'Spiderweb' drone attack marks a new threat for top militaries
businessinsider.com

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31 points

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petethomas

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2 days ago

16 comments

idiotsecant ・ 2 days ago

Forget the military threat, imagine the chaos a person could cause with a few thousand dollars worth of shape charge drones if they wanted to, for example, disable a national power grid. Large substation transformers have lead times measured in years. It would cost a few hundred bucks to destroy one. I imagine a guy in a box truck doing a tour of the US, dropping a shape charge drone or two with cellular data connections outside 30 or 40 major substations and activating them all at once.

Once the grid goes dark we're going to suddenly find out that black start of an entire electrical grid is a very difficult thing to do.

getcrunk ・ 2 days ago

It’s only a matter of time before governments with the money and the sense adopt automated anti drone radar/turrets.

It’s funny that they haven’t already. I mean it’s about “national security.” This threat has been looming for 10 maybe 15 years now

  • flowerthoughts ・ 2 days ago

    This was in Who's hiring? yesterday

    > Building AI-driven turrets that stop hostile drones. We need sharp, hands-on engineers:

    (And not the same company already mentioned here.)

  • pooralaska ・ 2 days ago

    What do you mean haven't already? They most certainly have been working on it (this video is over 6 years old for example):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-miBH10bdCs

    • impossiblefork ・ 2 days ago

      Yes, but even now I don't think people have understood.

      I suspect these turrets are fine with a couple of drones, but what if it's 5000? What if they're autonomous so that they can fly at 1/2 a metre?

      With autonomy and something to allow long-distance flight it actually challenges the whole capable-airplane paradigm. People aren't thinking like this at all.

      They aren't thinking real saturation, i.e. let's say, an attack with 10000 modernized V-1s, either. I believe that 10,000 modernized V-1s could cost as little as 50 million USD. So less than a single F-35, which has no chance of even reaching more than a couple during such a saturation attack.

  • heyitsguay ・ 2 days ago

    At Allen Control Systems, we're working on deploying automated anti drone turrets (radar or passive EO detection) right now!

    Development in the space is happening at a breakneck pace. We're hiring pretty aggressively, if this sort of thing seems interesting, check it out!

    https://www.allencontrolsystems.com/company#jobs

moi2388 ・ 2 days ago

If these drones are so successful, why are their defences in the billions?

Why don’t you have hunter drones targeting any potential drone coming in?

  • heyitsguay ・ 2 days ago

    Defense needs them everywhere, offense needs one gap in the defense.

  • Zanfa ・ 2 days ago

    I think Ukraine is already using mothership & hunter drones to target slow-flying drones (Shaheds and similar).

    Very soon the most challenging part of anti-drone defence is going to be detection since fiber-guided drones can already fly tens of kilometers at low altitudes where they’ll be virtually undetectable with radar. You can literally fly them just above ground if necessary.

  • ls612 ・ 2 days ago

    Ukraine is already using interceptor drones, Perun did a patron special episode discussing the development of these.

    • moi2388 ・ 2 days ago

      Ah cool, must’ve missed that one I’ll check it out. Love me some Perun