Drone technology

[Chaigidel]

does any other country maintain a full drone program like the USA? if so please give me some links im having trouble finding anything about any other military working with drones as much as the US.

and this can be a general discussion of where the drone tech is going to lead in the world of TEH FUTAR

1 they all look cool and strike that nerd nerve
2 they will probably get smaller and smaller
3 will they become autonomous?

[Juvenal]

This article describes the UK drone programme consisting of exactly one drone helicopter.



To be fair - there is an implication that the UK military might have a couple more.

[Chaigidel]

I really think that military forces of the modern world will move more towards these drones and robotic combat in general.

[SwiftBlade]

are'nt UAV's 'Drones'?

[rathelios]

Lots of none US UAV/RPV programs that we know of.
Some listed here
some more with detailed links here
Lots more that we aren't privy to.
With our obsession with minimal friendly casualties their use will increase.
I read somewhere the current hot potato is to use loads of cheap UAVs in a swarm to attack targets. Individually easy to shoot down but hard to take all of them out before they get you. So they'll likely get more autonomous, cheaper and become more heavily armed.
Looks like there might be a role for a generation of nerdy computer kids in the army after all. Who would have thunk it?

[Sosobra]

Drones are great for getting humans out of the frontlines but I feel like they will make war an easier option as the potential cost of lives for those with drones goes down.

[GORE]

always reminds me of metal storm projects, not only did they make a gun that fires 1,000,000rpm but they make some robots aswel:

[SwiftBlade]

Wait you do know that israel Invented UAV's right?

[Tiwaz]

Robotic warfare has great obstacle to overcome before it can become anything but curiosity.

Either secure dataflow or small and solid image recognition software.

As it is, robotic ability to interpret images is too cumbersome and too inefficient to make them viable option in combat. Else this droneswarm might happily engage extremely hazardous rock which just happens to be around right shape.

Or rather, fake construction made to fit their target parameters roughly enough.

[Chaigidel]

it could work with heat signatures or even ion static ! :O

yeah robotic swarm armies are the goal though I think --- its an open direction of the US military to have a fully autonomous army; capable of engaging and securing without any human prescence(sp)

but right now I think almost all of the tech has "pilots" and gunners who sit in texas somewhere -- and anything that attacks satellites would be a good counter to the UAV problem.

[Tiwaz]

Heat signature?

Easy enough to fake or cover up. If it relies on certain shape, just put extra heat around. If it homes on highest or biggest one, again just make big hot fake one.

Ion static sounds too star trekish. If you have anything more solid on it please give link.

And you don't need to attack satellites.

Laser and IR communications rely on clear route between drone and satellite. Relatively easy to handle with suitable smoke dispensers.

Radiochannels have problem of jamming. Just fill the channels with continuous powerful useless signal and guidance signal will be lost under it.

[NaptownKnight]

.czar is a good example that Russia has an excellent "drone" program also.

[Bokks]

.czar is a good example that Russia has an excellent "drone" program also.

Ouch.
That was actually a really good burn.
Has .czar seen that? He might like it.

Anyway, three words to counteract a swarm of toasters: EMP.
Well, ok, three letters being an abbreviation for three words.

And have you noticed how big "abbreviation" is? That's what'll kill robot autonomy, once they start to actually understand speech instead of simply spell-checking, they'd fry themselves due to the ironies of the english language.

[Chaigidel]

blah I couldnt find anything but on discovery I saw a theory about how pitvipers decide how to attack things-- and the theory is that they can see the static discharge of the molecules as the body moves through air--- the ions discharge all the time if anything moves through the air -- you just cant see it.-- was just a shot :O


but they can be protected from EMP-- and I cant find the article but I have heard of a new method of global positioning that could be used with current gps tech minus the satellites.( eliminating another weakness of a robotic army)

[Simetrical]

Anyway, three words to counteract a swarm of toasters: EMP.

Worthless outside of sci-fi. Anything inside a metal casing is immune to EMP: the metal forms a Faraday cage, which blocks EMP almost completely. Even a thin mesh of a good conductor like gold will block electric fields excellently. Practically any military vehicle is encased all the way around with metal anyway, so your prospects of hurting it via EMP are slim.

EMP is only good against unhardened (generally civilian) targets, basically. If it's big enough, though, the economic damage to those could be made devastating. I've heard it said that some of the nuclear weapons we have could knock out a continent's electrical devices through EMP. That would, however, do nothing to any of the important military targets, which would all be in protected bunkers with backup generators.

[ProneStar!]

Worthless outside of sci-fi. Anything inside a metal casing is immune to EMP: the metal forms a Faraday cage, which blocks EMP almost completely. Even a thin mesh of a good conductor like gold will block electric fields excellently. Practically any military vehicle is encased all the way around with metal anyway, so your prospects of hurting it via EMP are slim.

EMP is only good against unhardened (generally civilian) targets, basically. If it's big enough, though, the economic damage to those could be made devastating. I've heard it said that some of the nuclear weapons we have could knock out a continent's electrical devices through EMP. That would, however, do nothing to any of the important military targets, which would all be in protected bunkers with backup generators.

one of the best explanations ive heard in a while.

[Serious Spamurai]

What about a graphite bomb? Surely there must be some gaps in the casing that the graphite filings could get into.

[Kanaric]

I for one am against automated killing machines.

The US military has said that all their machines will require human input.

I guess they are, wisely, listening to science fiction in this case. I wouldn't be surprised though if someone could turn these drones against us simply by hacking them in some way. The predator would be something that terrorists or someone else could try that on and gain some kind of benefit.

[Simetrical]

I wouldn't be surprised though if someone could turn these drones against us simply by hacking them in some way.

I would. Encryption and secure identification are established technologies that are unbreakable for the present. The US military would have to be insane not to use them. If you use a secure connection with certificates that are renewed, say, hourly, and allow no other connections, there should be no way for anyone to hack into your drone. Of course the precise technology used may be a little different from the stuff I'm used to, but the unbreakability part isn't hard, pop-culture portrayals of hacking aside.

Of course, if they just take over the control station, there's no surefire way of stopping at least temporary takeover of the drones, unless you have good security features in the control devices. But that doesn't seem likely anyway in present conflicts, where the opposition probably can't engage in direct assaults on military bases without getting slaughtered. Anyway, they might have good security features in the control devices, that would take too long to circumvent to be useful for an attacker.

[Tiwaz]

I would. Encryption and secure identification are established technologies that are unbreakable for the present. The US military would have to be insane not to use them. If you use a secure connection with certificates that are renewed, say, hourly, and allow no other connections, there should be no way for anyone to hack into your drone. Of course the precise technology used may be a little different from the stuff I'm used to, but the unbreakability part isn't hard, pop-culture portrayals of hacking aside.

Of course, if they just take over the control station, there's no surefire way of stopping at least temporary takeover of the drones, unless you have good security features in the control devices. But that doesn't seem likely anyway in present conflicts, where the opposition probably can't engage in direct assaults on military bases without getting slaughtered. Anyway, they might have good security features in the control devices, that would take too long to circumvent to be useful for an attacker.

That is only half of the problem. As long as these devices require human input, challenge is in having that input reach the target.

As I have said, thinking about having these things hacked, graphite bombed or EMP:ed is irrelevant until connection is working and solid.

Having physical landline is bad idea. It can easily be cut and limits badly possible range. Of course it can remove need for independent power source.

IR/laser are bad. Require independent power source and can easily be spoofed with rather simple smoke dispensers or other physical objects.

Radio. Again independent power source. Radio is by far best option, but since to my knowledge you can easily "override" control signal by broadcasting your own nonsense with higher output over all used frequencies (to fight frequency hopping) you have very cheap counter to it.


Until problem of getting signal to drone is solved, these nonindependent fighting machines have very limited use.