Settle a pub squabble.

Could a drone deliver enough payload for a significant terrorist atrocity?

I’m wondering if home grown explosives are a bit heavy for effective quantities to be carried by an average over the counter Drone.

Discuss.

I won’t be googling it for obvious reasons.

there was one in (somewhere) recently wasn’t there – Turkey maybe ?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/exploding-drone-sent-by-isis-allies-kills-and-wounds-troops-in-iraq-report?0p19G=c

If not an explosive attack, perhaps chemical…
Lovely… 😕

I have access to a few quadcopters at work that have a 5kg payload. 5 kg of even a relatively weak explosive such as TNT will make a big mess.

If ever there was a thread where people go on a list, this is it.

You’re on the list, teethgrinder

With my search history… I guarantee I have been on the list for years. Oh well.

Easy to build one. It’s always a trade off between payload and range (duration).

Can you define “significant terrorist atrocity”?

It’s always a trade off between payload and range (duration)

in almost every aspect of life 😀

can you really call it a civilian drone if it delivers a bomb?

Other than novelty to aid in propaganda/hype/media terror a drone seems like a fairly ineffective way of killing people when you can just hire a lorry and crush people to death or walk into a nightclub with an AK and shoot them like fish in a barrel.

soobalias – Member

can you really call it a civilian drone if it delivers a bomb?

He means something you buy off Amazon as opposed to one of these.

those spinning blades can nick if they hit you. No need for semtex.

I’d say yes in a military environment where the payload is plastic explosive and its available. Probably less of a threat when the payload is some fertilzer homebrew. Doubt there is much C4 in the wrong hands over here.

So technically yes, but in practice unlikely

5Lb of C4

[video]https://youtu.be/0nc98hzR-tk[/video]

some mentalist NZ bloke.

http://www.rense.com/general38/cruise.htm

I find it more disturbing 250,000 people a day visited the website showing how

Well. I could think of quite a few ways, but probably best not to share them. Simple terms if your payload is small then the target can be the multiplier, plenty of places that the right amount of bang could cause some massive damage (teeside, runcorn etc)

Lucky for us, mikewsmith, that those wishing us harm have displayed amazingly low levels of imagination. So far.

Rachel

If ever there was a thread where people go on a list, this is it.

Your name is going on the list!

What is your name?

I think the answer is yes, but why focus on drones?

Remote controlled planes have been available for decades and can get to pretty significant sizes/payloads.

Think of the possibilities once self-driving cars are commonplace! 😯

GrahamS

I think the answer is yes, but why focus on drones?

Remote controlled planes have been available for decades and can get to pretty significant sizes/payloads.

Humans are also capable of delivering some pretty decent payloads and are self guiding.

Think of the possibilities once self-driving cars are commonplace!

Nothing that can’t already be achieved already when you’ve got people willing to blow themselves up in the name of their god.

Obviously if there was one drone attack, even a failed one, it would cause a media frenzy, but I don’t really see them as much more of a threat than a lorry or a car, or an individual with the correct motivation.

I think the answer is yes, but why focus on drones?

Because anybody can fly one, and some come with the option to fly out of visual range or autonomously. Sure you can equip a plane with a camera and they’re not that hard to learn to fly, but suitable FPV equipment is relatively new anyway. The entry barriers are so much lower, which is why interference with commercial flights is an issue when it wasn’t before.

What is your name?

Don’t tell him Pike.

Nothing that can’t already be achieved already when you’ve got people willing to blow themselves up in the name of their god.

True but most terrorist groups are not so keen on the explodey part.

Sure you can equip a plane with a camera and they’re not that hard to learn to fly, but suitable FPV equipment is relatively new anyway

The FPV kit is relatively new sure, but before that you could fly an RC plane to target using line of sight easily enough.

“Drones” get a bad rep because they are associated with military drones (which ironically tend to be RC planes not multi-rotors) and with invasion of privacy concerns – but in reality a lot of this threat isn’t new at all, it’s just getting cheaper and more accessible.

Ultimately I think “Ooooh terrorists could use this” is a bit of scaremongering. If people are intent on harm then there are a million-and-one things they could do to cause it.

can you really call it a civilian drone if it delivers a bomb?

Well it’s generally “civilian” vehicles that are used in terrorist bombings.

“Lucky for us, mikewsmith, that those wishing us harm have displayed amazingly low levels of imagination. So far.”

This.

Cultural terrorism always seems a good one none of them ever consider. Turn up at the National Gallery with some paint stripper. You’d get as much publicity and shock as killing 10 people and you’d spend about 5 minutes in prison. Plus you wouldn’t have killed anyone.

Halt rush hour traffic at a few key intersections, every morning you could cause gridlock, close down the economy for hours day after day and again spend very little time in clink.

And that’s before you start on imaginative ways to kill people for maximum publicity.

I suppose terrorist are self selecting dumb people.

some mentalist NZ bloke.

http://www.rense.com/general38/cruise.htm

A nutter in a shed messing about with pulse jets and weapons?

You’d never get that kind of thing in Blighty. 😉

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEoqrjFX1yI[/video]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9PMD8fcvAk[/video]

Halt rush hour traffic at a few key intersections, every morning you could cause gridlock, close down the economy for hours day after day and again spend very little time in clink.

Indeed. Pretty easy to take out some key bridges too for a similar effect.

Likewise pylons and power-substations are pretty easy targets.

As are water supplies.

(definitely on a list now..)

I think some people have spent too much time watching the Italian Job, traffic chaos is hardly a big deal. Pylons etc are also easy to fix and have little news value so why bother. You could hit Runcorn but again why bother it is a lot of hassle to not do much damage. Key infrastructure is already protected with no fly zones and security on the gates.

http://www.channel4.com/news/pakistan-drone-warfare

I think you’ll find drones have been causing terror for quite some time already.

Pylons etc are also easy to fix and have little news value so why bother.

They are unguarded. An organised group could lay charges across an entire network of pylons with minimal risk, then blow them all at the same time and leave a large area of the country without power. Even more so if they hit a few sub-stations too. Pretty sure that would make the news.

I think some people have spent too much time watching the Italian Job, traffic chaos is hardly a big deal.

There was a massive power cut in the west of scotland a few years ago that took out all the traffic lights in glasgow at rush hour. It was absolutely fine, if anything it was an improvement.

Pretty sure that would make the news.

Being newsworthy isn’t enough

The mistake to make with all these easy targets is exactly the point that they’re easy. Successful terrorism needs to terrorise people – they actually have to change their behaviour out of fear. The liquid bombs on planes that never even became close to being executed was an example of success even though the instigator was dead and plot foiled before we knew anything about it. Its changed the way we all fly – added hours to journey’s and cost millions. And we think about terrorism all the time we’re being inconvenienced by those measures.

Its much easier though to just walk onto a tube train with a bomb though. Except theres nothing anyone can do about that. So as tragic an episode as that is – the next day people are travelling on tube trains the same as they always were. What can we do in the face of a threat we can do nothing about? Nothing. Us doing nothing shows that as an act of terrorism its a total failure.

What could we do to prevent terrorists using drones? Nothing. So how much thought would we give it? Non

I for one am glad that terrorists are rare, generally unimaginative and desperate.

Of course if they were thoughtful, intelligent and aware of the best way to spread their views, they probably wouldn’t be terrorists.

You could hit Runcorn but again why bother it is a lot of hassle to not do much damage

I still haven’t heard whether the Chemical plant explosion in Germany was terrorism.

TBH the most effective bombs are suicide ones, drones are very much a secondary risk

Jambo- it wasn’t terrorism, but an accident.

The most effective bombs seem to be those which the “developed” nations drop on the poor ones.

That thermite launcher guy is a real Darwin Awards candidate

Colin Furze?

Nah, he is invincible as long as he wears his safety tie.

(If you think the thermite launcher is nuts you should see the other stuff on his YouTube channel).

e.g.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9uh-CyBMCs[/video]

An organised group could lay charges across an entire network of pylons with minimal risk, then blow them all at the same time and leave a large area of the country without power.

How many organised terrorist groups are there, not many, most are currently a bloke or two. Then you’d have to lay multiple demolition charges in the countryside without anyone thinking it was all a bit odd. Then blow them all at roughly the same time, and all that to cause a tiny bit of disruption that could be fixed pretty quickly.

Far easier to bomb a subway or whatever.

Us doing nothing shows that as an act of terrorism its a total failure.

it’s a paradox. This is the ultimate truth about terrorism, that it is the failure of govts to deal with the legitimate concerns of moderate opposition that sometimes metastasises into the illegitimate tactics of hard line terror, which in turns provokes govts into acts of state control and propaganda and sometimes making a bad situation worse still.

Colin Furze?

There’s a definite 1950’s feel to his views on health and safety.

Amusing stuff if you like that kind of thing 🙂