The arms race for anti-drone weaponry

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9631208/drone-defender-regulation-iacp

by Futurebot • 11 years ago

36 44 11 years ago

jschwartzi2• 11 years ago

Was this article paid astroturfing for the Drone Defender?

It made some vague allusions to that product's market and then suggested that federal regulations would prevent the sale of it to local law enforcement, but I didn't see any real argument for why local law enforcement should be able to buy jammers other than some isolated incidents in prisons. There also wasn't any explanation for why the FCC and FAA have the rules about jamming. I suspect devices like the Drone Defender are banned for good reason.

stormcrowsx• 11 years ago

I would think jamming signals on anything flying is a bit on the dangerous side. Yeah some commercial drones will gently land but there's no guarantee. I'd also think it would not take the criminals they are trying to stop long to realize it and find ways around it. Such as preprogramming flight paths in and allowing them to fly without any need to have radio communication.

jschwartzi2• 11 years ago

You might be able to bring a drone in using accelerometers only. Given an assumed measurement error and integration time for the sensor you could calculate how far you'd need to be from the prison before the error in position becomes a problem. So jamming doesn't really buy you anything if you can program a flight path.

spacecowboy_lon3• 11 years ago

er does anyone producing these not know the radiation patterns for a yaggi - held like a normal rifle you would have a nice high power lobe right through the operators brain.

CISCO all ready do some very tasty airnet kit that attacks rouge ap's and hosts.

Ao7bei3s2• 11 years ago

The signal wouldn't have to be very strong, it should be relatively harmless for the operator. (Most rc rf transmitters send with <<1W PEP and a low-gain antenna.).

Also, at multiple GHz (most rc rf links used today are 2.4 GHz (no, I don't mean WLAN)), the waves don't penetrate the skin very well.

Also, Yagi antennas have (not perfectly, of course, but approximately) unidirectional beam patters; that's what the reflector elements at the end are for. The back lobe isn't very strong.

Also, the exposure would be for a very short amount of time.

Many radar operators are exposed to much, much stronger radiation on a continuous basis. Though admittedly, they do get cancer.

spacecowboy_lon3• 11 years ago

The actual emitted power is magnified by the antenna gain (say 14db) its not consumer 100 mw any more. And those sort of antennas have very pronounced side lobes.

And to get range they normally run these blue tooth/wifi sniper rifles much hotter than your consumer wifi AP

PTP you can run 4W

72deluxe• 11 years ago

I thought Cisco just broadcast disconnect messages for the rogue APs? That way, the AP gets "shut down" because nobody can connect to it (they just disconnect as soon as they've connected), not due to any wizardry.

In a sense it would reduce the amount of airspace being utilised by many wireless clients (as they couldn't connect) but it can only do this by bombarding the same airspace with disconnect messages, thereby contributing to the problem it is attempting to solve (cramped airspace).

spacecowboy_lon3• 11 years ago

Shuts it down and tracks it on a map via triangulation

douche2• 11 years ago

Seems like a 12 gauge with birdshot would do a pretty decent job of taking down any drone I've ever seen.

Seems like that might be a little cheaper than developing ECM to target drones. Although if it is really just a pork-barrel, then a $200 shotgun with $25 worth of shells is much less efficient than a multi-thousand dollar radar jammer rifle.

post_break• 11 years ago

Yeah but you fire it and go to jail for discharging a weapon, vs no one being the wiser.

rpenm• 11 years ago

Not relevant, since the users being discussed are law enforcement.

comrh2• 11 years ago

Max range for birdshot is ~120 feet so a drone can just increase its altitude and be safe. Also you have to be aware of what is beyond your target which might not be possible in an urban environment.

x5n1• 11 years ago

Drone with a shotgun mounted on it comes to mind.

hga• 11 years ago

Proper leading of the target is also required, and with birds crossing in front of you that's pretty hard in my experience (you have to aim your gun at where the target will be when the shot gets that far out; shooting birds you've just flushed into the air, traveling away from you is lots easier, e.g. turtledove vs. quail).

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

Birdshot is mostly harmless outside its effective range.

Nadya• 11 years ago

Max range for birdshot is ~120 feet

Effective range for taking out a drone is "as far as the bird shot will shoot" which is much further than ~120ft. We aren't talking about effective range (e.g "breaking a clay plate").

That being said - your point about increasing altitude still stands. I'm not sure how birdshot will go when shot near vertically - but it can travel well over 200 yards horizontally depending on if you're using 04 or 08, etc. At a certain point its harmless to humans unless it hits in the eye but as long as it hits a blade of a drone it could still damage the drone and bring it down. It doesn't need to completely destroy the drone like a point blank blast of a double barrel with buckshot would.

cloakandswagger• 11 years ago

Not a great solution for a drone flying over a populated area, or a drone potentially carrying a biological or chemical payload.

johnchristopher2• 11 years ago

Are you people aware that what comes up comes down ?

douche2• 11 years ago

As mentioned below, birdshot is really not that dangerous when it is coming down from its apex. Unless maybe it hit you in the eye. I've had shot fall on me goose and duck hunting before. Not worse than hail.

In a situation like a max-security prison, where you've already got cleared dead spaces around it to shoot escaping prisoners, its not really an issue.

Torgo• 11 years ago

Not my department.

clort• 11 years ago

How would this not count as interfering with its operation? The article says that this could count as a federal offense, even for police officers..

theklub• 11 years ago

Makes sense, don't work on building a drone company, you're too late, build a drone defense company and convince every police station they need your product.

elorant• 11 years ago

Or build a drone that takes down other drones.

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

Asking for a friend: Is there any portable, viable laser device that could be shoulder fired (backpack powered?) with enough energy to actually drill a hole in one of these from afar? If talking jamming frequencies (illegal) then why not just up the ante and go with a precision weapon? Zap N Crash!

windlep• 11 years ago

It seems people aren't thrilled with the prospect of debris landing on people underneath. More likely we'll end up with bigger drones that grab smaller drones with a net so they won't fall at this rate, or some sort of net-gun that after wrapping the drone immediately yanks it back fast enough that it won't hit the ground/people.

Captain_Usher• 11 years ago

I'm sure there's something like what you're describing in existence, probably in a lab somewhere, clamped in front of a metal plate with burn marks on it. I think you're out of luck on commercially available man-portable lasers for effectively shooting down a drone in a real-world scenario. There's a reason why people making videos of their lasers on Youtube are using them to pop balloons.

Even if that sort of laser for sale at a reasonable cost, you probably don't want or need one for killing drones. If you've escalated to actually blowing the drone out of the sky, you might as well use a gun. Guns are great at that and they're much cheaper. The bullets and shot you fire into the air do pose a safety risk on the way back down, but if reasonable steps are taken it's probably not a big enough deal to justify using a laser instead. (Caveat: in dense urban areas it's very difficult to even begin taking those "reasonable steps" and firing anything into the air is a recipe for tragedy. If you're seriously looking to take out a drone in a city, a laser makes a lot more sense.)

Another downside is that the laser needs to be held on its target to work, and that's a pain in the ass when the target is a drone. Even a relatively stable model flown by a skilled operator is still going to bob and weave, and the drone is presumably not hovering perfectly still while you're trying to break it. Today, hitting that target once with a shotgun is probably easier than holding a laser on it for the amount of time you'd need.

In the future, that will probably not remain true. Lasers (or really any devices that emit energy in a tight beam) are inherently better long-range direct-fire weapons than firearms because the laser moves in a straight line and you can get it to go farther. Travel time is pretty obviously another area where lasers win. As laser technology improves, we'll see more powerful lasers that can do damage in less time and automated platforms for doing the aiming. A future scenario where militaries use automated energy weapons against unmanned aircraft is very realistic, so a future scenario where a police officer shoots down a drone with a laser is certainly within the realm of possibility.

snerbles• 11 years ago

That laser is going to require accurate tracking to heat a target to the point of damage. Additionally, reflected laser light of that intensity is not usually safe to look at without protection.

lmm• 11 years ago

No. Portable laser weapons are simply not possible with current electricity storage technology. Those railguns the navy are experimenting with are intended for mounting on ships and wiring into the powerplant, and a laser would be even worse in that regard. If you want a weapon for making holes in flying things, the answer for drones is the same as for birds or planes: a gun, or a missile for bigger, higher ones.

jdowner• 11 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Dzd9iaXX4

wehadfun• 11 years ago

Not a radio guy but there isn't some way to listen for radio signals, figure out where they are comming from (to get the opperator) then duplicate them and land the drone

swiley• 11 years ago

It depends. Older style controls yes, but it wouldn't be hard to use encrypted digital control signals and make that impossible.

mansilladev• 11 years ago

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/52600/52611/52611_lozenge_net_lg....

mmosta• 11 years ago

I'm half hoping pumpkin canon drone hunter becomes a thing, this video[0] is beautiful.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC89KRV7l9M

logfromblammo• 11 years ago

As an American (or 'Murican, if you prefer), the ham-handed attempt by multiple hierarchical levels of government to rein in and control the hobbyists flying cheap, miniaturized, computer-stabilized, remote-piloted aircraft only makes me want to get one and fly it as an act of protest. If the gummint banned them outright, I'd want two.

Knowing that the federals are themselves creating partially self-piloted full-sized aircraft armed with lethal area-effect weaponry (Predator/Reaper/Avenger/Grey Eagle) or surveillance arrays capable of observing entire cities at once (Gorgon Stare/Constant Hawk/Angel Fire) makes me angry at the hypocrisy and nervous about the potential consequences.

If nothing else, it undermines my enjoyment of modern and sci-fi subgenres of the Western, and any War-genre movie with an underdog guerilla group. For instance, when Hunger Games 3a showed me a fighter-bomber going down to a bow and arrow, it was Sid Meier's Civilization modern jet fighter vs. archers-stack all over again. It just can't happen, people; you can't fight war machine X on the traditional battlefield without anti-X weaponry. And you can't fight a nation that deploys hunter-killer drones with just AR-15s and AK-47s. Your tactics have to change dramatically.

I think all this drone/anti-drone arms-racing is just going to push Americans into inventing 5th-generation warfare sooner, and it's going to be really, really ugly. Prison drug deliveries are just the tip of the iceberg.

mring33621• 11 years ago

How about a hunter drone that shoots/drops fishing line into the prey drone's propellers/rotors?

sophacles• 11 years ago

It gets hard to do that fast -- I just picked up this guy for flying around my house:

http://reviews.costco.com/2070/100222794/syma-model-aircraft...

The reason I chose it: there are enough dangling light pulls, and when I lose control, enough other stringy things around the edges of the room, that I've damaged props on other mini drones. The cage has effectively eliminated (or at least severely reduced) the problem. I presume a slightly lager drone can have better shielding.

The arms race for anti-drone weaponry

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