#anti-drones

they look like cousins

#EY-#FICCI Report Urged To Deploy #Counter_Unmanned_Aircraft Systems in India #Defence

EY India, in collaboration with FICCI, released a report that highlights the need to deploy Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) in India. Considering the status of UAS policy and operations in India, the report emphasizes the need for counter-UAS systems, considering the challenges with respect to market scenario and operations.

Risks posed by UAS technology

The market for drone…

George RR Martin has some choice words for modern-day methods of warfare: 

There's something very close up about the Middle Ages. You're taking a sharp piece of steel and hacking at someone's head, and you're getting spattered with his blood, and you're hearing his screams. In some ways maybe it's more brutal that we've insulated ourselves from that. We're setting up mechanisms where we can kill human beings with drones and missiles where you're sitting at a console and pressing the button. We never have to hear their whimpering, or hear them begging for their mother, or dying in horrible realities around us. I don't know if that's necessarily such a good thing. You see this same moral struggle all through history. It's always the question, when you're at war, do you do whatever it takes to win, or do you actually maintain your own moral standard and ideals?

- George RR Martin, Time Interview, 2014

He has a point. As military technology advances to kill people in a more detached, clinical way, we have the privilege of ignoring the horrors of war. I’m certain this is how he’s writing Dany’s dilemma. Remember her conversation with Jon after she had just “pressed a button” on the Lannister armies?

She is making several erroneous assumptions here. First, she is showing her ignorance of the situation (I mean, Dany doesn’t even know Sansa exists). Jon is likely thinking: “You don’t know the whole story, lady.” Moreover, Jon reluctantly went to war to serve someone else, and he was elected king because of it. 

Second, Daenerys assumes that both wars are just because they both want to “help.” But helping people is just a label, in modern-day parlance, it’s “spin” or an illusion. The Faith Militant thought they were “helping” the small folk. Melisandre thought she was “helping” people find the one true god. Jon doesn’t pretend that war is that simple. He is unsettled by war, doesn’t like it, nor appears to buy her justification.

Third, she’s making a false equivalency. In Jon and Sansa’s war, the warriors were evenly matched, sword vs. sword. Even then, Jon was horribly outnumbered. Meanwhile, Daenerys is essentially using drone warfare. Which isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself. Hey, this is Game of Thrones. If she wants to win, that’s her prerogative. But she can’t win by using a more advanced killing method, without sacrificing her values, or pretending that she is taking the moral high ground. In other words, if she wants to be the good queen who helps people from a position of strength, she must confront the reality that she isn’t morally superior than any other player vying for the throne. This is why Cersei is the “less problematic queen”--she’s not a hypocrite. She’s not a savior.

Furthermore, Dany is confronted with blood and gore for the first time, “up close,” in fighting pit scenes, and surprise, surprise - she can’t handle it:

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd  … I cannot breathe. She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk. “Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?” “Taking off my floppy ears.” A dozen men with boar spears came trotting out onto the sand to drive the boar away from the corpse and back to his pen. The pitmaster was with them, a long barbed whip in his hand. As he snapped it at the boar, the queen rose. “Ser Barristan, will you see me safely back to my garden?” Hizdahr looked confused. “There is more to come. A folly, six old women, and three more matches. Belaquo and Goghor!” “Belaquo will win,” Irri declared. “It is known.” “It is not known,” Jhiqui said. “Belaquo will die.” “One will die, or the other will,” said Dany. “And the one who lives will die some other day. This was a mistake.”

- Daenerys, A Dance with Dragons

She’s like “fuck this, I’m out, it’s too horrible!” But look, two seconds later, Drogon swoops in and saves her from these “horrors.” Notably, in the show they added the Harpy’s uprising to enhance the “drama.” However, in the books, the dragon is the “enemy” terrorizing the spectators in the pits. Moreover, she also has an orgasm as she flies away on his back:

“Higher!” Her other hand clutched at his scales, her fingers scrabbling for purchase. Drogon’s wide black wings beat the air. Dany could feel the heat of him between her thighs. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst. Yes, she thought, yes, now, now, do it, do it, take me, take me, FLY! - Daenerys, A Dance with Dragons.

It’s enjoyable and exhilarating to her. All she has to do now is shout a word to incinerate men alive, without even having to look at the agony she’s causing at the “tiny ants” down below:

He grows, she thought as he launched himself into the sky. They are all three growing. Soon they will be large enough to bear my weight. Then she would fly as Aegon the Conqueror had flown, up and up, until Meereen was so small that she could blot it out with her thumb.

- Daenerys, A Dance with Dragons

Where did all the ants come from? Dany brushed them from her arms and legs and belly. She ran a hand across her stubbly scalp where her hair had burned away, and felt more ants on her head, and one crawling down the back of her neck. She knocked them off and crushed them under her bare feet. There were so many … It turned out that their anthill was on the other side of her wall. She wondered how the ants had managed to climb over it and find her. To them these tumbledown stones must loom as huge as the Wall of Westeros. The biggest wall in all the world, her brother Viserys used to say, as proud as if he’d built it himself.

- Daenerys, A Dance with Dragons

Ironically she had a chance to learn from brutality, but her lesson was cut short by Drogon. Now she’ll probably never understand why her way of fighting, high up on her drone in the sky, is just as horrific as the fighting pits. 

¿Y si en lugar de construir drones debemos derribarlos?

Nos lanzamos a la tecnología como si no hubiera un mañana, solucionamos problemas existentes, pero creamos nuevos. Los drones son herramientas con gran poder, y sus usos pueden ir desde salvarnos la vida a quitárnosla. En aeracoop nos hemos pasado los últimos cinco años construyendo drones, pero después de la explosión de la burbuja drone, nos planteamos si no sería buena idea derribarlos.

Este…

Stealth Wear ‘Anti-Drone’ Fashion

Germany: Thousands Surround US Air Base To Protest The Use Of Drones

Germany: Thousands Surround US Air Base To Protest The Use Of Drones Demonstrators have formed a human chain near a US air base in western Germany to protest against lethal drone strikes. The demonstration was organized by the alliance “Stop Ramstein – No Drone War“, which says the Ramstein base relays information between operators in the US and unmanned drone aircraft on missions over Iraq,…

Un nouveau post sur http://bit.ly/1Tud9MQ

USA : Une société prétend pouvoir prendre le contrôle de n'importe quel multicoptère et lève 3 millions de dollars

La société SkySafe, établie à San Diego (Californie), a levé dernièrement trois millions de dollars par un fond d’investissement qui est déjà à l’origine de AirBnB, Facebook, Groupon ou Foursquare.

Son projet est un système de défense anti-drones qui permettrait à n’importe qui de prendre le contrôle de n’importe quel multicoptère trop intrusif, en le sélectionnant, sur l’écran d’une tablette, puis en lui ordonnant de s’en aller, ou de s’écraser.

Une vidéo (impossible à afficher ici) montre bien un DJI Phantom s’écraser lorsqu’une personne, équipée d’un smartphone relié à un gros un boitier (genre rack 19′) bardé d’antennes, donne cet ordre «Disable», mais rien sur la procédure qui va identifier son système comme le donneur d’ordres autorisé par le contrôleur de vol du multicoptère. Et c’est là toute la difficulté de la manoeuvre !

Est-ce bien réel ?

Bien sur, avec l’ouverture des SDK aux utilisateurs et aux programmeurs, c’est surement le plus grand fantasme que d’arriver à «pirater» un multicoptère sur un autre système que celui de son pilote pour pouvoir en prendre le contrôle. Mais à notre humble avis, on y est pas encore !

A notre connaissance, la seule façon de relier un multicoptère et une télécommande pour autoriser le contrôle du premier par la deuxième, c’est d’activer une fonction sur la télécommande , puis d’aller appuyer avec une pointe fine sur un bouton minuscule se trouvant sur le drone ou le récepteur de la télécommande, et c’est absolument impossible à faire en vol.

Bref, on est plutôt sceptiques !