163
Trying to outrun Ukrainian drones? Kursk traffic cams still issue speeding tickets.
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
163 points (95.0% liked)
News
23608 readers
3776 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
With good directional antennas, the correct frequencies and analog signals and maybe last-mile AI/image recognition, 30-50 miles should be easy. You could even use a high altitude drone as a signal repeater for even more range with minimal latency.
For perspective: I could communicate with ham radio repeaters using a 5W transmitter and a basic whip antenna at about 150 miles, at 220/440mhz, because the repeater was in a high enough spot, on a distant mountain. Granted, that was only voice but it's still a good representation of what kind of range you can get.
Digital signals at higher frequencies wouldn't have much of a chance.
Edit: We are entering a period of high solar activity as well. While atmospheric bounce is usually reserved for other bands (usually 10m, or ~29mhz) it can absolutely be a thing with higher frequencies now.
I've been wondering about how practical it is to extend FPV drone range by also deploying them from larger vehicles.
Like, remember that fixed-wing foamboard drone that Australia shipped some of to Ukraine a while back? Those are pretty expendable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sypaq_Corvo_Precision_Payload_Delivery_System
That thing can haul 6kg 80km.
https://www.politico.eu/article/future-warfare-400-army-strike-drone-unit-2m-tank/
So that's up to 3.5kg.
The FPV is more-maneuverable, cheaper, and faster than the PPDS.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/DRONES/dwpkeyjwkpm/
That'd be a substantial range increase.
I don't know what risks might be associated with having a non-one-use drone, though. Like, if you want to use the "carrier" drone multiple times, it might be possible for a reconnaissance drone to follow it back, wait for someone to retrieve the thing, and then drop artillery on the spot or something.
Could also just expend the fixed-wing drone as a single-use weapon, though then it increases the cost of the drone by a factor of several times.
I remember seeing some testing videos of Baba Yaga's being used as launch platform for other drones and according to Wikipedia, it can function as a control repeater as well.
But yeah, the concept is solid regardless of the "how". If your carrier drone is only half way to the front (or just over) and used to launch kamikaze drones, the risk is probably minimal but probably more time consuming than anything else.