[JumpCrisscross]

> I don't think that we have realized the real implications of this technology

Define “we.” The defence community has been deeply engaged with what’s going on in Ukraine since ‘22. (And the supremacy of sensor fusion in India’s air battle with Pakistan.)

[consumer451]

We as a society. I don't want to write down my detailed thoughts on this, but anyone with a red team mind can imagine the implications for personal security.

[jauntywundrkind]

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote down pretty bluntly what society might do against the vicious nasty foes of the world with drones, in Ministry for the Future. A book very well reviewed by for example Bill Gates. https://www.gatesnotes.com/books/science-fiction/reader/the-...

Alas it feels optimistic to hope that asymmetric confrontation would be downtrodden people of the earth against bad world damaging take-take-take pests. Merely a science fiction. The world having powerful forces working strongly for the world rather than self interest: hardly believable science fiction.

[luckylion]

How did it change?

It's cheaper now, it's easier to pull off remotely, but most airports already were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. It feels like the primary mechanism that protected civilian airports is that the weapons you'd use aren't easy to get, and states didn't want to supply their sponsored terror groups with that kind of weaponry because it'd be dangerously close to an act of war and very hard to deny.

Individually, you were never safe by default. Your safety depends on not being an interesting target.

[euroderf]

> Individually, you were never safe by default. Your safety depends on not being an interesting target.

Hello, cyberpunk future. Imagine Luigi with Ukraine's strike capabilities. 10 years from now? 5?

[XorNot]

So you know, if instead of being one guy he was a substantial portion of intelligence operatives of a nation-state with significant industrial resources backing him?

Ukraine isn't wealthy, but it's still an entire country.

[euroderf]

That's why I say 5 or 10 years. But it will happen - put it within reach of a lone operator. I suspect.

[jacquesm]

Bluntly: nothing is safe from drones + a determined operator. No airfield, no aircraft on the ground, no government institution. Drones have changed warfare forever and Ukraine is writing the manual for future operations. What happened today was unthinkable 10 years ago. As one side effect I predict that at least in some places private drone ownership will become illegal. Think about it: for a few hundred K you get to take out a good chunk of a nuclear power's strike capability.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Drones have changed warfare forever

We’re in a strategic imbalance. Cold War air defences were trained on high-value targets, like strategic bombers and spy planes. So currently our air defences are overspecced for something like this.

Nothing about drones makes them inherently undetectable. You just need a different model. I suspect those should be commonplace within 20 years, potentially a decade.

> at least in some places private drone ownership will become illegal

I could see ownership being restricted in wartime. More likely is eager air defences shredding birds on perimeters.

[nothercastle]

Exactly ad well catch up but is limited by inefficiencies of procurement

[threatofrain]

Won't the cat and mouse game ultimately tilt to the side of defense? I imagine automated rifles are basically impossible to dodge. Automated rifles sound much more scary to me. Plant a rifle and wait a year, works on people and drones.

[lmm]

> Won't the cat and mouse game ultimately tilt to the side of defense?

Probably not. Most of the history of war is weapons getting stronger and stronger and defence getting harder and harder. E.g. in ancient times a shield or simple palisade could protect you, now even tanks and trenches are not safe. The days of being able to build a wall along a border and hold it against a peer adversary are long gone and not coming back.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

I feel like this correlates with nations getting bigger over time and the square-cube law (or line-square law for national borders?) but I am not smart enough at military stuff to figure it out

[lmm]

I've read that it's kind of the converse - as military technology advances the size of a "minimum viable nation" increases. E.g. as gunpowder technology developed, anywhere that couldn't afford to field a gunpowder military got absorbed into somewhere that could.

[tim333]

On the other hand defensive alliances like NATO and the like pretty much work. A couple of centuries ago war was all over the place. These days most people never see it unless they deliberately go to a war zone.

The whole Ukraine war thing seems a bit anachronistic like something from the last century. I think it isn't coincidental that Putin spends a lot of time reading about past centuries (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares...)

But times have moved on.

[justsomehnguy]

> Think about it

Three years ago: "Oh stop nobody can do a decapitation strike. Russia's security concerns are bogus".

[AnimalMuppet]

OK, but how does taking Ukraine eliminate Russia's concern about an attack like this?

[justsomehnguy]

You need a globe - an old school one, physical, a map of the black soils, population density and to remember how long it took Prigozhin to get to Moscow outskirts, with all the stops, interviews and scuffles with VVS.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fb...

[koonsolo]

To be fair, these planes were out in the open, protected by tires on the wings. If they were in simple hangars, this operation would have already been way harder.

[gus_massa]

I remember when https://xkcd.com/652/ was published and it was brilliant. Now it's very outdated.

[tim333]

Those things are still around https://truthout.org/articles/trump-white-house-is-consideri...