Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by eszed 815 days ago
I hadn't thought of that, but it's terrifying. Like, far more nightmare-inducing than a conventional minefield.

How would you counter? Up-armoured bipedal robots with roughly human-shaped heat-signatures is the only thing that would defeat easily-implemented automatic counter-measures. But if the "minefield" is under surveillance + command and control, then that goes right out the window. Besides, the cost-benefit (let alone logistics) is firmly in favor of the defender's "robins". I suspect attackers will try jamming signals and then send in the meatshields.

Ugh.

2 comments

Why, a "vacuum bomb", that is, a large-volume detonation of combustible spray, could give a serious kick to anything and everything within the area.

(If not that, a small nuke can generate enough heat and gamma rays to burn everything near the point of the blast, but the military escalation hasn't reached this point just yet.)

Not a bad thought. (Your first one: if we're throwing nukes around I suspect minefields will be the last of our worries.) The complicating factor would be how widely they can be dispersed, and how quickly they can converge. It might take more vacuum bombs than is feasible to clear even a small area.

I had another thought. There's a tried and tested method for knocking down bird-sized moving objects. So, what about shotguns? (Yes, I know they're currently banned for combat use. I think something like this would override that, at least de facto.)

> How would you counter?

With something cheaper that you spread around. Drone grenades?