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Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by bsder on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @03:38PM (#12971258)
> Our current conception of a "drone" is really hard to bring up to military spec once this sort of countermeasure becomes militarily common.

This isn't really for drones. It's for frying ground-based electronics like cell phones. Drones are the smoke screen to hide that fact.

As for drones, motors and batteries are quite hardy against quick microwave pulses. A bit of aluminum foil makes a good, light Faraday cage. Optocouplers can isolate radio and GPS modules from the actual motor control systems.

I would expect you can fry an RC drone, but an autonomous one operating inertially or capable of switching so when radio/GPS goes away is probably pretty easy to shield.

In addition, this kind of system is always going to have a range vs width tradeoff. Can the drones get inside this thing's range where they can still be effective even if they are "ballistic"?

Dumb old bombs are really effective if you just give them a little bit of GPS to improve their accuracy. You don't have to get very close for the GPS adjustment to be devastatingly effective.

Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by windlep on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @10:25PM (#12973966)
> This isn't really for drones. It's for frying ground-based electronics like cell phones. Drones are the smoke screen to hide that fact.

Or imagine a smaller system integrated on a humvee that can destroy electronics in anything along the path a few dozen meters in front and in a smaller side/side area. That'd end the IED threat from anything other than a purely mechanical IED (not sure if many of those are around anymore, as everything assumes electronics will work nowadays).

Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by woodman on Wednesday November 16, 2016 @10:41PM (#12974033)
Nope, insurgents found a way around that a long time ago when convoys started including jammers. Hybrid detonation systems: radio arm the device outside of jamming range, mechanical switch detonated the IED once the vehicle triggers it.
Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by foxyv on Friday November 18, 2016 @04:48PM (#12990354)
When my brother was doing Op-For at camp Irwin he used one of the sensors from a garage door for simulated IEDs. Pressure plates, lasers, motion sensors, you name it and it'll make something go boom.

This is why IEDs are so effective in asymmetric warfare. They are cheap and anyone can get parts =(

Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by woodman on Saturday November 19, 2016 @03:40AM (#12992606)
I assume you're talking about the safety beams that prevent the door from closing on obstacles. Have you ever had the door go down on command and then halt, without any obstacle in the way? They're very noisy sensors - lots of false positives, not the sort of thing you want to wire up a massive bomb. They also actively emit light, so not very stealthy.

The first time I saw the results of an IED blast was a day after I arrived in Iraq. I had to shake a tree in order to retrieve the trousers of the guy who blew himself up planting the thing. That happened a lot. Making IEDs isn't very hard, but making a lot of them without eventually blowing yourself up is.

Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by kbart on Thursday November 17, 2016 @01:44AM (#12974977)
Or they simply use long wire buried in sand.
Re:How the U.S. Army’s ‘Phaser’ can wipe out an entire fleet... by woodman on Thursday November 17, 2016 @03:24AM (#12975504)
I only saw that a couple of times, in one case we caught the guy - he still had the 9v in his pocket (why he'd keep it I don't know). If you watch their videos you see that they prefer to be much further back than what is practical with a wire commanded detonation. There were rumors of laser commanded detonators, but I doubt it happened enough to warrant any sort of countermeasures.