I'm glad I live only a few miles from Moffit Airfield, which is almost certainly a primary target (given that besides taking out NASA you'd also get Google HQ). Knowing that I most likely wouldn't even perceive a nuclear attack is strangely comforting.
EDIT: The company that makes them first pitched them to the ADF in 2018: https://www.sypaq.com.au/news/sypaq-wins-for-the-cardboard-d...
Engine probably still needs to be custom but lightweight drone engines are off the shelf products so...
Another chilling aspect of drone warfare is that you don't get to surrender. No prisoners are taken. You just get blown up even if you are clearly cornered, and helpless and in a traditional setting you'd have surrendered your weapon and became a POW.
There will always be war crimes in a conflict of any scale. That is human nature even if we don't like it. If both sides aren't doing it with drones they are doing it with something else. You now see the action in every situation because there are cameras everywhere and incentive for all sides to shape the narrative with this content.
As far as AI is concerned, there is the huge risk for problems. That said, you can have entire sectors of a battlefield that are kill zones for artillery but now you have drones taking more targeted action. Western artillery capabilities and approaches are more precise than those used by the likes of Russia, but it's a still a case of pummeling certain places. Drones hitting within a sector aren't much different and possibly have some long-term benefits.
This isn't true, you can surrender and there are videos of people doing so.
You've perhaps seen videos of drones loitering, waiting a bit, and then moving in when the soldier does nothing. This is often waiting for a surrender sign.
Normally the soldier in these videos is Russian. Why don't they surrender? First they may be shot by their own side if they try to follow the drone.
Second, Russian soldiers have generally been recruited with large bonuses and even larger bonuses paid out in the event of their death, paid to their families. However, if they try to surrender and are shot for desertion there is no payout. Whereas if they stay still and die the Russian government gives their family money.
There are some new ones that work like landmines, too; they sit on the ground until they detect something worth going after.
> Another chilling aspect of drone warfare is that you don't get to surrender.
You can. First one happened in 1991.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/featured/humans-surrendered-t...
It happens fairly regularly in Ukraine.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukrai...
surrender is likely usually accepted when its possible, but with drones it is often logistically difficult because frontline is very wide now.
Half-life 2 manhack vibes.
Okay I need to refute some of this.
1. LLMs haven't been used so much for terminal phase targeting to my knowledge. There's not really any benefit. It takes a lot of power and electronics that aren't needed when you can just do optical image matching.
2. Drones have taken a fair amount of prisoners. They're way more valuable alive than dead for intelligence purposes and prisoner swaps.
https://www.facebook.com/NYPost/videos/ukraine-drone-spares-...
Maybe if you voluntarily join the military of a country known for invasions and war, you're not that helpless to begin with. And, if you get sent to another country with the goal to kill soldiers and civilians, and you yourself get killed by a drone it’s not that chilling.
Moreover consider that the situation sucks both for the soldier being blown up and also for the one doing the blowing up. If I were to be a soldier, I would like the option of taking the enemy prisoner if I could, instead of having to needlessly turn them into minced meat. I think, it is a very human desire to make war, less cruel.
The positive aspect of drones is that maybe war will turn in a purely economic contest, drones against drones, until one side has exhausted their supply and are forced to declare defeat.
I would have thought your first inclination would be to say you're not Russian and not thinking from the perspective of a Russian inclined to join in on the unjust invasion of Ukraine.
But you could also perhaps look at it from the perspective of someone who is a member of Hamas, bombing and attacking civilian targets, or the IRGC launching one of the hundreds to thousands of drone attacks unjustly.
> The positive aspect of drones is that maybe war will turn in a purely economic contest, drones against drones, until one side has exhausted their supply and are forced to declare defeat.
I think in an age of more deadly drone warfare and less human intervention you'll start to see more deaths and more destruction.
It's been a while since the vietnam war, but we (the general public in the US) have forgotten how ugly a war can be.
9/11 was narrow geographically but had a large emotional, political, and economic impact stateside.
In the civil war not only might your son be sent to the front, but the front might end up in your yard.
There are still countries in the world that have landmines from previous wars, after all.
they could take out all water and power utilities on the entire east coast over 24 hours
our million dollar missiles would be useless even if Whiskey-Pete was more than willing to use them over crowded cities
North Korea, Russia, China, et al
and considering we've depleted a decade's worth of weapons and half of the fleet is overseas, we're pretty darn vulnerable right now thanks to those in power
I wonder how far away we are from "dirty drones" where they don't even need a bomb, just radioactive material or toxic chemicals as dust
"so far" is for the next five minutes or so.
It's a bit silly to claim a misleading headline when you can't read the article. https://archive.is/5Pqg6
OTOH small airplanes like the one pictured derive most of their lift from wings, and are not expected to do aerobatic, so they have somehow lower requirements for strength, and cost considerations can take over.
I wonder what would be the military usefulness of such a drone: it's much more visible, likely has rather low payload capacity, and cannot hover. It could work as a recon drone, or a retransmitter for extending communications range. It may be significantly more quiet than a quadcopter, it could even glide with the motor off, so it could sneak towards manned positions, especially in the dark.
To deplete anti-drone defenses; to provide cover for heavier Shahed type drones.
> it could even glide with the motor off, so it could sneak towards manned positions, especially in the dark.
Return of the Night Witches.
If you're talking about the cardboard drone specifically: it's incredibly cheap to manufacture, which means you can easily deploy a gazillion of them. They're bullet sponges - a modern day Zerg rush.
Ukraine seems to be pouring a lot of these right now.
Bomb: “To explode, of course.”
"You blow yourself up."
"OH MY GOD"
See also: https://blog.wrouesnel.com/posts/jipi-and-the-paranoid-chip/...
Oh, that makes more sense. I probably watched too many episodes of Futurama for my mind to immediately imagine drones used by people to commit suicide.
Some carry things like air to air missiles or act as communications relays for other drones.
Some have multiple munitions.
Some are the munition.