Low-Cost Drone Add-Ons From China Let Anyone With a Credit Card Turn Toys Into Weapons of War
Chinese ecommerce giants like Temu and AliExpress sell drone accessories like those used by soldiers in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Fpv has a very storied history, yet we don't see these bombings in peacetime. Like fucking ever. Even in the U.S.
Its almost like pre-made drones are locked down and tracked, and homemade fpv quads take like 20 hours of sim time just to keep in the air.
That's before we discuss the fact that the munitions Ukraine straps to them are unobtanium for normal people.
This is really cheap if you're a military with a bunch of people, training facilities, and explosives, but still a big pain in the ass for anyone else. I guess if you have a really angry hobbiest with hundreds of man hours of flight time, and explosives knowledge you're in danger.
The only RC hobbiest that pissed off I know lives in New Zealand.
Its almost like pre-made drones are locked down and tracked, and homemade fpv quads take like 20 hours of sim time just to keep in the air.
While I agree with most of your sentiments here, I think these two statements are a bit hyperbolic...
DJI drones are locked down and possibly "tracked," or at least they were up until recently. But my off-brand drone certainly isn't, and it's not like I had to do anything more special to get it than slouch up to B&H Photo/Video with my credit card.
Kit components for FPV drones are extremely capable these days and even entry level control boards are perfectly capable of keeping a homebrew flyer in the air or hovering stably without any skill from the operator required whatsoever other than reading the documentation far enough to run the calibration procedure before rocketing off into the sky. The only barrier to entry there is managing not to crash into stuff, or being smart enough not to yank the left stick all the way when you're directly under a tree.
I have a micro drone with absolutely no pilot aids whatsoever -- No obstacle avoidance, no GPS, no sonar, no head tracking, no nothing. It did not take me 20 hours of sim time to figure out how to keep it aloft. It took me about 20 seconds, after plugging the battery in and pairing the transmitter.
I want to make a drone and a dropper for meshtastic and totally-not-weed purposes, I wouldn't be making bombs, but I gotta say, it really isn't that hard to make bombs if you did want to.
Sure we can't get the RPG heads to duct tape on em, but a primer positioned over a pin, some gunpowder and lead shot, a weight in the front of the shell to ensure it falls right, and a 3d printed shell will be pretty effective against soft targets. "Conveniently" for bombers here there isn't much armor to contend with in the streets, nobody has tanks/BMPs or even pelvic plates on their carrier (hell not even many plate carriers day to day, even though people do have them.)
Hell, the Boston marathon bombing was done with a pressure cooker from Kohls and nails from Home Depot, sure those can't be drone delivered, but explosives aren't actually unobtanium, you just need to do a little more work.
And again for the FBI guy in the back, I'm not making bombs, I'm using it for radio, and I don't even have one yet because I wanna try and find one I can program to follow me to extend my radio range (which I'm like 80% sure is possible.)
If drones are weaponized, they become subject to the Second Amendment and the public's right to buy them would become more protected, not less.
Thats why we can just go down the street and buy fully functioning tanks and machine guns! /s
I don't think there's a single common interpretation of the second amendment in which that would be true.
I mean it's two sentenses, about as clear as mud. Could have been talking only about small arms, or all arms available at the time, or future weapons nobody had even dreamed up yet.
“This equipment is mainstream, but it does not just cost a few dollars to make, so I think this stuff is being sold either at or below cost,” Cui says.
Wat? Why would they do that?
“The things that work at taking them down are machine guns, lasers, and massive jammers—none of which can be used in a city,” Cui says.
Well, and a regular old shotgun but you can't use that in a city either.
This article seems... off. I can't put my finger on it but hmm.
Aren't the ones the Ukrainians use basically just off the shelf DJI drones with an extra servo or two mounted to a release mechanism? We're already in this scary future
They're also modified with fiber cable so they can't be jammed.
Luigibots!
Paywall :-(
Post a link to archive.is and you can read it: https://archive.is/3N2ha
I saw someone share this sweet tip, share the article to Firefox, in the ff browser bar there's a little page looking icon tap that and it goes into reader mode and removes soft pay walls. Sometimes you have to refresh the reader to get all the way past. 🍻
Really? That's what we're doing now? We don't have enough public shootings daily in this country, now we're going to add drone bombing to the mix? C'mon. What's your excuse now? Is there another amendment to the constitution? The 2nd amendment guarantees you the right to bear arms. So what's it going to be now? The 28th amendment guarantees you the right to bear wings?
Don't fall for the fear mongering. Anyone that wants to turn an off the shelf drone into a weapon has been able to for years.
Not if we ban adhesives, straps, glue, welding equipment, string, and bendable wires. Think of the children.
For example, my Fimi (Xiaomi) drone has a factory accessory specifically to enable it to carry and drop stuff. I've had it for years. They market this as a search and rescue thing, i.e. you can strap medical supplies to it or something and fly them out to a hard to reach location.
Any tit could just stick a grenade on it instead, but the rub there is that any tit is not allowed to just buy a grenade. The article above is full of breathless scaremongering about fiber optic tethers and guidance systems, but stops well short of specifying just what the fuck these imaginary bad actors are expected to do with the drone once they've got it over the presumptive target. If somebody's already got a bomb, the problem is that they've already got a bomb.
