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Jon

@cstross I contemplate Chinese container ships pulling up to the US coasts and simultaneously deploying millions of autonomous drones against military and political targets. Pearl Harbor times 100 and entirely within their industrial capabilities, though the likelihood of nuclear retaliation would be very high. Israel might be in the last phase of acting as a colonial power as well - had Hamas waited another 5-10 years things could be playing out much more to their advantage. (1/2)

14 August at 11:18 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mstdn.social
8 comments
Jon

@cstross reminds me of the bit at the beginning of Alexis Gilliand's Rosinante trilogy ca. 1982, where the (IIRC) Governor of Texas is taken out by a "personal cruise missile". (2/2)

14 August at 11:19 | Open on mstdn.social
simonbp

@oddhack @cstross What, you mean the Hellfire R9X assassination missile that the US has already used multiple times? Though that's a drone-launched antitank missile with the warhead replaced by a bunch of literal swords.

14 August at 12:57 | Open on social.linux.pizza
Jon

@simonbp @cstross something like that, though the implication in the novel was that it was deployed by an individual as I recall - not a $150K weapon requiring a much more expensive launch platform and a satellite infrastructure. That said, Ukraine has done drone strikes targeting command staff, using much cheaper platforms.

The real fun comes when Nazis can get these off the shelf at Wal-Mart (or Alibaba).

14 August at 13:58 | Open on mstdn.social
7leaguebootdisk

@oddhack @simonbp @cstross as a long time fan of his, it was a stolen US military cruise missile. Books are on Amazon, still good stuff.

15 August at 0:32 | Open on mindly.social
Robert Atkins

@oddhack @cstross Slamhounds. In fact I wonder why we haven’t seen these on the battlefield yet—quadcopters are cheaper, I suppose?

15 August at 7:47 | Open on mastodon.social
Jon

@ratkins @cstross quadcopters are probably faster and more maneuverable in general. There have been pictures emerging recently of dog-like robots being used by the AFU on the battlefield, but I think more for resupply and scouting than assassination.

15 August at 10:38 | Open on mstdn.social
Jon

@ratkins @cstross followup article: apparently AFU has deployed 30 robot dogs for recon. It does not sound like they're using them for strike, yet. Price quoted is 4K-8K Euros which is more expensive than most drones, but not order-of-magnitude more expensive.

english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-d

15 August at 11:09 | Open on mstdn.social
Ralph058 (S/he/it) AF4EZ

@oddhack @cstross It doesn't have to be that complicated. Hundreds of containers can be shipped to "import companies" in all of the major cities. They can be militarized like the Ukrainians have been doing.
Swarm attack major events....concerts, ball games, political rallies. Hit shopping centers at Christmas time. Many many vulnerabilities are out there.
Having an AR-15 is useless at a swarm of $500 drones with eight points of explosives...and you can buy reload powder on every street corner.
Agent A buys a crap house full of it from several locations under false IDs and disappears. Agent B facilitates the attacks and disappears. "Importer" has records of selling to Agent A and Agent B and appears to be the victim in this.

@oddhack @cstross It doesn't have to be that complicated. Hundreds of containers can be shipped to "import companies" in all of the major cities. They can be militarized like the Ukrainians have been doing.
Swarm attack major events....concerts, ball games, political rallies. Hit shopping centers at Christmas time. Many many vulnerabilities are out there.
Having an AR-15 is useless at a swarm of $500 drones with eight points of explosives...and you can buy reload powder on every street corner.
Agent...

15 August at 0:25 | Open on techhub.social
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