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Secure-Badger-1096 t1_je11z2r wrote

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

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From_Ancient_Stars t1_je1vg5o wrote

I'm no droneologist, but heavy bulk is perfect for building up kinetic energy during a fall. I expect that's quite useful for suicide drones like this.

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TheLit420 t1_je21x4b wrote

Would be better if they tried for velocity? Right? I mean, for ke, (1/2)mv^2. With velocity being much more of a factor...

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Ag0r t1_je2bvly wrote

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.

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tufftyAus t1_je23txd wrote

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.

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[deleted] t1_je2etmb wrote

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Duckfammit t1_je2iemz wrote

Unless you're talking about accelerating these tiny shitty drones to some percentage of the speed of light, any weight budget is much better spent on extra explosives.

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p4di t1_je48yf4 wrote

just add the same weight in explosives instead. that's more effective and even cheaper.

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gosu_link0 t1_je30x9y wrote

Absolutely not. No airframe design adds weight on purpose. Increased weight necessitates increase lift from the wings and increased drag. Means lower range, speed, and efficiency.

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wasdlmb t1_je3v9yg wrote

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.

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Secure-Badger-1096 t1_je29tr5 wrote

i forgot about that! i was thinking more of payloads and velocity than self destruct/suicide drones

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hydrated_raisin2189 t1_je3weze wrote

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.

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WaterIsGolden t1_je39360 wrote

And probably cheaper to manufacture in the same way a full size computer is cheaper to build than a similarly powerful laptop. Why waste money keeping things compact if the final mission for the device is kamikaze anyway.

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Love_God551 t1_je2vffh wrote

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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degotoga t1_je32zrz wrote

They’re designed to be cheap and easily produced

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Jhereg22 t1_je2h1jc wrote

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

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elkmeateater t1_je31yss wrote

To be fair its very functional, ergonomic and has a very impressive range.

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Vier_Scar t1_je36ybf wrote

Do you mean economic? Or does it help with posture?

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Aerian_ t1_je40ymz wrote

To be fair, ergonomics also encompass ease* of understanding and use, so it might apply!

Edit: a letter

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ClutchPoppinDaddies t1_je36k44 wrote

Like a Geo Metro.

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DeflagratingStar t1_je4jpsn wrote

My mom had a Geo Metro. Could park that bad boy in the tightest of parking spaces with room to spare, 40 mpg fuel economy and designed well enough to fit a surprisingly large amount of stuff with the back seats down.

Loved that car as a kid

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[deleted] t1_je1k3pm wrote

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TazBaz t1_je1kwpx wrote

Cheap, though. These drones are not high tech, they’re cheap suicide drones.

Really they’re more like slow cruise missiles. Same function.

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MofongoForever t1_je2bp4y wrote

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.

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herpaderp43321 t1_je2x1md wrote

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.

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usefulbuns t1_je2yxbl wrote

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.

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degotoga t1_je33lal wrote

Shahed isn’t really accurate enough to hit something the size of a SAM system.

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stormelemental13 t1_je1sdnb wrote

Wooden propellers have been used for a long time. It's a sensible option, especially for a single use drone.

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[deleted] t1_je1tjs9 wrote

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Miraclefish t1_je2pgrq wrote

Why not? What's wrong with using a cheap, effective and highly proven material? They could likely purchase them easily.

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RalphNLD t1_je1y170 wrote

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.

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DJHellduck t1_je1zdce wrote

WW2 airplanes (like the spitfire) had wooden wings. It’s, cheap, light, and durable, so what’s the issue?

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Shuber-Fuber t1_je21bhv wrote

Or the venerable Mosquito.

Airframe is almost all wood and cloth.

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BasicLuxury t1_je1yz2j wrote

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.

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Joezev98 t1_je28p77 wrote

>Note how these drones lack landing gear.

Because they don't have to search for a target. The coordinates of energy infrastructure and civilian hospitals are well known.

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BasicLuxury t1_je2ea2a wrote

Even being the Russian use case, Iran designed these as loiter munitions.

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degotoga t1_je33wzt wrote

No, that’s not correct. They are more akin to cruise missiles than true loitering munitions. They are guided by GPS coordinate, not manually

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elkmeateater t1_je3229o wrote

It keeps the weight down because the power plant is basically a moped engine.

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I-seddit t1_je2kry7 wrote

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

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Cobrex45 t1_je2oyid wrote

Warhead, the copper presumably shoots a shape charge Ala rpg7. They are usually cupped like that.

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jsgui t1_je52lvv wrote

Why is copper used for that?

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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

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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.

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Chrisda19 t1_je30vgn wrote

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

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AST5192D t1_je31lcs wrote

Powered by BRP Rotax!

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Golden3r t1_je476fe wrote

Saw this too, how did they end up in a drone from Iran?

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powersv2 t1_je3mjsv wrote

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

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Orangecuppa t1_je3vxqp wrote

Alibaba is like amazon kinda.

They don't actually manufacture most of the shit they sell.

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MrMikeJJ t1_je46n3d wrote

I am guessing it is more like "western designed components, manufactured in China, sold on AliExpress".

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