Iran's Network of Cameras Bolsters Air Defenses, Expert Says(www.wsj.com)
43 pointsby uxhacker8 hours ago5 comments
  • JumpCrisscross7 hours ago
    “Following the 12-day war with Israel in June, Iranian authorities learned that Israel could easily locate their radar systems and take them out, leaving Tehran’s forces blind to the skies above, Avivi said. Unlike the radar installations, the cameras don't transmit a signal that Israel can use to locate them, he added.”

    Damn innovative.

  • kklisura7 hours ago
    Huh. Reminds me of this video "tracking faint objects like stealth fighters with cheap cameras" [1] and HN post [2].

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-b51C82-UE

    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43643207

  • aftbit7 hours ago
    Ukraine has a sound-based version of this, supposedly using cell phones as the primary hardware element. The idea is to scatter hundreds of sensors along the front in some depth, then use simple on-device models to classify sounds and send an alert when a sound matching a known drone signature is detected.
    • NoiseBert692 hours ago
      That's not even complicated.

      You can use ESP32 with GPS modules and their PPS signals. The PPS signal from the module often has has a roughly precision around 60ns against the global GPS standard.

      With that signal you can PID-control an internal timer of the ESP32 - which then can be used to timestamp audio frames. Send that to a central host over Wifi and you can use your standard localization math.

      The trick is to use the internal ESP32 10MHz hardware which automatically kicks timestamps into a register if a GPIO does something. Not using high-level C constructs that must eat their way through x API layers.

      This costs like 20€.

  • lolbutwait7 hours ago
    Like Elon’s camera based self driving does it also make a lot of mistakes?

    I bet modern radar can tell the difference between a bird, plane, baseball, and missile, but a camera based one is full of false positives.

    • cogman107 hours ago
      It might, but I'm not sure how much of an issue a false positive is. It's not like Iran has an airforce and it's not like there a bunch of civilian planes flying over head.

      Also, modern radar can't always tell the difference between a bird and a plane. Especially when dealing with stealth vehicles.

      • chistev7 hours ago
        A false positive can be a problem if you're shooting missiles at things that aren't real threats, no? Those missiles cost money.
        • cogman107 hours ago
          It's a problem depending on how often it happens. Letting a bomber through that takes out a military installation or desalination plant is worse.
    • oa3357 hours ago
      Widely available image recognition software can tell the difference between birds, planes, baseballs and missiles already.
      • the__alchemist7 hours ago
        Depends. It would be a non-trivial problem when dealing with only 1 - a few pixels, which is likely.
        • ceejayoz6 hours ago
          It's not that hard. Planes and birds act pretty differently, even when pixel sized. Doubly so when you've multiple cameras networked all over the area.
  • zoklet-enjoyer7 hours ago
    That's pretty cool. We need a decentralized civilian network like that to identify UFOs