> Ukraine bombs the planes that bomb schools and hospitals."
> Ukraine targeted a train carrying civilians by blowing up the bridge it was on.
Not only this but by now both sides of the conflict have accumulated enough war crimes that it would take an eternity to prosecute them all.
This is just demonstrably untrue.
(35 points, 6 hours ago, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44151327
And I don't see any reason to suggest AI being involved here. GPS to an initial point, follow a specified bearing and do image recognition. Note the angle at which you are seeing the image, if it doesn't change as you move you're looking at an image, ignore it. This would fall for any reasonably fancy decoy, but that's not going to be enough to protect the facility.
I've been saying this for years: with pretty much everything military a bunch of cheap units will give you far more bang for your buck than the same value of expensive units. It used to be that since units required operators you would have a big problem with personnel (although we did see the Kamikazes in Japan), but now that it's a microchip running it that's no longer a factor.
Is there a reason to suspect autonomous flying as opposed to remote control via the internet? Whatever deployed those drones can act as a bridge between the drone's radio link and cellular/public Wi-Fi/Starlink.
Also, humans controlling them means a lot of data flying back and forth. IP, bearing, search pattern and image recognition have been around in the world of anti-ship missiles for quite a while.
For the good ones, I doubt it.
Israel today has trophy [0] which can detect if an rpg is going to hit its tank and shoot it out of the sky.
(from wiki): The system allegedly relies heavily on high-speed computational technologies. Upon detection of an incoming projectile, the system automatically computes various parameters, such as the approach vector, nature of the threat, time to impact, and angle of approach. The defensive projectiles are launched by two rotating projectile launchers positioned on the sides of the vehicle. These launchers deploy a number of small EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators), forming a precise and closely spaced matrix, targeting an area in front of the anti-tank projectile.
And that's one country with 10 million people and a mere $46.5 billion in military spending. And BTW allies generally share tech (we the US suck right now (sorry)) but Trophy is being integrated with multiple allies [1].
Developing automated drone shooting destroyers I think we can do.
EDIT: To add, I bet those drones can be shot down by 1 minigun or shotgun shell which aren't relatively expensive.
Edit 2, the dutch already have a badass automated minigun too [2, 3].
Edit 3: multiple countries have similar systems but they are all mainly for boats. I think we can adapt the to army bases [4].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)#Intern...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalkeeper_CIWS
Fundamentally it’s not about building anti-missile technology, it’s about doing it cheaply and at scale. That is a much, much tougher problem.
These drones cost less than a thousand bucks, and if each interception cost you 100k (the cost of a trophy shot) you’re going to lose a lot of equipment. It only takes one miss.
Now imagine scaling that system to protect an entire airfield. That seems next to impossible when these drones have a range of 10+ miles and are basically unjammable. You need China level surveillance across your entire county as a bare minimum.
Also, ukraine doesn't have Trophy or any minigun/shotun defense system that I know of yet.
Having automated miniguns/shotguns near civilian areas definitely creates a challenge but I think our defense budget can handle that.
It could be scaled down to the size of a normal minigun, but even that is about $50 per second.
Meanwhile drone costs keep falling, Ukraine is well below $500 per drone now.
Also, I don't think you need 30 mm bullets to take out a drone. Those bullets are for much more hardened targets.
Modern CIWS will use radar to track their own outbound bullets and adjust their aim in real time to hit the target.
But can they survive a small bullet or a shotgun hit?
But all high rate fire guns have short operation limits before their barrels melt. About 15 seconds before a 10 minute cool-off, maintenance and reload cycle. It's comically easy to saturate that with waves of decoy drones.
Upgrade your drone defenses and now your drones cost more...
I don't work in the military so take everything I say with a massive grain of salt but I bet offense and defense scale in cost similarly and NATO + allies have WAY more money than the russians.
What we need is cheap systems that can be deployed in large numbers that fire wimpy short ranged stuff so it doesn't do too much damage when it falls back. Shotguns are good at this, the smaller pellets do not fall back with lethal energy.
And it could have been prevented if our former leaders had any ethics and knowledge of history.
It's a failure of politics and leadership, at all levels.
sleepyguy•8mo ago
What a favor they did for the USA and the West in general. We owe them eternal gratitude.
Glory to Ukraine