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How to Hide from Killer Drones(economist.com)
39 points by pseudolus an hour ago | 23 comments
orthoxerox 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Dazzle camouflage doesn't work on killer drones. Even civilian LLMs recognize that the object on the photograph is a military truck, except they can't explain why it's been painted to resemble a zebra. Most dedicated machine vision models easily lock in on a boxy shape moving along a road. If anything, the stripes make the trucks easier to see.

The real answer to killer drones is a CIWS that can cover 2pi steradians and attack multiple drones at the same time, because otherwise it will be just swarmed by drones that quietly glide towards it, engines off, from several directions before entering the final dive.

ukd1 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This. See https://9mothers.com

yogthos 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

The difference is that a neural network you can fit on a drone is going to be a lot less capable than an LLM you can run on a desktop.

davidwritesbugs 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As a bonus it will also repel horse flies.

https://www.science.org/content/article/zebra-stripes-confus...

karim79 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I suppose the answer for anyone living in Gaza would be don't be a human and don't live there. And definitely don't use a mobile phone if you happen to be a human living in Gaza.

leptons a few seconds ago | parent [-]

Have they tried not murdering 1200 people in the neighboring country in a sneak attack?

ahartmetz 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh, so dazzle camouflage is back. I wonder if the more sophisticated "classic" patterns would work better. They certainly do for human observers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

delichon 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Twenty four years later I'm still looking for ways to evade the spider drones deployed by PreCrime in Minority Report.

pseudolus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://archive.ph/xiCSq

tcp_handshaker 15 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Slaughterbots: https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU

echelon 6 minutes ago | parent [-]

Prescient.

This film predated the Ukraine war, and it felt like fiction six years ago.

This is absolutely coming.

The government is concerned about who might print a 3D gun, but this is the real danger.

trhway an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Half the time it is the nighttime and the things are in IR https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000051 . You may still try to camouflage and decrease your IR visibility - stealth planes try to do it, and there are some IR-decreasing covers for tanks and people.

The night time hunt using IR is widely practiced today in Ukraine and even was widely practiced by US and USSR in Afghanistan and Iraq as surroundings gets cooled down and cars, people and say donkeys used to transport weapons in mountains become highly contrast against the surroundings and thus easy to spot visually and to lock IR seeker of a weapon. Saddam used USSR anti-ship missiles, old even then, to attack Iran oil storage tanks at night as the missiles were easily able to lock on that large bright IR emission of the tanks still hot from the day against the cold night desert.

esseph an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you're really interested in this kind of thing, Grand Thumb on YouTube has a couple of videos about it. I think it was Dirty Civilian on YouTube that had a good video on how to prepare hide sites and the impact of using the right laundry detergent as to reduce or eliminate IR brightener chemicals, etc.

ButlerianJihad an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Machine Learning CAPTCHA https://m.xkcd.com/2228/

mananaysiempre an hour ago | parent [-]

Username checks out :)

stefan_ 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is an odd article that tries to elevate some random grunt in the field painting their truck white stripes to grand battlefield strategy in the face of autonomous AI killer drones. Neither are the latter real nor is the former actually in widespread use, and it obviously is not effective, not least because the drones it's talking about barely have the resolution at altitude to resolve that detail.

joezydeco 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The evidence seems to be coming out to support the latter.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/ukraines-one-time-test-us...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjp0n7rn41o

stefan_ 6 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes, media see a snapdragon running a YOLO and go off writing "AI apocalypse autonomous killer drones" articles.

See it for yourselves: https://x.com/RALee85/status/2071537561059692956

Some object detection and (human triggered) terminal guidance. It's essentially there to solve latency and control issues for a fixed wing platform with a spotty data link.

trhway 19 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

>not least because the drones it's talking about barely have the resolution at altitude to resolve that detail.

the drones are used in groups. That is for example how we have a lot of footage of the drones hitting targets. The drone observers or especially the intelligence drone guiding the group would frequently carry much better camera than the actual kamikaze drones (especially when it comes to high-resolution IR cameras which are expensive). In the fully autonomous AI mode the drone is usually given small target area where to operate (in particular because they aren't yet smart enough to differentiate Ukranians from Russians, so you'd like to confine their operations to a limited area and not letting it into the totally free hunt) and regular 4K camera is sufficient there. Again, there is a lot of footage on YT an TG.

sleepyguy 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

If anyone here is into drones, manufactures, ideas, or wants to either use their drone piloting skills or learn how to pilot drones. Ukraine is recruiting for positions.

https://usforces.army/en

kakacik 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

Just beware that being part of the drone team isnt some comfy safe job far from danger, they are the most hated type of unit currently since they are deciding large part of this war (and any future war it seems). I see videos of ie glide bombs used by both sides targetting specifically positions of drone teams.

If all this is clear and you go ahead, all the power to ya, fighting evil in this world is highly commendable.

wartywhoa23 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> fighting evil in this world is highly commendable

Except more often than not it is fighting sleeping civilians who don't support this war, which is not even war in the strict sense of the word, but a deliberate meatgrinder set up to devour as much human beings on both sides as its orchestrators can get away with.

trhway 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Like sharpshooters, the drone operators are usually executed instead of being taken POW.