Weaponized drones that recharge on power lines are at this point looking inevitable. if you missed the chance to freak out before everyone else about AI or covid, nows another chance.
Why is this freak-out territory? This doesn’t seem directly economically or culturally relevant to anything but war, and the effect on war seems easy to counter: put nets around power lines you need to use, and turn off power-lines you don’t need to use, two things you really shoulda been doing anyway during war.
The US’s capability of drone striking anyone anywhere will get much cheaper, and working out which nation or non-state actor performed which drone strike will get much harder. Basically, the dynamics we currently see around cyberattacks, but kinetic.
I think you need to argue better for 1) The US not already having that level of capability, and 2) The ability to deploy self-recharging drones enabling that capability, 3) The willingness of the US to actually buy & use such drones, 4) The willingness of the US to use such drones for such purposes, 5) The response of countries not just being to eg put nets over their power-lines (or increased drone detection ability) so that this happens a few times but is not persistent like cyber-attacks are (due to different offense-defense balances in that domain), and 6) The propensity of the US public to actually care at all.
No doubt drones seem an important military development, but self-recharging drones seem silly to me, if operating in enemy territory the slightest bit wary of being attacked. Drones are very much primarily a defensive and surprise attack sort of thing, and countries with sophisticated operational capabilities don’t seem too have much trouble getting drones into position for such surprise attacks right now. For instance, see Israel’s covert use of drones in June’s 12-day war.
I’m not talking about the US, it already has and uses this capability, along with israel, and I’m sure china has it too but they don’t seem to use it.. I’m talking about russia, china, iran, pakistan, walmart, taiwan, isis, Micheal Reeves- and all able to take up the strategy of modifying other countries leadership via droning the leaders they don’t like,
I think kamikaze quadcopter drones are bottlenecked on control right now, not power.
One of the biggest innovations thus far, fiber-optic drones, are only necessary because the drones still need low-latency, active human control.
Long range fixed wing kamikaze drones are usually autonomous, but even for those there were reports that taking remote control with FPV goggles can significantly increase accuracy and success rate.
When AI is developed that can control a drone well enough, and runs on a chip that’s economical to put on kamikaze drones, it’s going to be a game changer.[1]
Compared to that, I don’t see how recharging en-route will change anything. For fiber-optic drones, landing and waiting for an ambush is already an established tactic. Sitting on a power line instead of the ground is going to make your drone much easier to notice.
For fixed wing drones, Russia’s Shaheds can already easily cover Ukraine, they don’t need more range.
Weaponized drones that recharge on power lines are at this point looking inevitable. if you missed the chance to freak out before everyone else about AI or covid, nows another chance.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/voltair
Why is this freak-out territory? This doesn’t seem directly economically or culturally relevant to anything but war, and the effect on war seems easy to counter: put nets around power lines you need to use, and turn off power-lines you don’t need to use, two things you really shoulda been doing anyway during war.
The US’s capability of drone striking anyone anywhere will get much cheaper, and working out which nation or non-state actor performed which drone strike will get much harder. Basically, the dynamics we currently see around cyberattacks, but kinetic.
I think you need to argue better for 1) The US not already having that level of capability, and 2) The ability to deploy self-recharging drones enabling that capability, 3) The willingness of the US to actually buy & use such drones, 4) The willingness of the US to use such drones for such purposes, 5) The response of countries not just being to eg put nets over their power-lines (or increased drone detection ability) so that this happens a few times but is not persistent like cyber-attacks are (due to different offense-defense balances in that domain), and 6) The propensity of the US public to actually care at all.
No doubt drones seem an important military development, but self-recharging drones seem silly to me, if operating in enemy territory the slightest bit wary of being attacked. Drones are very much primarily a defensive and surprise attack sort of thing, and countries with sophisticated operational capabilities don’t seem too have much trouble getting drones into position for such surprise attacks right now. For instance, see Israel’s covert use of drones in June’s 12-day war.
I’m not talking about the US, it already has and uses this capability, along with israel, and I’m sure china has it too but they don’t seem to use it.. I’m talking about russia, china, iran, pakistan, walmart, taiwan, isis, Micheal Reeves- and all able to take up the strategy of modifying other countries leadership via droning the leaders they don’t like,
I think kamikaze quadcopter drones are bottlenecked on control right now, not power.
One of the biggest innovations thus far, fiber-optic drones, are only necessary because the drones still need low-latency, active human control.
Long range fixed wing kamikaze drones are usually autonomous, but even for those there were reports that taking remote control with FPV goggles can significantly increase accuracy and success rate.
When AI is developed that can control a drone well enough, and runs on a chip that’s economical to put on kamikaze drones, it’s going to be a game changer. [1]
Compared to that, I don’t see how recharging en-route will change anything. For fiber-optic drones, landing and waiting for an ambush is already an established tactic. Sitting on a power line instead of the ground is going to make your drone much easier to notice.
For fixed wing drones, Russia’s Shaheds can already easily cover Ukraine, they don’t need more range.
Game changer in the “fucking horrifying” sense of course.
My first thought was Amazon leveraging this for drone delivery.
I have raised this twice with UKR over the last year. Surprised they havn’t done it yet.
I like the name.