Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

Secure-Badger-1096 t1_je11z2r wrote

for being deadly their construction looks kind of heavy and full of useless bulk

217

RalphNLD t1_je1y170 wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,425,165)

Wood is a very light weight material though? The volumetric mass of wood is like half that of aluminium.

It's also cheap and abundant. Makes sense for a single-use drone from an embargoed county.

30

BasicLuxury t1_je1yz2j wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,425,165)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/good-wood-4915226

Article from 2003, but it does specifically mention wooden props for UAVs. You can run them into nets and recover the drone while only breaking a relatively cheap wooden prop.

I assume it's a similar problem WW2 Japan ran into. They tried cheapening and lightening kamikaze by removing the landing gear, but quickly found that if a plane couldn't find a target, then they would have to ditch, wasting the entire plane.

Note how these drones lack landing gear.

There's also other considerations mentioned in the article that may make wood better for this application, but I don't have information.

7

tufftyAus t1_je23txd wrote

Replying to TheLit420 (#2,428,097)

Depends how much velocity you'd gain. If they're going basically as fast as they're going to go aerodynamically by the time they arrive because they've got as long a run-up as you want, then more mass makes sense.

22

MofongoForever t1_je2bp4y wrote

Replying to TazBaz (#2,425,320)

And if the components are easy to source, Ukraine could set up their own manufacturing lines while western countries try and make it more difficult for Iran to get components. Fire off a dozen or so of these at a time to smoke out the SAM sites then hit those w/ more accurate GPS guided munitions once located.

18

Ag0r t1_je2bvly wrote

Replying to TheLit420 (#2,428,097)

I doubt the kinetic energy of the mass of the drone really has much impact (heh) on the destructive potential, that is probably almost entirely down to the explosives it's packing.

More mass in the drone would be useful for making it less prone to bring buffeted around by wind, so it would be easier to stay on target with less sophisticated equipment perhaps.

69

Jhereg22 t1_je2h1jc wrote

Imagine being a "world power" and needing to go to Iran for weapons.

199

I-seddit t1_je2kry7 wrote

What is that brass & copper cylinder on the right part of the table?

17

Cobrex45 t1_je2p694 wrote

How are these made by western companies and purchased on Ali baba? Arnt those counter intuitive? Wouldn't a western company selling on Ali baba be the same as them selling anywhere else and subject to the same customs and sanctions already in place? I'd believe it coming from SEA or China directly but I thought traffic from Ali baba was relatively one way.

7

Love_God551 t1_je2vffh wrote

Replying to Secure-Badger-1096 (#2,422,017)

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.

44

herpaderp43321 t1_je2x1md wrote

Replying to MofongoForever (#2,429,810)

To touch on your point while I agree to use em to smoke out SAM sites, depending on the cost you could just swarm the sam. The guided stuff should probably be used more on things that might suddenly move like tanks and what not.

2

usefulbuns t1_je2yxbl wrote

Replying to herpaderp43321 (#2,433,923)

It makes me wonder why they don't mass produce drones with a highly visible radar signature and a higher speed to force Russia to expend as much of their SAM inventory as possible. Make them look like helicopters or fighter jets.

4

Chrisda19 t1_je30vgn wrote

Isn't AliExpress a Chinese company that sources shit from Chinese manufacturers?

7

smoothtrip t1_je3ac62 wrote

>Most of the components that make up Iranian Shahed drones are made by Western countries, which can be bought on Aliexpress.

Regardless of whose side they are on, that is pretty ingenious and resourceful

8

imjesusbitch t1_je3hje1 wrote

Replying to Narwhalbaconguy (#2,435,818)

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.

32

powersv2 t1_je3mjsv wrote

If you can buy it all off aliexpress, are they really western components?

6

Narwhalbaconguy t1_je3v4la wrote

Replying to mukansamonkey (#2,439,909)

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.

2

wasdlmb t1_je3v9yg wrote

Replying to From_Ancient_Stars (#2,427,017)

This is very, very wrong. The drone weighs 200 kg and travels at about 50m/s. Let's say in a dive it could reach 100m/s (it can't but let's pretend it does). That would be 1MJ of kenetic energy total. C4 has about 1.5MJ of energy per kg. There's about 30-50 kg of explosives total. The kenetic energy is absolutely dwarfed by the explosive energy. And every kg of engine you have is a kg of explosive you don't have.

7

hydrated_raisin2189 t1_je3weze wrote

Replying to From_Ancient_Stars (#2,427,017)

Not quite. They main damage comes from explosives. That “bulk” is useless.

To me (not an expert in the slightest) it seems to have been designed with parts similar to small commercial propeller planes. Most likely because the machinery and parts for such vehicles already exists and would be far cheaper to produce.

2

zapporian t1_je42qr7 wrote

Replying to Narwhalbaconguy (#2,440,128)

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.

5

Mr06506 t1_je49pqm wrote

Replying to zapporian (#2,441,308)

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.

4

UglyInThMorning t1_je4fz9v wrote

Replying to Mr06506 (#2,442,296)

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.

2

MiaowaraShiro t1_je4wk27 wrote

Replying to imjesusbitch (#2,438,035)

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.

2

imjesusbitch t1_je679be wrote

Replying to El3ctricalSquash (#2,440,853)

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.

1

imjesusbitch t1_je7gt8z wrote

Replying to MiaowaraShiro (#2,446,489)

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.

1