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Crossbow: in mass use by the 10th century in Europe.
Full plate armor: appears early in the 15th century.Non-credible confirmed.
Breastplates were a common armor feature since the Bronze Age, chill out
Or don’t
I’m not your dad
> ruins combat > ruins warfare > ruins swordfights > ruins hand-to-hand combats > ruins an entire fucking combat doctrine Gunpowder, and its consequences...Now if we develop an even more powerful explosive that will make wars so horrible, then people will undoubtedly stop making war, right?
* Anakin unfazed *
the bayonet was a bigger game changer at the time
didn’t need to bother with pikemen any longer as riflemen could be both
WHY ARE YOU GREEN??
When putting text into ``` […] ```, do ```md […] ``` instead, then some formatter will display your meme-arrow texts in green.
FPV drones have never been $35.
You can get some incredible chinesium drones for even less, and it’s still technically FPV.
The range is like 2 metres though.
Yeah the cheapest I’d ever recommend anyone go is probably about $100 for one with an analog video signal.
HDZero video with ExpressLRS control link is the new meta though. Off the shelf drones with this setup start around $180 or so now, not including the controller or goggles.
If anyone is looking at getting into the hobby, I’d recommend getting the EMAX tinyhawk 3 kit to start. It comes with everything for about $270.
I really wish I would have shelled out a little extra for the Fatshark goggles with the removable receiver back when I bought mine. I’m pretty sure you can swap it out with a digital receiver, but I didn’t do that, so I’ll have to buy a whole new headset to go digital.
Ah man, yeah the switch to digital can get expensive. I got lucky and bought the skyzone cobra x goggles when I first got into the hobby - they have an HDMI input, so all I needed to buy was the HDZero adapter. Still pricy but half the price of the HDZero goggles ha
I already spent hundreds of dollars on my analog goggles, and a bunch more on analog VTX’s, so I’m just going to stick with analog for a while. Especially since prices are way higher than when I got into the hobby several years ago.
I really hope the western allies have a plan for countering drones in the pipeline, otherwise the next time we fight an insurgency will be a bloodbath.
As someone who’s been following this fairly closely since the Syrians started toying with it, and the Ukrainians threw it into hyperdrive… There’s no good counter when drones are cheap to make and can be programmed to run on a flight course:
- Jamming has to fight inverse square so the radius is trash (and kills a lot of useful civil RF ranges like WiFi). Something like 200 meters is a strong system currently, and power needs ramp up fast.
- ‘Kinetic hard kill’ like traditional air defense is way too expensive per shot, plus there’s issues with UXO, debris, and limited launching platforms. Legacy air defenses like Tunguska or FlakPanzer with programmable airburst rounds work best, but at very short range and make a lot of secondary fragments by design. Taking the guns out, interceptor missiles start at five figures.
- Laser systems have a lot of promise with none of the explosive downsides whilst being cheaper per shot, but range isn’t great - you’re focusing energy to physically melt the target, and all light suffers from diffraction. It is better than jamming, but far too close for comfort.
That assumes you know the drone is coming, mind you. Piston-engine flying wings aren’t silent, but they are generally made of polymers/laminates that are hard to detect via radar. Thermal cameras and acoustic sensors so far are the best early warning systems, but radar is still a huge help.
And then there’s FPV and quadcopters. While a larger munition like Shaheed can be under $10k, even the more advanced FPV/quads with night vision (or even thermal) cameras frequently run under $1,000, up to a few thousand. Air dropped explosives have been fundamental in changing the course of the civil war in Myanmar for the rebels, it’s like having a budget Air Force and spy satellites on call.
The air burst rounds sound like the best option, pretty much guaranteed kill against a slow moving drone, cost less than what you’re shooting at, and useful against a wide range of targets.
Yup, air burst and lasers are the leading ideas atm. But you’re still dealing with a zone of protection a kilometer or so - not a big deal to defend the main command post or vital supply depots, but spreading that out to industrial areas, grid power stations and substations, seaport complexes, or cities and your ‘blanket’ of protection starts looking too small for the job of covering the ‘want to have’ as well as the ‘need to have’ protected.
I was thinking about military actions on foreign soil, where the infrastructure is theirs anyway.
Hmm, what about Phalanx/CIWS for hard kill? Assuming you can track the target.
Of course the real solution is trained birds.
Have they looked at masers? Basically rf lasers.i think they’re much cheaper than lasers and could be steered at drones but would only need enough power to interfere with guidance/ controls
A maser is a device that produces coherent microwaves, through amplification by stimulated emission. The term is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
TIL, thank you friend!
There has been development of smarter jammers that’ll ‘listen’ for the frequency used, and pump out jamming to defeat it, but I haven’t heard of a steerable unit like that - very interesting.
Yes, you can damage pretty much anything with enough energy. It’s hard to fit high-power lasers on small flight-capable platforms, so ground-based units are more likely. You can blind UAV systems’ sensors with IR lasers at relatively low power, too. However, this is easily countered by software. Reflective coatings and retroreflective foils are possible countermeasures to laser attacks, but even these have damage thresholds.
IR lasers and masers have the advantage of being eye-safe, meaning their light won’t get bent by your eyes’ lenses and can’t damage your retinas, due to their wavelength. With enough power, however, you can still burn human flesh.
Gin and hubris tell me the leading defense will be other drones. Defense still has the range advantage: assholes come to you. You can easily make faster and lighter drones than whatever’s targeting you, and if nothing else, punish attacks with loss of materiel. Which doesn’t even require blowing up your zippy little drone, if the enemy’s rotors can be fucked by anything more substantial than Silly String.
Why not just use a big shotgun for the smaller stuff, skeet shooting style? I dunno how to really deal with much larger drones, but a shotgun should be able to deal with most human sized drone targets pretty easily
What about a shotgun shell but each pellet is crimped around the midpoint of a bundle of carbon fibers
Now it’s one of asymmetrical multi-player games where one guy plays a monster and everyone else just needs to survive
Devs plz nerf
Yeah the Pope baned crossbows for a while, but as you might have heard already, it didn’t stick.
“$35 hobby toy”
Well yeah, cheap drones can be used for war, but that’s not all drones really are:
Metas been stale since 1945 I’m okay with change
The crossbow suddenly doesn’t look as good when your pavise shields are still stuck in the wagon train and you’re in range of the English longbowmen.
Are you suggesting that rapid offensives - lunging out beyond your logistical network without taking the time to have your auxiliary force fully equipped for the task you expect of them - are a bad idea and will lead to said auxiliary forces putting in but a token effort instead of dying for an ally that clearly doesn’t give enough of a shit about their lives?
But have you tried mounting it on a drone?
Massive skill issue
It’s called emergency gameplay! The old meta is contrived!
Crossbows are based, drones are cringe. Reject modernity
