For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[kerbiloid]

They are mockups. Mockucopters.

This company develops some equip to make light helicopters in future and uses those mockups for fitting.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://www.interfax.ru/world/715640

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

They are mockups. Mockucopters.

This company develops some equip to make light helicopters in future and uses those mockups for fitting.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=ru&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https://www.interfax.ru/world/715640

Or that is the cover story. Or might be true, they might simply use the mockups for making helicopter equipment like seat or winches. Or more advanced stuff like cameras who can see polar-bears. 
An famous story about US or Canadian search and rescue helicopters was asked to look for polar-bears with their IR cameras on patrol and training missions as they wanted to count the population as they are both an endangered species and a dangerous predator. 
They found none on IR who was very weird, then they sported one visual and in IR they only saw the nose like an small bird. 

[kerbiloid]

At least one helicopter on the photo looks wooden for me.

[Spacescifi]

End Of The Soldier Era In Scifi:

No matter how scifi a setting is... this never changes.

Humanoids with guns.

Yet I tend to think... oh really?

We have flying drones already, and it is not a stretch to make four legged robot running drones that have gun mounts.

Land drones would be heavier armed.

Assuming both air and land combat drones existed and were employed on a massive scale, would soldiers become obsolete?

I mean... take 2000 drones, 1000 air, 1000 land. All armed with bullets and or bombs/rockets, vs 2000 modern land soldiers with guns.

Drones are smaller targets that don't eat or sleep. Or poop.

For that matter they can even recharge electricity on solar power.

I know jamming remote signals is possible, but I doubt it since it comes from satellites, and if you jam a satellite, you will have bigger problems soon enough unless you're already an Earth superpower nation with nukes.

What do you think?

[kerbiloid]

Soldiers will come and beat the droner's face.

P.S.
At least that's how it works in fantasy. An hero comes and kicks the warlock.

Edited July 3, 2020 by kerbiloid

[K^2]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Humanoids with guns.

Yet I tend to think... oh really?

Stop giving them ideas. So long as they keep trying to make killer robots humanoid, we have a chance.

[Spacescifi]

4 hours ago, K^2 said:

Stop giving them ideas. So long as they keep trying to make killer robots humanoid, we have a chance.

 

Reality is often superior to scifi tropes. 

I just wanted to know if human soldiers could actually stand a chance against dedicated remote small war machines.

The answer is probably no.

Inasmuch throughout history man has designed more efficient ways of conducting wars.

Other than placing tons of IED's ahead of the land drones I don't know how scifi soldiers would deal with them wiithout taking heavy casualties.

They have no answer beyond shotguns against flying armed drones.

 

Edited July 3, 2020 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

The answer is that they will come to the droner's grannie and take her kitties as hostages.

  

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Other than placing tons of IED's ahead of the land drones I don't know how scifi soldiers would deal with them wiithout taking heavy casualties.

Easily. They will approach to the protected items and make the drone fire inappropriate.

(See above about the grannie).

Edited July 3, 2020 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

7 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

They have no answer beyond shotguns against flying armed drones.

The only real hope there is to go back in time and destroy the inventor of the drones. But time travel isn't a thing, as far as anyone knows, outside of fiction.

So meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss:

 

[Okhin]

Well, depending on the drones, but they do have flaws. For instance, the quadcopters used by the cops here have very fragile propellers (like any propellers I guess), and one of the options found by some radicals fighting drones is to throw rolls of toilet paper at them. It will just block the propellers, leading to a drone crash soon after. The main issue is to reach the height at which those observation drones operates, but nothing a than a good slingshot can fix.

You can also use salt circle to trap them, the way you can trap car, and you can use slightly altered stickers to ruin the image analysis system of such automated drones.

And if they're remotely operated, use a good old jammer. You can probably build one out of a microwave oven.

There's always a low tech way against a high tech threat. Like an hydraulic press against a Terminator.

[DDE]

5 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Well, depending on the drones, but they do have flaws. For instance, the quadcopters used by the cops here have very fragile propellers (like any propellers I guess), and one of the options found by some radicals fighting drones is to throw rolls of toilet paper at them. It will just block the propellers, leading to a drone crash soon after. The main issue is to reach the height at which those observation drones operates, but nothing a than a good slingshot can fix.

You can also use salt circle to trap them, the way you can trap car, and you can use slightly altered stickers to ruin the image analysis system of such automated drones.

And if they're remotely operated, use a good old jammer. You can probably build one out of a microwave oven.

There's always a low tech way against a high tech threat. Like an hydraulic press against a Terminator.

Or you can use a shotgun.

Or worse...

Spoiler

 

 

[StrandedonEarth]

36 minutes ago, Okhin said:

Like an hydraulic press against a Terminator

Sure, if you can convince it to walk into one. Or a vat of molten steel 

[Spacescifi]

2 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The only real hope there is to go back in time and destroy the inventor of the drones. But time travel isn't a thing, as far as anyone knows, outside of fiction.

So meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss:

 

Not likely. Crows, cats and dogs are actually smarter than any AI we have. Yet they don't rule the world (cat jokes aside).

2 hours ago, Okhin said:

Well, depending on the drones, but they do have flaws. For instance, the quadcopters used by the cops here have very fragile propellers (like any propellers I guess), and one of the options found by some radicals fighting drones is to throw rolls of toilet paper at them. It will just block the propellers, leading to a drone crash soon after. The main issue is to reach the height at which those observation drones operates, but nothing a than a good slingshot can fix.

You can also use salt circle to trap them, the way you can trap car, and you can use slightly altered stickers to ruin the image analysis system of such automated drones.

And if they're remotely operated, use a good old jammer. You can probably build one out of a microwave oven.

There's always a low tech way against a high tech threat. Like an hydraulic press against a Terminator.

 

There are some high tech weapons that have virtually no low tech counters.

Nukes for example... unless you wanna try taking it out in midair with a catapult propelled projectile.

Good ideas... but I think I can counter them... ethically it's VERY wrong though.

1. Spread leaflets that jamming the drones will make them more dangerous. Don't do it.

2. When jammed the drones go into seek and destroy anything with a thermal signature that looks human mode, until the jamming stops and they get instructions to do otherwise. But only in the target city.

3. When microwave jammed, some drones are designed to detect and seek and destroy microwave sources. So jamming will lead them to you.. like bees to honey.

Edited July 3, 2020 by Spacescifi

[AngrybobH]

2 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

So jamming will lead them to you.. like bees to honey.

and that's where you leave the thermite.

[DDE]

54 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

When microwave jammed, some drones are designed to detect and seek and destroy microwave sources.

To support your argument, air-to-air missiles already have a backup home-on-jam mode.

Edited July 3, 2020 by DDE

[StrandedonEarth]

10 minutes ago, DDE said:

To support your argument, air-to-air missiles already have a backup home-on-jam mode.

How big/expensive would a remote jammer have to be? Could the jamming signals be reflected onto the target?

Obligatory Spaceball reference:

Spoiler

 

 

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, AngrybobH said:

and that's where you leave the thermite.

Great! Now the drones can expend less missiles to blow it up.

You want a mobile jammer so you can herd my drones where you want to blast them with AA missiles. Assuming they don't take it out before then.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Reality is often superior to scifi tropes. 

I just wanted to know if human soldiers could actually stand a chance against dedicated remote small war machines.

The answer is probably no.

Inasmuch throughout history man has designed more efficient ways of conducting wars.

Other than placing tons of IED's ahead of the land drones I don't know how scifi soldiers would deal with them wiithout taking heavy casualties.

They have no answer beyond shotguns against flying armed drones.

As I understand shotguns works well against drones. 
I guess we will get mini anti air guns with shotguns, probably larger and with higher muzzle velocity than standard shotguns say 30-40 mm, drum magazine and computer controlled. 
Then we get anti drone drones, shotgun armed flying drones who main purpose is to intercept and shoot down enemy flying drones. They will be much faster than other drones as they don't need to hover but use fixed wings. 
Then you have flying drones who could target both people and drones, in the later part ROE is much simpler. 
For some reason it feels like history repeats itself. 

And for remote you have electronic warfare. Everything from hard jamming to DDOS attacks. 
Finally you need people to reload, recharge and do service on the drones.  
-----
In short anti drones and counter measurements will mostly cancel each out if equal but drones will be an major arm by it self similar to artillery, armor and air power. 
Like now I also think that the recon aspect will still be the most important outside of anti drone roles. 

Drones will be very important in counter insurgency. as they can be the low level recon and air support needed to fight hit an run attack and can be used for long term surveillance even inside hostile areas. 

4 hours ago, DDE said:

Or you can use a shotgun.

Or worse...

  Hide contents

 

 

This is that I thought of as an anti drone drone fighter plane.
also it will grow up and become an A-10
Think an shotgun would be better there but this thing can also do ground attack. I would prefer to mount the canard directly to the barrel but you probably need to handle recoil too. 

[Spacescifi]

20 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

As I understand shotguns works well against drones. 
I guess we will get mini anti air guns with shotguns, probably larger and with higher muzzle velocity than standard shotguns say 30-40 mm, drum magazine and computer controlled. 
Then we get anti drone drones, shotgun armed flying drones who main purpose is to intercept and shoot down enemy flying drones. They will be much faster than other drones as they don't need to hover but use fixed wings. 
Then you have flying drones who could target both people and drones, in the later part ROE is much simpler. 
For some reason it feels like history repeats itself. 

And for remote you have electronic warfare. Everything from hard jamming to DDOS attacks. 
Finally you need people to reload, recharge and do service on the drones.  
-----
In short anti drones and counter measurements will mostly cancel each out if equal but drones will be an major arm by it self similar to artillery, armor and air power. 
Like now I also think that the recon aspect will still be the most important outside of anti drone roles. 

Drones will be very important in counter insurgency. as they can be the low level recon and air support needed to fight hit an run attack and can be used for long term surveillance even inside hostile areas. 

This is that I thought of as an anti drone drone fighter plane.
also it will grow up and become an A-10
Think an shotgun would be better there but this thing can also do ground attack. I would prefer to mount the canard directly to the barrel but you probably need to handle recoil too. 

 

Yea I forgot about recoil. A big deal when you scale down.

Which is why only the land 4 legged drones will have guns. The air drones would have mini-missiles, and once gone they would just ram targets with an oboard explosive kamikazi style.

[magnemoe]

40 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Great! Now the drones can expend less missiles to blow it up.

You want a mobile jammer so you can herd my drones where you want to blast them with AA missiles. Assuming they don't take it out before then.

Or you put an jammer into something solid like an building, then put some nets around, who would work fine until other side blew you up with artillery or air-power. 
DDOS level jamming would probably be more common, but an wide spectrum hard jam would be useful against swarm attacks as it would disrupt remote control and also cross talk forcing drones to fall back to default settings, say they go for the jammer who is an AFW plenty of cammo nets around it and it will not stick around for long. 
For an anti drone fighter having an jammer might be useful simply to force target into default settings, its also something who does not mind getting targeted and have very loose rules of engagement as its only targeting drones. 

 

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Yea I forgot about recoil. A big deal when you scale down.

Which is why only the land 4 legged drones will have guns. The air drones would have mini-missiles, and once gone they would just ram targets with an oboard explosive kamikazi style.

Counter by the Russian video above, has seen people putting handguns on larger camera drones, you can harden stuff against recoil, and these people are not Darpa. 
Smaller drones would just be recon, yes I'm small but my dad has an 155 mm something

For ground drones, an fun idea of mine is scale down an classical tank destroyer to something build around an sniper rifle.These could be used either as forward guards or drop inside enemy territory as an smart minefield against high profile targets. 
 

[kerbiloid]

A missile shower on the place where the drones are getting from, and the troops to the opponent's populated area to use the locals as hostages, that's how it would look like irl.

In case of skynet - populated by critical elements of robotic infrastructure or a dam above the data center.

The original question about many drones vs many humans sounds like "Can you crash the rock with your head, or you're a chicken?"

9 hours ago, Okhin said:

You can also use salt circle to trap them, the way you can trap car,

I had always suspected that self-driving cars are guided by daemons...

And see - it fears the salt circle!

Edited July 4, 2020 by kerbiloid

[TheSaint]

10 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

The only real hope there is to go back in time and destroy the inventor of the drones. But time travel isn't a thing, as far as anyone knows, outside of fiction.

So meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss:

 

Stock up on green tip....

[DDE]

10 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Think an shotgun would be better

That's a Saiga, a 12-gauge Kalashnikov.

[K^2]

15 hours ago, DDE said:

Or you can use a shotgun.

Or worse...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Pretty sure that thing has the same creation story as A-10. "You know what that gun needs? Wings!"