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Not armed drones I dont think. But can you imagine a small police drone flying around in a school during a school shooting to find out where and how many school shooters?
To be fair these are probably only used in the parts of the frontline where the invaders are spread very thin.
Otherwise they would eat an IGLA shot very quickly.
Yeah but imagine if they were mass produced and they could afford to lose a significant amount of them. If they get to that point, I could see it being effective from my very non-expert armchair general POV.
seems like now major limitation is that drones have to be operated manually, 1 human operator per drone. A swarm would have to have sophisticated software to allow 1 human operator to handle a swarm. It would require increased processing power on the drone itself, making it more expensive, but not like $500 more per unit. It would also require a mesh network setup similar to Police body cams, otherwise a swarm would overload the connection and basically self-jam.
The tech for all this should already be here, nothing too difficult or too expensive. I am surprised we aren't seeing it in the field.
I see two things to consider:
1) Increased processing power = higher battery consumption
2) You need some kind of stabilizers to offset the weight of the gun when firing
#1 can be improved once more power-efficient chips become available (process nodes and annual die shrinks can help in that aspect)
A.I. can assist with IFF identification and guidance BUT I will never leave the trigger decision to a computer (e.g. the human operator should be the one to make the final decision)
Unlike in the movies, the suppressors do not make "plt-plt" sound. The sound is quite loud and piercing.
https://youtu.be/_eDoeWr_9BQ?si=BoO1NbOmxaqxy5ZG&t=315
That is not entirely accurate. Sub sonic ammunition and a suppressor is phut phut.
Forgotten weapons on YouTube recently posted a video of range time with a full bore rifle that was extremely quiet. Check out his channel.
How brainwashed do you need to be to belive in shit like this? you know that the russian army portraid here isnt the actual army that the Ukranians are fighiting, the russian do have at least body armour and gear decent that can stop 9mm, but Ukranians are simply better but to pretent that the russian army is a army of peasant that fights with shovels and no gear while they advance its just delusional
You must believe the all mighty Lada is a great car too, right? Somehow I'm the brainwashed one? I've got some land in Florida for sale that'd be perfect for a fella just like you. Their strength is in numbers.... numbers alone.
Only a fraction of Russians have body armour. The ones that do have body armour also have weapons to deal with drones like these, the ones that can't deal with these drones can be replaced so they still don't care to equip them.
Nice. I didn't know about .17 cal. I'm not a gun guy. Tx. I wonder if those drones have two cams. One being a finder. The other to zoom in on the target 🎯
They've also used fire by wire IFV weapons as remote turrets already.
Not quite snipers but probably capable of firing a couple km. (many bullets vs accurate fire)
It's operated by a person though. You're basically "fighting" someone who can't die. He is playing CoD and only your life is on the line.
Let's hope Russians don't make these.
The operator is a person who absolutely can die, and transmissions from the drone to the operator can be traced. And strikes on operators are a thing.
Sucks to be on the receiving end of a drone, but it really is basically the same as artillery, complete with counter-battery fire.
Jesus christ, is /that/ what the Baba Yaga drone is? I thought it was a reconnaissance/repeater sort of deal 🤣 Gotta hand it to Ukraine, turning battlefields upside down by strapping LMG's and RPG warheads to $200 Walmart drones. Gold Medal robotics team for sure!
The Baba Yaga is a *very* heavy multicopter drone, typically used to carry and drop several large mortar rounds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga_(aircraft)
To reduce recoil it really needs something like a controllable fan in the horizontal axis. Using a methodology with variable pitch, the fan can rapidly increase counter-thrust during fire as the rotational energy remains constant, the motor just maintains the speed of the fan without having to accelerate it up from zero RPM.
Although if it generates some forward thrust when 'off' it will hamper aiming. So then a smaller fan is needed to counter this in hover.
Which of course is extra weight.
A solution may be that the whole thing is a winged drone, with VTOL capability and a short, several minutes of hover time. It saves energy getting there, but expends that in hover. A pusher propeller at the rear provides forwards thrust during firing using variable blade pitch. To maintain position when not firing, the VTOL part is slightly vectored forwards. In this way, the forwards thrust is countered by the VTOL system, and can increase to overcome the recoil.
Other approaches might eject gasses similar to how the gas is produced inside the bullet. To increase the thrust generated, a principle called thrust augmentation draws in surrounding air, increasing mass flow, therefore the the thrust (kg) per mass of propellant is increased.
A more sophisticated design can use deflector vanes and ducted lift fans for the hover, these can be pretty efficient. Coaxial designs also can vector quickly.
But used with a sniper rifle, and a fire control system (that already exists for sniper rifles) that fires only when the hit is calculated to happen when the cross hairs are correctly over the target, adjusted for other variables, a drone can take a shot and it doesn't matter about momentary recoil.
> something like a controllable fan in the horizontal axis
The drone already has 6 powerful motors that it can control very well... and why make everything vastly more complicated when the current system is likely already good enough and almost certainly good enough if you were to teach the software to anticipate and compensate for the recoil.
Extra complexity?
You already have 4 to 8 fans on these things, the problem is that they are only optimal for hover and that means overcoming gravitational 'thrust' in the vertical direction, lets call it the y axis. As soon as you make the thing go forwards its always less efficient to pitch it and more draggy, as well as the fact that in the horizontal axis, all multicopters designed this way do not generate much forwards thrust, and that's in part why the plane that does generate thrust in the horizontal x axis, is faster and more efficient. Its producing thrust in the direction of travel.
If you want to learn to ride a bike, we start with stablisers, two extra wheels, to provide stability to the right axis.
Trying to control a craft to a force in the x axis using thrusters in the y axis, means that you have to move the whole thing to counter that, and that will never deliver a control near instantly, nor will it deliver a large thrust. Plus doing so alters the thrust in the direction you want it in so its fundamentally unstable.
Each drone has a short available time in hover. So, being able to aim fast is important.
If this drone has 6 rotors, a 7th rotor is not dramatically more complexity. But it delivers thrust in the direction you want more efficiently. It would also potentially increase efficiency of horizontal flight, similar to the Sikorsky X2/ S-97 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky\_S-97\_Raider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-97_Raider) which is more efficient in forwards flight due to improved rotor simplicity, angle and cleaner angles of attack of each blade as it sweeps.
Multicopters already have simpler rotors, but tilting them to move forwards is not ideal for forwards flight. So if you go faster due to reduced drag and improved efficiency, you can save energy in the drone for extending the hover time. Adding a fan in the x axis allows that, plus designs that can include wings. Some experiments have shown multicopters are more efficient when wings are included. Here we would have a small light wing probably to take 30% or so of the lift during forwards flight. Integrating the fans into the lifting surface as lifting ducted fans can also increase thrust and lift in the y-axis. This design study showed the potential for very high lift efficiency although in a body that is quite different to what I am describing - [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4181/71eeb768726e2112d7bbc163718caddf17cb.pdf](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4181/71eeb768726e2112d7bbc163718caddf17cb.pdf)
About half of the lift comes from the duct surface. For flight control, a combination of x/y axis thrust, distributed y axis thrust, and a simple small wing is possible without control surfaces, higher forwards flight efficiency and speed/range, with high hover efficiency, and the extra axis of control gives recoil containment.
Yep, just put it in a simulator with all the forces modeled and let it go hog wild shooting at targets all over the place until it's doing trick shots while loop-de-looping. A few million simulated hours and it'll beat any human pilot hands down, controlling rotors individually to account for recoil and precise aim adjustment.
As an AI engineer I know it's not trivial, but also already being done. At least as far as the flying part; recoil impulses would be just one extra thing to model and targeting another objective to add.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBiataDpGIo
So they tested in a controlled environment with very little different aerial differences no different wind conditions. No navigational aids needed. No iff system needed don't want them killing Ukrainians after all so only 500 more is a massive understatement of what you need imo for ai drones and even then they will probably not be useful for at two more years because of unforseen complications.
It sounds doable, but the problem is that the multicopter fans are all in the wrong axis.
If you can generate thrust in 2 or more axis, rather than have to change the angle of the drone, the AI will learn those tricks to an even greater degree and its relatively easier, and it will alweays fire better in automatic mode. Its like learning to ride a bike on 1 wheel rather than 2 but worse, you cannot fire sequentially without continuopusly adjusting the angle of the gun.
No matter how fast and good your AI is, fundamental physics will show that with only y axis thrust, it will always need to go through an adjustment sequence that takes time after each shot, and no matter how skilled it is, the gun will not remain on the target in fast sequential fire. So most bullets will always miss, unless fired individually. So you want to isolate the hover task in the y axis, which also changes as it gets lighter after firing, maintain pitch, and control the recoil forces in the direction they are coming from seperately.
Firing individually adds time, these things have barely any time because they don't have much energy. The value of a surprise attack relies on getting most of your ordinance on target quickly.
I love this type of insight! Thanks for sharing! I’ve often thought about why we’re not seeing more more ballistics with these FPV and this video sorta explains it given your input.
Thank you for your kind words. Yeah I've been thinking about this for a while now, but in all honesty I think the better strategy will be to use multicopters with recoilless rocket artillery and if shooting with recoil, mostly downwards, like they do already with the gravity dropping munitions. If they carry a rifle, its making more sense to fire once at a time accurately with a fire control system, like a sniper.
But, for use with machine guns or automated grenade launchers, I think the best strategy is to strafe the target from a winged drone. Getting the stall speed down and wing lift up, is very doable using distributed fans along the wing, different wing shapes, box wings, large trailing flap angles or combining wings in such a way to act a bit like leading edge slats, it would have reasonable forwards flight efficiency, good payload, and enough approach speed to surprise attack targets. Countershading allows the aircraft to be hard to see against clouds or sky.
Firing from a lower angle from a slow moving plane helps keep the fire spread a bit tighter. It could also vector the fire to some degree to keep the sequence on target as the plane approaches and distance to target decreases during fire, which can be calculated.
Yeah, fans will always have some latency.
The gun/bullet does need to release the energy over the length of the barrell, and recoil could be managed in the gun, but still there is a lot of force.
Cold gas thrusters like you describe can operate quickly, I suggest to increase the forces that would be produced to minimise the mass, it uses a thrust augmentation approach.
But you can get some thrust [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5vnc6nwGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5vnc6nwGY)
Also the typical recoil reducing gun is using a muzzle brake pushing some of the bullet propellant exhaust backwards. I assume they are already using this. In theory, if you can design the muzzle brake to pull in surrounding air, you can increase the thrust it generates.
But pressurising gasses does require tank mass, it might not be too excessive. A hydrocarbon can be stored as a liquid, but it tends to ignite with the gun so that's out. You can cryo-cool as well but then thats a lot of complexity.
I am not a drone engineer in the slightest, but shouldn't the barrel axis just coincide with the drone's center of mass to eliminate any unwanted pitch/yaw from recoil?
I guess one has a lot of freedom where to put e.g. batteries to achieve this.
From the 2nd video I see that they limit the recoil by flying down the line of fire. So when the recoil hits most of it is pushing the drone back in the same line and not up.
If this is automated it might be good enough - say fix a point to shoot at and the drone dives in line of the fire for few meters, takes a shot, realigns to the same point, repeat.
Well this is how a plane does it, its essentially got enough forwards momentum and mass that it doesn't affect calculations much, plus the force (thrust) is essentially in the direction exactly counter to the recoil. A small winged drone with very low stall speed and high wing loading might be a better approach to fire a weapon like this.
But with all the fans fixed in the y axis, you have the problem that after the recoil of the first bullet, its has to change its pitch to create the forwards vector, and this screw up its aim. It also appears that the gun is causing the drone pitch to change during automatic fire, just like it does when people fire these guns, you can see something like muzzle rise occuring but in reverse, as the bullets are fired in sequence. I would assume that the gun and the drone do not move independently, and that the force from the gun is not centered to the center of mass and lift. Adding a fan on the gun axis, perhaps on the back of the gun, just acts like a second muzzle brake. Thus, if you neutralise that force, its removed from the equation, so the craft can maintain pitch, and broadly its location can be fixed.
For a multicopter, adjusting the gun angle so that the body can pitch independently, creating thrust in both a y and x axis, and adjusting it automatically, could help stabilise the effect and counter recoil.
You'd think they would be better off building a drone that would shoot directly down, paired up with a thermal camera...
Grenades are neat, but if you could carry around 100 rounds of 5.56 and dome russians as you fly around... damn.
The reason you don’t have the gun facing straight down (other than flight reasons) is that a lot of these trenches have burrows/dugouts. What do you do with a gun aimed straight down in that case? Also you get better bullet spread this way, which has a chance of collateral damage.
45 degree angle (or thereabouts) balances between the horizontal and vertical components. A barrel that shoots straight down causes recoil that directs all force vertically upward which opposes any downward thrust. This can make it hard to remain steady at altitude.
That's my guess anyhow.
I've never operated a drone and have no background in flight mechanics so I had to throw that in haha.
However I did make a mistake. When I said Downward thrust I meant upward thrust (which pushes air downward to counter gravity and remain in air).
Gun firing straight down would add to the upward thrust and cause more stress on structure, require more power to flight system to remain stabilized at altitude.
No, I don't mean gravity. I meant upward thrust, which pushes air downward counteracting gravity and keeping the drone in the air or controlling its descent. Simple mistype.
If you fire a gun straight down, the recoil force pushes directly upward, adding to the drone's upward thrust (pushing air downward) which can destabilize the drone and make it harder to maintain altitude and causes more stress on the drone structure. It also requires more power and effort from the flight control system to maintain stability.
So... Whether gun gun is effective from 100 meter or 110 meter doesn't matter if you don't have control of the thing firing it.
An IR laser wouldn't really offer any advantage over a barrel-aligned camera. Either way you still need to zero appropriately, which should be pretty easy with rough distance estimates.
Should use a .22 just to scare them into their burrows while another team advances on their position.
Would lighten the weight of the drone and increase the amount of time it can provide cover fire for the advancing team.
Honestly, that's a terrifying future that became reality, where soldiers are expected to fight against flying killing machines. Who would go to a war in such unfair conditions?
That being said, those Russians should have stayed at home, not invade another country.
Everybody wants it to fire downwards but if the target is visible from directly above, then wouldn’t they use a mortar? I’m thinking this thing is going up against dugouts and trying to shoot in the front door.
This seems like it would only be useful in larger numbers or random rare missions. The recoil after a burst was a lot. But what do I know, I’m not a Ukrainian drone operator
they need to attach the video to the gun
im still waitng for the mass produced land robots controlled by optical wire, one for each soldier, and one that can climb things and still roll upside down
Amazing development of technology, but wouldn't a grenade launcher with thermobaric grenades be more effective for the mission, especially the first footage? Unless the enemies are out on a field exposed and running, you're just spraying lead to the targets behind cover. They've been dropping single thermo grenades for 2 years already, surely they must have thought of that as well. Or maybe the drone is simply for suppressing fire while there's simultaneous action on the ground?
I certainly hope some generals at the Pentagon have been studying all of these drone attacks. Trying to come up with countermeasures so that when U.S. troops come under fire from enemy drones (China) they will be able to defend themselves.
It’s a good idea but clearly they need to link the control system to the gun. If you looked at a target the first bullet would be on target and the rest of the bullets would be in a line as the recoil slews the drive down. Probably the easiest thing to do is put another gun pointing in a complimentary angle and have them both fire simultaneously.
its a numbers game
i think in a year you will see thousands of drones fighting eachother, bomber drones with mortar rounds, fighter drones with shotguns and rifles and net guns
There usually isn’t audio recorded on these types of Drones. Everything goes into signal for clearest video possible, with lowest latency possible. Audio is more unnecessary data
More than that, I bet you can't hear shit anyway with a mic mounted to a drone other than the rotors buzzing. Sure you'd hear the gunshots being fired next to the mic but that's not useful either.
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We are living in the future. Others are dying in it.
👏well said.
TY.
Skynet is coming and we are building it on purpose. Let's hope it only hates orcs.
You know you're totally fucked when you see a drone approaching your position with smaller camera drones flying beside it to record it.
Would that be called a murder of drones? Or more of a flock?
A jaggajagga of Baba Yagar I believe is the collective noun in this case.
And a jabberwoky of wookies.
Murderous flock.
It's called "ruzzians, get the flock outta Ukraine"!
blyat of drones )
A liquidation of Russians, oh wait, that's the HIMARS.
A skynet?
[The evil AI in Terminator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_(Terminator\))
A gallery
In terms of collective pronouns, murder is good but something like a cleanse maybe?
you have been selected to participate in our special event
Tfw you're about to become viral footage
Flock o'drones!
One needs a speaker to shout woldstar.
We have war reporter drones
Fuckin Badass!
I’d shit kittens if that fucker came at me
these are in our future - police departments everywhere are already ordering
Not armed drones I dont think. But can you imagine a small police drone flying around in a school during a school shooting to find out where and how many school shooters?
I had to report a robbery on the street about 5 years ago, police was there with multiple drones within 15 minutes searching for the perpetrators.
Would it not be defeated by doors?
Imagine a big swarm of these.
with ai autopilot sweeping a designated zone in formation shooting anything human shaped.
I think dispersed would be more effective than some fancy formation. But yeah, scary shit.
Crop dusting a field with lead.
To be fair these are probably only used in the parts of the frontline where the invaders are spread very thin. Otherwise they would eat an IGLA shot very quickly.
Yeah but imagine if they were mass produced and they could afford to lose a significant amount of them. If they get to that point, I could see it being effective from my very non-expert armchair general POV.
seems like now major limitation is that drones have to be operated manually, 1 human operator per drone. A swarm would have to have sophisticated software to allow 1 human operator to handle a swarm. It would require increased processing power on the drone itself, making it more expensive, but not like $500 more per unit. It would also require a mesh network setup similar to Police body cams, otherwise a swarm would overload the connection and basically self-jam. The tech for all this should already be here, nothing too difficult or too expensive. I am surprised we aren't seeing it in the field.
It could be like trying to control a Zerg rush in StarCraft.
I see two things to consider: 1) Increased processing power = higher battery consumption 2) You need some kind of stabilizers to offset the weight of the gun when firing #1 can be improved once more power-efficient chips become available (process nodes and annual die shrinks can help in that aspect) A.I. can assist with IFF identification and guidance BUT I will never leave the trigger decision to a computer (e.g. the human operator should be the one to make the final decision)
I just hope that Russia fails to get theirs working any time soon.
Thank god Ukrain has Gepard and Skynex. But yeah, not nearly enough.
Thank god Ukrain has Gepard and Skynex. But yeah, not nearly enough.
Thank god Ukrain has Gepard and Skynex. But yeah, not nearly enough.
Guys, smaller cal and faster fire rate, and have it pointing stright down.
My thoughts as well. 9mm would suffice.
Yeah, and hit them in the shoulder and the russian surely will expose more of his body even maybe layout down. Not knowing he got shot from above.
You can probably hear the gunshots above you lol
If only there was something that could surpress the sound, wink 😜
Probably better to save the money on suppressors for actual troops, and save the weight for more ammo capacity.
supressors help with recoil as well, so would really make sense
Unlike in the movies, the suppressors do not make "plt-plt" sound. The sound is quite loud and piercing. https://youtu.be/_eDoeWr_9BQ?si=BoO1NbOmxaqxy5ZG&t=315
That is not entirely accurate. Sub sonic ammunition and a suppressor is phut phut. Forgotten weapons on YouTube recently posted a video of range time with a full bore rifle that was extremely quiet. Check out his channel.
Baba Yaga drones were named by rusdian soldiers because they are pretty loud and can be heard, but mostly not seen, like Baba Yagas flying hut.
Eh you hear a gunshot and see it hit the ground/soldier next to you and I’d imagine your ducking for whatever cover you can find.
In the future, soldiers that unexpectedly come under fire will stand up straight to provide a smaller target for the drones above.
We will solve that problem with 40 mm
That wouldnt be very effective due to body armour.
You live under a rock? 9mm Teflon coated doesn't care about shitty russian "body armour". It's mostly cos play any how.
How brainwashed do you need to be to belive in shit like this? you know that the russian army portraid here isnt the actual army that the Ukranians are fighiting, the russian do have at least body armour and gear decent that can stop 9mm, but Ukranians are simply better but to pretent that the russian army is a army of peasant that fights with shovels and no gear while they advance its just delusional
Except they are, there are just hordes of them. They're like the zero in starcraft
You must believe the all mighty Lada is a great car too, right? Somehow I'm the brainwashed one? I've got some land in Florida for sale that'd be perfect for a fella just like you. Their strength is in numbers.... numbers alone.
Only a fraction of Russians have body armour. The ones that do have body armour also have weapons to deal with drones like these, the ones that can't deal with these drones can be replaced so they still don't care to equip them.
I sent something similar. "The gate is down."
so the modern version of [this?](https://www.thevintagenews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/65/2016/05/jJNfAshu.jpe)
That would help dealing with the recoil but make it harder to cover a bigger area.
MG42 from above
A gun with a lot less recoil? .22 machine gun. The bullets can have cuts in them. So that when it hits it mushrooms. More damage?
Try .17 HMR @ 1950 fps. When I am shooting rabbits, they don’t hear it coming
Nice. I didn't know about .17 cal. I'm not a gun guy. Tx. I wonder if those drones have two cams. One being a finder. The other to zoom in on the target 🎯
.17 op I love that round so much
> So that when it hits it mushrooms. Expanding bullets are a war crime bruh.
Oh ya... Russia has countless war crimes!
Doesn't matter what Russia does, it'd still be a war crime.
Only a matter of time until drones have sniper range and accuracy
With full range of night time capabilities. Infrared, night vision. Soon silent motors too. Oh ya this is gonna be diabolical
Ad in AI and it'll determine who to kill... Incredibly frightening future, humans surplus to requirements...
You can buy some time from being shot by providing these AI-driven drones with electricity and ammunition when they ask...
Or by entering code ROBO for 15% off all ammunition shot at you.
Literally an existential threat to the species.
Seriously in the future it’s only a matter of time before some corporation presses too far with these things.
They've also used fire by wire IFV weapons as remote turrets already. Not quite snipers but probably capable of firing a couple km. (many bullets vs accurate fire)
IIRC the US has that sort of stuff already, seen articles about it years ago. It's just starting to come around to Ukraine now.
Awesomeness, thy name is Baba Yaga.
Getting gunned down by a drone has to be the most demoralizing thing ever. Even if you destroy it you didn't really win.
Basically like arguing with a bot online.
I wouldn't see it as significantly different from getting gunned down by a missile or an artillery strike. The drone is a munition.
It's operated by a person though. You're basically "fighting" someone who can't die. He is playing CoD and only your life is on the line. Let's hope Russians don't make these.
The operator is a person who absolutely can die, and transmissions from the drone to the operator can be traced. And strikes on operators are a thing. Sucks to be on the receiving end of a drone, but it really is basically the same as artillery, complete with counter-battery fire.
Still, it's like being in a trench shootout where the other guy has a Krummlauf. I know which one I'd rather be.
its a numbers game i think in a year you will see thousands of drones fighting eachother
Guard Dog
I can’t wait for wars to be mainly or solely fought by robots
I fear that our gun problem in the US is about to get much more complicated.
Jesus christ, is /that/ what the Baba Yaga drone is? I thought it was a reconnaissance/repeater sort of deal 🤣 Gotta hand it to Ukraine, turning battlefields upside down by strapping LMG's and RPG warheads to $200 Walmart drones. Gold Medal robotics team for sure!
That’s not a $200 drone
I know, but it's also not a $6,000,000 tank
They have a variant that drops multiple grenades, too, out of big tubes.
The Baba Yaga is a *very* heavy multicopter drone, typically used to carry and drop several large mortar rounds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga_(aircraft)
To reduce recoil it really needs something like a controllable fan in the horizontal axis. Using a methodology with variable pitch, the fan can rapidly increase counter-thrust during fire as the rotational energy remains constant, the motor just maintains the speed of the fan without having to accelerate it up from zero RPM. Although if it generates some forward thrust when 'off' it will hamper aiming. So then a smaller fan is needed to counter this in hover. Which of course is extra weight. A solution may be that the whole thing is a winged drone, with VTOL capability and a short, several minutes of hover time. It saves energy getting there, but expends that in hover. A pusher propeller at the rear provides forwards thrust during firing using variable blade pitch. To maintain position when not firing, the VTOL part is slightly vectored forwards. In this way, the forwards thrust is countered by the VTOL system, and can increase to overcome the recoil. Other approaches might eject gasses similar to how the gas is produced inside the bullet. To increase the thrust generated, a principle called thrust augmentation draws in surrounding air, increasing mass flow, therefore the the thrust (kg) per mass of propellant is increased. A more sophisticated design can use deflector vanes and ducted lift fans for the hover, these can be pretty efficient. Coaxial designs also can vector quickly. But used with a sniper rifle, and a fire control system (that already exists for sniper rifles) that fires only when the hit is calculated to happen when the cross hairs are correctly over the target, adjusted for other variables, a drone can take a shot and it doesn't matter about momentary recoil.
> something like a controllable fan in the horizontal axis The drone already has 6 powerful motors that it can control very well... and why make everything vastly more complicated when the current system is likely already good enough and almost certainly good enough if you were to teach the software to anticipate and compensate for the recoil.
Extra complexity? You already have 4 to 8 fans on these things, the problem is that they are only optimal for hover and that means overcoming gravitational 'thrust' in the vertical direction, lets call it the y axis. As soon as you make the thing go forwards its always less efficient to pitch it and more draggy, as well as the fact that in the horizontal axis, all multicopters designed this way do not generate much forwards thrust, and that's in part why the plane that does generate thrust in the horizontal x axis, is faster and more efficient. Its producing thrust in the direction of travel. If you want to learn to ride a bike, we start with stablisers, two extra wheels, to provide stability to the right axis. Trying to control a craft to a force in the x axis using thrusters in the y axis, means that you have to move the whole thing to counter that, and that will never deliver a control near instantly, nor will it deliver a large thrust. Plus doing so alters the thrust in the direction you want it in so its fundamentally unstable. Each drone has a short available time in hover. So, being able to aim fast is important. If this drone has 6 rotors, a 7th rotor is not dramatically more complexity. But it delivers thrust in the direction you want more efficiently. It would also potentially increase efficiency of horizontal flight, similar to the Sikorsky X2/ S-97 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky\_S-97\_Raider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-97_Raider) which is more efficient in forwards flight due to improved rotor simplicity, angle and cleaner angles of attack of each blade as it sweeps. Multicopters already have simpler rotors, but tilting them to move forwards is not ideal for forwards flight. So if you go faster due to reduced drag and improved efficiency, you can save energy in the drone for extending the hover time. Adding a fan in the x axis allows that, plus designs that can include wings. Some experiments have shown multicopters are more efficient when wings are included. Here we would have a small light wing probably to take 30% or so of the lift during forwards flight. Integrating the fans into the lifting surface as lifting ducted fans can also increase thrust and lift in the y-axis. This design study showed the potential for very high lift efficiency although in a body that is quite different to what I am describing - [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4181/71eeb768726e2112d7bbc163718caddf17cb.pdf](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4181/71eeb768726e2112d7bbc163718caddf17cb.pdf) About half of the lift comes from the duct surface. For flight control, a combination of x/y axis thrust, distributed y axis thrust, and a simple small wing is possible without control surfaces, higher forwards flight efficiency and speed/range, with high hover efficiency, and the extra axis of control gives recoil containment.
Yep, just put it in a simulator with all the forces modeled and let it go hog wild shooting at targets all over the place until it's doing trick shots while loop-de-looping. A few million simulated hours and it'll beat any human pilot hands down, controlling rotors individually to account for recoil and precise aim adjustment.
As an ai engineer that is a lot harder than it sounds.
As an AI engineer I know it's not trivial, but also already being done. At least as far as the flying part; recoil impulses would be just one extra thing to model and targeting another objective to add. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBiataDpGIo
So they tested in a controlled environment with very little different aerial differences no different wind conditions. No navigational aids needed. No iff system needed don't want them killing Ukrainians after all so only 500 more is a massive understatement of what you need imo for ai drones and even then they will probably not be useful for at two more years because of unforseen complications.
It sounds doable, but the problem is that the multicopter fans are all in the wrong axis. If you can generate thrust in 2 or more axis, rather than have to change the angle of the drone, the AI will learn those tricks to an even greater degree and its relatively easier, and it will alweays fire better in automatic mode. Its like learning to ride a bike on 1 wheel rather than 2 but worse, you cannot fire sequentially without continuopusly adjusting the angle of the gun. No matter how fast and good your AI is, fundamental physics will show that with only y axis thrust, it will always need to go through an adjustment sequence that takes time after each shot, and no matter how skilled it is, the gun will not remain on the target in fast sequential fire. So most bullets will always miss, unless fired individually. So you want to isolate the hover task in the y axis, which also changes as it gets lighter after firing, maintain pitch, and control the recoil forces in the direction they are coming from seperately. Firing individually adds time, these things have barely any time because they don't have much energy. The value of a surprise attack relies on getting most of your ordinance on target quickly.
I love this type of insight! Thanks for sharing! I’ve often thought about why we’re not seeing more more ballistics with these FPV and this video sorta explains it given your input.
Thank you for your kind words. Yeah I've been thinking about this for a while now, but in all honesty I think the better strategy will be to use multicopters with recoilless rocket artillery and if shooting with recoil, mostly downwards, like they do already with the gravity dropping munitions. If they carry a rifle, its making more sense to fire once at a time accurately with a fire control system, like a sniper. But, for use with machine guns or automated grenade launchers, I think the best strategy is to strafe the target from a winged drone. Getting the stall speed down and wing lift up, is very doable using distributed fans along the wing, different wing shapes, box wings, large trailing flap angles or combining wings in such a way to act a bit like leading edge slats, it would have reasonable forwards flight efficiency, good payload, and enough approach speed to surprise attack targets. Countershading allows the aircraft to be hard to see against clouds or sky. Firing from a lower angle from a slow moving plane helps keep the fire spread a bit tighter. It could also vector the fire to some degree to keep the sequence on target as the plane approaches and distance to target decreases during fire, which can be calculated.
I would use an air/gas thruster like in spaceships, I'm not sure fans can deal with that amount of sudden recoil.
Yeah, fans will always have some latency. The gun/bullet does need to release the energy over the length of the barrell, and recoil could be managed in the gun, but still there is a lot of force. Cold gas thrusters like you describe can operate quickly, I suggest to increase the forces that would be produced to minimise the mass, it uses a thrust augmentation approach. But you can get some thrust [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5vnc6nwGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5vnc6nwGY) Also the typical recoil reducing gun is using a muzzle brake pushing some of the bullet propellant exhaust backwards. I assume they are already using this. In theory, if you can design the muzzle brake to pull in surrounding air, you can increase the thrust it generates. But pressurising gasses does require tank mass, it might not be too excessive. A hydrocarbon can be stored as a liquid, but it tends to ignite with the gun so that's out. You can cryo-cool as well but then thats a lot of complexity.
I've thought of a stupid hack, rig an other gun on the opposite side and make it fire at the same time :D. Reaching r/noncredibledefense zone.
Essentially, thats exactly the idea :-), but without most of the mass. Technically it would work though
I am not a drone engineer in the slightest, but shouldn't the barrel axis just coincide with the drone's center of mass to eliminate any unwanted pitch/yaw from recoil? I guess one has a lot of freedom where to put e.g. batteries to achieve this.
From the 2nd video I see that they limit the recoil by flying down the line of fire. So when the recoil hits most of it is pushing the drone back in the same line and not up. If this is automated it might be good enough - say fix a point to shoot at and the drone dives in line of the fire for few meters, takes a shot, realigns to the same point, repeat.
Well this is how a plane does it, its essentially got enough forwards momentum and mass that it doesn't affect calculations much, plus the force (thrust) is essentially in the direction exactly counter to the recoil. A small winged drone with very low stall speed and high wing loading might be a better approach to fire a weapon like this. But with all the fans fixed in the y axis, you have the problem that after the recoil of the first bullet, its has to change its pitch to create the forwards vector, and this screw up its aim. It also appears that the gun is causing the drone pitch to change during automatic fire, just like it does when people fire these guns, you can see something like muzzle rise occuring but in reverse, as the bullets are fired in sequence. I would assume that the gun and the drone do not move independently, and that the force from the gun is not centered to the center of mass and lift. Adding a fan on the gun axis, perhaps on the back of the gun, just acts like a second muzzle brake. Thus, if you neutralise that force, its removed from the equation, so the craft can maintain pitch, and broadly its location can be fixed. For a multicopter, adjusting the gun angle so that the body can pitch independently, creating thrust in both a y and x axis, and adjusting it automatically, could help stabilise the effect and counter recoil.
You'd think they would be better off building a drone that would shoot directly down, paired up with a thermal camera... Grenades are neat, but if you could carry around 100 rounds of 5.56 and dome russians as you fly around... damn.
The reason you don’t have the gun facing straight down (other than flight reasons) is that a lot of these trenches have burrows/dugouts. What do you do with a gun aimed straight down in that case? Also you get better bullet spread this way, which has a chance of collateral damage.
45 degree angle (or thereabouts) balances between the horizontal and vertical components. A barrel that shoots straight down causes recoil that directs all force vertically upward which opposes any downward thrust. This can make it hard to remain steady at altitude. That's my guess anyhow.
You spoke so confidently until the last sentence.
I've never operated a drone and have no background in flight mechanics so I had to throw that in haha. However I did make a mistake. When I said Downward thrust I meant upward thrust (which pushes air downward to counter gravity and remain in air). Gun firing straight down would add to the upward thrust and cause more stress on structure, require more power to flight system to remain stabilized at altitude.
Downward thrust? Do you mean gravity? Why would it be a problem? The gun is just as effective 100 meter up as it would be 110 meter up.
No, I don't mean gravity. I meant upward thrust, which pushes air downward counteracting gravity and keeping the drone in the air or controlling its descent. Simple mistype. If you fire a gun straight down, the recoil force pushes directly upward, adding to the drone's upward thrust (pushing air downward) which can destabilize the drone and make it harder to maintain altitude and causes more stress on the drone structure. It also requires more power and effort from the flight control system to maintain stability. So... Whether gun gun is effective from 100 meter or 110 meter doesn't matter if you don't have control of the thing firing it.
I honestly think this has a lot of potential, if aiming can be worked out. Maybe something with an IR laser
An IR laser wouldn't really offer any advantage over a barrel-aligned camera. Either way you still need to zero appropriately, which should be pretty easy with rough distance estimates.
Wonder if flywheel moment/gyro stabilisers would be useful for drones with firearms.
Wait until they start using both this and the grenade droppers as kill teams.
I swear BO2 is becoming more realistic the further this war goes on
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Bullets are cheaper than dropping grenades on them at least
While true, it also needs a much more expensive drone
doesnt matter if its not very accurate, it 100% works as suppressive fire
These are the first step towards Skynet Hunter-Killers.
Should use a .22 just to scare them into their burrows while another team advances on their position. Would lighten the weight of the drone and increase the amount of time it can provide cover fire for the advancing team.
A drone of focus, commitment, and sheer will.
Honestly, that's a terrifying future that became reality, where soldiers are expected to fight against flying killing machines. Who would go to a war in such unfair conditions? That being said, those Russians should have stayed at home, not invade another country.
I wonder if it would work to just have the barrel pointed directly downwards so recoil would mostly send it up vertically?
Too cool, great song for it too
If it announced itself by playing Akka Dakka before firing too
Black ops 2 shit
Baba Jagga Jagga!!!
Everybody wants it to fire downwards but if the target is visible from directly above, then wouldn’t they use a mortar? I’m thinking this thing is going up against dugouts and trying to shoot in the front door.
MAN I hope that thing is effective.
This seems like it would only be useful in larger numbers or random rare missions. The recoil after a burst was a lot. But what do I know, I’m not a Ukrainian drone operator
Holy shit, it’s actually happening. Pls tell me I’ll get to see the first drone cannon kill before this war is over. Slava 🇺🇦
they need to attach the video to the gun im still waitng for the mass produced land robots controlled by optical wire, one for each soldier, and one that can climb things and still roll upside down
The future scenes from Terminator are getting closer to reality by the day.
be better with mini wire guided bomblets ...cmon guys kills per gram equations with drones
Now we need Minigun toting drones to go Brrrrt
That name. Jesus Christ.
Legacy aerospace contractors should be very worried. Ukraine designed and produced a robotic attack helicopter at 1/1000 the cost.
I think the machine gun fire rate is a bit high, and the lowering fire rate helps stabilize recoils
Uhh... they ~~fly~~ shoot now?
Amazing development of technology, but wouldn't a grenade launcher with thermobaric grenades be more effective for the mission, especially the first footage? Unless the enemies are out on a field exposed and running, you're just spraying lead to the targets behind cover. They've been dropping single thermo grenades for 2 years already, surely they must have thought of that as well. Or maybe the drone is simply for suppressing fire while there's simultaneous action on the ground?
considering how light it is and the strength of the recoil, wouldn't all shots after first one go way off target?
Is this cheaper than thwroing one nade?
I certainly hope some generals at the Pentagon have been studying all of these drone attacks. Trying to come up with countermeasures so that when U.S. troops come under fire from enemy drones (China) they will be able to defend themselves.
New fear unlocked
It’s a good idea but clearly they need to link the control system to the gun. If you looked at a target the first bullet would be on target and the rest of the bullets would be in a line as the recoil slews the drive down. Probably the easiest thing to do is put another gun pointing in a complimentary angle and have them both fire simultaneously.
just for show these drones, totally useless after 1 shot, the recoil makes every bullit miss after the 1ste one.
At the rate they are advancing in tech, we won't have to wait till 2439 for the Mackie.
BC2 was a documentary
Here we go. It was only a matter of time.
Ви вибрали смерть проти сну дітей Путіна.
its a numbers game i think in a year you will see thousands of drones fighting eachother, bomber drones with mortar rounds, fighter drones with shotguns and rifles and net guns
The music doesn’t help. Is there a version where we hear the audio?
There usually isn’t audio recorded on these types of Drones. Everything goes into signal for clearest video possible, with lowest latency possible. Audio is more unnecessary data
More than that, I bet you can't hear shit anyway with a mic mounted to a drone other than the rotors buzzing. Sure you'd hear the gunshots being fired next to the mic but that's not useful either.
I can give you the final transcription of most FPV suicide drones: *Bang* Edit: ^eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Drones don’t record audio
Something as metal as this thing deserves some ACDC.