436
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
436 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
72471 readers
2258 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
You shoot much?
I have to think no because then you’d know how difficult it is to hit a stationary target and then be able to extrapolate that to one that moves and changes direction on a dime in 3 dimensions.
Then you’d also consider what’s happening to the projectiles that inevitably miss even in a computerized targeting system.
At range sure, nearby though an open choke shotgun would be pretty viable. Skeet shooting has been a thing for a while and unless it can change direction between the trigger and the pellets reaching it the drone's likely at least impaired.
Skeet/trap shooting was designed around duck hunting. Ducks aren't particularly acrobatic flyers. Even fat, heavy quadcopters like off the shelf DJI stuff can do some impressive maneuvers, and purpose built racing quads are wicked. If the operator tries a little to do some evasive maneuvers, or the autopilot has it programmed in, it's going to be very hard to shoot down.
Shotguns also aren't common on the battlefield. They're not that useful for typical army engagement ranges. Navy vessels do use them for boarding actions, but you usually won't find them in armies.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
off the shelf DJI stuff
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
How nearby is nearby though? And, in the context of the proposed use case for defending a crowded stadium in a populated area, does this put people down range as well that could also be impaired by the pellets?
The optimal sweet spot is probably like 40 meters or something, within 20 or 10 meters and the drone is probably in range to drop a grenade or explode, and becomes much harder to hit because it's capable of making much quicker direction changes relative to where you're standing even as it presents a larger target to you as a consequence of being closer, and a whole lot farther out, and birdshot can't really cut it.
Edit: Oh I was also gonna say, for indoor spaces, it'd maybe be not a good idea even just for hearing protection, but barring that, you could just opt for something lower velocity which you'd probably pack for this occasion if you're defending a set location, and then just load what you need in like 2 seconds. I imagine most drones are going to be flying around above head height anyways, so the main worry would be debris and falloff. You can't prevent debris from the drone really unless you have a net drone or something, and the falloff on the backend of a lower velocity or frangible birdshot with less mass is probably not super consequential except maybe in the case of eye protection. Some sort of ceramic bullet or maybe even steel bbs would probably work without doing too much damage. More than a drone, anyways. It's not as though a drone that rams into another drone is a particularly safe thing, in any case.
Crowded spaces it's a problem, I was more talking to notion of just plain shooting them rather than a use case. A rifle would be dang near impossible, but a scattered spray, you really only need to stop one prop and it's probably on the ground for a standard 4 prop deal. At least mine got real screwy when a blade split mid flight.
Edit: It also could be noted that while a lot of pellets would miss, they would pose a lot less risk that a rifled bullet coming back down. The weight of an individual shot pellet is a fraction of the weight of a bullet, so less momentum, plus the don't have a ballistic spin to maintain their speed that a rifle round does. Basically someone shooting a shot round in the air would come down with about as much force as a handful of gravel once the air resistance slows it a bit.
Admittedly not, no. I was making the assumption, possibly a naive one, that a computer should be capable of understanding the physics behind bullet trajectories well enough to shoot accurately even if the target is mobile.
You should check out some videos of CIWS (Close In Weapon Systems) in action. They're systems designed to shoot down projectiles like missiles and mortar rounds (as well as targeting small vehicles and planes). The sheer number of rounds they spray to take out a target that is moving on a single ballistic trajectory is crazy.
The closest thing I know of to what you're talking about would be hard-kill APS (Active Protection Systems). These are systems designed to protect vehicles like tanks from incoming rounds and missiles. Using radar and optical sensors, they can detect a round and predict whether or not it's going to hit the vehicle and respond in nanoseconds, firing an explosive back at a target traveling 1-2km per second. However, this isn't like shooting a bullet out of the air with another bullet. It's more like chucking a grenade at a missile to either deflect it or destroy enough of it that the pieces (still going 1-2km/s) don't damage the vehicle.
But both of these systems are designed mainly for destroying targets on a ballistic trajectory. When you throw drones into the mix, now you have a target that can react to your reaction. With slower moving drones like the helicopter ones, that's easy enough. But what about a drone that's moving at mach 2 and capable of sustaining 20g's, like a missile. Now you're talking about basically firing missiles at missiles, which has proven to be very difficult before a missile has spent its fuel and is coasting towards its target on its final ballistic trajectory.