this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (21 children)

So, I haven't played with them, but even commercial, off-the-shelf DJI consumer drones have the ability to return to some location if they lose link, so they're gonna have at least GPS in there. You can jam that, but they've got accelerometers, and you can't jam that. They shouldn't drop out of the sky even if you can manage to jam things.

It looks like DJI drones have frequency-hopping spread spectrum support, too. So you have to jam all frequencies that they're using, since you don't know which they're using at any given instant. For consumer hardware, it probably doesn't matter much -- nobody is jamming you, so you sit in your little assigned piece of spectrum, have a handful of channels -- but in a war, you can probably expand the frequencies you use, use a huge chunk of the spectrum, if need be.

There are also some forms of jam resistance that AFAIK are not being exploited -- beam-forming or directional antennas.

Both Russia and Ukraine have a pretty strong interest in using electronic warfare against drones, and the fact that both are still using a lot of them seems like a pretty good argument that they can't currently successfully stop them via electronic warfare.

And even if you can jam signal when it gets really close to the target, if you have a second drone watching -- which it looks like Ukraine and Russia often are, from the videos I see, maybe to do damage assessment -- you can probably stick a laser designator on those, if they haven't already, use it to guide the weaponized drone in.

[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (10 children)

Don't take my word for it but my understanding is that your average FPV drone is much more rudimentary than a camera drone like Mavic. It's basically just a battery, 4 motors, a camera, antenna and some flight controller chip. There's no GPS or return to home feature as far as I know. I don't think many of these are even able to hover on their own but require constant input from the pilot.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 8 months ago (9 children)

I don't know if that's true or not -- at least some of them definitely do, but maybe some don't -- but those capabilities are cheap enough that they can afford to have them there if it's what it takes to make the drone work in the presence of electronic warfare. A dumb artillery shell in the US is, from what I can dig up, about $800. The DJI drones are rather cheaper than that.

To put it another way:

https://www.faac.com/blog/2018/01/28/killer-instinct-how-many-soldiers-actually-fired-their-weapons-in-past-wars-how-has-simulation-other-training-helped/

During World War II it was estimated that 45,000 rounds of small arms ammunition was fired to kill one enemy soldier. In Vietnam the American military establishment consumed an estimated 50,000 rounds of ammunition for every enemy killed.

https://thegunzone.com/how-much-does-5-56-nato-ammo-cost/

On average, the price of 5.56 NATO ammo ranges from $0.40 to $1.00 per round.

By comparison, the drone is probably pretty cost-effective. If having a GPS chip is important to make it usable, cost isn't going to be a barrier.

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Dumb artillery shells are more 6000-8000 usd in the West.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That's what it costs in Russia and North Korea. In the EU the costs are as I cited. And there are no production capacities at the volume required. China stopped exporting the specific type of cotton used for cordite production. Nitric acid is expensive and hard to get.

You can print billions of banknotes easily. You cant do that with millions of shells.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

russia and nk uses 152mm, not 155mm

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I am aware. The 3 mm calibre difference has no impact on fabrication costs.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

the difference is in different cost of workforce, different manufacturing standards, different materials, different fill, different fuze (easily 1/3 of cost),

[–] eleitl@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 months ago

In terms of bucks per kill the West is doing an order of magnitude worse.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 months ago

not when there's a shortage

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 8 months ago

GLSDB is cheaper than regular GMLRS rocket. ramjet 155mm is prototype. there's another obscure 155mm ammunition called vulcano that basically packs smaller HE sabot round in 155mm, trading off payload for range, ramjet takes it even further

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