I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun and accessible topics, cute concepts, and decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU

In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries

Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.

In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:

imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil

This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, it is showing off military technology with serious ethical implications.

There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones.

Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner built for ground-based air defense that can rapidly launch, identify, intercept, and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats — or be safely recovered and relaunched at near-zero cost.

  • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    7 months ago

    Skeet/trap shooting was designed around duck hunting. Ducks aren’t particularly acrobatic flyers. Even fat, heavy quadcopters like off the shelf DJI stuff can do some impressive maneuvers, and purpose built racing quads are wicked. If the operator tries a little to do some evasive maneuvers, or the autopilot has it programmed in, it’s going to be very hard to shoot down.

    Shotguns also aren’t common on the battlefield. They’re not that useful for typical army engagement ranges. Navy vessels do use them for boarding actions, but you usually won’t find them in armies.