadn't thought of it will start thinking about it (yeah.. I'm talk to you religion of peace).
If memory serves the first recorded weapon was a rock. Maybe even an assault rock.
What did the Gunny say in FMJ? Its not a weapon that kills, it is a hard heart that kills.
Lack of imagination is what happens when you aren’t FORCED to have imagination. The cave dwellers are forced to, the CIA guys aren’t. Besides, the CIA guys can be right 100% of the time but that doesn’t mean the shot callers are going to do it.
1) http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/
Originally conceived ~ 2003. Could be improved with today's technology.
2) When the Bad Rags hit L.A. in the 2017 opus I would expect rifle teams to open fire on the clogged freeways.
3) Maybe a dozen Dorner clones join the party at some point.
4) Maybe L.A. isn't the only place for such festivities.
5) Stay away from crowds...
_revjen45
That was me that took issue with the Bayou Renaissance Man - and with you.
And - nothing has changed, other than I've stopped reading his stuff, that is. Pete is a neurotic old woman who is prone to over-reaction and alarmism - as are you. I am beginning to suspect him of dishonesty too, and I will not tolerate that from a person who claims to be a representative of God. I have proved, and remain correct, in saying that hobby drones pose no real tactical threat at this time. You and Pete have asserted that these toys can become weaponized tank busters, anti-aircraft weapons - you name it.
It doesn't even dawn on you that if it WERE possible - Uncle Sam would have already done it. Look, Aesop, the laws of aerodynamics don't change, no matter how many silly old men line up to fill their Depends diapers with fright over CG animations of toys blowing up tanks.
Here is the "drone" that is the culprit:
https://theaviationist.com/2019/09/15/everything-we-know-about-the-drone-attacks-on-two-saudi-aramco-oil-facilities/
As you can see - that is not a toy drone... it's more of a cruise missile. Good grief - it should be obvious, even to you - that if you want to do big damage to hardened targets like warships and tanks - you are going to need big warheads - and the heavy lift vehicles to do the work! This is heavy ordnance.
I return your scorn and contempt, sir - and urge you to change your pantaloons as soon as possible. ;)
You proved nothing. You opined endlessly when confronted by incident after incident where hobby drones were weaponized, we shouldn't believe our own lying eyes.
Neither Peter nor I said they would ever be a threat to tanks or military aircraft.
Nice straw man try on that score.
So Glen, exactly how thick is the armor plating on an oil tank compared to that used on a main battle tank...?
Neither Peter nor I ever suggested these things nor hobby drones pose a threat to actual weapons of war.
Their precise utility is soft targets.
Like crowds.
Civilian airliners, moving or parked.
And oil tank farms.
And the people who're going to do that won't be able to afford "cruise missiles", by any name.
QED
I am a pilot, and I own a couple of aircraft, including an "ultralight" type.
It doesn't take a ton of money to build a "drone" that can carry a payload of several hundred pounds.
Purchase an "ultralight" type aircraft: https://www.barnstormers.com/ad_detail.php?id=1503631
Add an experimental(non-certified)autopilot to the "ultralight" aircraft.
Add a programmable GPS and slave it to the auto pilot. Load your flight plan into the system. Load your payload into the front seat of the aircraft.
Fire up the engine, and climb in the backseat of the aircraft wearing your parachute.
T/O, climb to about 2000' AGL. Activate the flight profile on the autopilot GPS, including the descent phase, and arm the payload. Bail out of the plane.
Parachute to the ground, and watch the news feed.
This has been predicted for several years now. It is not fantasy.
I have GPS navigation in an "ultralight" aircraft, and it is accurate to within 25 ft if WAAS is enabled. Cost for this GPS? Less than $200, on Ebay.
Cost for the "ultralight"? Less than $8000.
Additionally, "toy" drones exist that are big enough to easily carry a kilo of Semtex. Drop a few of those in UCLA's football stadium during a game, and watch the results.
Aesop is right: it was only a matter of time before the goat-humpers figured out what a lot of us in experimental aviation have known for numerous years.
And before anyone says: "But TFRs!!"
Grasshopper, there is a WORLD of difference between a TFR issued for POTUS and VPOTUS, and one issued for a college football game.
Glen Filthie, you sir, are a moron.
Actually he's pretty bright on a lot of things.
Just really, totally, willfully wrong about drones.
FFS, we've been weaponizing drone aircraft since 1940 or so.
Looks like one of the calls I made on Monday was correct, that at least one drone would be recovered somewhat intact, short of its target. Once the forensic analysis is finished, I wonder if there will be a counter-strike, or if the Saudis consider themselves to vulnerable to risk a spiral of escalation? And in the end, Iran holds a major trump card, their thousands of truck-launched mobile anti-ship missiles which ring the Strait of Hormuz. If this escalates, they can close shipping through the strait, and short of a WW2 level infantry attack, there's nothing we can do to stop them from popping off a couple of ASMs a day for months to come, utterly choking off oil shipments through the Strait. Not to mention all the Saudi refineries, terminals etc being left in ruins.
SAUDI DRONE STRIKES AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE
Posted by Matt Bracken | Sep 18, 2019
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2019/09/saudi-drone-strikes-and-the-future-of-warfare/
Matt Bracken hosts the 4th hour of The Alex Jones Show to break down the logistics of drone warfare and what the battlefield of the future will look like.
September 16, 2019, 29 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiAU-0EkCsk
Since 1940 yes It was a attempted drone strike that Killed Joe Kennedy, Jr, The plan was to fly a Bomber to height, set the Auto Pilot to fly to a Target in Europe, and Bail out, but there was a fault in the wiring and the plane exploded before Kennedy could bail out
Let us have some truth here, Aesop. It was your opinion, and Pete’s - that casual garden variety terrorists and insurgents were all going to weaponize hobby drones and bring America crashing to its knees. You gobbled in fright and filled the comments with hysterical scenarios that had drones weighing a few ounces, dropping payloads that could wipe out platoons and bust tanks. You posted tripe from yellow journalists, and CGI animations to “prove” your assertions. And of course, I called BS and I was correct - when no credible drone threats emerged you guys turned to Ebola as the bogeyman de jour... and I will grant that you did up your game in doing so. In truth you and Pete got that one exactly backwards, the hobby level technology grew out of the mil based counterpart. It’s no use lying; I was there, and I build, program and fly these things. You can’t lie to me.
The weapons deployed here do not use jury rigged Arduino based hobby level firmware and cheap Chinese electronics. These are full blown sophisticated weapons that need a trained crews of specialists to assemble, maintain and deploy. That in turn infers a govt involvement. I suppose we will know which govt soon, but for now the fingers seem to point at Iran. Regardless, they are well beyond the capabilities of your shade tree terrorist.
And again, I find you lot panicking over nothing. Of course more third world countries are going to join us on the digital battlefield. BFD - every second rag head has SCUDs, and access to high tech weaponry manufactured in Russia, China, Europe, and even America. Hell, in Pakistan and India, where they shit on the street and can’t afford to feed themselves...they have nuclear ICBM’s.
Ladies, if you want to cluck and flap - be my guest, and pardon my laughter. But: ever see those radar guided chain guns go off on incoming missiles? Remember the Patriot missiles going after Saddam’s SCUDs? Those weapons were 80% plus effective in their day. They’re in their 5th and 6th generations today, and their more effective successors are on the drawing boards and in the labs now.
No, ladies, you are not going to die today. ;)
Glen, let's have some truth indeed.
Your scenarios and commentary on them are so full of shit your eyes must be brown.
And all the relevant posts are still right where we left them, for everyone to see.
But just for honesty's sake, let's fisk your bullshit line by line:
It was your opinion, and Pete’s - that casual garden variety terrorists and insurgents were all going to weaponize hobby drones and bring America crashing to its knees.
1/2 of a point credit.
It was Pete's opinion, and mine, and that of many others before and since that some terrorists would weaponize hobby drones.
We had confirmation of that when drone bombs were seized by the authorities in Mexico over a year ago. You denied that even after it was proven otherwise by actual events.
Us 1, Glen 0.
No one, at any time, suggested this alone would "bring America crashing to its knees."
Glen: -10 for lying.
You gobbled in fright...
No gobbling nor fright occurred; rational analysis did. You were immune.
Glen: -10 for inability to reason.
and filled the comments with hysterical scenarios that had drones weighing a few ounces, dropping payloads that could wipe out platoons and bust tanks.
None of the scenarios were hysterical. Glen: -5 points for lying again.
Nobody specified drones weighing "a few ounces". Glen: -5 points for delusions and inability read with grammar-school level comprehension
No one suggested any such thing as wiping out platoon or busting tanks.
Glen: -20 points for more outright lying.
Glen, I've gotta tell you man, you're already looking at the ass-end of -200 pts by the time I get to the end of your nonsense. And I'm going easy on you.
You posted tripe from yellow journalists,
No such tripe was posted. -5 points.
and CGI animations to “prove” your assertions.
No such animations were posted. -10 points for sheer fabulism.
And of course, I called BS and I was correct
Yes, you called BS, but you were wrong. No points.
when no credible drone threats emerged you guys turned to Ebola as the bogeyman de jour...
-20 points for cluelessness.
I've been blogging regarding Ebola since 2014, long before I'd even heard your twaddle, and I wasn't just right, I was right ahead of time, half a dozen ways about if, how, and what, compared to the head of the CDC, who was wrong right down the line. Which makes contradicting your nonsense child's play.
(cont.)
(cont.)
and I will grant that you did up your game in doing so.
My game hasn't been upped, it started so far beyond you have no idea.
In truth you and Pete got that one exactly backwards, the hobby level technology grew out of the mil based counterpart. It’s no use lying; I was there, and I build, program and fly these things. You can’t lie to me.
In truth, neither of us claimed any such thing. Military drones per se have been around since early WWII, AFAIK. COTS hobby drones, OTOH, for barely a decade, (unless you want to count model rocketry and RC airplanes). Which is precisely the POINT, Soopergenius. Because now Mohammed Imawannajihad can go down to Best Buy with naught but a credit card, buy a no-brainer drone with GPS guidance, and put a hand grenade or thermite bomb on it and turn it into a DBIED, something he couldn't do anytime from the Pliestocene Era until about 2010 or so. Everyone else grasps this fundamental change in things intuitively, while you keep beating your head on the wall to try and stop the common sense obviousness of that fact from seeping into your brain.
Glen: -20 points for too much cranial bone, and not enough cranial cargo.
The weapons deployed here do not use jury rigged Arduino based hobby level firmware and cheap Chinese electronics.
No shit, Sherlock. No one suggested otherwise. But the ones used on the Russian weapons depot by Crimean militias a year or two back did, and they blew several hundred million rubbles worth of ordnance all over downtown Crimea. And you told us not to believe video of that, and to ignore our lying eyes, because you knew better.
You were wrong on this then, as you are now.
Glen: -20 for failure to learn from your mistakes, or own your errant prognostications.
These are full blown sophisticated weapons that need a trained crews of specialists to assemble, maintain and deploy. That in turn infers a govt involvement. I suppose we will know which govt soon, but for now the fingers seem to point at Iran. Regardless, they are well beyond the capabilities of your shade tree terrorist.
Point to where anyone said otherwise.
If not, you're making a pointless point.
Glen: -5 points for fallaciously building a straw man, and laying waste to it.
And again, I find you lot panicking over nothing.
No one is panicking over any of this. Dancing on the bones of your wrongness, yes. Panicking, no. We pointed out that oil refineries are particularly soft targets, anywhere, and hitting one with 100# payload, or a pound of home-made thermite, produces pretty much the exact same results. Flaming oil fires are like that.
Glen: -5 points for mischaracterizing analysis as panic.
Inigo Montoya points out that you keep using the word "panic": it does not mean what you seem to think it means.
Glen: -1 point for poor grammar and abysmal dictionary skills.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Of course more third world countries are going to join us on the digital battlefield. BFD - every second rag head has SCUDs, and access to high tech weaponry manufactured in Russia, China, Europe, and even America. Hell, in Pakistan and India, where they shit on the street and can’t afford to feed themselves...they have nuclear ICBM’s.
Point of order: India and Pakistan have theater-range ICBMs. Being contiguous adversaries, that's all they need. I'll let that slide.
But for once again pointing out the obvious, on a point no one disputes, another -5 points for fallacious straw man assault and battery.
Ladies, if you want to cluck and flap - be my guest, and pardon my laughter.
No one's clucking and flapping here, but you're braying, not laughing.
-1 point for mischaracterization contrary to evidence.
But: ever see those radar guided chain guns go off on incoming missiles? Remember the Patriot missiles going after Saddam’s SCUDs? Those weapons were 80% plus effective in their day. They’re in their 5th and 6th generations today, and their more effective successors are on the drawing boards and in the labs now.
1) They have a finite ammo supply, which I could exhaust with funds on hand and 45 minutes at a couple of the local audio/video merchants, rendering an entire carrier battle group defenseless for 1/100th the cost in munitions expended.
2) The RCS of a COTS drone is about 1/1000th that of an incoming Harpoon, Exocet, etc. Given that they fly slower than a Yugo going uphill, 9 out of 10 odds the software screens them out of its search entirely.
3) No one's going to use COTS drones on a ship with CIWS, SeaSparrow, armor plate, and damage control.
4) They are likely to use one COTS drone with a thermite bomb on a loaded LNG tanker coming into or departing port, which unfortunately has no air search radar, no defensive weapons whatsoever, and if breached and detonated, would unleash the equivalent of a tactical nuke explosion on a civilian harbor, and all contiguous buildings.
Glen: -50 points for making up an irrelevant scenario, destroying his straw man, and yet completely overlooking the goal of Mohammed Imawannajihad since...ever: doing the most spectacular and costly damage for the smallest investment of time, money, and effort.
Jesus, man, that last paragraph of your was a Coyote vs. Roadrunner smoking hole in the ground worthy of Chuck Jones on his best day.
Bravo Zulu!!!
MOAR!!!
No, ladies, you are not going to die today. ;)
Unless you live next to a soft target, or are present when such is attacked using cheap, easily-deployed COTS drones, causing primary casualties from weapons, secondary ones from trampling and panic, and further assassinating the Bill of Rights, exactly as we've experienced after 9/11, the Boston marathon attack, and countless others.
Glen: -20 points for sheer obtuseness on that point.
Your final grade: -210½
Word to the wise, man. When you've dug yourself 210 feet down trying to get over a building, stop digging.
Every time you talk about this subject, you lose IQ points.
On something you claim to know anything about.
You are not the white tiger in this discussion.
You are Roy Horn.
Go put a bandage on that, and consider other career endeavors.
A point system! And three paragraphs!!! So much effort, for a slow kid that is supposedly so full of shite that it makes my blue eyes brown!! I’m honoured, Aesop, I truly am!
Yes... those posts are still up, but I’m sure the cool kids here will take your bluster and BS rather than inform themselves. After all, you’d have to learn about telecommunications, antennas, firmware, software, and the physics that go along with all that. For me, listening to you talk about drones is like listening to Democrats talking about gun grabbing. Scratch that - the Democrats argue more intelligently than you do, and are more informed! HAR HAR HAR! For us to have an argument, not only do we need some modicum of intellectual honesty (which you and Pete took off the table early in the debate), we would have to define our terms. For a rational debate, we need to distinguish between harmless hobby drones with minuscule capacities - and the bigger ones that are conceived and designed from the ground up as weapons platforms. Another category might include some of the high end heavier small multirotor that commonly lift heavy camera equipment like the advanced hex and octocopters. Those typically cost upward of $8k and could conceivably be weaponized, albeit with extreme limitations and usefulness. As such distinctions are probably beyond your scope and intellect, any meaningful exchange is probably not possible. But - for gits and shiggles lets give it a shot!
Why aren’t drones running the drug trade now, Aesop? After all, according to you they’re just the perfect tool for the job? And why aren’t drones being used for far more terrorist attacks? They’re the perfect weapon for that too! (As I recall, your assertion for that involved one case - that involved a retard who was easily captured by the authorities). And another where the rag heads tried to frag some Marines... and failed. The reason these things haven’t come to pass is that far better weapons are available for any given job the terrorist or insurgent might consider using them for. Look at this case - because the Iranians now have shite on their faces for trying to shoe-string themselves into drone ware fare. Sure, drones can be useful war fighters... but only if you have the money, the time, the personnel, and the support and logistic capability to build them and deploy them properly. In the real world, you can fit more drugs up your arse than the hobby drone can lift. (Considering the words that have come tumbling out of yours, you could probably hassle a small freight train in that regard... HAR HAR HAR!)
For us hobby guys, crashing is part and parcel of the hobby. That is why we get in trouble all the time... sure as shit, some idiot will fly his drone over a populated area, and be shocked and dismayed when his drone malfs and comes down on people or property. The same will happen to the terrorist or cartel mule if he tries to use this stuff. It is nowhere near reliable enough for serious work or warfare. That requires expensive, complex purpose built hardware, software and firmware. Sorry, whiz kid - $35.00 Arduino based flight controllers, 5.8 MHz radios and line of sight telemetry aren’t going to cut it. (Technology, BTW, developed by the military decades ago).
Because I am a reasoning man, (and familiar with the technologies involved)... I’m smart enough not to be caught up in the hysteria over the idea of moslem mutts using advanced weapons. Wherever there’s a market, someone will supply it. If the moslems can’t get them they will try to improvise their own with the expected results. Rinky dink drones? Hell, they did far more damage to us here at home by flying passenger jets through our sky scrapers. There’s a point where you have to stop worrying about countering the weapon, and actually do something about the man that wields it. It should be intuitively obvious that at some point, that certain moslems will need to be dealt with. But whadda I know?
So how does it work with my Retard Points, Aesop? Can I trade them in for toys and prizes?
Hmmm... as an update... looks like Yemen might have pulled this caper. Just goes to show...the mass media can’t be relied upon for info. Something else to keep in mind in debates such as this...
Aesop I will defer to you as to whether or not this guy is "pretty bright" as you seem to know him. However, your "Soopergenius" comment (as well as the rest of your posts) seems to belie that.
Something about a hole, stop digging, something something...
I think some of your families craziness is rubbing off on you Brother...Might want to vacate that environment...
It always takes far longer to fisk idiocy than it does to spout it.
Try to grasp this, Glen:
Drones are running the drug trade.
They're named Pedro and Miguel, and they work for about 1/10th the cost of a COTS drone, and carry 80 times the payload.
And cartels have already used ultralights to try and beat the border in places where the wall and ground patrols have made that approach unworkable.
You're out of toes, man.
For the love of mercy, quit shooting yourself in the feet.
You yourself noted that the capacity of something as bog-standard as a DJI Phantom was a "paltry" 500 grams. That would be 1.1 pounds to people whose country has landed on the moon.
Which, mirabile dictu! happens to be the exact weight of a standard M67 frag, or a soda can thermite bomb, and a way to initiate and drop it on command, within a GPS-guided CEP of 10'.
So, it's a good thing terrorists couldn't find any use for a payload like that, let alone 10 or 20 of them, all at one place and time, right?
That would cause zero havoc and chaos anywhere it was tried.{/sarc}
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, man, pointing out that obvious reality requires nothing but common sense, and belies all your pointless arguments. Just like it did two years ago.
This is like playing poker with my sister's kids.
You also keep pulling out your sad little "hysteria" trope.
The only one hysterical here is you.
No one else: not me, Peter, or twenty other commenters, all with more common sense that you (a low bar, I grant) has shown any panic at the impending reality.
They've just figured out, in about 0.2 seconds, the inevitability that something designed for one harmless purpose can be repurposed into a weapon, especially by unsavory sorts like criminals and terrorists. And already has been.
That obvious truth only escapes your superior intellect.
Think about that.
Everyone gets this except you.
Those "unreliable" drones were already used in Ukraine over a year ago, and accomplished their mission at a loss of zero men. There were no 1000# cruise missiles used, nor launched from hundreds of miles away. Only a few grand worth of COTS equipment, and some explosive/incendiary devices, sent over from just outside the depot fenceline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHhXk3UYRSM
Or were you going to palm that off on Yemen too?
As to your prizes, you've already played stupid games.
No points for guessing what that reward is.
I'm going to enjoy your Special Ed tap dance when somebody does exactly what's been outlined time after time, and you try yet again to tell everyone that you were right all the time, and not to believe their lying eyes, because it's unpossible.
The only way for you to win this game, is to slink back to your cave, and plot another way to get the Road Runner.
Doing this all across years all over the internet just gets you a collection of ways to make a large puff of dust in the canyon when your latest Cunning Plan finds you challenging gravity for dominance of the world of physics.
Try a tourniquet, and please, just stop.
It doesn't matter what you can't do, nor even imagine.
All that matters it what terrorists can do.
Technology doesn't have a side.
It merely has applications.
A friend in my industry flies 1/3rd scale jet powered 'model airplanes' as a hobby, his F-104 does better than 200 knots (real, not scale). That is a 'drone' that can carry a real punch.
Part of the problem is language-lawyering/Category errors. The category error is limiting 'drone' to only refer to something from DJI or Parrot.
Drone just means unmanned. UAV means unmanned autonomous vehicle. Neither one says anything about the size or capability of the platform.
A UAV is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
They are rarely autonomous.
I was thinking of the Navy's Seahunter autonomous drone but they refer to it as a USV (unmanned surface vehicle), time to update my internal dictionary I guess.
I disagree about autonomous operations being rare. Anything that can fly a specific course to a designated location without a man in the loop meets the criteria to me. Even basic DJI/Parrot quad-copters have stability and return-to-start programs that make them partially autonomous.
Few aerial drones are launch and forget; yet.
But the capability to program waypoints from GPS is the blessing and curse of the things.
Programming a tour of the property, or the neighborhood, or want to replicate a camera shot flawlessly? Good stuff.
Pre-load "fly to oil tank at XX.XXXXN YYY.YYYYW", hover, then activate Item Z (thermite bomb)"?
We've got a problem, Houston.
The Navy gets to operate within the caveat of no obstructions, and using pattern recognition for IFF. They go out X klicks, and do a programmed pattern search or route recon.
And even Sea Hunter, planned as a prototypical sacrificial scout/EW vessel, wasn't fully autonomous. It was shadowed at all times by a manned vessel, and Navy personnel boarded it regularly during its 5200mi journey to check up on it. They haven't said if anything needed adjusting en route, but that would be classified intel anyways.
Until it screws up, they won't really learn anything, and until they find and fix all the bugs, they won't know how much it can be depended upon. The feat of pointing a small vessel at Pearl Harbor, and turning it loose from San Diego, and having it make a round trip is no mean achievement though.
That sort of reach also has SAR applications not even discussed, though they must have thought of it themselves by now.
And like self-driving cars, the first time one runs over a sailboarder, sailboat, or crashes into a cruise ship off the sea lanes, the shit sandwich aftermath for Big Blue will be Hindenburgian.
This wasn't done with drones.
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