“#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#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: #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#USA #history of biowarfare also includes spraying supposedly harmless bacteria all over San Francisco. #weaponry
on 02026-04-29#USA #history of biowarfare includes airdropping tens of millions of fleas as #weaponry
on 02026-04-29#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#MK-60 "CAPTOR" deep-water naval mine that launches a torpedo against a submarine with a range of about 7km, deployed since 01979. #underwater #weaponry
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 02026-04-13#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 02026-04-11on #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 02026-04-10full 4-hour #video #interview with #Ethan-Thornton of #Mach-Industries, 3 weeks ago. The interviewer, Shawn Ryan, is this ex Navy SEAL dude who is into some bullshit about supernatural beings building the pyramids.
Thornton doesn’t really understand the Tragedy of the Commons, thinks it’s about companies making insufficient profits because of competition.
Atlas Shrugged is his favorite book.
His childhood summers were fixing old tractors and combines on the West Texas farm of his grandfather farm, who also had a hobby of building and flying experimental aircraft.
He got a visit from the ATF in high school after he started Mach at 16 because he built .50-calibre oxyhydrogen rifle #weaponry and had paid a machinist to build a better one.
“I think the stratosphere is sort of the most important military domain moving forward.”
Also as a teen he stole his mom’s credit card and bought a microscope and two sheep’s brains online to learn about neurosurgery.
He says he’s motivated by “individual sovereignty”, which is why he’s passionate about #Ukraine’s national sovereignty, but “China/Taiwan is orders of magnitude more important”.
“Decentralization” is also why Viper is vertical takeoff: so there’s no runway to bomb.
He envisions making up to 2 million Vipers and having them do everything a fighter jet can do, although right now it’s a kamikaze.
Ryan points out that decentralization means discarding the entire world military infrastructure of bases. Thornton points out that it means you can’t require a tanker to refuel. Containerized anti-ship missiles mean any container ship is a potential destroyer in disguise.
Thornton mentions Anduril’s "Eagle Eye".
At 2h48m Ryan presents him a rifle as a gift.
He says the company would not be in business today if he hadn’t moved from Austin to Huntington Beach, in Orange County, CA, where 95+% of the engineers he needed to hire lived (“niche RF, niche propulsion, niche GNC”).
Both Ryan and Thornton are fairly right-wing, but both agree that the US government has lost a lot of trust internationally and needs to regain it, in particular alluding to Trump and Vance’s shenanigans to increase European defense spending and to #Trump’s unpredictable #tariffs, but don’t see how that trust can be regained. Also interesting to hear Thornton express concern about and opposition to the “terrifying” “neofeudalist” planned obsolescence of iPhones, John Deere tractors, etc., which I normally think of as a left-wing concern.
on 02026-04-04#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 #interview of #Palmer-Luckey from two weeks ago. Apparently he’s mass-producing robotic "Ghost Shark" submarines in #Australia now, delivering the first submarine a year ahead of schedule. He describes himself as a “caricature” and a “larger-than-life character”, and says that gets him retweets, which is only helpful for recruiting. Only about half of #Anduril’s products are public, he says, choosing to single out Fury, the autonomous fighter jet. The first Arsenal-1 production lines are going live in a few weeks, so, I guess April, rather than the planned June, and will be making Barracuda, Fury, etc. He expects it to be in full-scale production by Q2 02027. Oh, and he says he has prototype autonomous #subterrenes. #weaponry
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 02026-04-04sling dart #weaponry #video #toread
on 02026-04-04Allen Pan #humor #video #manufacturing goofy nonlethal #weaponry like a “bola gun”.
on 02026-04-04#Iran’s anti-aircraft missile #weaponry.
on 02026-04-03Rheinmetall Skyshield is CIWS-like anti-drone and anti-missile #weaponry.
on 02026-04-03overview of the #Anthropic #weaponry situation including quoted opinions from many opiners, as of Feb 25.
on 02026-03-17Google doc on #OpenAI powering #USA autonomous #weaponry
on 02026-03-17discussion of the new #OpenAI contract to power the autonomous #weaponry and mass surveillance of the #USA Department of War, following #Anthropic’s rejection of the DoW’s demands, and how OpenAI’s FAQ on the subject is misleading
on 02026-03-17#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 02026-03-12“BMW E38 7-series MLRS, 2025. In #Ukraine, a third-generation (1995–2001) 7 series has been fitted with a 122mm Grad rocket to create a multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS).” #weaponry
on 02025-12-18#video on how the #USA sabotaged Viet Cong #weaponry in the #Vietnam war (Project Eldest Son), which was eventually leaked to the press. #history
on 02025-12-17Steve Blank argues that #USA’s “defense” procurement system was out of control and after being completely revamped will now “operate at the speed of Silicon Valley, delivering more, better, and faster” when buying #weaponry etc., by scrapping the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which Blank argues descend from McNamara's “Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS).” “Companies selling to the DoW previously had to comply with the impenetrable DFAR and FAR – the Defense and Federal Acquisition Regulations” It’ll be interesting to see if this opens the door to more corruption. #politics #toread
on 02025-11-11the #Hiroshima #nuclear #weaponry museum
on 02025-11-05#history of #FDA #politics in #USA and #human-experimentation by the #DOE for #nuclear #weaponry
on 02025-11-05Russia’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 02025-11-04slow-motion #video of #weaponry accident causing third-degree burns, analyzing the equipment failure
on 02025-11-03pro-#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#Tech-Ingredients #video about #jugaad #laser directed-energy #weaponry against #drones #toread
on 02025-10-18#video on “depth charge hydrostatic pistols” (WWII #weaponry #mechanisms #history). Water flowing into a rubber diaphragm inflated it, forcing two concentric flanged sleeves to slide axially apart, releasing the retaining balls inside the sleeves in a groove machined into the firing pin, which the firing spring then slammed through the copper membrane into the detonator. Orifice size determined water ingress speed to approximately set the depth at which the detonator and thus the surrounding booster and finally the entire depth charge would detonate, sinking a submarine. The two sleeves moving in opposite directions makes it shockproof since their absolute position doesn’t matter much.
on 02025-10-17#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#video #toread from three years ago about #Ukraine salvaging Russian tank machine guns for use as #weaponry
on 02025-10-02#video #history of #landmines #weaponry, though badly diluted with talking-head filler with a guy cosplaying as a soldier
on 02025-09-14#video overview of current naval #weaponry
on 02025-09-14#Anduril #Anvil #weaponry demo #video, showing that it’s a brick-shaped battery-powered quadcopter designed to knock down low-altitude #drones
on 02025-09-125' #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 02025-09-06Gwern on the possibility of the military cloning Special Forces dogs as #weaponry. #toread
on 02025-09-05#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#video on #USA developing lightweight precision grenade launcher #weaponry “squad support rifle system” (by “Barrett” and/or “FN Herstal”?) and “precision grenadier system”, with programmable but unguided grenades, similar to what #China has already fielded against “insurgents and pirates”, the QLU11, in service since 02011
on 02025-08-29“US holding fire on rail gun development but China takes aim with planned tests” by Stephen Chen in February 02022, quoting “Wang Xiaohe, a researcher at the China Huayin Ordnance Test Centre in the northwestern province of Shaanxi” #weaponry
on 02025-08-10apparently the US no longer has any battleships since 02011, having initially deactivated them in 01947 #weaponry
on 02025-08-10#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 was also buying #weaponry from #Egypt and #China last year. “Shortly after delivery, Burkina Faso appeared to begin using its Akinci UAVs in combat, with video published on 29 April purportedly showing Akinci and TB2 strikes against terrorist targets. The country has used UAVs extensively to combat Islamist fighters, but unfortunately dozens of civilians have also been killed in these strikes. (...) Last year, Burkina Faso surpassed Afghanistan as the country most impacted by terrorism, with nearly 2 000 deaths.” Other #Bayraktar customers listed include #Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco, Niger, Djibouti, Togo, #Nigeria, Mali, Rwanda and #Tunisia.
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 saying #Israel is the only country to run its #F-35 #weaponry on domestic software, and (presumably because of #Trump’s freeze on aid to Ukraine) European #politics are concerned about this suddenly. Seems to mostly be a question of electronic countermeasures or countercountermeasures. #Deutsche-Welle
on 02025-03-14#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 of slingshot #weaponry shooting darts made from wooden dowels with broadheads screwed into an aluminum insert on the front of the shaft.
on 02025-03-06#video by #The-Gripsion on isopropanol-powered #weaponry made from a pocket flashlight battery chamber, shooting blowgun darts made out of sewing needles, hot glue, and paper, weighted with a bit of solder; at 320 “feet” per second, they penetrate about 8mm of plywood. He’s speaking with a heavy US accent, so this is almost certainly an illegal firearm.
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 on “SixNeedler” CO₂-powered dart gun #weaponry by #Joerg-Sprave. Testing on a cut of pork. The blowgun darts are about 150mm long with a plastic cup on the back, presumably to catch the compressed air. Rather horrible to think of these nails going into a person. Apparently this is a product he’s going to be selling starting in the summer. Under 6 “foot pounds” (8.1J) and so he thinks it should be legal in the UK.
on 02025-03-02#video #toread about #Ukraine "Sea Baby" maritime drone #weaponry which supposedly has “sent Russia’s Black Sea fleet packing”.
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 #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 #interview with #Palmer-Luckey from 02023 (though released only three months ago) about #Anduril and other #weaponry, a foursome by Erik Torenberg ("Upstream" on the podcast network "Turpentine") with someone from #Varda. Lots of belligerent rhetoric attacking #China, proposing “defector visas” and citizenship under the illusion that many people are desperate to leave China. Luckey proposes that the PRC might blockade #Taiwan as a way to force capitulation to reunification without shooting. Describes Chinese immigrants to the US as “traitors to their country”, approvingly.
on 02025-01-30#video #interview with #Palmer-Luckey by Jim Gash, the president of Pepperdine; Luckey wears a NERV jacket (from Evangelion) and describes himself as “a propagandist” and says he’ll “twist the truth”. Really interesting insights about the #history of Oculus, like fixing geometric distortion and chromatic aberration in software instead of optics. Says he’s “still extremely bitter” about his ouster from Meta. #weaponry #Anduril
on 02025-01-29#news on “Startup #Castelion” raising US$100M to build hypersonic #weaponry in the #USA, founded and half-staffed by ex-SpaceX employees.
on 02025-01-29#video on #weaponry against #drones, specifically a truck-mounted “Bushmaster” machine gun shooting 30mm HE rounds with RF proximity fuses
on 02025-01-28#Palmer-Luckey gearing up to go to war with #China in 02027 with his billion-dollar Arsenal-1 Ohio factory is disquieting. #politics #Anduril #weaponry #video
on 02025-01-28#video showing Roman pilum effectiveness against a shield. #weaponry #history
on 02024-11-19#video of Dexter Taylor, sentenced to ten years in prison for making his own guns. #weaponry
on 02024-11-19#video of reinvented ancient plumbata (lawn dart) #weaponry using a loop of cord at the back end of an arrow to keep the shaft in pure tension during the throw, allowing the lead weight to be 30 “inches” from his hand. The long, thin barbed point in front of the lead weight gives potentially very large penetration depth. He throws his 130g prototype plumbatae at 47 meters per second (140J) with a maximum range of some 180 meters.
on 02024-11-19#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#nuclear #history: #Tsar-Bomba was conceived as real #weaponry. Also discusses #USA Gnomon and Sundial weapons
on 02024-11-16#video about #China crossbow #weaponry, funded by crossbow manufacturer (!!) Tenpoint, who is giving away a Siege 425 crossbow, which shoots 16-“inch” carbon-fiber composite arrows, mass not disclosed, at 425 “feet” per second (thus the name). One reason for China sending soldiers through two years of crossbow training might be the #India border dispute, though the armament limitations don’t seem to cover ordinary automatic rifles and no #crossbows have been observed in use in the border dispute area. Pretty worthless damn video by #TaskAndPurpose. Plonk.
on 02024-10-30#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#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 02024-09-10#video on USAF’s "Rapid Dragon" cruise missile #weaponry with lots of talking-head footage
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 #Palmer-Luckey and #Anduril #weaponry #toread
on 02024-09-05#video #toread about "UGVs" in #Ukraine, ground #weaponry #drones
on 02024-09-05#video #toread about #Ukraine “vampire” rocket #weaponry attacking Russian city
on 02024-09-05Sun #video of #Ukraine drone destroying other #weaponry #toread
on 02024-09-05#video on graphite #weaponry against power lines. Low-quality animation.
on 02024-09-03#video on anti-drone #weaponry cages on tanks #toread
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 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 including a #Ukraine tank invading Kursk getting hit by “Lancet” drone #weaponry and a US-made M1 Abrams tank on Russian soil
on 02024-08-27promo #video on #Anduril’s Pulsar #weaponry
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 02024-08-27#video about armor-piercing #weaponry, mostly HEAT, including the RPG-7, and countermeasures including wood planks, cardboard, metal cages, and explosive reactive armor, and other related topics, and counter-countermeasures such as tandem warheads, questioning whether #tanks have a future.
on 02024-08-13#video #toread about radio-controlled machine-gun #weaponry in #Ukraine. Specifically, a remote-controlled machine-gun nest in a fortification in a bridge embankment — a machine-gun nest with no gunner, which withstood Russian attacks for 40 days, during which it was able to halt Russian advances anywhere within its line of sight. Battery-powered I guess. This was in Avdiivka. #politics
on 02024-08-03laser-guided mortar #weaponry "Iron Sting" has 1 meter CEP
on 02024-08-01#Scanalyst’s ultra-right-wing analysis of current #weaponry, etc.
on 02024-07-29#USA declassifies the number of #nuclear warheads in its #weaponry arsenal: 3748 as of 02023. Plot of warhead count over time.
on 02024-07-27#video about a FAB-3000 bombing in Kharkiv, #Ukraine. Seems like the FAB-3000’s error is on the order of ten meters. It’s 3 tonnes (payload 1.4 tonnes TNT) and they tout a 25 “mile” range. Says the Su-34 can accommodate one FAB-3000 or three FAB-1500s. Cites the pro-Russian Telegram channel Fighterbomber. The UMPK (Universal Modular Planning Kit) is a bolt-on guided glider which supposedly gives it a 50 “mile” range as a so-called “glide bomb”. #weaponry #politics
on 02024-07-07#video on Voronezh ammunition #weaponry depot blowing up near #Ukraine #politics
on 02024-07-07#video on US #weaponry failing to hit in #Ukraine (JDAMs and SDBs) #toread #politics
on 02024-07-07#DarkFootage #video of US #weaponry in #Ukraine, specifically a NaviStar M1224 MaxxPro. The video sounds like a NaviStar Defense ad. Mostly it consists of a single 5-second piece of drone footage repeated over and over again. #politics
on 02024-07-07#video of a T90M being defeated by a pair of Bradley IFVs before getting blown up by a drone, along with some reflections on the nature of battlefield power. Not a very credible source. #weaponry #Ukraine #politics
on 02024-07-07#video from #Ukraine from three days ago, killing Russian troops with #flying #weaponry. Another “Terra” fundraiser video. This time they’re flying the drones from inside some kind of wooden structure rather than a basement, where they have a butane canister camping stove set up. I think they’re in a trench. Drones with arms made of carbon-fiber tubes again. They’re attacking a similar command-and-control center on the Russian side, in a house with its windows barricaded with sandbags. The first drone, a quadcopter, blows most of the roof off; the second one, a hexcopter, carries a heavier charge, a thermobaric warhead which looks like it weighs close to 5 kg and has tailfins for dropping from a plane. It sets fire to the building. The next drone seems to be carrying an RPG without a fragmentation belt, which they use to attack an IFV (so maybe the armor-piercing HEAT is indeed in play here). They claim the explosion killed all the passengers. The next drone, attacking a squad of three infantrymen on foot, failed to explode on impact, but did explode shortly afterwards, probably killing all three of them with shrapnel. The next drone attacks a lone infantryman, who futilely tries to shoot it down with a rifle. Then they kill another infantryman who was walking slowly because he was wounded. Then they launch another large hexcopter carrying a 3-kg charge to attack a trench; the infantry hear it and flee into the dugout, to no avail. Then there’s another hexcopter with the repurposed thermobaric bomb, which explodes in a trench. They’re apparently driving around Ukraine on the highways in an unarmored van with the door open. #politics
on 02024-07-02#video on FAB-3000 M-54 glide bomb with UMPC (unified planning and correction(?)) guidance system, which struck 10 meters from its target in #Ukraine today. #weaponry
on 02024-06-26decoy #weaponry being built in #Ukraine #video with lots of talking heads and stock footage from #DeutscheWelte
on 02024-06-26#video on #Ukraine’s naval drone #weaponry, including the Marichka, a torpedo with a range of 1000 km and the ability to go dormant. Gets to the Sergey Kotov at about 15'30" and then the Tsezar Kunikov and the corvette Ivanovets, which apparently they also sank. The time-wasting talking head describes it as a “garage industry” — it’s decentralized to prevent Russian targeting of the production facilities. And apparently there’s an “Unmanned Systems Force” as a new branch of the Ukrainian armed forces.
on 02024-06-26as of a month ago, in #Ukraine, Russia had had 1800 tanks destroyed, 530 captured, and 270 abandoned. They’re starting to deploy T-55s and T-54s and US$4.5M T-90Ms (about the same cost as an M1 Abrams tank), but not T-14s. Another annoying #weaponry #video made of talking heads and stock footage. Russia’s new budget spends 6% of GDP on the military
on 02024-06-26The Sun (garbage #UK tabloid) claims NATO tank #weaponry is too heavy for #Ukraine’s bridges or indeed those in most of Eastern Europe, which have a 60-tonne limit, and with active protection systems too heavy for even the ground. Lots of talking head footage and even repeating stock footage, so kind of a trash #video
on 02024-06-26#video of Iran’s #Shahed 136 kamikaze drone servomotor. It uses an #STM32 with six power MOSFETs to control a brushless motor and read from an encoder; these motors sell for €20 in Ukraine. There’s a silicone conformal coating to protect the board. It uses a conventional 600μs–2.4ms PWM control signal. Interesting reverse-polarity protection circuit on the ground rail. Detailed schematic analysis, awesome. #electronics #hardware #microcontrollers #flying #weaponry #Le-labo-de-Michel
on 02024-06-26#video about FPV drone #weaponry in #Ukraine, describing the tradeoffs of things like analog vs. digital video. Lots more #3D-printing on view here.
on 02024-06-25in April 02022 #DJI quit Russia and #Ukraine over the widespread use of the Mavic as improvised #flying #weaponry. Supposedly also Starlink was crucial to streaming FPV footage from drone crews to artillery crews until March 02023, at which point they blocked their service in Russian-occupied territory, over water, and at speeds over 100km/hour, claiming that the purpose of providing Starlink was humanitarian, not military. #video
on 02024-06-25#video #toread where #USA drone operator describes his experience #flying #weaponry, specifically the Puma drone
on 02024-06-25#video of disassembling a BM-23 Russian tungsten-core fin-stabilized APDS tank cartridge from 01985, showing 8.5kg of nitrocellulose propellant extruded in the form of thin tubes, packed into the cartridge. Demonstrates how it burns when ignited with a cigarette lighter, and shows the wax-paper phlegmatizing liner. Knocks apart the sabot with an axe. The sabot is small and toward the front of the dart, relying on copper buttons around the tailfins to center the tail in the barrel, while many other APDS designs use a longer sabot. #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video of #Ukraine bomb-dropping #flying #weaponry killing Russian soldiers. Fundraising video for “Terra”. In Ukrainian with English subtitles.
on 02024-06-25#video from two weeks ago of #Ukraine kamikaze FPV #flying #weaponry killing Russian soldiers. Fundraising video for “Terra”. The first drone they fly is a hexcopter, maybe a surveillance drone; the first kamikaze they show taking off with a metal cylinder zip-tied to its bottom is a quadcopter whose arms seem to be round tubes, maybe GFRP. It's using three-bladed propellers and has a fairly oversized battery pack on top. The Russian targets, which they refer to as “cockroaches” (like in Rwanda!), are holding a previously Ukrainian trench; the first drone blows up in the trench, though the actual death is censored on YouTube. The squad is operating the drones from a concrete-roofed brick basement close to the front lines. The second and third drones are used to disable what looks like a turtle-tank-armored IFV, and the fourth kills a Russian soldier in the trench who is attempting to shoot it down with what looks like a shotgun. The fifth kamikaze drone launches carrying what looks like an RPG, which is zip-tied to it and thus unable to fly on its own; not sure if it has a shrapnel belt. It’s pointed horizontally, so it wouldn’t be useful for HEAT; instead they detonate it over the head of a fleeing Russian infantryman, killing him. A sixth kills another fleeing infantryman with a fragmentation charge, and a seventh is launched carrying another RPG to pursue the last infantryman, but opportunistically attacks a “Bukhanka” vehicle poorly hidden inside a hangar instead. An eighth is used to set fire to the building some other troops fled into. Because some other troops fled into a hangar, they launch a heavier hexcopter kamikaze drone with a larger charge (4 kg of PVV-7, later described as 3 kg), whose arms are carbon-fiber-reinforced tubes.
on 02024-06-25#video #toread on #Ukraine #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video of an Irish FPV pilot from South Side Dublin, nicknamed “Irishman”, with Ukrainian parents, in the “Terra” FPV unit of the third “storm brigade”, #flying drones into Russian D-30 (122mm howitzer, perhaps US$3 million) and D-20 #weaponry in #Ukraine from what seems to be a stone vaulted basement; they said they knew the first one wasn’t a decoy from observing artillery fire the day before, though later they identified a decoy from the FPV video. They destroy a whole artillery unit (six artillery pieces, or maybe four, or two, it varies). He came in through the Internatsionali Ligion (my transcription). Mostly interviews with the four soldiers in the unit. A Russian FPV drone finds the bunker where they’re piloting from but doesn’t find them. They’re uploading the videos to raise money for more drones on social media.
on 02024-06-25#video on a zip gun, improvised #weaponry used in the 01950s made out of plumbing fittings. Supposedly legal in the #USA.
on 02024-06-25#video of Russian soldiers on a speedboat on the Dnieper shooting down a #Ukraine FPV drone #flying after them, maybe with a rifle. A second drone covers the boat with shrapnel from an air blast, killing four of the seven soldiers; the other two, unable to control the boat, jump into the water as a third drone arrives, killing them as well. A seventh remains unaccounted for. A fourth FPV drone blows up the boat. #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video from #Ukraine of an FPV pilot repeatedly buzzing a squad of soldiers #flying #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#video on Chinese type 69 RPG #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-25#BrandonMitchell #video footage from Donbas of #Ukraine FPV drone pilots #flying a small ducted-fan quadcopter in the house, then showing off a larger non-kamikaze quadcopter US$700 “Lucky Strikes” drone which apparently drops NATO and Polish grenades. Then they show multiple workshops and weapons including with improvised contact fuzes and tailfins (made by #3D-printing in some cases) installed on these grenades. The famous fragmentation sleeves on RPGs are also shown. They even seem to have a HEAT anti-tank warhead rigged up with 3-D printed tailfins to drop from quadcopters onto tanks. “FPVs are very effective against [sic] destroying armor. (...) NATO munitions are difficult to convert. So many safety mechanisms.” Footage of drone making. #3D-printing around the clock. Also shows FPV-driven remote-controlled cars for laying mines, with wheels and wheelbase similar to a four-wheeled push lawnmower. The radio signals still seem to be direct rather than relayed. Mentions a friend of his who nearly got killed three times because she didn’t know she needed to “anonymize” her Mavic drone (apparently something you have to do in these workshops). Lots of discussion of logistics, timescales, repair pipelines, parts shortages. He says, “We're losing the war. It's not lost, it’s far from lost, (...)”. Lots of discussion of how to raise funds on social media for the war. #weaponry
on 02024-06-25#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 02024-06-25a #video about anti-drone #weaponry being supplied to #Ukraine, the Australian "Slinger" system by “Electro Optic Systems”, which turns out to be a truck-mounted single-barrel machine gun with automatic targeting via image processing, using “the tracking (...) the stabilization algorithms we’ve used to develop for deep space tracking”. Ten were to be delivered by the end of 02023. #Pricing “less than under one million US dollars”. #Australia #politics
on 02024-06-25another #video #toread on #PPDS #Slaughterbots #weaponry in #Ukraine #flying
on 02024-06-25#video from 9 months ago on flat-pack waxed cardboard drone #weaponry in #Ukraine “destroying Russian jets”; the airfoils and the rest of the bodies are assembled with rubber bands and tape and can be repaired with a hot glue gun, cardboard, and tape. Looks like there are some wooden rails (dowels?) for mounting the airfoils. Mainly powered by a single #brushless motor and propeller. Brands printed on the body are “Tanglewood Group Ltd.”, “SYPAQ Australia” (who exhibited it at a military trade show this year), and “CORVO precision payload delivery system” ("PPDS"). There’s what look like laser-cut balsa or other hardwood spars in the kit, at least in some cases plywood. SYPAQ’s Michael Partridge is quoted as saying a laptop allows you to “mission plan and launch” it, so presumably it’s not FPV, though FPV seems to be the main approach used these days. “About a shoebox size [unassembled], can carry roughly three kilos. (...) we've delivered over 600 of the PPDS into Ukraine.” Has been supplying “100 of these every month since March”. Mentions a strike at an airbase at Kursk destroying “five fighter jets, a missile launcher, and an air defense system,” then another attack on a Russian site a few days later destroying two cargo planes, also probably with these cardboard drones. #Pricing quoted at AU$5000 per drone. #Slaughterbots #flying
on 02024-06-25#video on the PAM-2 submachine gun from #Argentina in 01957–62. #weaponry
on 02024-06-24#video #toread from the Sun about NATO tank #weaponry in #Ukraine
on 02024-06-23Russian propaganda (?) #video #toread about #Houthis sinking a Red Sea ship full of drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-23#video #toread on #Ukraine naval #weaponry
on 02024-06-23#video of hilarious #Ukraine #weaponry consisting of six AK-74s hose-clamped together to form a sort of many-triggered Gatling to shoot down drones with
on 02024-06-20#video from #Ukraine of fragmentation sleeves to adapt RPG #weaponry to kill people instead of tanks
on 02024-06-20#video #news of new turtle tank #weaponry designs in #Ukraine from a month ago
on 02024-06-20#video about how current #weaponry (Javelins and drones) might make #tanks obsolete
on 02024-06-12#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 02024-06-12another #video about improvised drone #weaponry, contrasting #Ukraine’s improvised FPV kamikaze drones with RPGs with Russia’s Iranian-made GPS(?)-targeted Shahed-136 drones (though I’m pretty sure Russia makes plenty of its own FPV kamikaze drones). Unfortunately mostly filler stock footage
on 02024-06-12another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up various Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-12another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up various Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-12another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up three Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-10another #video about #weaponry in the #Ukraine war, with Ukraine blowing up three Russian tanks with drone #weaponry
on 02024-06-10#video about #Ukraine withdrawing US-provided Abrams M1A1 #weaponry from the battlefield last year due to their vulnerability to Russian drones. Mostly stock footage, but I think this is a Russian propaganda channel
on 02024-06-10As 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 02023-02-14apparently JStark died of heart failure two days after being arrested (but not in custody) two months ago #3D-printing #weaponry
on 02021-12-20#3D-printing #weaponry in #Burma (JStark’s FGC-9)
on 02021-12-20#Yemen #weaponry #drones built by #Iran to blow up missile-defense radars in #war.
on 02017-09-10more on #history of #civil-defense against nuclear #weaponry by #USA suburbanization and superhighways
on 02017-06-07Suburban development in #history was pushed by the #USA federal government for #civil-defense against nuclear #weaponry.
on 02017-06-07flamethrower #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 02017-05-28standard-issue infantry #weaponry in #Finland is a locally-manufactured version of the #AK-47, because they decided to switch to automatic rifles a decade before the USA did
on 02016-12-21Gabions for fortification against #weaponry (in e.g. #Afghanistan and #Iraq): a collapsible wire mesh container and a heavy-duty fabric inner liner, filled with dirt and rocks.
on 02016-11-21Discussion thread on an article on #concrete as #weaponry or rather its opposite (in #Iraq)
on 02016-11-21Teleoperated machine-gun #weaponry in #Syria controlled via PlayStation controls. I wonder what kind of motors, controllers, and gearing they’re using.
on 02016-11-13#video of #weaponry dropped from (teleoperated?) #drones in #Syria
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#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 02016-10-07#Israel’s Trophy Active Protection System (APS) #weaponry shoot down anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) automatically; #USA wants to buy them. The original such system was the Soviet Drozd in the 1980s.
on 02016-10-07#nuclear #weaponry #history — bases around Tucson, #Arizona, now the Titan Missile Museum. Fairly unrealistically hagiographic article
on 02016-08-01the deepest-penetrating penetrating bomb is this 14-tonne MOP, which penetrates a bit over 60 m, presumably in soil. #weaponry
on 02016-07-21#Daesh is using #drones with #weaponry and #surveillance cameras for #war in #Iraq
on 02016-07-11Truck-mounted “GBAD OTM” solid-state laser #weaponry will shoot down #drones with directed energy
on 02016-06-29Images of ancient Roman #weaponry #history #archaeology
on 02016-06-28Unguided #flechette #weaponry used by the US in WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
on 02016-04-25The Sandia guided bullet precision-guided #weaponry #patent.
on 02016-03-03#Flechette #weaponry in World War I, dropped from French bombers onto German trenches. #history
on 02016-02-27#video on the ARL’s Very Affordable Precision Projectile (VAPP) #weaponry, which turns mortar and cannon shells into cheap precision-guided munitions using a single GPS sensor and a single linear voice coil actuator to control canards mounted near the nose of a spinning shell, which is stabilized with tailfins.
on 02015-12-10Business Insider #video claiming #Daesh has a (probably nonworking) ballistic missile. #weaponry
on 02015-12-01former operators of #drones think the program is a bad idea. #weaponry #politics #USA
on 02015-11-19“#Weaponry and morale determine outcomes. The 2nd largest city of Iraq (Mosul) fell when 1k ISIS fighters attacked “60k” Iraqi army. 40k soldiers were artifacts of embezzlement, and of 20k real only 1.5k fought - these mostly the AK47 armed local police. An AK47 loses to a 12.7mm machine gun and armored suicide vehicle bombs. Finally, the attack was personal - soldiers received calls mid-fight threatening relatives by name and address. One army captain did not leave quickly enough and had two teenage sons executed.” #violence #Iraq #daesh
on 02015-11-11“Fabrication of a Compensated Pulsed Alternator for a Rapid Fire #Railgun System” #paper #pdf #weaponry
on 02015-11-10