Drone attack on Venezuelan President

[gnirtS]

How do you defeat a swarm attack scenario that uses INS with other existing onboard sensors; EW countermeasures in the RF spectrum would be useless. Optical terrain maps exist that could algorythmically work with INS to verify position in conjunction with barometric altmiters.

Over the short distances drones fly INS will be more than near enough. However, for small amounts of explosives you have to be REALLY close, that requires some sort of manual spotting and flying.

Of course, a clever first wave would be one that homes in on any transmitters to take out a jamming device. Similar tactic to ALARM/HARM used by the military for radar.

I cant see anything on the video that rules out an uplink jamming. It would only work over a short area and cause the behaviour we saw.

 

[scjerry]

Ever watch TED? You should.

 

[tangomike7]

In violation of my hijacking apology, look at this:

Even Hawkings signed the petition to prevent this.

That’s a DARPA project 30 years down the road

 

[tangomike7]

Over the short distances drones fly INS will be more than near enough. However, for small amounts of explosives you have to be REALLY close, that requires some sort of manual spotting and flying.

Of course, a clever first wave would be one that homes in on any transmitters to take out a jamming device. Similar tactic to ALARM/HARM used by the military for radar.

I cant see anything on the video that rules out an uplink jamming. It would only work over a short area and cause the behaviour we saw.

That’s an interesting role of drones as applied in a SEAD / Wild Weasel application. I believe AGM-88 HARMS “ride the beam” to the target at high velocity in one attack mode. I know they will still impact the point of radiation even if the equipment is then switched off. They do have mm radar for terminal guidance. I don’t know how discriminators are applied with various threats.

In a drone attack, hypothetically and practically, multiple compact defensive antenna arrays could be used that are close enough for convience but physically separate enough to be survivable with a single attack; think 50 foot cable. The ECM system could rapidly switch between arrays as they are destroyed / disabled to keep the capability online. This would provide reduced cost and increased capability while defeating a drone based SEAD threat.

Edit: ^ drone based SEAD / counter EW threat.

 

[Dizzy1971]

I just saw that President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was “attacked by explosive laden drones (article mentions two drones). Of course this is early and the fog of war is thick at this point. I know the US is frequently blamed for Venezuelan economic ills so we will get no info concerning details. I’m asking if anyone knows the type of drones used. I could see how a small civilian drone could wreak damage very easily, especially to a nuclear power plant. I believe the French recently flew a drone(decorated to resemble Superman) into a nuclear reactor. This was done to show vulnerabilities with security.

Not sure if this was a staged episode by the dictator,however I would point out that ISIS type fighters have been dropping IEDs on our warriors in Iraq/Afghanistan for a long time using DJI drones and others. This is a new concept....yet not as new as we might hope. In Iraq grenades have been dropped from relatively inexpensive quads. Do a search... combatants are not as dumb as “first world” peeps would love to believe. Just sayin.... drones HAVE been used successfully in the Middle East to wound and kill....Without any super high tech planning and ai nonsense. Just a guy with a phantom and a grenade stuck to it.

 

[scjerry]

Given the Pentagon's technology management disarray, the success of ISIS drones is due to the lack of simple battlefield countermeasures. One of the messages in this thread is looking to the future, any battlefield countermeasures will become more and more difficult, given the "AI nonsense".

 

[Babaco]

I think the ideal tool for this job is to use that thing in the video...

 

[gnirtS]

Given the Pentagon's technology management disarray, the success of ISIS drones is due to the lack of simple battlefield countermeasures. One of the messages in this thread is looking to the future, any battlefield countermeasures will become more and more difficult, given the "AI nonsense".

At the moment its inexcusable when you can detect a drone purely by its emissions from many miles away and jam it with $150 worth of gear. Currently its easy - anyone with access to google, a Pi and HackRF can do it with near no knowledge.
It might not be the case in years to come.

 

[sar104]

The aircraft don't have to connect to DJI to fly, except for initial sign in. After that they can be permanently offline. The issue with Government use was that those users wanted to be online to access maps etc., but did not know what was then being uploaded to DJI servers. What they have done to address those concerns is to allow the app to be kept entirely offline while the mobile device is online, rather than having to keep the device offline.

 

[gnirtS]

IF you're bored look at the DJI Geo website for Iraq and Syria - hundreds of max radius NFZ circles overlapping. A crude, desperate attempt to quickly put NFZs into place in response to the drone threat.
I guess then ISIS upgraded to "tinfoil".

 

[Dizzy1971]

It was my understanding from the news reports here in Canada ,that isis fighters had used consumer drones for their attacks,not sophisticated military hardware.

 

[tangomike7]

Given the Pentagon's technology management disarray, the success of ISIS drones is due to the lack of simple battlefield countermeasures. One of the messages in this thread is looking to the future, any battlefield countermeasures will become more and more difficult, given the "AI nonsense".

If your handed a fat piece of intelligence, such as being able to quantify launch sites, recovery sites, flight plan, GCS location etc., that you can use to qualify tactics, techniques and procedures of an adversary, wouldn’t you just sit back and collect data? Over time, you would have a beautiful picture put together. Some frontline foot soldier could leave a drone or remote powered up when he moves around the battlespace. What if it was left on while charging in a control post for days? The (MP) remote uses firmware and has a built in microphone right? The cell used for registration could be qwereyed with all source intelligence. The data passively collected, even through external siginals intelligence, would be an order of magnitude more valuable that preventing a drone attack in that theater.

 

[sar104]

No - that's incorrect. After the initial sign, if you don't connect to the internet, then the aircraft knows nothing about new NFZs or updates. I'm not arguing whether anyone is smart enough to do that - just pointing out that the aircraft can be used indefinitely without signing in or uploading any data at all. And that's true of the DJI GO 4 app as well as the Pilot app with silent mode.

 

[gnirtS]

Certainly doesn't need signing in. I fly 90% of the time at remote islands where theres no internet or phone signal. It just works. Doesn't need to phone home at all.

 

[sar104]

Listing hypothetical ways that a terrorist could screw up and reveal information isn't particularly useful, because the bottom line is that it can be done discreetly and securely.

Buy an aircraft, sign in with a new account on a burner device from somewhere else, disconnect and never connect device or aircraft to the internet again. You don't need DJI maps if you are flying FPV or using GPS waypoints. Hack the firmware, if necessary, to remove NFZs or disconnect the GPS module and fly FPV in ATTI.

Then you lost me with the rest of the discussion about the military and hackers.

 

[sar104]

For example - one that has been deployed in a number of locations:

SkyTracker - Overview

 

[gnirtS]

Security is hard. DJI have already failed in that their drones are rooted, the firmware has been hacked, the android source tree itself discovered. They left SSH keys public access on Github and everything else.
Ultimately the protocol has not been reviewed, clearly is NOT end to end encrypted and highly likely its flawed. At the very least you can drag telemetry and ID from it because Aeroscope does. Its likely you can spoof back into it as well.

 

[tangomike7]

DJI markets it’s Airwatch system to large security entities. It’s available on many platforms including a portable miniaturized suitcase version, ideal for sporting events, that displays geographically any powered DJI system within a radius of dozens of km/miles. It is also available as a permanent installation to correction institutions with a high stated detection range. A capability to interdict an active airborne DJI system is unknown. When an airframe is powered up, at least the airframe S/N and email used for initial first registration is beaconed from the airframe in the clear along with GPS coordinates. Additionally, it is highly probable the ground control station location will be displayed to the airwatch terminal. This provides early warning of a sUAV launch & it’s telemetry in addition to allowing a local response to investigate the physical location of the operator.

Referencing the attack in Venezuela, the sequence of events and context is confusing and illogical allowing a wide range of speculation regarding the motive and intent of the various actors involved. This may be by design or by coincidence. A rebel group could use a commonly available mortar system or other standoff ranged weapon to create mass pandimonium if just chaos and embarrassmen was the goal. However, by using a novel zero day platform (against a head of state), the international media became fixated on the debate highlighting weaponized drones and by proxy Venezuelan issues giving the regimes reputation a black eye.

The big grey elephant in the room is what kind of risk assessment did Venezuelan state security do prior to this event and what countermeasures were taken. You have thousands of soldiers marching down a street in an obviously unstable tactical environment. That’s a massively soft, sensitive and condensed target that is in the open. They took an unnecessary risk and paid for it pubically. Video of thousands of regular troops running for their lives is the type of publicity that is pegged out on the bad meter to propaganda sensitive regimes. No one thought it was a bad idea on their intelligence team?

 

[sar104]

DJI Aeroscope is probably the technology in question: Aeroscope - DJI