We've seen that drone advertising has now officially become a thing with this Candy Crush bollocks. How easy would it be to wreak havoc on them?

FYI: Drone jammers are not legal in the US per FCC regulations. "The use of "cell jammers" or similar devices designed to intentionally block, jam, or interfere with authorized radio communications (signal blockers, GPS jammers, or text stoppers, etc.) is a violation of federal law.

I'm going to lazily repost something I commented that has my thoughts on the matter:

How difficult would it be to destroy covertly? I’ve got a drone, and it’s quite a feeble being. Obviously these things would be a lot bigger than my little camera drone, but it really can’t take a whole lot, surely? My drones rotors sometimes get stuck when I land it in grass that’s over a few inches long. Surely that means a sturdy piece of string could tangle up those advertiser drones.

How surveilled are they? How does one even surveill something so high in the sky in pitch blackness? How hard would they investigate the destruction? It would be a very fucking expensive thing, if even one drone was destroyed. One drone would probably fly into the rest though and then you got mega damage bucks on your hands…

What is the best method of destroying them, do you think? Send up your own drone and drop a bunch of netting over a section? Perhaps having your own drone would be too traceable. Maybe it wouldn’t if it was a home built one though. No trackers that feed info back to a company like MAVIC, for example.

  • SickleRick [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Destroying them is already illegal. Why limit yourself by discounting jammers?

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It's not the FCC. It's the FAA. They're legally registered aircraft. Shooting down an aircraft is about as big of a felony as you can do.

      • SickleRick [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I have known people who illegally transmitted to fuck with HAM boomers and had no consequences.

        Just like every other illegal activity, you gotta assess your risks and act accordingly.

        • keepcarrot [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Ham boomer sounds like the most boomer thing (I know ham radios are different to ham you buy at the grocers, but the mental image is funny)

          • Frank [he/him, he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Ham radio is extremely boomer to the point where the hobby is dying out because the boomers are so hostile to new users.

            • keepcarrot [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              My dad (a boomer) made us all learn Morse and the NATO reporting alphabet when he was getting his ham license. We sometimes talked to truckers while 4wding

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Pretty easy. Drones need operators and technicians. Operators and technicians are human. Humans are flammable under the right circumstances.

  • CommunistDirtbag [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Not sure if they're still vulnerable but an awesome security researcher made a zombie drone that flys around taking control of others

    • Ideology [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I can't imagine that they have good security. A virus is way simpler than all this other stuff

      • CommunistDirtbag [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Also I'm just saying, these drones clearly have Red LEDs co if yoy were to take them over you could make a massive hammer and sickle appear over the city (or a bear)

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Extremely illegal. If you get caught operating a radio frequency jammer against FAA approved aircraft you're going to spent the next twenty years in a concrete box.

    • Mizokon [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      These look like it's for military drones. I'm sure a smaller less conspicuous ones will work just fine.

  • Notcontenttobequiet [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I'm actually encouraged that this is not going to fly with people (so to speak). I imagine hating intrusive drones to be the handshake meme but the two arms are labeled "leftists" and "libertarians" and also "info wars watchers." someone is going to find out a way to shoot these things out of the sky.

    • HamManBad [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Then we'll all get looped in with the maga people and called insurrectionists and terrorists for not liking the coca cola drone ads

  • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    You know what? It's gotta just be balloons right? Like let go of a bunch of balloons upwind of the mass drone formation maybe with some strong string like fishing line. Like hundreds of balloons. You could prepare on site, it's gotta be less expensive than rigging your own counter drones.

    If you had a big net with some weights on the edges and then spun a drone holding it pretty fast it should spread the net when you drop it. Or you could just have a couple drones with one big net draped between them, that could be neat.

    I dunno if laser pointers fuck with these drones or not. I'm not sure how these mass drone formations synch, is it just one controller broadcasting to each drone or do they have some sensors and dumb AI to coordinate a little too?

    The French were training eagles to attack drones, you could always try that lol.

    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Bet you could use metal twine or something with balloons and then fill them with some weird confetti to fuck with signaling as they pop.

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Burning lasers are getting smaller and more powerful these days. You might be able to mount one alongside a jammer. Jammer makes them hold still, laser burns them down. You'd have to make sure to attack from beneath the swarm to avoid accidentally lasering pedestrians, but I'm pretty sure that's where the battery packs are anyway.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        You'd need a very, very serious laser to damage a moving drone from hundreds of feet away. Like "Maybe a university could put something like that together but not a DIY person" serious.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Nah. They're far too high up. Shotguns have very limited range. Even hitting a clay pigeon from a few dozen yards takes skill.

  • forcequit [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    directional jammers, big fuckoff nets, or a backyard flak cannon

  • Elon_Musk [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I think you would be very unlikely to jam the signal unless you're near the operator and even then it's not going to crash all the drones, it's just going to block any commands from the ground station. The drones are semi-autonomous and just hover there waiting for commands and the good ones have their entire script already uploaded before they take flight.

    A net would work but they're going to be spaced out so far that your net would have to be hueg

  • blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Ramming into enough of them with another drone would deface the advertisement which would mostly defeat its purpose.