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Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by threeseed on Thursday April 25, 2024 @09:32AM (#40157342)
Ukraine is constantly inventing new techniques that are re-thinking what drones can do.

Recently they have been using them to drop spikes to slow vehicles which are then hit by a second set of drones.

At some point soon these drones will have specialised capabilities and will go out in swarms to autonomously figure out how to take down objects.

Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by chasd00 on Thursday April 25, 2024 @10:42AM (#40158175)
Aren’t these drones regular cots drones with some modification? Wouldn’t taking the door off a microwave and pointing it at the drone cause it to fall to the ground? Surely it’s more complex than that and I’m missing something.
Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by sandos on Thursday April 25, 2024 @11:08AM (#40158466)
Obviously Russia is already doing massive amounts of radio interference, that has always been a problem, which Ukraine has partly overcome. Partly. Googling for it you can see that it is massively diminishing the usefulness of drones for Ukraine.
Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by Log_out_ on Thursday April 25, 2024 @03:45PM (#40162124)
Jammer hunting drones already exist. In fact that was the idea behind the Shaheed predecessors in the first place. Set a course, then home in on strong em devices.
Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by stackedinserter on Thursday April 25, 2024 @11:15AM (#40158549)
Frontline on both sides is saturated with electronic warfare system which are essentially microwaves with open doors. Both sides put them on trucks, armored vehicles, set up near trenches and even carry on their backpacks. There were absurd cases like this https://imgur.com/a/4LqgLED

Drones evolve under this pressure. Dynamic frequency changes, computer vision, maneuvering (like "go up when lost signal") and many more counter measures are adopted on both sides.

Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by mig39 on Thursday April 25, 2024 @01:12PM (#40160258)
Consumer drones already deal with a hostile RF environment well. Finding the frequency with the least interference, using a wide bandwidth for control, and a different one for video, and programmable signal-loss behaviour.

Cities are hugely hostile to low power transmission, especially in the 2.4 and 5ghz frequencies.

The effective range of cheap DJI "mini" drones in cities is measured in kilometres. If you get away from the city, you can double and triple your effective range.

Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by Gud on Thursday April 25, 2024 @03:19PM (#40161842)
We are not talking "interference", but an enemy actively looking for your signals and overpowering it with massive high powered RF.

Flying your drone around in a city is not the same as flying it against an opponent skilled in electronic warfare.

Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by RealityVoid on Thursday April 25, 2024 @06:21PM (#40163806)
Most drone RC systems use FHSS. Those make them resistant to naive jamming. You can get fancy with jamming, but so can the way the FHSS works.
Re:Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unman... by fullspectrumdev on Friday April 26, 2024 @02:54AM (#40166585)
No. That’s been tried already lol.

You can jam the signal, but you can work around signal jamming in software by having it back off or gain altitude.