Lethal Mini "Grenade" Drones That Can Attack In Swarms

a reply to: andy06shake

To be effective against a cruise missiles guidance system, you would need to jam the GPS siginal for many miles. For this, a thousand feet would do. The power requirements are the problem. It would be the difference between a large truck and a device that fits into your pocket.

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
It says they use GPS. Scramble GPS frequencies and they are lost. Really dumb to tell everyone how to disable them right in the sales brochure.

It is not a secret after you brag about it.

It's no secret that US/NATO and its partners (including Australia) use GPS for just about everything, including drone navigation, and GPS spoofing and jamming are guaranteed to be present on almost any modern battlefield. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran routinely run GPS disruption equipment around sensitive areas and near foreign military exercises.

However, US/NATO military GPS technology has advanced significantly over the years and is much more resistant to spoofing and jamming than it used to be. The use of encryption makes spoofing military GPS particularly difficult, while GPS jammers are, by their nature, easy to locate and high-priority targets for early elimination in a contested area.

The exact nature of the GPS navigation system used by Drone40 isn't publicly specified, but it would likely use military GPS, which would make it very resistant to spoofing attacks, and might include an inertial guidance backup as a countermeasure for jamming (standard equipment for larger drones and munitions), although that might be foregone depending on cost.

Active jamming would likely be a problem, but ironically, aside from airstrikes, missiles and artillery, small drones and drone swarms could be used effectively to seek out and destroy enemy GPS jammers by following the signals they broadcast.

Granted, the technology race with respect to GPS, Russia's GLONASS, China's BDS and other navigation methods is ongoing and the future is unwritten, but as things stand, GPS navigation is not necessarily the vulnerability it might appear to be for small drones and drone swarms.

originally posted by: chris_stibrany
You know if it's in a film they have had even better ones for decades.

So where's my X-Wing?

a reply to: JIMC5499

That's in the past!

originally posted by: chris_stibrany
ouch ...dont even want to picture

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

Another video in my head I can't unsee of a man and his woman with a baby just trying to wash their clothes in the Limpopo. Crocodiles have to eat too I guess.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: ultimatesaviorMessiah

Say what now???

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

But Roald Dahl wrote about it so cutely.

a reply to: Majic

You are thinking fixed site jammers. I am thinking each soldier or possible target carrying a jammer about the size of a smart phone. It doesn't activate the jammer until it detects a threat siginal. In this case a moving GPS receaver with certain charicteristics. Any receiver is detectable because it transmits a weak signature signal off frequency to make the receiver work.

The jamming wont be detectable until the weapon is within range because it wont be on. When the jammers activate, there would be too many to track and only operate until the threat is over.

I would bet the military already has the technology to track navigation recievers to locate nearby enemy units.

a reply to: andy06shake

You know where all these different autonomous technologies are headed, right? They're progressively eliminating the human from the battlefield, which at face value seems like a good thing. However, while this technology reduces casualties and death on the battlefield it also reveals the uglier underbelly and sordid truth of war itself.

It was never really about the soldiers, it was about money. In the future, the victor will be the one who breaks more of the other guy's stuff, until he ultimately breaks his checkbook. Sadly, that's what war has always been about. The soldier was just an unfortunate bystander.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Its always been about the power and monies Flyingclaydisk.

Soldiers are simply pawns on a board to be moved around and sacrificed for the sake of the game.

Which is self perpetuating, never-ending, and ever expansive towards dominance and control over our fellow Man.

And sadly that paradigm dont seem to be up for much change even in the information age in which we exist.

I can be very VERY precise with one of these vs. a grenade launcher. pinpoint strike less collateral damage.

Fatal dose fentanyl coated needles rail gun machine gunned until the Lion battery dies. Return to home for reload.

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

Will that be the new Taliban/Jihadi tactic?

originally posted by: beyondknowledge
a reply to: Majic

You are thinking fixed site jammers. I am thinking each soldier or possible target carrying a jammer about the size of a smart phone. It doesn't activate the jammer until it detects a threat siginal. In this case a moving GPS receaver with certain charicteristics. Any receiver is detectable because it transmits a weak signature signal off frequency to make the receiver work.

What's the range on detecting the 'weak signature signal'? Probably pretty low. And how would it distinguish a drone from the hundreds of cell phones with GPS nearby?

The drone doesn't need GPS all the way, when it gets close enough non-jammable inertial & optical is enough.

originally posted by: mbkennel
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

Will that be the new Taliban/Jihadi tactic?

It wouldn't surprise me, but then again, nothing really does. Using semtex or cubane charged flechettes in a swarm does seem the next logical step. Did you ever see the military parade where I guess protesters tried to drop C4 on Maduro? These kinds of actions have been tried in the past using single drones, it isn't much of a stretch to go swarm with a more effective killing process.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: mbkennel

I've read about a proposal called "Smart Chaff". For those who don't know "chaff" is aluminum foil or aluminized Mylar that is used as a decoy for radar.

The idea is for a swarm of drones to defeat anti-ship missiles. Some drones would be reflectors, some would emit heat, some would emit EM signals and some would be controllers. The idea is that they would fly in a formation that would allow them to look like a ship. A missile would lock on to the swarm and mistake it for a ship. Depending on the missile the controllers in the swarm could detect variations in it's radar or flight path indicating that the missile has locked on to the swarm. The swarm could then scatter leaving the missile with no target. These drones could be deployed by a ship, aircraft or a larger drone. In a perfect world they could be possibly recovered and reused.

For those of you who think that this is a fantasy, In the mid-80's I trained on a system that would allow a helicopter to fly a certain flight path and discharge chaff at certain intervals to mimic a ship. This was just after the Falklands War introduced the Exocet to the world. In training we had an aircraft with a Exocet seeker head mounted in a pod fly the missile's flight profile to evaluate the radar image we were creating. During the build up for the First Gulf War I was called back as a civilian rep to help re-activate the program.