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Love_God551 t1_je2vffh wrote

Reply to comment by Secure-Badger-1096 in Ukraine Defense intelligence shows insides of Shahed drones, which Russia uses to attack by DoremusJessup

According to the article;

A representative of Ukrainian Defence Intelligence said that there is usually a warhead of 40-50 kilograms inside the drone. The most valuable part of the drone is the CRPA antenna, which is used to resist electronic warfare. Defence Intelligence said that all components can be purchased on Aliexpress.

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Narwhalbaconguy t1_je36acu wrote

The fact that this can be made by a civilian is a bit scary

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imjesusbitch t1_je3hje1 wrote

In 1964, two people in their 20s designed a nuclear bomb with a yield equivalent to the one dropped on hiroshima in less than three years, using nothing but their phds and public knowledge. Complete amateurs when it comes to making a nuclear bomb. That was Nth Country Experiment. Fascinating read.

McVeigh and Nichols both had high school diplomas and look at the destruction those two bozos caused.

Fuck me the world would truly be a frightening place if psychopaths had more ambition.

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El3ctricalSquash t1_je3zw4j wrote

Psychopaths have plenty of ambition, look how many end up in places like the White House and congress.

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imjesusbitch t1_je679be wrote

The scope of destruction politicians can cause directly and indirectly is incomparable to what your average psychopath joe has ever done. So I didn't take baconguy's use of civilian literally. Timmy killed 160 some people that day. How many can you argue the US federal government has killed? Almost half a mil/year was the estimate according to Forbes back in 2020.

Feels different when they do it compared to some rando. A bomb or mass shooting is really direct and in your face. Policy not so much.

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Love_God551 t1_je4iwsy wrote

Now this is scary

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imjesusbitch t1_je7h5qy wrote

Oh buddy, how about some home-made drones dispensing vx gas while it zooms around a populated city. That's doable for someone with a chemical and engineering background.

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sambull t1_je9c89l wrote

That's why they regulated them.. they are a modern useful weapon.

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MiaowaraShiro t1_je4wk27 wrote

Designing the bombs was the relatively easy part of the process and these two had the benefit of 20 yrs of knowledge since the invention.

The really tough part at the time was refining enough uranium for it.

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imjesusbitch t1_je7gt8z wrote

This is true but the same done today would have the benefit of 80 years of knowledge and all the advancement done in enriching uranium. Russia would probably sell both the uranium and the plutonium rn for cheap, considering the state they're in.

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mukansamonkey t1_je3tpf2 wrote

They're slow, noisy, and Ukraine has shot down a few with handheld rifles. Literally have guys who go outside and stand around taking shots at these drones and succeeding. They're not exactly high tech marvels.

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Narwhalbaconguy t1_je3v4la wrote

But think about how this could be used. Let’s say an extremist manages to build one of these, realistically who’s gonna shoot it down before it crashes into a crowded building, busy road, power grids, etc? Unless the FBI and homeland security was already on their ass, I don’t see anybody stepping up to do it until it’s too late.

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zapporian t1_je42qr7 wrote

Sans the explosive warheads, literally all of the fairly new, revolutionary drone tech being used in ukraine right now is civilian tech, and can be improvised pretty trivially by any small group of people with some kind of engineering background.

It's a damn good thing that terrorists and pissed off political agitators have apparently not realized – just yet – that you can just strap an IED to a cheap FPV drone off of alibaba and start running around assassinating politicians from concealed positions 1km away or whatever. Or just drop pipe bombs from a heavier hexa / octa copter a la Ukraine: heck, the designs and release mechanisms that Ukraine is using for their jury rigged grenade / mortar shell delivery drones is practically open source at this point.

Anyways the Shahed isn't even 21st century drone tech; that thing is just (more or less) a mid-sized hobbyist RC plane kit, packed with explosives, that uses GPS to navigate towards a preselected geographic target. Literally just an ad hoc WW2 V1 (and with a similarly terrible accuracy rate), but built with mostly off the shelf parts that anyone in the west (or in iran, apparently) could acquire and build given sufficient time and engineering resources.

No two bit terrorist is gonna engineer and build a shahed though: much, much easier to just build (and test) pipe bombs or whatever. And the issue, again, is that you could literally just strap a pipe bomb to an FPV, and have a fairly accurate guided munition that any idiot off the street could use.

Technically speaking, yes, just about any sufficiently motivated individual could probably build and launch a shahed by themselves – but you'd have to be a pretty particular kind of terrorist wierdo to want to and be capable of doing that.

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Mr06506 t1_je49pqm wrote

Pretty good reason why we restrict access to explosives and even to common fertilisers, etc.

I think the main thing to be thankful for is that even assembling a basic nitrate explosive mix is beyond most common terrorists / attention seekers.

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UglyInThMorning t1_je4fz9v wrote

Truly restricting access to materials that could be used to make explosives is incredibly difficult because that’s a category that includes goddamn near everything. I started to give examples and then realized maybe I shouldn’t include a shopping list, but you can build a bomb out of like, three farts and a nine volt battery if you know what you’re doing.

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MiaowaraShiro t1_je4wezq wrote

We used to call drones "RC planes". It would be absolutely trivial to buy an off the shelf RC drone and put some sort of weapon on it.

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