I'd imagine as stealth goes, driving up to someone's house is a much more subtle way to deliver a grenade than launching a drone that goes EEEEEEEEEEEE all the way as it is hastily steered to its destination while the operator attempts to avoid bumping into a street lamp and then fiddles with the controls to drop the grenade in such a way it actually detonates before the victim figures out what's going on.
Drones are hardly even a daily occurence let alone frequent enough not to catch anyone's attention. Cars on the other hand are everywhere.
I don't think the level of involvement and conspicuousness required for this attack makes it any easier to cause crashes (even from afar) than it already was with human drivers, like by messing with the vehicle's brakes while it's parked, or using the same drone to drop a metal object through the windshield from high up.
Bomb robots aren't unheard of. Sending a camera on wheels in to check out a situation you are unsure of doesn't sound terrible to me.
Or hell, this is a great use for a camera drone. While I'm sure there's some handwringing about tipping off the perps it really shouldn't be any worse than a whole bunch of guys swarming the yard and surrounding the house. One of those little racing drones with the good camera would seem to be perfect for checking out the house before you send guys crashing through every window and chucking flashbangs into rooms blind.
That's far less dangerous than you might think. True, people are far more likely to look ar a drone than a random object, but targeting a 2mm wide target from a drone is a hard problem. Especially when you consider how dangerous fairly small drones can be. IMO, as long as your taking about something less dangerous than a car surpassing information seems excessive.
The issue is accountability. Cars are "2D" and generally limited in where they can go. Drones are small, hard to detect, and hard to trace back to their owner/controller. Similarly with the lasers, I've been hit at night while flying and it's not something I want to repeat. The idiots playing with it can just throw it their pocket and run off before the cops even get the coordinates.
>Drones in the skies aren't necessarily easily concealable either
Drones can fly either high enough to not be easily seen (and they are too small to show up on most radars) Or they can be launched near a target and fly low.
>Both cars and drones are fairly easily transported by other vehicles.
But you need another licensed vehicle at that point to transport it. You can put a drone in a backpack and walk, ride a bike, take a bus etc...
>Drones are slightly easier to transport in that respect, but not enough that I think it makes a difference.
You think that a 2 pound drone is only "slightly easier" to transport surreptitiously than a 2 ton car?
Why haven't we seen any drone terrorism (AFAIK) yet? There are grenade attacks in Antwerp on a weekly basis (usually related to drug gang wars). What's stopping these people from using drones instead of having to drive up to their victim's houses?
While I have no intention of ever doing so, imagine a “DC sniper” situation but with lethal drones. A nondescript vehicle driving around releasing a single killer drone that finds the first person in range and detonates a hand grenade sized charge right by their head. Even worse, imagine they deploy it while driving at speed. It climbs fast to get out of sight, loiters, and attacks only when the person deploying it is long gone.
I'm sorry but this is just not a reasonable thing to be worried about. Drones are going to be more prevalent across numerous industries and professions, planes and helicopters fly over your head all the time already, and most people are not listening for tire or engine sounds to prepare them to dodge an out of control car.
I am in WAY more danger from a police car currently than from a drone mitigating the need for the police to send a car in the first place.
I'm pretty sure that one drone causing a car crash that kills one person would be more effective terrorism than 20 drones taking out lots of electricity. I.e., you're right, it's just probably not what terrorists would do with drones.
Using drones wasn't going to dramatically increase the damage someone like the Boston Marathon bomber did or decrease his chances of getting caught. Would be domestic terrorists are deterred by the fact that they are domestic and will eventually be arrested given the dragnet of internet and CCTV surveillance we all live under, not because they can't somehow fly a bomb into a stadium instead of leaving a pressure cooker backpack. Drone availability is way down on the list of things a normal person would consider before deciding to pick up domestic terrorism. Top of that list is probably whether they can win a shootout with the police force when a dozen swat vans inevitably show up at their address.
Because think of all the rogue actors who can deploy anonymous drones including from other countries
Right now all our skies are clear but once we have a lot of drone traffic, we may have really bad stuff happen. It takes just one drone flying over a crowd to cause massive problems. Let alone a coordinated attack in multiple areas.
If you don’t know who to go after, to make an example of, after a crime (what if a drone drops grenades??) then you should be catching this drone with a net and disabling it.
Drones are the first type of robot that will be in PUBLIC PLACES which is cheap to produce. Autonomous cars are dangerous but expensive so we will not likely encounter cars which are unregistered and we don’t know who made them. But w drones it’s easy!!
To the downvoters: can you speak about how you would address the danger? Let’s have a conversation
Your comment seems to ignore the fundamental question which has nothing to do with drones: should we be blowing up people remotely?
It's not just a question about remote vehicles - it's about the moral issues of blowing things up that are not physically proximate (and thus not a direct threat) to yourself.
In my neighborhood, a noisy drone would get shot out of the sky pretty quickly. Or even a not-so-noisy one, if it were spotted over someone else's property.
"planes and helicopters fly over your head all the time already,"
Yes, there are some incidents related to these. Keep in mind maintenance requirements, training, and restrictions are much stricter for real aircraft and thus should have a much lower mishap rate.
"and most people are not listening for tire or engine sounds to prepare them to dodge an out of control car."
This is simply untrue. The nature of the loud and unusual sound causes most people to look even if they weren't intentionally looking for it.
"I am in WAY more danger from a police car currently than from a drone mitigating the need for the police to send a car in the first place."
This is only true because the adoption of the drones are so low. If we had similar deployment rates it's likely we would see similar risk levels.
Of course you could mitigate a lot of this by having other restrictions similar to other aircraft, automated parachute and strobe/alarm for failures, designated low risk/disruption flight paths, etc.
Drones are hardly even a daily occurence let alone frequent enough not to catch anyone's attention. Cars on the other hand are everywhere.
reply