Drone swarms. What's your thoughts on the tech and applications good and bad?

kv

Death and gore gets headlines, but we are right on the cusp of a technology that could do a great deal of good. I would be more concerned if they were still high priced or if the quad copter hadnt been so well taken up. Sure the military can do versions of a quad copter, but like many things it was general geeks interested in them first. Not sure exactly how that gives us the edge, but i am pretty sure it does.

The predator drone isnt what i call a drone. Its more plane than what we normally identify as a drone, not sure if there is one this year but next July there is a drone wars competition in a place called Stevenage.
Will be interesting to see what people have come up with, a bit like flying robot wars! Unless they got the boring laser tag route.

Little Ghostman said:

You tube might have deleted the channel now, i couldnt find the video i was after. But in some places there its now a kind of sport. The one i remember had several jeeps with HUGE machines welded on the back, lined up with groups of guys with all kinds of guns. The idea is people fly the drones back and forth along this mud bank and the people with the guns try and hit the drone!!

I think its 3 times they have to go in the firing line, really really funny to watch, you can hardly see these little drones, but you do see the earth erupt back and forth. Then when the runs are complete you get to see whats left if anything. No idea what some the guns are, but to me they look like what you want with you to take down a full size plane!!

Surprisingly hard to hit the little drones, some the videos has 20-30 people all shooting at the same time at a single drone! I have absolutely no idea how anything could get past a wall of fire like that. Its a shame you tube seem to be taking down any channel that isnt making serious ad money.... I mean any channel that is family friendly and have a cat in

Found one, this isnt the really funny one, but does show the kind of fire power they were throwing at it, the one i really wanted to find had loads of these all firing at once at the drone.


These ones are special rounds designed specifically to take down drones. They appear ok as long as the drone isnt moving and is tied to a pole in the ground..... Well most drones are anyway arnt they.

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there's a town here in Colorado that passed an ordinance allowing people to shoot down drones if they are flying above their property. there's only one problem i have with that, and that is when you miss, where is the bullet coming down? you notice in the video of the machine gun shoot, their backstop is a barren mountain ridge, so even of they are firing into the air, they won't hit anybody or anything other than dirt and rock. but in a town, if you are firing into the air, assume a .22 bullet can come down up to 1.5 miles away, and a .50BMG round can come down up to 4 miles away, and most of the calibers in between will come down somewhere inside that 4 mile radius. a 12Ga shotgun with birdshot, however, is different. birdshot loses all it's energy very quickly and falls within 200 yards. 00 buckshot falls within 800 yards, don't shoot into the air with slugs. if you want to find out how far to mark off as a "danger zone", look up whatever caliber in a ballistics program, and set the firing elevation to 45 degrees. that will tell you how far the round can go in a "worst case" scenario (i.e. firing at a 45 degree angle)

unclejed613 said:

there's only one problem i have with that, and that is when you miss, where is the bullet coming down?

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Depends on its critical velocity Vs mass at whatever distance you are at.

A bullet may leave the barrel at 3000+ FPS but at 1 mile its going substantially slower. At 2 miles even less. A shotgun at 20 feet might blow your head half off regardless of what type of shell you used but at 500 feet the projectile velocities are so low its not longer a issue, assuming the projectile/s even made it that far without being in or even below its capable vertical free fall velocity.

Likelihood of injury is even less so if its a bunch of BB's Vs a single slug which if your shooting down drones most would want a birdshot load of some sort with fairly wide pattern rather than a high velocity rifle bullet or shotgun slug.

Rather like the concept that a penny dropped off a skyscraper won't go right through you simply because at some point aerodynamic resistance had limited its terminal velocity to a low enough value that impact Ft/Lbs energy of the penny is capable of producing is well below dangerous. At best, it might hurt for a moment if it hits you on edge but it certainly won't go through you like urban myths would wish you to believe.

Its unlikely many are going to shoot drones in the UK, in that vid it shows its not as easy as you think. A thin nylon fishing net still seems best or a trained raptor! the dutch and some airports here are using trained Hawks to bring then down. Shooting them down is for fun only, its not a serious method of control. As you point out its pretty irresponsible to shoot at anything without a decent back stop.

Here in the UK i dont use the rifle much, but when i do alot of the time i never take the shot because the position is wrong and the bullet is likely to cross into the neighbors land, here that is an offense. Mainly the riffle is for fox's or the most often used reason is Deer that get hit near the bottom of our wood on the road. Our woodland has the A75 going straight through it at one end, 6 times a day lorries head for the ferry port along the road, i often find deer smashed up on the drive way or near the wood. We have CCTV down there now as its 1/4 mile away from the house, I would say 80% of the shots i have ever taken with the riffle are to put deer out of pain.

Fox's now and then but mostly i use the Dogs to flush them and then the shotgun. You can tell if its a car or lorry thats hit it, if its a car then the car is normally with the deer and not in good shape . So 99% of the deer hit here are hit by lorries, its mainly spring and Autumn when the does cross from one side to the nursery side and then in Autumn they cross back again. We have a very small permanent herd as well, they stay our side the A75 all year, those are the Red deer mainly, the roe deer tend to wonder.

A specialized pyrotechnic round like this might be effective in a shotgun. Just don't set the house on fire.

Not really a UK kinda thing...

Typical American Pheasant hunt.

The British Version


Quail hunting in the states


UK Pigeon hunting.

British Turkey hunting


There is a different kinda culture with hunting and guns here

Little Ghostman said:

Not really a UK kinda thing...

There is a different kinda culture with hunting and guns here

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Completely wrong, this is hog hunting in Texas.

nsaspook said:

Completely wrong, this is hog hunting in Texas.

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LMAO, here the fuel for that trip would cost you as much as a house lol.

I went clay pigeon shooting with an American friends dad from school. He lives with his mum here in the UK and his dad came over last summer for 6 weeks, so we went Skeet shooting. Normal 12 gauge UK side by Side shot guns, Ian's dad couldnt get his head around the fact we dont have pump action shotguns . I have an open invitation to go on a turkey hunt with them, once i get some money and time. The idea apparently is to go on a bit of a road trip for a week and camp out near some mountains.

really looking forward to it, i doubt it will be for a year or two though.

The way we see it is if you got it indulge it and flaunt it!

I've never been a big hunter or gun collector but I do appreciate the ability to own and use freely that comes with being aUS citizen now.

The most shooting I do is gophers and up until this last summer I was doing those with 22's that were 60 - 80+ years old. Now I have a new ruger 10/22 rifle set up with a 25 magazine and 9x scope that I can take standing shots at ~200 yards with fair enough accuracy to have gotten half a dozen gophers last summer that way.

Planning to try and get that number out to 250 - 300 yards laying down next year now that I have a bipod if I can find a 22 load that has a consistent enough pattern to set the scope at that distance!

If not, I may have to step up tp borrowing my brothers AR-15 and see if I can go for 300+ yard shots with that.

My buddies 'gopher gun'. If it dont use belt feed you're not really shooting to win.

Little Ghostman said:

I went clay pigeon shooting with an American friends dad from school. He lives with his mum here in the UK and his dad came over last summer for 6 weeks, so we went Skeet shooting. Normal 12 gauge UK side by Side shot guns, Ian's dad couldnt get his head around the fact we dont have pump action shotguns . I have an open invitation to go on a turkey hunt with them, once i get some money and time. The idea apparently is to go on a bit of a road trip for a week and camp out near some mountains.

really looking forward to it, i doubt it will be for a year or two though.

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Sounds like fun. I haven't done skeet shooting since I was a Navy guy. We would setup the rig on the side of the ship for gun practice with our shotguns for each man on the security team.

Being born with a gun in my hands hillbilly from Texas I was pretty good at it from quail hunting in the fields.

We have a place just down the road from us for skeet shooting, they do the low level ones as well, like if your shooting rabbits (forget what the style is called). They used to be great days out but lately the cost of skeets and shotgun cartridges seems to have gone up, a days shooting now isnt cheap. I spent a year as a young kid shooting clays before i was allowed to shoot anything live, growing up on a farm i have handled and used shotguns from an early age, but rifles are pretty recent.

like i said earlier its mainly for the hurt deer, getting a vet or anyone out to shoot it takes a long time. None of the 5 neighbors i have,own guns. No idea why the guy next door (1/2 mile away) got rid of his, might be cost or the fact the last lot of inspections we had to get the licenses renewed, were absolutely a nightmare. We have a new firearms officer in charge locally, nasty little man.....

Corvid numbers were really high last year, I cleared loads with the shotgun at nesting time by getting shooting up through the nests. Not always easy if they build high up, but using a fine shot and full choke i think i must have got a fair number of eggs. This year I got some live baited traps to use, with my back it dosnt take much recoil to start it really hurting.