Has nobody seen Black Sunday?
The airspace over large gatherings of peoples (like say stadiums, or big concerts) is monitored and restricted. If someone gets an AC-130 type A/C anyway near the AF will probably want to have words with them long before they reach. Unless they have stealth technology at which point frankly they might as well give up the terror and go legit.
But when you’re spraying into a massed crowd of spectators you don’t need accuracy at all.
The arc that would be directed to the crowd is much smaller than the arc that is not directed at the crowd, and you are talking about forces that will tend to dramatically change the aiming point. Muzzle rise as an example is one of the major limiting factors for using machine guns for even human users, which will have 150-200 pounds of mass to control the aim. In fact the M16 and M4 have safe/semi-automatic/3-round burst settings without full auto due to the waste of ammo.
When you reduce this down to something that only has ounces of potential corrective force to apply it would be problematic.
Post WWI, the primary purpose of small arms fire, outside of close quarters, is to drive enemy infantry to ground so so that indirect fire, E.G. artillery and close air support can fire on their positions.
In fact the Marines recently moved away from the SAW due to aimed fire being more effective and being less weight. No one was running in a Call of Duty fashion when carrying around a SAW and ammo with armor plates.
The AC-130 is really air based artillery, which is far more effective.
Fireworks.
Launched into a crowded sports arena.
They need not kill anybody, directly,to create a mass panic that could kill hundreds.
And that, right there, is the problem.
An M249 (a lightweight machine gun) with 200 rounds of ammunition weighs 10 kilograms. This stresses the carrying capacity of the largest octo-rotor drones. Assuming you found - or built - a drone large enough and somehow acquired the machine gun (more easily done in the Middle East than the USA) I assume you’d want more than 200 rounds of ammunition which would then necessitate some kind of customized ammo tray… which means even more weight, which means you need an even bigger drone.
If you actually watch the video of a consumer drone firing a handgun, you’ll notice that the whole drone staggers about drunkenly from the recoil. To correct this, the drone would need more mass. Adding ballast to the drone means even more weight, which means you need an even bigger drone.
At this point, it’s barely worth it to even build a drone at all. You might as well just buy an actual helicopter and do it the old-fashioned way.
I saw a show (on the Military Channel, I think?) where some US government entity challenged drone manufacturers and inventors to stop drones from reaching an exercise target. They used a variety of ingenious methods, including:
[ul]
[li]Sending the drones a signal that caused them to return to their launch point[/li][li]Taser-type wires to short drones outGuns and missiles[/li][li]Nets[/li][/ul]
The exercise was a resounding failure. Despite intending to escalate the “threat” through stages (single drone from known direction, single drone from any direction, multiple drones, multiple drones from multiple directions) every system failed the very first part, a single commercial drone from a known direction they were prepared for.
Presumably if we can’t handle that, anyone with the resources to operate even a few drones (which is to say, pretty much everyone) could wreak havoc.
What a funny quote if overheard at some poeople’s revolutinary council or other.
Whenever the topic comes up, it doesn’t hurt to look at what the UAV/drone OGs are up to. IAI Drone Guard. (not up to date cite).
This was my thought. A small fleet of drones, maybe ten, each with a small pyrotechnic charge. Fly them, one every ten seconds or so, into the stands at an NFL game. Each one only needs to kill or maim a few people. Once a few of these reach their targets, the resulting stampede would likely kill far more people than a guy with a rented truck. A truck attack is cheap and low-tech, but these guys want flashy, high-profile attacks; I’m surprised we haven’t seen something like a multi-drone stadium attack already.
HTS(al Qaeda)/FSA has been using drones against Russian targets in Syria for a while now (in fact, there was just a wave a couple of days ago.) The largest of these attacks sent about 13 fixed wing drones carrying about 5 kilos of nitrate based explosives in a swarm against Hmeimin airbase in Latakia. Russia claims that they were supplied with Western technology to launch the attack, but of course, we deny it and the tech they used was fairly simple except perhaps for targeting, basically hobbyist grade drones. Bottom line though is that rebel groups in Syria have it and that al Qaeda either launched it or could get the tech easily. On a hard target with heavy air defences, they were able to launch from 50 kilometres away and roughly half of their drones delivered their payload. It’s really a matter of when and not if it’s used against a major soft target in the West. They also use grenades mounted to quadcopters on Syrian troops with some regularity.
There’s an old Green Hornet radio show from the 40’s where a remote controlled plane delivers a bomb to an upper story office. No one could figure out how it happened as the idea of radio-controlled toy planes wasn’t well known.
It would be trivial to attach a small pipe bomb onto a drone and fly it to a target. Easier now than when the Hornet faced the challenge, as you can have a camera showing you approach the target.
Somewhere on (IIRC) Funker350, a military video channel on YouTube, there’s aerial view from a drone dropping modified 40mm grenades onto targets with great precision.
I saw this video on LiveLeak.com when it was first released. My immediate impression was that it was a CGI fake. As I recall, many of the commentators there (not the sharpest pencils in the box I will admit) seemed to believe it was also. One of the first things that made me suspicious was the “bomb” looking rather like a WW2 era weapon. Another clue was that I found no news reports on this incident that did not refer back to the video.
I am not an expert but have seen many computer generated simulations of combat.
I personally am counting this video as a piece of propaganda
Also Gotham
It is a very clear, sharp picture of the bomb and the vehicles on the ground. Would things that far away and that close to the camera both be in focus?
Do you have a link to this video or image? I’m not coming up with anything similar from a google search, thanks.
And on the topic of the thread I recall reading that during the 1980’s or 1990’s the IRA in Northern Ireland had a plan to use a remote control full-sized aircraft packed with explosives for an attack, the plan was cancelled before being put into effect.
There is a link in post 10. It looks like a video game.
This…
A couple guys with rifles and who were wearing body armor could cause more mayhem than any of these kludges involving civilian drones.