Anti-Drone defenses?

[giant.robot]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If 1 drone can get a kill it'll be because you're injecting botulin toxin or soemthing like that. Then you can get that 1 hit with a stealth attack and need so swarm. The swarm would actualy make you conspicuous.

My point is that little assassin drones are totally feasible with today's technology. Swarms like that shown in the OPs video would also be effective and are also feasible with today's technology. Additionally such drones could be entirely autonomous so the various anti-drone tactics discussed in the thread need not apply. RF jamming or "breaking encryption" (whatever that is supposed to mean) are useless against autonomous systems.

The danger of tiny autonomous assassin drones is they can be effective singularly or in swarms. They're difficult to defend against because they're maneuverable and can conceal themselves up until the terminal phase of their flight. Where they're autonomous grenades or shoot ricin pellets is immaterial. A bunch can be launch from the back of a van in an alley and then the driver gets away with no connection to the attack.

[benz72]

tl;dr
Initial countermeasure thoughts are, in no particular order:
water cannon
EMP
netguns
chaff
directed energy
spray adhesive/foam
counter drones

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by benz72

tl;dr
Initial countermeasure thoughts are, in no particular order:
water cannon
EMP
netguns
chaff
directed energy
spray adhesive/foam
counter drones

Also eagles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKNN49idCUo
although to counter a drone laden with explosives, it might be a one-use eagle.

Luke

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by benz72

tl;dr
Initial countermeasure thoughts are, in no particular order:

I really liked the anti-paparazzi clothing, make-up, and hair styles. That fits C-punk so well it hurts.


Other idea: Anti-drone drones. Sure this then becomes a "who's flying the most drones", but it's a viable secondary measure for the truly rich and paranoid prepared.

[Ulzgoroth]

Against a solitary drone, bat it away. It might be able to dodge your hand, but it probably can't dodge your hand and close in at the same time.

It might give up and shoot you in the hand, but that's a lot more survivable than what it's trying to do. Especially if your enemies don't have advanced poisons access.

[dcarson]

Drone range is more or less inverse to size. The lightest drone I can find with a 7km range weighs 1.6 pounds, most weight 3+. So being in the middle of a good size farm means the small hard to spot ones can't make it that far.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If you have nothing that anyone wants, no one will waste the time to crack it.

That conclusion seems to assume that some measurable amount of human intervention and time is needed to do the cracking. Even today, most hacking is done by automated scripts sweeping across the internet, looking for a target containing one of the vulnerabilities in the script-kiddy's library. Now imagine that such automated scanning has been ramped up to TL9, scanning social-media profiles and related data to pin down physical targets the hacker dislikes and where they're likely to be found; and that releasing a deadly set of drones requires no more emotional investment than starting the sort of script that used to encrypt peoples' desktop computers and hold their files hostage.

Originally Posted by johndallman

"Civilian encryption," these days, is AES-256, which the NSA has approved for government information classified up to and including Top Secret. Attacking the endpoints is vastly easier then trying to break the encryption.

Most modern encryption also has to deal with the problems of distributing the keys to computers that are widely physically separated. Drone swarms can reasonably be assumed to be launched together; generating a few gigabytes of random noise each to use for one-time pads, and loading them into the drones, avoids most key-distribution problems entirely.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If the drones are attacking at extreme close range it's reasonable to expect them to be able to go for the head. That's not a one-shot guaranteed kill, but it's pretty serious so long as their armament reliably penetrates a human skull. (Countered by helmets, perhaps, but apparently people with helmets aren't the focus here. At least for giant.robot.)

We're already discussing cyberpunk-esque fashion choices made out of pure self-defense. Creating an early-TL9 version of Crasche hats seems a reasonable addition to that arsenal.

Speaking of; is there any better approach to that then Ultra-Tech's tailored-armor system?

Originally Posted by benz72

tl;dr
Initial countermeasure thoughts are, in no particular order:
water cannon
EMP
netguns
chaff
directed energy
spray adhesive/foam
counter drones

One difficulty with all such approaches is that there's no telling when an attack might be launched, so all such active countermeasures would have to be pre-installed and standing ready 24/7, with enough redundancy to still be working while some portion was turned off for maintenance.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Against a solitary drone, bat it away. It might be able to dodge your hand, but it probably can't dodge your hand and close in at the same time.

It might give up and shoot you in the hand, but that's a lot more survivable than what it's trying to do. Especially if your enemies don't have advanced poisons access.

If I remember the old Anarchist's Handbooks right, among other deadly homebrewed toxins, nicotine can be extracted from cigarettes in lethal forms.

A possible counter-tactic: Have the swarm focus several attackers on each target at a time, then when that target is down, refocus on the next batch of targets. This is likely to be applied in any situation where individuals might be carrying active defenses that can only handle a few drones and which can be swamped.

Originally Posted by dcarson

Drone range is more or less inverse to size. The lightest drone I can find with a 7km range weighs 1.6 pounds, most weight 3+. So being in the middle of a good size farm means the small hard to spot ones can't make it that far.

The TL9 flier robobugs in Ultra-Tech that I've been jotting most of my notes on have an airspeed of around 20 mph, and an endurance of 1 hour.

[AlexanderHowl]

It honestly sounds like it becomes another sniper problem. In real life, a sniper is capable of choosing a position in most urban areas a mile or more from a location that the target regularly visits. The bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so there is no warning before the head of the victim explodes like a ripe watermelon. Despite this, most important people do not hide themselves away from the world for fear of an enemy sniper.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

It honestly sounds like it becomes another sniper problem. In real life, a sniper is capable of choosing a position in most urban areas a mile or more from a location that the target regularly visits. The bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so there is no warning before the head of the victim explodes like a ripe watermelon. Despite this, most important people do not hide themselves away from the world for fear of an enemy sniper.

True, to a degree; but the point of the mental exercise is the sudden cheapness of the attack. Sort of the difference between manually sending a piece of spam to a carefully- and consciously-chosen newsgroup in 1980, and having a cheap script-kiddies' desktop that automatically sends millions of pieces of spam an hour in 2010 to everyone who is even vaguely a potential target. Manual filters and killfiles may have sufficed for the former, but the latter requires a whole different approach to defense.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

I've recently been reminded of the video, Slaughterbots (NSFW, violent imagery); and it's relevant to a near-future setting I'm detailing.

How would such bots best be described in GURPS terms, and what sorts of defenses could be feasible against them?

Oddly enough, I recently considered exactly this idea. The conclusion I came to was to treat them as brilliant missiles (UT p. 168). The Hunter Missile is 64mm, and the Striker Missile is 100mm. Well, just posit even smaller models, perhaps a 10mm version with a couple of cycloidal propellers to make it wicked maneuverable, because a tiny cyclogyro would be a much more capable design than quadcopter. You'd just have to assign statistics and note that, unlike the Hunter, it can hover, and give it a loiter time. Then you can use any 10mm warhead that you like (UT pp.152-159), which would presumably be about the size of a .40 S&W projectile.

At TL9 available warheads include:

1. Biochemical Aerosol
2. HE 1d cr ex [1d-2]
3. HEC 1d cr ex
4. Expendable Jammer (drone ECCM!)

And whatever happed to High Explosive Squash Head, by the way? You could extrapolate from the rules in High Tech (HT p.170), and I really can't think of a reason that a 10mm version is not possible. That might be the warhead of preference for 10mm skull attacks at TL9.

But if you upped the size to 15mm you could get SEFOP, which is pretty damned capable for the described use at 4d(2) imp inc, especially since it can detonate from a couple of yards away, thus negating flyswatters etc as a defense. And you also gain Biochemical Liquid and EMP (yet more drone ECCM!).

And 25mm gets you all sorts of fun stuff for even larger drones, primarily freaking Thermobaric as well as Shaped Charge. Actually, shaped charges were made as small as 20mm at TL7, so one could reasonably house rule the limit to be 15mm rather than 25mm, but frankly why bother if you have SEFOP at 15mm?

I could easily imagine the very largest drones in that video carrying a 40mm warhead. Then you'd have essentially every warhead size covered.

And, wow, yes there really should be a Hypodermic warhead, shouldn't there? Bit of a fail, that. Perhaps one that works like an EpiPen-style auto injector to give a bit of clothing penetrating power? It would be especially appropriate for low-velocity weaponry such as a Tangler. And hypodermically-delivered nerve agents sound pretty terrifying, let alone stuff like botulinum, ricin, or irradiated polonium. But you could come up with stats for hypodermics rather easily. The Dan-Inject JM Standard (HT p.68) is 11mm, so I'd say that it would be pretty safe to assume that they are available down to 10mm at TL9, holding 1 to 6 doses just like the Dan-Inject. Injectable tracking devices are available, too, doubtless with 10x range and battery life at TL9.