“#Ethiopia’s Virgin Mary festival in Tigray cancelled over drone strike fears.” This is the first time I’ve heard of a festival (Ashenda, in Mekelle) being canceled because of #weaponry #drones. “There are concerns the conflict might reignite with the regional authorities blaming a recent series of deadly drone strikes on federal armed forces.” This #news is from Friday, and the festival was supposed to happen today, so they canceled it with two days’ warning. #politics
on 02026-08-23#video #toread about #Ukraine Special Operations Center OMEGA’s non-flying #weaponry and logistics #drones in #Ukraine, and OMEGA’s leader Oksana “Oksi” Volodymyrivna.
on 02026-08-18#video #toread about radio-controlled #drones #flying with circular wings
on 02026-08-15#news of #Ukraine using #weaponry #drones against a Russian refinery in Nizhnekamsk, 1200 km from the Ukraine border, killing 12 people and injuring 75.
on 02026-08-10#USA Pentagon’s #drone-dominance program “has published its Gauntlet I leaderboard, naming 11 companies set to receive orders for a combined 30,000 one-way attack drones worth up to $150 million” #drones #weaponry
on 02026-06-11#news: #drones from #Russia use #NVIDIA Jetson Orin processors for #AI #machine-vision
on 02026-06-11#news: #Niantic (a spinoff from #In-Q-Tel funded #Keyhole, the Google Earth folks) is using 30 billion camera environmental scans from #Pokemon Go to train #AI for new #USA #weaponry #drones using aerial navigation software made by #Vantar (formerly Maxor)
on 02026-06-11#video on #Ukraine #slaughterbots (#weaponry #drones) reaching Moscow en masse and hitting precision targets (including many oil refineries) starting May 17, instead of 90% getting shot down and the rest hitting random crap (not sure if I believe that). Apparently they have better intelligence and they’ve blown up more of Russia’s air defenses. Also operatives inside Russia are launching drones. Profile of Ukrainian Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, whose parents have now survived two Russian assassination attempts within Ukraine, using rocket launchers: reprisals against family members of key military officers are apparently routine in today’s form of war. They’re using “FP1” “Firepoint” winged drones vaguely similar to the Shahed: 1600km, 130 “pound” payload; and the jet-powered RS1 Bars: 800km, 200 “pound” payload. Russia has built a new air defense ring of 40 truss towers at some distance around Moscow.
on 02026-05-23#news #video of #Ukraine soldiers shooting at #drones with a CNN reporter, showing in detail a net-covered road and the tactics the soldiers use to survive while under drone attack
on 02026-05-22#video about how to avoid or defeat #weaponry #drones as an infantryman, from a guy who says he fought in #Ukraine amd Iraq for five years. #toread
on 02026-04-22#news from 02013: “long endurance, transoceanic gliders harvesting all energy from the ocean thermocline,” the so-called #Slocum-Gliders, contracted by the Navy of the #USA to Teledyne Benthos. #underwater #drones #energy-harvesting
on 02026-04-2202014 predictions about #drones citing contemporary sources
on 02026-04-22#news from 01998, first transatlantic crossing by #drones, the #Aerosonde specifically.
on 02026-04-22#news from 02014 about agricultural #drones #toread
on 02026-04-22Rutgers’s “remotely piloted” submarine RU27, made by Teledyne Webb Research, crossed the Atlantic #underwater in 221 days in 02009 under battery power by adjusting its buoyancy by adjusting an electrically operated piston, surfacing every 8 hours to check in with Iridium and GPS, despite hundreds of gooseneck barnacles attaching to it on the way. #narcosubs #drones
on 02026-04-22prediction from 02014 that #Hamas will acquire #precision #weaponry #drones to strike #Israel’s military and mine its ports instead of killing civilians indiscriminately. #politics
on 02026-04-22“Large-scale exercise in Estonia - Ukrainian #drones wipe out entire NATO battalions” #Ukraine #weaponry #news
on 02026-04-22#video #toread showing #Ukraine #weaponry #drones flying over the city of Donetsk, very far from the front (50km? Much further than the usual 20km kill zone), where they’re starting to attack Russian military logistics on the roads. Not sure if these are so-called #Martians; those are supposed to be autonomous, and this looks like FPV.
on 02026-04-16“Ukrainian soldiers down $10 million Russian Mi-8 helicopter with a $500 drone” The #Ukraine ‘Baltika’ crew. #drones #weaponry #news
on 02026-04-14pro-#Ukraine propaganda #video says that al Jazeera says that in March there were 35351 Russian casualties, 96% from #drones #weaponry, a record body count perhaps due to the new so-called #Martians powered by #AI. In 02026 Ukraine projects building 7 million drones.
on 02026-04-13Russian warblogger commenting on the #Ukraine #slaughterbots #news, suggesting ways to tweak Russian tactics to deal better with #drones.
on 02026-04-13#news from last week: Russia calls the new #weaponry #drones from #Ukraine "Martians" or "Bumblebees": “The enemy has begun using new drones called ‘Martians,’ which, unfortunately, have a cruising speed of up to 300 kilometers/hour [186 miles / hour], no longer fly under operator guidance but are controlled by [#AI],” [Horlivko Russian mayor] Prikhodko said. “They are undetectable by electronic warfare systems, and drone detectors don’t spot them.” And Apti Alauidnov: “It appears they are jointly produced, Ukraine-Germany, Ukraine-France. They are modernized. They fly farther than the old ones.” Plausibly, though, these are not full-fledged #slaughterbots but just using LPD radio links to a teleoperator.
on 02026-04-13#video on #Frankenberg Mark 1 #weaponry against Russian #drones, a baguette-sized model rocket with an explosive warhead. From Estonia’s Frankenburg Technologies, headed by Kusti Salm, at a cost of US$50k a shot, first used by #Ukraine. Seems to be mostly stock photos and stock footage of Vladimir Putin walking around and flags flying outside the UN headquarters. From anti-Russia propaganda channel “The Military Show”.
on 02026-04-12talking-head #video on #weaponry #drones. Says #Ukraine front-line military units buy directly from manufacturers on an Amazon-like platform called “Brave One”. “The side that masters drones at scale, in doctrine, in training, and in organization will shape how wars are fought in the coming decades.” #slaughterbots
on 02026-04-12#news #video about #drones #weaponry called "LUCAS", a US$35k-per-unit reverse-engineered #Shahed 136 clone developed in 18 months as part of the #USA’s "drone dominance" program.
on 02026-04-11#video of 60 Minutes reporting on #weaponry #drones, duplicate of the other one I watched profiling #Tencor, etc.
on 02026-04-11#video #news about demining the Strait of Hormuz by Sal Mercogliano. “Additional [#USA] forces, including underwater #drones, will join the clearance effort in the coming days.” Map overlays showing how #Iran has shifted the shipping lanes into its own territorial waters, and animation of the last 24 hours of #oil ships using Iran’s new #shipping lanes, using AIS data from MarineTraffic. Two US destroyers have arrived at the Strait, and one turned on its AIS (automated identification system) after passing through to show that it had done so.
on 02026-04-11on #Ukraine, #Iran, #weaponry #drones, and putting things #underground to keep them safe. He proposes “rapidly bored shallow tunnels” because “Israel has destroyed only about 40 percent of Gaza’s tunnels after two and a half years of war.” He suggests cut-and-cover with prefab tunnel segments, which sounds ineffective to me.
on 02026-04-10#video #toread on #3D-printing variable-pitch rotors for #flying a large, high-efficiency quadcopter. #manufacturing #drones
on 02026-04-07#news #video #interview with MIT dropout #Ethan-Thornton of #Mach-Industries from 7 months ago. He suggests that priority targets for swarms of #drones would be cellphone towers, high-voltage transformers, and cranes in ports, in order to “stop your industrial machine”, war crimes similar to those Trump is threatening in Iran this week. Shows Stratus (balloon-based), Viper, and Glide. Thornton envisions coming out with new models every 6 months or every year, a sharp contrast to the one-week roundtrip touted in Ukraine. He’s also very focused on decentralizing #manufacturing because he expects it to be a target in war. #weaponry
on 02026-04-04#video #interview with on #Ethan-Thornton of "Mach Industries", a 22-year-old making #weaponry called Viper, Dart, and Stratus, and who thinks that balloons will be the key to future air warfare because of their asymmetry: 100× more costly to shoot down than to put up. He’s the one that took Venom (which he calls Pike) from concept to flight in 71 days. He blames the names on the government. He is mostly talking about wars with “hundreds of thousands” of #flying weapons, perhaps unaware that Ukraine and Russia build millions of #drones per year.
on 02026-04-04#news #video from 60 Minutes about how #drones from the #Ukraine war have transformed war, and what that means for #Iran. Says Ukraine now produces 4 million drones a year. Profiles Roman Tkechenko’s #Tencor ground drone company, Air Logix, and its investors, former US Marines William McNulty and Lenore Caraffa, with their investment fund specializing in Ukrainian weapons (“UA1”?). The guy Ukraine has in charge of drones says they have about a one-week feedback time from designing a drone to incorporating feedback from its use in the field into the next generation of drone design. #weaponry
on 02026-04-04discussion of #ICE and #censorship in #USA #politics through restrictions on #drones: “[D]rone operators can’t know whether they are within 3000 horizontal feet of unmarked DHS vehicles. Yet the TFR allows the government to capture or even shoot down a drone if it flies within the TFR radius, and to impose criminal and civil penalties on the operator. (...) We don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the TFR was put in place in January 2026, at the height of the Minneapolis anti-ICE protests, shortly after the killing of Renée Good and shortly before the shooting of Alex Pretti. After both of those tragedies, civilian recordings played a vital role in contradicting the government’s false account of the events.”
on 02026-04-03#news that #Iran’s attacks with #drones and ballistic missiles are down 95% and 90% respectively from the beginning of the war, but #Israel and maybe #USA are running low on interceptor #weaponry such as THAADs. Also: “The State Department last week announced a sale of 12,000 “BLU-110A/B general purpose, 1,000-pound bomb bodies” to Israel.” #politics
on 02026-03-12Japanese-Argentine #video tour of #Shenzhen, showing delivery by #drones, traffic monitoring by drones, iUFO single-person taxi drones, self-driving ground taxis (since the end of November: L4, no driver, a half-hour trip for US$2.50), self-driving buses, five-axis CNC woodcarving, laser-cutting photographs into leaves, T-shirt printers, etc.
on 02026-01-15#video on #hydrofoil #drones using capacitive sensing of water levels, with the cathode physically in contact with the water to get a bigger effect (and Kapton tape on the anode instead of solder mask), and using “fringed-field capacitance” (?). His main watercraft body was cut from Foamular, and it used an air propeller in front to drive it. They were using a PID library that by default only updated at 10Hz, which was a problem.
on 02025-11-21#video by "UC Military News" about what #drones did for #Ukraine in October #toread
on 02025-11-05#video of #drones killing Russians in pro-#Ukraine propaganda #toread
on 02025-11-04#video with technical detail about fast #drones, Peragreen 3, with a 16kW lithium-ion battery. #toread
on 02025-11-04Russia’s 12-tonne ground #weaponry "unmanned ground combat vehicle" Uran-9, Уран-9, initiated in 02016 and first fielded in 02018. Seems to be running into some trouble. #drones
on 02025-11-04pro-#Ukraine propaganda #video from yesterday about mostly tank battles with a bit of #drones and artillery #weaponry. Every Ukrainian tank round fired hits its target, usually completely destroying it, a Bradley IFV destroys a Russian tank, etc.
on 02025-11-03#video on #weaponry for #Ukraine, NAD of Sweden’s US$5000 warhead-less infrared-guided missile "Kreuger" 100, because Lockheed Martin makes 500 US$3.7M Patriot PAC-3 missiles per year, while Russia makes Geran “flying lawnmower” #drones for US$30k to US$100k and sends 100–500 per night. Russia’s Orlan-10 is US$87k to US$120k. The Kreuger 100XR is longer-range and does carry a warhead. It’s propeller-driven, but with just one electric propeller at the rear, plus forward and rear canards. “Civilian configurations” (?) reach 270km/hour but only 4000m altitude.
on 02025-11-03#video about another record in quadcopter #drones from a week ago, 585km/hour, using 15–16kW of electrical power at peak. He’s using a box of water with two aluminum-plate sides as the heatsink for the ESCs, just holding the heat thermally in the water until the end of the flight. He endorses SMC batteries.
on 02025-10-29#news: after a battle with 100 arrested and 60 killed (including four police) in two favelas in Rio de Janeiro, #drones attacked police stations in #Brazil with grenades, leaving several of them (five?) spewing columns of black smoke at once. “Comando Vermelho” seems to be the name of the gang the government is fighting.
on 02025-10-28#Tech-Ingredients #video about #jugaad #laser directed-energy #weaponry against #drones #toread
on 02025-10-18#video on new anti-#Shahed #weaponry #drones from #Ukraine, battery-powered quadcopters with 500g of explosives for US$595, using a DJI digital transmission module. Displays some captured Russian drones.
on 02025-10-07#video #toread about how not to get killed by #drones #weaponry: umbrellas, tunnels, moving in the daytime, moving in thunderstorms, etc.
on 02025-10-02#RFU #video from today on #Ukraine news on the front between Dolyna and Lyman; Ukraine is bombing Russian pontoon bridges with GBU39 #weaponry despite GPS jamming; artillery fire suppressed bridge replacement. FPV #drones are playing a supporting role.
on 02025-10-02#news that 13 people, including 8 children, killed by unattributed explosive #drones at a birthday party in #Haiti. “The explosions happened Saturday night in Cité Soleil, which is controlled by Viv Ansanm, a powerful gang coalition that the U.S. has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
One of its leaders, Jimmy Chérizier, best known as Barbecue, vowed to avenge the attacks, with a total of at least 13 people killed, according to residents.
“This is my daughter,” said Claudia Bobrun, 30, as she showed the AP a video of her 8-year-old girl lying in a pool of blood. (...) Meanwhile, Nanouse Mertelia, 37, said she was inside her house on Saturday night and ran out to see what happened after hearing an explosion. Her son had left their home several minutes earlier to get something to eat.
She found him on the ground, his leg and arm blown off.
“Come get me, come get me, please mama,” she said he told her, but he had lost too much blood. “By the time we got to the hospital, he died.”
Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network accused police of launching two exploding drones in the Simon Pelé community of Cité Soleil as suspected gang leader Albert Steevenson, known as Djouma, prepared to celebrate his birthday. (...) “It has now been 48 hours since the incident, and the authorities have yet to issue any official communication or assume public responsibility. Who, ultimately, will assume responsibility for this attack: The prime minister? The transitional presidential council? Private security companies? The leadership of Haiti National Police?” he asked. (...) Activists noted that a similar operation involving explosive drones in downtown Port-au-Prince killed at least eleven civilians earlier this month.
The human rights group said several gang members have been killed in drone attacks since March.
A new task force created earlier this year has operated outside the oversight of Haiti’s National Police and employed the use of explosive drones. The task force was made up of certain police units and private contractors.” I don’t know why it couldn’t be a non-Viv-Ansanm gang?
on 02025-09-25#video of surveillance #drones #decentralization to, supposedly, compete with Anduril by strapping an ESP32 to a DJI drone
on 02025-09-22#Anduril #Anvil #weaponry demo #video, showing that it’s a brick-shaped battery-powered quadcopter designed to knock down low-altitude #drones
on 02025-09-12#video #news claiming #Poland just shot down a bunch of Russian Shahed-style #drones deep inside its airspace, which were shot down by Polish, German, Dutch, and Italian forces (operating out of Estonia), and #NATO has convened a special meeting. Russia questions whether the drones are of Russian origin. #Ukraine #politics
on 02025-09-105' #news #video of autonomous #drones #weaponry contract won by a company in Texas #USA named Mach Industries, founded by 21-year-old MIT dropout Ethan Thornton, and its high-altitude-dropped fixed-wing project Glide and parking-lot-launched Viper, and balloon-launched Stratus, visualizing warfare with tens of millions of balloons #politics
on 02025-09-06#Infobae #news #video on #Argentina buying #drones #weaponry. They’re talking about Eron, Milkor, and Elbit’s Hermes 900. Mostly talking-head filler, supplemented by Elbit’s advertising footage.
on 02025-08-30#video on #Ukraine #drones #weaponry, which it said is largely made by Vyriy and the Vampire’s maker Skyfall. Says dropping 10kg TM62 anti-tank mines onto tanks, and also dropping heavy bombs from drones, is a “warfare first”. The Vampire (Baba Yaga) can carry them 10km. Says the Donetsk battlefield is “dominated by FPV drones on both sides”. The most popular ground drone is Ratel’s 35kg-capacity Ratel S or “Honey Badger”.
on 02025-08-30#drones #weaponry #news #Burkina-Faso #Iran
on 02025-06-17#Weaponry #news from April. Another repetition of the NYT’s claim that in #Ukraine, “#drones caused 70 percent of battlefield injuries or deaths in 2024, supplanting artillery,” inspiring #Burkina-Faso, etc. “[#Turkey] is Africa’s top supplier, with a total of 32 agreements, 28 of which have occurred since 2021. Türkiye has succeeded by appealing to the desire of countries across Africa to acquire affordable, modern weapons outside the supply chains of major technological powers. Israel, the #UAE, and #Iran have similarly expanded their reach on the continent via the supply of drones.
On the demand side, #Nigeria (18 acquisitions), Algeria (15), Ethiopia (12), and Morocco (11) are Africa’s top drone seekers. (...) Enterprises in nine African countries (Algeria, #Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, #Nigeria, #South-Africa, Sudan, and #Tunisia) now produce military drones, supplying approximately 12 percent of Africa’s overall drone market. South Africa, the continent’s longest-standing drone producer, has manufactured unmanned military systems since the 1970s. #ENOVA Robotics, a Tunisian company, is exporting 50 of its ground security robots to the United States.”
on 02025-06-17#news from Le Monde on #weaponry #drones: “From the base’s runway take off armed drones from Turkish manufacturer Baykar (at least six Bayraktar TB2 and two #Bayraktar Akinci, the superior model) and surveillance drones from the country’s National Intelligence Agency (ANR). Their mission: to track down and strike the jihadist groups that control large swathes of Burkina Faso's territory. Initiated by former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré (overthrown by the 2022 putsch), the use of armed drones has been intensified by Captain Traoré. (...) The ruling militaries of #Mali, #Burkina-Faso and Niger, which broke away from France and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) at the end of 2023, aren’t just banking on drones to bolster their air capabilities: attack and troop transport helicopters, fighter jets, aircraft equipped with ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities... To acquire these aircraft, they are relying primarily on their Turkish partners (for drones), with whom the civilian government they overthrew was already cooperating, and Russians (for planes and helicopters). (...) According to various sources consulted by Le Monde and cross-referenced with the Military Balance register, a directory of military forces worldwide published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Malian army currently has eight Bayraktar TB2s, around 15 helicopters (Mi-35s, Mi-24s, Mi-17s, Mi-8s...), and some 15 L-39 Albatros aircraft. The Burkinabe army has at least six TB2s, two Akinci, a dozen helicopters (Mi-35, Mi-17, Mi-8...) and five light fighters (Super Tucano and Marchetti SF-260). The Nigerien army has six TB2s, some 10 helicopters (Mi-35, Mi-17, Gazelle...) and two Sukhoi Su-25s. (...) Working alongside the Malian army, #Wagner’s mercenaries are playing an active role in this aerial war. Among them are pilots, at the controls of the L-39 Albatros supplied by Moscow to the Malian air force. At the end of September, in the region of Tin Zaouatine, where they attempted a retaliatory attack for the assault they suffered two months earlier before turning back, CSP rebels came across drones with Russian-designed Zala Kub prowler ammunition (kamikaze drones).” Archive of <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/article/2024/11/20/turkish-drones-and-russian-planes-aerial-warfare-comes-to-west-africa_6733455_124.html>.
on 02025-06-17#Burkina-Faso bought #Bayraktar TB2 #drones from #Turkey in 02022, following sales to Togo, Djibouti, Libya, #Ethiopia, Morocco, #Tunisia, and Niger. #weaponry
on 02025-06-17#Burkina-Faso bought several #Bayraktar #drones (TB2 and Akinci) from #Turkey last year, following earlier purchases. #weaponry
on 02025-06-17“#Drones, not the big, heavy artillery that the war was once known for, inflict about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, said Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in #Ukraine’s Parliament. In some battles, they cause even more — up to 80 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say. (...) drones rule the battlefield. They have far surpassed conventional arms as the war’s most lethal #weaponry. (...) The war has killed and wounded more than a million soldiers in all, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates. But drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say. (...) Of the 31 highly sophisticated Abrams tanks that the United States provided Ukraine in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, disabled or captured, with many incapacitated by drones, senior Ukrainian officials said. Nearly all of the others have been taken off the front lines, they added. (...) Ukrainian officials said they had made more than one million first-person-view, or FPV, drones in 2024. Russia claims it can churn out 4,000 every day. Both countries say they are still scaling up production, with each aiming to make three to four million drones in 2025. (...) Ukraine has followed suit, firing more drones last year than the most common type of large-caliber artillery shells. The commander of Ukraine’s drone force, Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, says Ukraine is now pursuing a “robots first” military strategy.
However effective they may be, the drones fall far short of meeting all of Ukraine’s war needs and cannot simply replace the demand for conventional weapons, commanders warn. Heavy artillery and other long-range weapons remain essential for many reasons, they say, including protecting troops and targeting command-and-control outposts or air-defense systems. ”
on 02025-06-17#video from May 19: #interview with #drones developer Sergey Tovkach from #Russia on how #weaponry from #Ukraine is far better than what the US and even China have, and now 70% of fatalities on the battlefield are from drones. “A special thanks to our Western partners, because where else could we have trained on so much of your equipment? You delivered it straight to the front, and we got to study it up close. We learned all the weak points. We learned exactly where to strike. (...) There isn’t a single Western drone that’s proven itself effective in this conflict.” He claims #China makes military gear that doesn’t survive being tossed out of a truck, “like toys”. Ukraine barely uses Chinese chips in their drones, but Russia’s have to be all Chinese. Talks about mine-laying drones (“in use for about a year and a half now”), “sleeper/ambush drones” (same time frame, Ukrainians first — drones playing possum, pretending to be “a real trophy”), and drones dropping caltrops welded from rebar. “Same [ambush tactics] with drones placed on rooftops or hilltops overlooking roads (...) when the vehicles come, the drone just takes off, flies a short distance, and hits its target. That whole tactic really took off with the rise of fiber optic drones,” because they don’t need to burn 5–10W to transmit the video feed. Russian operators now wind up used fiber-optic cables on a cordless drill to avoid giving away their position. “The Orbit [Russian remote piloting] system. (...) The Ukrainians have been using radio relays and internet bridges for a long time already. (...) #Starlink is the holy grail. (...) Take away Starlink and Ukraine’s entire fleet of naval drones disappears overnight. (...) Why doesn’t Russia have naval drones? Well, we do have the boats and, but we don’t have Starlink.” But he says Starlink’s #latency is too high for FPV drone piloting. Baba Yaga or “Vampire” drones dropping antitank mines with 6–8kg of TNT have been very effective; Russia is ramping up two factories to produce its own equivalent.
on 02025-06-17#Israel #drones destroy two F-14 airplanes in #Iran. #weaponry #politics
on 02025-06-16#news #video from a week ago about #narcosubs in Galicia, saying three have been found but maybe 30 got through since the first one was found in 02019, saying thermal imaging cameras are among the best tools for detection; mentions “unmanned #drones” in a possible future.
on 02025-05-15#video on whether drug #cartels in #Mexico will use #drones or similar #weaponry against #USA Marines etc. (as they have been against rivals) who are apparently patrolling the border now; #Asmongold does a live “react to” stream to a pro-#Trump #politics YouTuber; he predicts an invasion of Mexico. Illegal #immigration is being blamed for US gangs in New York in homeless shelters.
on 02025-03-06#video extensive footage of #Ukraine #drones #weaponry dropping bombs on individual Russian soldiers, mostly in trenches, killing them. Also includes footage of house-to-house fighting in Shcheribivka (?). Lots of heat-vision footage. Also includes footage of tank-to-tank (or IFV-to-tank?) combat. By #Sinyor-Media.
on 02025-03-04#video #news on #Ukraine doing the “first all-robot assault” on a ground position at Lyptsi, near Hlyboka, by the 13th National Guard brigade. Includes footage from “Army TV - Ukrainian Military Channel”. #toread #weaponry #drones
on 02025-03-04#video #toread on #USA CIA flying Predator #drones over #Mexico to provide information on drug cartels to the Mexican authorities. #politics
on 02025-03-01#video of #Ukraine Magyar Birds #drones destroying Russian #weaponry while controlled over fiber-optic cables. Lots of purported battlefield footage with a voiceover with a native US accent reading a script written by somebody who doesn’t speak English very well; AI? Several instances of FPV drones piercing howitzer barrels with strapped-on RPGs, lots of FPV footage, some heat vision. By #Sinyor-Media.
on 02025-03-01#video on intercepting Russian fiber-optic-driven FPV #drones #weaponry
on 02025-02-27#video on Australian #PPDS #drones: cardboard, or waxed-paper foamboard sandwich, airplane-shaped, “origami of death”, being used in #Ukraine for #weaponry. 24 shipped flat-packed in a pizza box, front propeller, catapult launch, straight wings attached with rubber bands, 5.3 “pounds” empty, 6.6 “pounds” payload, 37 “miles” per hour, 75 “miles” range. Unit price speculated to be between $670 and $3350, an oddly precise upper bound suggesting wankery around exchange rates. It’s claimed that the MiG-29 and four Su-30s destroyed at the Kursk airbase were destroyed with these drones at well over their nominal range. #slaughterbots
on 02025-02-27#drones carrying PKM #weaponry in #Ukraine #video
on 02025-02-27#video on autonomous submarine #drones
on 02025-02-20#video on GPS-denied, anti-jam autonomous #drones and #motion-planning using a #Raspberry-Pi 4 running #ROS. He calls his flight control software #dRehmFlight. Apparently Intel’s “RealSense tracking cam” does “optical flow” inside the camera to measure changes in orientation. The main drone body seems to be laser-cut from MDF. He’s using #D-star Lite instead of A* for his #path-planning graph search. #robotics
on 02025-02-20#video on #Ukraine #weaponry, saying they passed Zelenskyy’s target of manufacturing a million #drones in the year 2024 — in February. Mostly about “cope cages” and “turtle #tanks”. From pro-Ukraine propaganda outlet “Military Show”.
on 02025-02-12#video #news of #UK defense minister Healey listing #weaponry sent to #Ukraine last year: “10000 #drones” is the only thing worth mentioning. Hegseth says #Trump’s approach to the war is that the war must end. “We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. (...) The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. (...) As part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine.” Not sure what he thinks about Donetsk and Luhansk. #politics
on 02025-02-12#video on #weaponry against #drones, specifically a truck-mounted “Bushmaster” machine gun shooting 30mm HE rounds with RF proximity fuses
on 02025-01-28"MicroLink" Devices in Niles, Illinois, “Recognized as Airbus Key Supplier”, makes ultra-lightweight #solar #photovoltaic panels for #drones etc.
on 02024-12-19#USA #politics #drones sighted leading to calls for a state of emergency #news
on 02024-12-13#USA #politics #drones sighted leading to calls for a state of emergency #news (discussion)
on 02024-12-13#Ziroth #video on #ornithopters #drones, mostly talking-head filler with stock footage, but some of the stock footage is from ornithopter research groups. Mentions that a Chinese homing-pigeon drone had a record flight time of three hours, presumably on batteries.
on 02024-12-04#video of 10-gram 330-mm-wingspan Bionic Bird "MetaBird" powered by a 1.6-watt motor powered by a 1.6-gram battery, designed by Edwin Van Ruymbeke, XTIM, 77 Rue de Lyon, 13015 Marseille, France. Annoyingly half the video is taken up by stock footage of disaster relief. #ornithopters #drones
on 02024-12-03#crossbow #weaponry in #Ukraine also discussing #drones a bit. “Major European armies still fielded breast-plated heavy cavalry regiments at the outbreak of World War I.”
on 02024-11-17#video #toread about #Ukraine #drones #weaponry from last week
on 02024-10-30#video #toread on "Locust" laser #weaponry against #drones
on 02024-10-16#video from three days ago about #Anduril’s Barracuda cruise missile #weaponry #drones. #Palmer-Luckey describes #China as an “expansionist dictatorship” and claims that Anduril’s autonomous drones in #Ukraine have been crucial to destroying Russian hardware. He pronounces it ['ænd ɚ ,ɪl]. “I don't think the United States needs to be the world police. We need to be the world gun store. (...) Ukraine has really exposed this weakness in the United States' foreign policy strategy, where we say we support all of these people, but they look and say, ‘They can’t even manufacture the basics, like artillery shells or, you know, small missiles.’” They just raised money on a US$14 billion valuation to build “Arsenal One, a five million square foot factory that we’re building”. Refuses to comment on possible deployments in Israel, but says, “We have a very strong relationship with #Taiwan,” and says Anduril was recently sanctioned by the CPC.
on 02024-09-16#video from yesterday #toread about #weaponry #drones on the Pokrovsk front in #Ukraine
on 02024-09-16#Ukraine #drones hit Moscow, or a city near Moscow, killing one person and injuring three. Also so-called “Dragon” drones dumping thermite on a forest. #politics
on 02024-09-10#news #video on an Iranian-made Russian drone that was shot down (?) in NATO member Lithuania on Saturday after launching from Belarus targeted at #Ukraine. #drones #politics
on 02024-09-10half-hour #video on DIY sub-250-gram autonomous #drones with #Ardupilot #tutorial #toread maybe with an actual drone at hand
on 02024-09-10#video about Queen Hornet #drones carrying AK-74 gun #weaponry in #Ukraine from the maker “Wild Hornets”. Mentions that they’re also used as signal repeaters. Also, a #Baba-Yaga firing an automatic rifle at the ground. Also Russia has at least tested Molot Aero drones firing AK-74s. And the Georgian Legion fired an RPG-7 from one of their drones.
on 02024-09-10Terminal Autonomy’s AQ400 Scythe #drones have a range of 750km and are being made from wood “in former furniture factories in #Ukraine. (...) Mr Serra-Martins, a former Australian Army Royal Engineer, set up the company with his Ukrainian co-founder, backed by US finance. It is one of at least three companies now producing drones in Ukraine at scale. (...) Terminal Autonomy’s Scythe drone uses visual positioning – navigating its course and examining the terrain by Artificial Intelligence. There is no pilot involved. (...) What you’re seeing now is like nothing compared to what you’ll see by the end of the year.” #weaponry The article also covers #Palantir’s involvement, including route planning for the drones.
on 02024-09-10CNN News #video saying #Ukraine blew up an oil refinery near Moscow with #drones last weekend (shown in cellphone video), Russia having shot down 160 of the drones of the attack wave. Another cellphone video shows some kind of industrial facility on fire in Konakovo in Tver, reportedly an energy facility, about 500–600 km away from the line of battle. Ukraine hadn’t done this before because its long-range missiles had been supplied by Western allies who forbade it. Also discusses #Durov’s arrest in #France and Russia’s concerns about Telegram opsec — the Russian military has been “instructed to stop using Telegram”. #weaponry #politics
on 02024-09-07#video from two weeks ago on Western tank #weaponry in #Ukraine, such as the Kampfpanzer Leopard 1 with its 70mm RHA and rifled 105mm gun; the US$6 million, 70-tonne Leopard 2 with its smoothbore 120mm gun and composite armor, and at least 130 deployed to Ukraine, at least 32 damaged or lost so far (8 of these being repaired); the Stridsvagn 122+, a Leopard 2, with 10 deployed and 7 lost; Britain’s 70-tonne Challenger 2, with its 120mm rifled gun, 14 deployed and one lost so far, the first Challenger 2 lost to enemy fire anywhere in the world (the comments say a second one has just been lost in the Kursk offensive); and the 66.8-tonne turbine-powered M1 Abrams, with its 120mm smoothbore gun, 31 deployed, 10 lost. Ukraine has lost 857 tanks so far: 585 destroyed, 72 damaged, 66 abandoned, 134 captured. Their T-64 tanks were more useful for minefields because they had mine rolles, unlike the Western tanks. They say the Polish PT-91 Twardy, an upgraded T-72, has been the most useful. But somehow the video also says that the Western tanks are intimidating, advanced, and scare Russian soldiers with just the sound of their engines, even though it sounds like it’s the T-64s and T-72s that have been most useful. “#Drones are actually the reason many military experts believe tanks have been made obsolete in modern warfare, at least until the technology and tactics catch up,” and Russian drones took out at least five of the 10 Abrams tanks Ukraine has lost, prompting to remove them from the front lines. #politics
on 02024-09-05#video #toread about "UGVs" in #Ukraine, ground #weaponry #drones
on 02024-09-05#video on bending 3mm music wire with a Micro-Mark #60346 Mini Wire Bender tool for radio-controlled #drones #mechanisms (landing gear, pushrods, etc.) For thin wire you can just use heavy-duty pliers. He recommends making Z-bends by first using all three dimensions and then flattening back into two. Basically the Micro-Mark tool is a miniaturized version of a rebar bender. He obviously has a lot of practice because he freehand bends multiple perfect 90° angles, seemingly compensating for the wire’s springback purely by intuition. For cutting the 3mm wire he recommends a Dremel instead of something like a bolt cutter.
on 02024-09-03#WSJ #video on #Shahed (131, 136, and 238) #drones from #Iran in #Ukraine, described as “cheap”. The 238 has jet propulsion, but the 136 uses a four-cylinder piston engine (after an initial rocket boost) and has 1500 “miles” (2400km) of range, 11.5 “feet” of length (3.5m), 441 “pounds” of weight (200kg plus spurious precision) with a 100-“pound” payload, and US$50000 of production cost, 1/600 of the Reaper. Moscow plans to manufacture 6000 of them by 02025. #weaponry
on 02024-08-28#video from two weeks ago on swarm #weaponry #drones likely to be deployed en masse in #Ukraine. Mostly talking about optical navigation by waypoints for terminal guidance to defeat GPS jamming, though, rather than swarming; emphasis is on attacking tanks, Russian reconaissance drones, and in one case a helicopter. Says Ukraine “may well be ahead” of Russia, weakly contradicting other recent reporting. #politics
on 02024-08-28#video about a couple in #Ukraine who left Beryslav, near Kherson, after kamikaze #drones bombed their house. Now they’re scared of thunder and wasps. The claim is that there’s no military presence in Beryslav, which has shrunk from 11000 people to about 1000 after hundreds of drone casualties, including 16 deaths. Contrary to what Business Insider’s Russian deserter said, the civilians believed they’d be safer going out at night, when the drones couldn’t see them; in one case a drone blew up an ambulance. It says Russia “quickly caught up” to Ukraine’s initial lead in drone #weaponry. The only hypothesis offered by the Ukrainians is that Russian drone operators are using Beryslav for target practice. A Russian post on Telegram says there are no civilians there, so they’re destroying vehicles to deprive the enemy of mobility. #DeutscheWelle
on 02024-08-27#video about Russian soldiers fighting in #Ukraine. Interview with an escaped soldier by #Business-Insider. Makes it sound like the no-man’s-land trench warfare of WWI. He talks a fair bit about #drones, saying that the “night birds” all use thermal cameras, and also describes how he amputated a fellow soldier’s gangrenous arm with an axe. Also, accidentally crawling over corpses trying to hide from a drone. Later he crawled off the battlefield, unable to walk, after getting a grenade from a “night bird”. He relates an incident of two of his companymates getting executed for insubordination (“zeroed out”) because they refused to go to a post where “Baba Yaga” was “fucking them up real bad”. On another occasion he was going to be executed and dumped in a mass grave for supposedly deserting.
on 02024-08-27#video on #weaponry against #drones, nothing interesting
on 02024-08-27#video on #weaponry #drones in #Ukraine, and in particular Ukrainian company Saker’s autonomous target identification software, which has reportedly already destroyed Russian targets in autonomous mode. And then #Anduril. “The cost of killing is getting scarily low.”
on 02024-08-27#video on #Ukraine #drones #weaponry being caught up with by Russia. Says the Russians have five times as many drones on the front lines, though the number of Ukrainian companies licensed to sell the government drones has risen from 7 “last year” (02022) to 70 “this” year (02023). #politics
on 02024-08-27#video #toread on #drones and #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-08-27Mike Bell’s #video on #manufacturing the #Guinness winning #Peregreen-2 #flying #drones explains why they wanted inherent stability: so they wouldn’t have to waste differential thrust on stabilization. He explains the batteries were 48V, 12S, 1500mAh × 2, 160C (!!!). To smooth the transparent canopy they printed it from PVA (!!) and misted it with isopropanol for days. Apparently he designed the shape in Blender!
on 02024-07-31#video on Luke Bell and Mike Bell #manufacturing #Guinness winning fast #flying #drones called "Peregreen 2", in part by CNC-cutting frame parts out of a carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic sheet (#sheet-cutting). Because streamlining was a top concern, it’s sort of rocket-shaped, which they played with by printing a transparent tail and illuminating it from within. Their fake batteries caught on fire, their motor wires caught on fire, their motor wires desoldered themselves from the ESC, their ESCs caught on fire, their PID control loops went out of control and crashed the drone, their motors turned out to be anemic, rough skin produced excessive drag, etc. But finally they got it to go 133m/s average over 100 meters, 142m/s peak. They were using FPV flying with goggles.
on 02024-07-31#video on how 250g+ #flying #drones need to be registered in Germany and some other countries
on 02024-07-31#video from November on diy #drones and #weaponry in #Ukraine, in the drone labs. Largely talking-head footage though. Claims that they gave Ukraine an “edge” that “leveled the playing field”. Mentions friends of soldiers in Ukraine organizing fundraisers on Instagram. Mentions that they’re using “signal booster drones” to counter jamming, and an SBIR for “a lethal payload capability that can be deployed on a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS)”. A pretty reasonable #introduction if you don’t know anything.
on 02024-06-25#video of #Ukraine and Russia #tanks popping open like a jack-in-the-box when the ammunition inside gets blown up. Annoyingly dramatic music. In Spanish. Partly blames the autoloader, whose purpose was to make the tanks smaller, and therefore both harder to hit and cheaper, but also the fact that the other half of the ammunition is under the crew, a part which is often left empty nowadays. Also points out that usually the jack-in-the-box explosion is 30-60 minutes after the initial hit, giving the crew time to escape before that rather fatal explosion. Contrasts the Abrams’s blow-out panels. Suppoedly shows Lancet HEAT #drones destroying an Abrams at 11'05". #weaponry
on 02024-06-12As of 02020-11-02, Joseph Trevithick reports a #Taliban attack in #Afghanistan on four off-duty bodyguards of the provincial governor using #drones as #weaponry.
on 02023-02-14As of 02020-11-27, Joseph Trevithick reports that #Mexico's Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación is mass-producing quadcopter #drones with C4 bombs for assassination #weaponry. Most of the YouTube videos he links to for evidence have been censored by now.
on 02023-02-14"Slaughterbots" #video on #drones. Shortened URL <https://is.gd/slaughterbots>.
on 02018-10-19#Putin thinks AI is the strategic technology for future #war, due to #drones.
on 02017-09-10#Yemen #weaponry #drones built by #Iran to blow up missile-defense radars in #war.
on 02017-09-10flamethrower #drones #video #China #weaponry
on 02017-05-28A power company in Xiangyang, #China, is using flamethrower #drones (remote-controlled octocopters) )to burn debris off power lines. #weaponry
on 02017-05-28#USA FAA can’t require registration of #drones. #politics
on 02017-05-19256 unreported “airstrikes” from #USA armed #drones and attack helicopters in #Afghanistan. #politics #violence
on 02017-03-15in #Guyana the Wapichan are surveying their forests with fixed-wing #drones with GoPro-donated cameras in order to stop illegal logging; it covers 50 km, driven by the open-source Mission Planner, which I assume means it’s autonomous. As dannypgh commented on HN, “If a 15 year old white kid in Nebraska built a drone following directions on YouTube to monitor land use around him, I don’t think this would be seen as incredible. The difference is a lot of people have very demeaning views of indigenous peoples - they believe they are frozen in time (usually at the time of first contact with white people) and therefore they are surprised to hear that, no, this nation (like any other) is in fact able to use technology.”
on 02017-01-05#Daesh attack with #drones in #Iraq near Erbil, kills two peshmerga, asshole French newspaper headlines with “gravely wounds two French commandos”
on 02016-10-11#video of #weaponry dropped from (teleoperated?) #drones in #Syria
on 02016-10-11#Daesh attacks with #drones in #Iraq near Erbil/Irbil; one drone, four casualties; #USA equips troops with Battelle DroneDefender jammer rifles
on 02016-10-11#audio of #weev advocating #white-supremacist warfare with #drones on 2015-09-25 #weaponry #human-rights #USA #politics
on 02016-10-11#white-supremacist anti-Semitic site deploring #weev’s open advocacy of warfare with #drones, correctly pegging him as an “agent provocateur” (i.e. troll)
on 02016-10-11#weev says (I’m guessing that) he isn’t attacking the USA yet because of “lack of adequate additive manufacturing technologies to guarantee sustainable victory,” i.e. #3D-printing #drones. Google cache gives the now-deleted context, “Even if I had the drone army now, it wouldn’t be the time” #white-supremacist #politics
on 02016-10-11on the #Daesh killing by #drones of two peshmerga last week #politics
on 02016-10-11#Putin at #Valdai in #Sochi on #drones in 2014: “Today, many types of high-precision #weaponry are already close to mass-destruction weapons in terms of their capabilities, and in the event of full renunciation of nuclear weapons or radical reduction of nuclear potential, nations that are leaders in creating and producing high-precision systems will have a clear military advantage.” #politics #precision
on 02016-10-11#USA Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley thinks that in future wars, soldiers won’t be able to stay put for more than a few hours without dying due to #drones, similar #weaponry, and jamming. No bases, no front lines, no secure supply lines, and ground forces will have to “penetrate denied areas to facilitate air and naval forces” and sink ships and whatnot.
on 02016-10-07lieutenant general H.R. McMaster suggests #drones, similar #weaponry, and computer #security holes will eliminate #USA air supremacy in near-future wars, so they need more manpower. “Since 1950, in particular, no American soldier has died to enemy air attack.”
on 02016-10-07on #drones and rules and arms control. All very naïve.
on 02016-09-23Some people in #Portland, #Oregon flew #drones over hobo encampments (nascent #slums) in the river delta and posted #video
on 02016-08-02#politics #police #drones #extrajudicial-execution #Micah-X-Johnson
on 02016-07-11Al Arabiya on the #extrajudicial-execution of #Micah-X-Johnson with #police #drones
on 02016-07-11Mentions that the #police lied to Mark Hughes, the guy who’s receiving “thousands of death threats” because of their #public-shaming of him; could he have been sacrificed by #drones in place of #Micah-X-Johnson? #extrajudicial-execution
on 02016-07-11#Daesh is using #drones with #weaponry and #surveillance cameras for #war in #Iraq
on 02016-07-11The #extrajudicial-execution of #Micah-X-Johnson after he shot up the cops in Dallas was done with “the Remotec, Model F-5, claw and arm extension with an explosive device of C4 plus “Det” cord. Approximate weight of total charge was one pound.” #drones
on 02016-07-11Truck-mounted “GBAD OTM” solid-state laser #weaponry will shoot down #drones with directed energy
on 02016-06-29what was believed to be a drone strike on a passenger aircraft may have been a plastic bag instead. Talking about mandatory #geofencing for #drones.
on 02016-04-22Michael V. Hayden (ex-Director of the CIA, 2006 to 2009, and although the article doesn’t mention this, retired United States Air Force four-star general, former Director of the National Security Agency until 2005, and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence) explains why he favored killing Pakistanis and Afghans with #drones.
on 02016-02-19The FAA is going to require users of #drones over 250 grams in the US to register them, and also “the FAA would continue to exercise enforcement discretion for aircraft that weigh less than 0.55 pounds, such as paper airplanes that are not linked to a system.” If I understand correctly, this does not even exclude model aircraft, which are things that are capable of sustained flight and flown within visual line of sight and for hobby or recreational purposes, even though some commenters claim the FAA is not authorized to regulate them.
on 02015-12-14former operators of #drones think the program is a bad idea. #weaponry #politics #USA
on 02015-11-19apparently the UK just assassinated two British citizens in Syria, who were working for #Daesh, with Reaper #drones: Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin. Specifically the Prime Minister defended this as necessary in order to prevent them from inspiring people in Britain from killing people there; they were not expected to return to Britain.
on 02015-09-07