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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 11, 2017 6:40:56 GMT
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Post by someusername6 on Jan 11, 2017 6:47:18 GMT
The sound of the microdrone swarm flying in circles is like a horror film, or like the opening of Penderecki's Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima:
It is awesome, in the "facing the certainty of death and the insignificance of self" sense of inspiring awe.
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Post by tukuro on Jan 11, 2017 10:44:20 GMT
Horrifying. And this isn't even a glimpse of what's possible. Imagine a hundred thousand or even millions of these things. The only defence against this is either more drones/robots or nuclear weapons.
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Post by shiolle on Jan 11, 2017 11:25:37 GMT
Also, when you think about it, in this context flying is easier than moving on land. Think of what may be possible if this technology is matched with self-driving cars and future improvement to sensory data processing. You don't need to build a weapon system that will be better than existing systems, if you can build enough of them you just need to make sure they can score a kill eventually even if the chance of success is low. What good is your army of 200 000 men with tanks and artillery if your enemy has fifty millions of mass produced dog-sized robots. A human or a tank may be superior to any of them yet eventually they will be overwhelmed. And that means that suddenly electronic superiority is more important than actual air superiority and directed energy weapons gain a new very important role.
I've read a few opinions that hinted we got to the cap of combat intensity humans can sustain. Combat stress, the issue that hardly existed in ancient times, became a real problem in the twentieth century and if you look at modern wars, most of them have either relatively brief active stage or otherwise they have pretty low intensity overall compared to what hardware itself is capable of. Even drone operations, where pilots may never leave US soil ran into these problems as I've heard, and it hurt morale badly.
Now an army that never sleeps and never needs to eat or be rotated brings can achieve a whole new level of combat intensity that human soldiers will not be able to cope with. You may not even need to bother fixing the units that broke. Just build a new one and wipe the memory of any unit that malfunctions.
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Post by thorneel on Jan 11, 2017 11:55:07 GMT
Horrifying. And this isn't even a glimpse of what's possible. Imagine a hundred thousand or even millions of these things. The only defence against this is either more drones/robots or nuclear weapons. This is one of the stated reasons behind the recent development of laser turrets. Those things are actually very fragile, and a fast-targeting laser would wipe them out pretty fast. If they are too densely packed for lasers to take them out, conventional airburst-shell AAA would probably thin them out pretty effectively and let lasers finish. Also note that while they can be useful as close-by surveillance, they cannot pack anything but the lightest weapons. In fact, the only superlight drone I heard of that is armed is in fact a suicide drone (and even then, it was quite heavier than a Perdix seems to be) However, in the hands of non-state actors aiming at hitting civilians and civilian infrastructure... Well, given the amount of shielding those things can bear, I'd expect future anti-drone police masers to be able to fry them pretty effectively as well. But let's be honest there: the goal there is obviously to lag opponents to ragequit by spamming them with troll microdrones.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 11, 2017 12:18:52 GMT
It's almost like we are going full circle here in Children of Dead Earth already.
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Post by teeth on Jan 11, 2017 14:51:24 GMT
:D
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Post by RiftandRend on Jan 11, 2017 18:08:42 GMT
Pretty cool, but what could you possibly arm something so small with?
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Post by amimai on Jan 11, 2017 19:13:37 GMT
The Russians in WW2 already worked out that if you make lots of tiny bombs and drop a lot of them on a tank column, there won't be much of a tank column left... that seems like a smaller and less effective version of the PTAB. At that size, unless the US has been holding out on us I don't think you could arm them with much at all.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Jan 11, 2017 20:14:03 GMT
Self-healing? NANOMACHINES, SON DEAREST DAUGHTER Seriously though repair modules would be a great addition. And going beyond that, how realistic is self-healing armour? How do mechanical/electrical and biological (ie. microbes that produce the armour material as waste, sealed in packets within armour layers that are activated when exposed to space) processes compare? Pretty cool, but what could you possibly arm something so small with? The sound they make is a good start.
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Post by apophys on Jan 11, 2017 21:11:38 GMT
If small enough, they could go inside the barrel of a tank (or ship turret) and damage the loading mechanism from inside.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 11, 2017 22:56:07 GMT
Okay perfectly legit question, how hard do you guys think it would be to hook up all 130 drones with: for uh, moral purposes.
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Post by someusername6 on Jan 11, 2017 23:42:31 GMT
Okay perfectly legit question, how hard do you guys think it would be to hook up all 130 drones with: <snip> for uh, moral purposes. ... well, can we make the engine nozzles have that shape, and death whistle with our exhaust plumes?
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Falcon256
New Member
Yes, I've been in microgravity. No, I didn't puke.
Posts: 32
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Post by Falcon256 on Jan 11, 2017 23:59:17 GMT
Okay perfectly legit question, how hard do you guys think it would be to hook up all 130 drones with... Very, very easy. And when it comes to arming them, I've got a multicopter sitting behind me that could easily carry multiple rpg7 style shaped charges. Scaling these drones up even 2x makes them little fixed wing tank killing machines. This same technology can even be applied to submersible drones. Also, minefields that optimize their own shape as individuals are activated and controlling urban areas with passable terrain using small conventional arms.
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Post by n2maniac on Jan 12, 2017 5:11:37 GMT
That explains why swarm behavior in an autopilot was appearing on the US munitions list!
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