And here I thought drones were radio controlled...
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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They were, now they aren't.
You can interfere wirh radio waves, but not a fiberoptic line
My scissor begs to differ.
And how long are you going to survive in the no man's land, operating your scissors?
I think I could manage a good few seconds.
Each cable can generate 80kg of fertilizer
Win-win
Huh?
I believe the implication is that when the Drone kills a soldier their body will fertilize the ground.
Presumably a corpse.
So whilst the drones are super-effictive (for now) they pose several serious problems - 1. Fibres can get tangled, maybe even affecting vehicles or other machinery, cars, whatever and 2. If you can view these from the air, you can use an fpv drone to trace them back to the operator (meaning they'll need to change position more frequently and probablyclean up before returning to old positions). 3. That's gonna be a heck of a cleanup operation.
None of your points are even remotely close to an actual problem, let alone a serious one lol
They usually carry the spool on the drone so they donβt really get tangled because the feed end is at the source of the movement. It can always let out more slack to continue forward.
Given how thin those are, and how many there are it might be a waste of time to try to follow them.
A war always is a "heck of a cleanup". These cables are by far not the worst part of it.
Us stupid humans will always find a way to kill each other.
The only question is what survives from the planet, not from our species...
A drill and reel could wind up the fiber if the drone has exploded and the cable is loose. If the cable is still attached to the drone, it could send a signal to a device at the end to cut/blow up the fiber attached at the drone's end.
Guessing it's impractical as they're not doing it.
that works as long as the cable is on perfectly flat surface and not tangled up in any way at all.
Yeah multiply the weight of 1/2 mile of fiber by 20 to 50 tangled strands and try to drag it.
It's not even just 1/2 mile. I read an article recently that 15km spools are already in use and 20km spools are actively being tested.
Is the tensile strength anywhere close enough to reel it back? I assumed the spool is carried by the drone, not dragged from the source.
Itβs a really interesting/terrifying technology. But itβs gonna a be a mess to clean it up.
Tensile strenghth is definitely enough. Ive used fiber to tow vehicles before in a pinch. A single strand takes a surprisingly higher amount of force to break than one would expect. Good luck pulling a window pane in two..
Man, that's gotta be hell on any wildlife left living in the areas in which it's used. (I mean, I get the necessity, but dang)
Tillers too when this war ends (with Russia's defeat) and it's time to plant crops.
Just wait until people realise the steepness of the co2 emissions reduction curve has become so extreme that it is impossible to avoid catastrophic climate change without a global collapse of capitalism that in turn can only lead to kinetic world war. Which, again in turn, is the most carbon intensive activity known to human-kind, making this sort of environmental degradation a picture of the good old days.
It is a pity that most people didn't pay attention when IPCC's working group three (the group responsible for coming up with a plan to mitigate climate change), was filled with economists beholden to a [neo-]liberal economic and political ideology that 1. set the stage for the current and future governments of right wing extremists. And 2. 'discounted the future at 5%', meaning rather than plan to mitigate climate change they said: "we will invest money now in exploiting fossil fuels, which will return a profit at 5% per year. Then we will take these compounded 5%'s and invest that in co2 removal technology". (Unfortunately they missed off the: [... co2 removal technology that does not exist outside of a lab and has only been shown to be impossible at scale].)
I don't have the information that says we are now at the point of no return (I bet people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping do), but publicly available information shows we have a limited number of years, and are racing in the wrong direction. Apologies maybe I am not having the best morning!
You are devastatingly correct on all points. We are AT BEST a few years from the cliff. If we do avoid the cliff, it will be so extremely painful for every single person on the planet that our societies will crumble. There will be a massive population crash as industrialized agriculture is made largely impossible. The chaos in this situation is impossible to overstate.
Mind you, if we don't avoid the cliff, we still go through that, but worse.
Well I mean the psychopathic and narcissistic rich bastards in charge aren't gonna feel the effects so why should they care?
Then the crops grow, and theyβre all full of microscopic glass fibre. Then the foodstuffs are shipped to the world. Then the foods are eaten and the GF joins the microplastics in our bloodstream.
Itβs initially a cool idea, but donβt the fiber optic lines give away the location of the drone operator? Or, at least where the drones are stored?
They spot targets first then send these fiber optic guides drones on a one way trip to killsville.
At least that's my understanding. I doubt they launch them from some central drone storage location, these drones are carried by a small team, fired off, then the team leaves the area.
I could be wrong though, I'm not an expert.
Sure, you hope out there in the open, you can follow them back to where they took off. And if you manage not to get spotted by a drone and blown up, you get to try killing the enemy in their tranches.
You know, just a casual, stress-free, totally low-risk Sunday stroll.
I think even a drone can follow the lines from reflections in the sunlight. Then, find where they converge and send in artillery, an air strike, or a drone strike.
Not from what I have read. They are only a couple of millimeters thick and a single strand can be hard to spot and follow on foot especially when it's hanging off of trees and the like. I doubt you are seeing a tiny strand like that through fpv drone goggles. Could be wrong though.
What I do know is that Ukraine is using them and I'm inclined to believe they wouldn't use something that wasn't worth it for very long.
I've seen some videos that show clearly how the cables reflect sunlight and become easy to see. You can see it in this video as well if you watch around 7 seconds and look towards the sun: You'll see a bunch of strands in the background that are only visible due to the reflected sunlight.
There's a difference between able to see a section of fibre and being able to follow it miles back to the operator.
Absolutely! My point was only that they can, in the right conditions, be very easy to spot. I've seen a video where the lines were also easy to follow along the treetops. That doesn't mean it's easy to follow the lines for many kilometres to their origin, but it does mean that if you have a rough idea of where to look for a drone team, the lines could reveal where they are.
Easy issue to solve since the fiber spool doesnt have to be attached to the remote controller.. all a drone following fiber back would spot is a router looking thing at best.
The "router" would need to be fairly close to the operator in order to maintain a connection though, and if you keep it under observation you would be able to catch the operators when they're packing to move.
Not even that, looking online the cable is only 0.5mm thick.
You can see an example here: https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1irsodi/the_ghost_of_khortytsia_battalion_of_the_karadag/
When there are lots of cables going in one direction, you can follow them as they reflect sunlight. I imagine the closer to the drone storage, the more prevalent all the fiber optic cables will be.
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