There are 2 short segments in the video showing the actual performance and thus far it is a complete [1] failure [2].
The guy has a talent, and he put together a nice prototype based on OpenRocket [3], but with all due respect, this is not a rocket, and you are not going to win any war with this toy, even if all your enemy has are rocks thrown at you from pretty much similar distance.
The remix of computer games / Ukraine / Martin Luther King / Vietnam / David Koresh just adding more to the amateur spirit and confusion.
I'm surprised nobody else has pointed this out. The entire YouTube video has only two short clips of the actual rocket being fired, and in both cases the clips are very short and only show the rocket being fired and then following an erratic flight path, and then get cut before showing the rocket hitting anything.
For all the technical info given in the video, there is a curious lack of any data regarding the actual accuracy of the system. What percentage of rockets tested managed to hit anything and at what range?
simonh 12 minutes ago [-]
I suspect a major problem is the quality and consistency of the propellant and getting a symmetric burn.
walterbell 35 minutes ago [-]
> curious lack of any data regarding the actual accuracy of the system
No lack of entrackment data generated by digital twin of "the system".
__MatrixMan__ 1 hours ago [-]
The video references "future tracking systems," so I don't think it aims at all yet.
vidarh 26 minutes ago [-]
You don't need to win any wars with it if you can use them to sow confusion, obscure the firing of more serious rockets, and/or trigger a sufficiently more expensive response.
It clearly needs more work, but if an amateur can get this far at this low cost, odds are you'll see attempts at overwhelming attackers or defense systems by sheer volume with cheap decoys like this long before they become an actual threat in and of themselves.
Get the rocket a bit more stable, and force an attack to try to take out dozens of these because one of them might be a real threat, and you'll have created a problem.
jacquesm 17 minutes ago [-]
With a 3D printer and some 'ordinary household chemicals' to quote a certain movie you can do pretty scary stuff.
mikkupikku 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, I don't think this project is a serious threat as a weapon, it's more interesting if viewed as a politically provocative stunt, to get people thinking about the relationship between technology and war.
make3 54 minutes ago [-]
I always wonder why rockets are millions of dollars each, that seems insane to me.
mikkupikku 26 minutes ago [-]
Check out Joe Barnard's youtube channel BPS.Space where he's documenting his development of "high power" (hobby) rockets. Those are relatively small rockets still but nonetheless he's getting into performance regimes where the engineering starts to be tricky and the details really matter. The more extreme your rocket gets, the difficulty really ramps up quick.
lukan 35 minutes ago [-]
Fireworks rocket do not cost as much. But if you want high precision and high speed, that simply is expensive. Also the area is of course restricted making it more expensive as most states do not want DIY rockets everywhere.
rancar2 2 hours ago [-]
Taking a quick look at the BOM, it lacks the correct sensor selection.
firesteelrain 2 hours ago [-]
Even if the correct sensor could be chosen (whatever it is), unlikely is attainable by consumers and the technology would definitely be export controlled in the US.
torginus 41 minutes ago [-]
I think MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers used in consumer drones should be just about good enough to measure orientation and acceleration, and those are cheap and easy to get.
You could integrate acceleration to get speed - the flight is short enough to make compounding errors easy to ignore.
I think thanks to drones and RC hobbyists, there's a generally nice body of knowledge on how to get good enough data from consumer hardware to keep things flying.
obidee2 2 minutes ago [-]
> You could integrate acceleration to get speed - the flight is short enough to make compounding errors easy to ignore.
‘Easy to ignore’ is not a term I would use here, especially given the motion environment of a rocket. It seems like it might be beginning to be borderline possible.
kotaKat 23 minutes ago [-]
You'd be AMAZED what you can find on eBay.
I saw this pop up alongside its video thumbnail and nearly shit myself watching it and going "damn, that looks exactly like what's on those RU/UA drones going at each other"... https://www.ebay.com/itm/197224214645
"HS AI Vision Cube For Ultra-long-range Target Recognition tracking & Thermal" for as low as $175. I am feeling the potential ITAR violations straight through my screen.
rdtsc 9 minutes ago [-]
> I am feeling the potential ITAR violations straight through my screen
And possibly landing on all kinds of watch lists.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the sellers there are just honeypots.
A name like “Ultra-long-range Target Recognition tracking” just screams “Hey, FBI, please come visit me and ask what I am building in the basement”
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
And that’s ok if it’s failing to do the job as intended, learning is acquired, and it looks fun to build, I am in the field and I find it great homemade concept.
Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually let alone with AI, you might have some workarounds, but never a real counter.
ninjagoo 2 hours ago [-]
> Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually let alone with AI, you might have some workarounds, but never a real counter.
Weaponized drones (say D_A) can be countered by other weaponized drones (say D_B), equally cheap or cheaper than D_A because the D_A is usually targeting something larger (so more payload) and typically has a longer range. D_B only needs to wreck D_A at a shorter defensive range. That's what Ukraine is doing.
You can also use drone swarms with coordinated action so that each drone in the swarm is only targeting one other drone, and automatic re-targeting if one node misses. [1]
I doubt it, as D_A's target is stationary (and could be reduced to GPS coords) while D_B's target is moving.
echoangle 3 minutes ago [-]
And also the attacker can send 100 drones without any real targeting at all and 10 proper expensive drones and you need to send up 110 defenders which need to be able to track flying drones. Being the attacker will always be easier.
sdenton4 3 minutes ago [-]
However, D_A is moving, while D_B can be stationary.
echoangle 2 minutes ago [-]
How is a stationary defense drone going to defend from a incoming attacking drone?
ninjagoo 1 hours ago [-]
> I doubt it, as D_A's target is stationary (and could be reduced to GPS coords) while D_B's target is moving.
It's a good point, though I should point out that GPS denial is assumed in those sort of contexts as a first countermeasure so D_A likely has alternative targeting, and that smaller drones can move faster with less energy storage, which itself requires less weight, compounding the benefits of being smaller.
torginus 38 minutes ago [-]
From what I can tell, Ukrainians are having some success with converting guns into automatic turrets that can track and shoot down drones via sensors, and the rifle-equivalent of birdshot.
skybrian 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t know if it will work, but here’s a startup that seems to be building an AI-controlled shotgun:
Given the war in Ukraine, wanting to build such things is certainly understandable. But still, this is the stuff of nightmares.
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
"Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually "
Why would lasers not work?
Those cheap drones are made from plastic, if you have a laser powerful enough and a target guidance system (like a camera and a PI) - then you would just need enough of them.
condensedcrab 2 hours ago [-]
At long distances the small cross section of the drone requires tight focusing (expensive optics) or a high power, preferably pulsed laser (expensive laser) or both.
Not impossible but many times more expensive than the drone
tjoff 2 hours ago [-]
Expensive is fine since it is reusable.
torginus 35 minutes ago [-]
Lasers imo don't really have IRL advantages over machine guns and rockets, and their line of sight nature is a huge limitation.
lukan 32 minutes ago [-]
Laser:
- are cheap to shoot
- do not fall on someones head if they miss (unlike firing bullets and rockets at a drone that will come down again)
- do hit the target immediately if aimed right
Problems with lasers are, cooling, power consumption limiting mobile use - and indeed targeting and fog and clouds.
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
Lasers won’t effectively work, it’s a two part equation, detection and targeting. To neutralize a target using a ground-based laser, you need an enormous power, and still it won’t penetrate a high distance/altitude in the sky, environment factors also to be considered. The detection part is even harder, these small 8in drones are almost impossible to detect unless you can hear it, aka it’s over, because they can fly at 250km/h, too small to be visually detected, acoustic sensors will fail to detect them, and radar will miss it as a false negative since it’s the size of a bird. I have seen some systems trying to combine all that to detect them plus AI for flying pattern detection, but they are far from being reliable in practical applications.
ndriscoll 1 hours ago [-]
Unless you mean it just can't detect objects that small, my guess is we'll see things calibrate toward a lot more birds being cooked in active war zones vs drones with explosives being let through.
lukan 1 hours ago [-]
The small weaponized drones do not fly 250 km/h.
Aspos 57 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but they still approach in just a few seconds.
tzury 2 hours ago [-]
"let alone with AI" what's falling into the AI category here perhaps is the key question, since microseconds counts, and LLM are very slow!
Even the fastest "real-time" LLM frameworks currently report sub-second latencies around 120ms. This is fine for high-level mission planning (e.g., "fly to the red house") but too slow to prevent a drone from hitting a tree at 50mph (80 KM/h)[1]
Whilst the Shahed-136 kamikaze drone typically flies at a maximum speed of around 185 km/h (roughly 115 mph or 100 knots).
> "let alone with AI" what's falling into the AI category here perhaps is the key question, since microseconds counts, and LLM are very slow!
LLMs (Large Language Models) are far from the only type of AI around. It's a pretty broad field, and there are real-time AI systems, for example, self-driving cars, which have the response times you're thinking of. [1]
> Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually let alone with AI
What kind of systems are you thinking about? Jet airplanes for sure are completely safe from small drones.
chrisweekly 1 hours ago [-]
"Jet airplanes for sure are completely safe from small drones."
That feels like a bold and unsupported assertion. Ask a pilot how they'd feel about takeoffs or landings through airspace filled with adversarial drones.
fragmede 1 hours ago [-]
maybe in the air, but I seem to recall the Ukrainians being successful at attacking Russian planes on the ground.
DivingForGold 2 hours ago [-]
Get connected with DARPA ASAP, just to let the overlords know you are on "the right side of the fence" - - before Homeland pays you a "very uncomfortable" visit
redgridtactical 4 hours ago [-]
The engineering is genuinely impressive for $96, but naming the repo "MANPADS-System-Launcher-and-Rocket" on GitHub is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don't want. ITAR implications aside, the interesting part is the mid-flight trajectory recalculation on a $5 sensor. That's the same basic problem military guidance systems solve with hardware that costs thousands.
The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking and this is a pretty stark demonstration of where that trend leads. A few years ago this would have required an IMU that cost more than this entire build. The democratization angle cuts both ways though - the same accessibility that makes this cool for hobbyists makes it genuinely concerning from a proliferation standpoint.
tclancy 3 hours ago [-]
> The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking
My friend's brother works in munitions and had, in his spare time, designed and prototyped a missile that could be built for about 10k. He pretty much was ignored by the contractor he works for.
Shockingly, as of a couple weeks ago, they are all hot and bothered to talk.
redgridtactical 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder what could have possibly sparked that... lol
hrmtst93837 3 hours ago [-]
Cheap sensors look impressive in demos but drift and calibration wreck repeatability unless you babysit launches so nobody in defense is sweating this yet.
vidarh 2 hours ago [-]
They should be sweating, because if the other side can fire 100 rockets for $10k that are close enough to not immediately and obviously be off target, and you don't know whether a more expensive one with actual explosives is hiding within that barrage, you now have 100 targets to try to intercept, and suddenly your costs have gone up dramatically while the other sides costs has barely moved.
dgroshev 2 hours ago [-]
100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.
Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to specification every time. You can stockpile the packaged missiles in a non-climate-controlled shed for years, replenish them at sea while being showered with salt water, subject them to shock of a nearby blast while in a VLS, and they will still launch, go up to Mach 13, and catch an incoming ballistic missile nearly every time.
Sure, Iran's ballistic missiles are simpler than SM-3, but they are still subject to most of the constraints. They still need perfectly cast large size solid rocket motors that don't crack after being stored for a year, they need warheads that only go off when they are supposed to, they still need to trace every part for QA, etc. There's a vast gap, largely invisible to amateurs, between garage prototypes and stockpiled AURs.
vidarh 42 minutes ago [-]
TFA is literally about a $96 rocket.
> propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.
You're entirely missing the point.
These do not need to be reliable for the scenario I hinted at. They also do not need to be armed.
They need to be large enough that if one of them is a higher quality rocket (not part of the $10k) that contains actual explosives, you have serious destruction on your hand. Maybe something that looks large enough for that will drive the cost up and we're talking $20k or even $100k instead of $10k.
The precise cost is largely irrelevant, as long as the total cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of a missile interception.
The point is you'd be multiplying the cost assymmetry by forcing a massively outsized response. Because if you don't try to intercept them, every future barrage will include a real rocket. If you do try to intercept them all, you'll be burning through massively expensive interceptors to take out a bunch of cheap toys.
If I was ever considering an insurgency, or a war, I'd be stocking up on vast quantities of toys, with the intent of making every radar constantly lit up by a number of possible threats.
redgridtactical 27 minutes ago [-]
For a sub-minute flight the drift budget is actually pretty forgiving — a MEMS gyro drifts maybe 1-3 deg/sec, and if you're fusing with accelerometer data you really just need "which way is up" and "am I still pointed at the target." A $5 IMU can hold that for tens of seconds.
Where you're right is repeatability. Mil-spec works the same on launch 1 and launch 500 across temperature extremes. Consumer MEMS you'd need to characterize each unit individually — fine for a demo, impractical at any scale.
torginus 30 minutes ago [-]
You can calibrate any sensor, its just a manufacturing step, and while cheap ones may be inaccurate and drift over time, I'm pretty sure the good enough ones (which cost tens of dollars, not fractions of a dollar) are accurate enough to work for the seconds-to-minutes flight time of a rocket like this.
mosura 2 hours ago [-]
For different definitions of cheap though.
While the pure gyro/accelerometer stuff does suffer from major problems the improvements in SLAM using just cameras in the last 15 years are insane.
redgridtactical 25 minutes ago [-]
Visual SLAM on a rocket would be wild. The frame rates you'd need at those velocities are brutal though — feature tracking falls apart fast when your entire visual field is changing at hundreds of m/s. Drones are the sweet spot where camera-based nav really shines.
gmerc 3 hours ago [-]
But do they drift enough to hit girls schools?
hrmtst93837 2 hours ago [-]
I think the problem sits in the white house, not in the sensors.
redgridtactical 2 hours ago [-]
Oof
numbsafari 2 hours ago [-]
Ask Claude
mikkupikku 3 hours ago [-]
It's not really terribly new actually, in the past, rapid advances in consumer technology have enabled other sort of weapon guidance systems. For instance, the development of extremely compact television cameras available to consumers directly lead to the development of the Walleye television bomb. It happened when one nerdy guy was fucking around with his new camera and realized that he could automatically track track features in an analogue television signal using some quite basic analogue electronics. Point the camera into the general direction of the target and you can then "lock on" to some target feature and based on contrast it could tell how that feature was moving around in the image.
He implemented a 1D tracker in his garage, took it to work and showed people. A few years later these bombs are taking out bridges and even sometimes hitting moving trucks.
jeffbee 56 minutes ago [-]
People made self-guided missiles with 1940s technology, in the 1940s. It can't be too much of a surprise if someone right now can make guided missiles in their garage with 2026 electronics. At this point the "guided" feature is trivial, the "missile" part is doable, and the weapon has probably become the tricky part.
shrubble 2 hours ago [-]
Consumer GPS chips are specifically nerfed for using them in rockets; they give erroneous readings on purpose if altitude is above a certain height and/or if speeds exceed a certain speed. That’s likely why the mid-course correction software uses other methods.
bragr 2 hours ago [-]
The restrictions on GPS prevent ballistic missiles, not MANPADs. Typical limits are 515 m/s and 18,000 meters (try using your phone's GPS on a commercial flight, it works fine near a window). Update rate is probably the biggest issue with GPS and MANPADs.
V99 2 hours ago [-]
What you are likely thinking of is the "selective availability" system, which intentionally provided slightly inaccurate data to civilian clients, while military receivers could decrypt the most accurate info. But this has not been used for many years now.
Other than that, GPS is a one-way system, it does not know you exist, how fast your receiver is moving or "give" different information to one client vs another.
Even if it did, this is essentially a toy and moving slower and lower than a general aviation plane.
It uses accelerometers and other sensors because they can be sampled and integrated hundreds of times a second. The $5 gps module is 9600 baud serial and provides one update/second (or maybe 5/sec depending on which part number you pick).
BenjiWiebe 2 hours ago [-]
No, he's thinking of the "CoCom limits". It's built into the receiver.
ninjagoo 1 hours ago [-]
There's a lot of room within those 18km/59000ft and 1000kts/1200mph limits.
nekusar 2 hours ago [-]
Chinese GPS chips dont have those restrictions.
I even have 1 that can remove up to 8 active jamming signals.
Gotta love what you can buy for $20
ninjagoo 1 hours ago [-]
It would be interesting to see if those are only for external sale vs restricted for sale within China.
If China allows those unrestricted chips to be sold internationally but not domestically it would be a strategic long-term decision, I would think. Destabilize the neighbors but not themselves.
The more likely reason is that their government has simply not gotten around to restricting it.
danmaz74 2 hours ago [-]
More than the electronics, I would be curious about the performance of 3d-printed plastic parts on a rocket. Are they strong enough?
the__alchemist 2 hours ago [-]
> A few years ago this would have required an IMU that cost more than this entire build.
Are you sure about this? MEMS IMUs have been popular and cheap for ~10-15 years.
mothballed 54 minutes ago [-]
Owning a system designed for surface to air weapon carries life imprisonment any USA, without any intent for violence, just simple possession or conspiracy to possess[]. Doesn't even matter if you have an NFA stamp, there is no exception except if it's done with authorization and behalf of the government.
Merely having a device intended to guide the rocket is also the same penalty.
I'm impressed by the kid's engineering and gumption, but I think he's a bit.. misguided, if you'll pardon the pun. The video ends with shots of Russian drone war, and, bizarrely, photos of David Koresh.
I don't think this ends well.
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
> The video ends with shots of Russian drone war, and, bizarrely, photos of David Koresh.
You're omitting that the end of the video also features pictures of Martin Luther King, Vietnamese civilians during America's invasion of their country and Afghani Mujahideen freedom fighters during the Soviet Union's invasion of theirs; I think he's trying to make a point about technology enhancing the capabilities of people who are in any conflict with conventionally powerful forces, not an endorsement of David Koresh.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
It’s really odd how people will so easily fixate on the bone the government consisting of maniacal, narcissistic, psychopathic, pathological liars will throw them; while totally ignoring that the pathological lying, evil, murderous people in and of the government are constantly and ceaselessly, lying and murdering.
There now carpet bombing and murdering people in Iran, just like they mass murdered people in Gaza, and they’re doing it to cover up and distract from the fact that our government consists of raping pedophiles. That is who we are governed by. … but David Koresh excuses it and makes any opposition invalid, of close.
huijzer 3 hours ago [-]
I was reading your comment and thought you were a bit too extreme, but then I thought about it and was like "Hmmm. Yes. Sounds pretty accurate actually." So yes I agree.
einpoklum 3 hours ago [-]
I am completely against the US-Israeli war on Iran. That said, they are not carpet-bombing Iran. That is, they appear to be selecting individual targets rather than engaging in carpet bombing entire areas:
The choice of targets is not legally legitimate (and the entire campaign is illegal AFAICT), and sometimes they used old/invalid intel, like what happened with that girls' school that's supposedly close to an IRGC base. Still, it is mostly individual buildings or installations rather than an attempt to flatten entire areas.
Saline9515 2 hours ago [-]
Not carpet bombing, yet. Israelis said the same at the start of the most recent Gaza war, which ended with large neighborhoods being destroyed.
srean 2 hours ago [-]
They are using white phosphorus on populated areas in South Lebanon. That's as vile as one can get.
saati 2 hours ago [-]
Be that as it may, carpet bombing has a specific meaning, and it's not bombing one's not on board with.
srean 2 hours ago [-]
In the context of Iran I agree with you.
Not so sure about South Lebanon. From whatever media coverage I saw, some look not that different from carpet bombing.
victorbjorklund 2 hours ago [-]
Evidence for the claim?
clort 2 hours ago [-]
Human Rights Watch claim it, and have analysed photographs put on social media
I understand your compulsion to rationalize things, make excuses for your abusers, but I ask you to contemplate for a moment what you are defending. One, hopefully we have all seen the genocidal bombing of Gaza turning whole regions of large apartment blocks into an hell-scape of rubble with tens of thousands of people buried underneath them; people, not animals, not “just brown people”, not “terrorists”… people like you, like your wife or girlfriend, like your daughter or son or nephew…people who also want to live just like you even if far more humbly, without all the waste and decadence of the avg American. Should your loved ones be bombed and buried under a resort and luxury condo towers because a clan of billionaires do not like that you won’t leave your land?
Two, at the very least, the most generous interpretation, the very first strike to start an illegal war of aggression that the Nuremberg trial clearly established as the “mother of all subsequent evil”, was not only on a girls school that killed dozens and dozens of young girls, but did so in a “double tap“ process where they observed that people arrived in ambulances and parents in cars to pick up very small humans, and then they hit them again with another missile. Let us be clear about what you are excusing… They intentionally splattered the guts and flesh of young girls and their parents rushing to save them all over a 300 foot diameter blast radius.
We can lie to ourselves that may have been a “mistake“ but as established during the Nunberg trials, there is no defense in claiming that if you started the illegal and immoral war of aggression.
Three, why are they hiding what is happening if it’s all above board? Why would they not permit unfettered access showing what is being targeted bombing and that the Iranians are lying when they say that thousands of civilian structures have been bombed including schools and hospitals? You trust Hegseth? Trump? Need I say more?
And all that is without even addressing that these people have done nothing but lie and lie about lying about lying.
And let’s also remember that as shocking as the files that gave been released, they have not even released even the slightly uncomfortable parts of the Epstein Files, let alone arrested any of the rapists and pedophiles that are now on yet another murder spree, starting that prosecuting everyone would cause the whole system to collapse!
If want to believe people like that, people who do nothing but lie, rape, murder and cover up for it; then I guess there is nothing else to say and you will have to deal with that on your own as it eats you up from the inside. I for one am opposed to these types of people and actions and will speak out about it even if people don’t like it. And I refuse to make excuses for it for any reason, be it personal weakness or comfort.
vidarh 18 minutes ago [-]
They did not defend it or make excuses for it. They argued about the very specific claim of carpet bombing in Iran, before pointing out the entire campaign is illlegal and calling the choice of targets "not legally legitimate".
They also said nothing about Gaza.
I share your concern about both Gaza and Iran, but criticising people for calling out an exaggeration is not helping anyone.
radialstub 3 hours ago [-]
> I think he's trying to make a point about technology enhancing the capabilities of people who are in any conflict with conventionally powerful forces
Which is absurd, since all the technology he used was manufactured by the conventionally powerful forces and they can decide to not sell you their stuff.
shrubble 2 hours ago [-]
The fact that Koresh and his group held off Federal officers who stormed their building with simple guns that anyone can buy, is likely the point.
Out of five and a half minutes of video, David Koresh appears for perhaps three seconds.
It does put a new twist on the recent controversy about 3d printers needing to be licensed, however.
laborcontract 3 hours ago [-]
soo... i have no kept up with what's gone on in russia/ukraine. Are those drone videos what i think they are – drones sneaking up on humans and, presumably, ceasing them of life?
edit: Ok, I googled the guy
> I have read the works of authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Desmod Morris,
and Ted Kaczynski who believe that technology is harming us and the world.
https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/User:Alisherkhojayev
sorenjan 2 hours ago [-]
Both Russia and Ukraine build millions of drones per year, most of them fpv drones that are basically remote controlled flying grenades. There's plenty of electronic warfare with radio jamming, so in some places they use drone mounted spools of fiber optic cable to control them. It's probably been the most impactful weapon type in the war for the past years.
mikkupikku 3 hours ago [-]
Yes. Both sides are using explosive FPV drones, flown directly into soldiers (as well as other forms of drone warfare.)
laborcontract 3 hours ago [-]
thank you. that was unnerving to watch.
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
phplovesong 2 hours ago [-]
What started in Ukraine, this is modern warfare. Like most "consumer" goods that are mass produced, you can now get a capable strike force for peanuts.
The russians have taken close to 1.5 million casulties because ukraine engineering for cheap drones. Putin really, really f-ed up his "3 day military operation".
JKCalhoun 3 hours ago [-]
Who knew there were war bros.
tclancy 3 hours ago [-]
We might need them. Would be better than my theory that this country will recover at some point after they destroy the EPA and reintroduce leaded gas because that's what made this country great which leads to a generation of kids who are willing to throw bricks at cops again.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Hnrobert42 3 hours ago [-]
It is exciting to know a secret no one else does. David vs Goliath stories have always been powerful. It is seductive to think you have outsmarted the rest of society.
Be careful who you let manipulate those emotions.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
I am sorry to hear you suffer from mental deficiencies, but they are not secrets at all, you too can learn about the truth by following the link and informing ourself how the lying psychopaths in the government lied to you and made you the awful person that runs cover for evil like you are doing here.
idiotsecant 2 hours ago [-]
You get that the post you're replying to is saying that the idea that you have knowledge that few others do is appealing and can lead to bad decision making, right?
Ascribing evil to someone who is trying to make a point in the gentlest and most respectful way possible makes you look like a crazy person, btw.
roysting 11 minutes ago [-]
I used to not think much of Waco and even remember seeing it on TV and my takeaway being basically “some crazies burned themselves instead of submitting”, because that was the line.
But that is not at all the actual story. Just think of how much the government has lied about and how much it constantly lies about everything all the time. You think it’s plausible they were just the most honest and righteous angels that didn’t do nothing at all in Waco? They pathological, murderous liars? I’m just trying to suggest you reconsider things, your relationship with the murderous, lying, psychopathic government.
Ironically, you seem to not understand what he is saying and doing with his inept, smug comment from a place of ignorance to protect his propaganda… a kind of self-hiding mental virus.
I get it is easier to believe we understand how the world works because we “learned it” from a government approved teacher when we were kids and we are now successful alpha slaves that have accumulated shiny things, but reality is simply that Waco was not what the government said it was.
And yet another level of irony, it is precisely what the government relies on, people simply rejecting anything that does not come from the biggest cult, government; the belief that these vile people we call government are any better than Koresh.
We are now governed by lying, murderous, raping, pedophiles … how is that different than Koresh… just on a massively larger and more evil planet sized scale?
myko 3 hours ago [-]
The white washing of Koresh is sickening to see. Similar to how some in the US idolize the traitor Colonel Robert E Lee.
shrubble 2 hours ago [-]
If this was Usenet, your post would result in a “plonk” very likely.
Why did almost all Presidents up to and including Eisenhower praise Robert E Lee? Was Eisenhower a traitor also?
mikkupikku 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, Eisenhower praised Lee's personal and leadership qualities, not the Confederate cause. The GP comment speaks of people who "idolize" Lee, which I think can be presumed to mean people who are on-board with the Confederate cause and by extension racism and slavery, which is pretty much how the subject is viewed by a great many today, but in Eisenhower's time people weren't tuned for twitter-sized ideas and were more capable of recognizing the way some people excelled while also simultaneously being strongly against other aspects of that person. Nuance like having complicated views on complicated people, doesn't do well on much of the internet these days, our culture has moved away from that. Now if you say Lee was a great military officer and also a traitor, people will assume that you mean one of those and just threw in the other to mask your extremist intent or something. People are assumed to be simple, with simple opinions about other simple people.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
Try to pay attention please. Let’s try this; are you opposed to the government pumping 100 rounds into a person for some imagined “threat” they rationalize about after the fact? Koresh was not a great guy, kind of a piece of shit, just like the people the cops usually gun down, but that does not mean you need to take the low IQ government bait to excuse their lying and wanton murder and constant evil.
myko 55 minutes ago [-]
I'm okay with criticizing the government response - they should have arrested him in town. But pretending he was not an awful person is beyond the pale, and I felt the comment I replied to came close to that line.
mothballed 2 minutes ago [-]
Maybe he was an awful person, but their warrant was completely bogus. Legal inert grenade shells, legal black powder, and the "automatic gunfire" complete BS accusation that the government never provided evidence of was likely "hellfire triggers" at best.
lukan 4 hours ago [-]
So this is basically a DIY mini rocket clearly advertised to be used in an asymetrical war. I do not expect this project to remain on github for long.
randomNumber7 4 hours ago [-]
> This project manifesto declares a fundamental shift: advanced air-defense capabilities—once locked behind billion-dollar state arsenals and classified labs—are now within reach of determined individuals using consumer electronics, open-source software, and rapid prototyping.
I guess a lot of people will not be happy with this xD
Xmd5a 3 hours ago [-]
> Description: Space echoes like an immense tomb, yet the stars still burn. Why does the sun take so long to die?
pjc50 3 hours ago [-]
Translation: everyone should be able to shoot down an airliner, not just nations.
PowerElectronix 2 hours ago [-]
I mean, if we already "trust" nations with that power...
niemandhier 3 hours ago [-]
A certain kind of mind deals with stress by devising solutions, even if one cannot put them into action.
Seeing people in Israel, Iran, the general Middle East as well as the Ukraine live in fear of drone strikes might have incentivised this person to come up with a potential way to deal with these threats.
Cheap air defense would equilibrate drone warfare again:
Currently drones are much cheaper that the systems that take them down.
sschueller 3 hours ago [-]
I would invert that statement.
The fact that home made drones can cause such havoc to even the best funded military is an equalizer when the military with all the power is actively trying to completely eliminate the otherside.
There are no home made devices a Gazan can build that can protect from a 2000lbs bomb.
mikkupikku 3 hours ago [-]
MANPADS can be effective against large drones, but definitely not against the kind of FOV shit we see in Ukraine. They were originally designed to kill helicopters and low flying aircraft, and I'm guessing that's still his design intent.
niemandhier 2 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that for the civilians in Ukraine Shaheed style drones are the danger.
jacquesm 10 minutes ago [-]
They are but the Ukrainians are making some serious inroads into the effectiveness of those drones and if they keep that up for a little while longer they will have near perfect ability to shoot them down. Essentially they've built hunter-killer drones that are sent off in the general direction of Shahed that then either succeed or fail in their mission. That success rate has been very steadily climbing over the last couple of months.
But I really hate the whole weaponization of these FPV drones (as opposed to the bigger fixed wings ones), not just they ruined the fun hobby that a lot enjoy, but also increased the prices for the parts. Before 2022 whenever I talk about drones everyone is enthusiastic about them, what benefits they can bring like drone deliveries and all, after that, you get a hostile reaction or the government putting you on some watchlist.
jacquesm 9 minutes ago [-]
You can hate it, but at the same time, without it Ukraine would have been overrun by now and I think that trumps your feelings about your hobby.
nine-one-two 1 hours ago [-]
Check out his code. It’s a joke. His control loop is a naive proportional response that doesnt even account for error let alone interpolate trajectory. Look at rocket.txt and launcher.tx. Especially the “fusion” function. lol. Stay in school kid.
kikkia 2 hours ago [-]
Really cool work on making your own rocket motors.
I wonder why he calls it a MANPADS (Man portable Air Defense System) It does slightly resemble a Manpads, but with a GPS based guidance system it would not able to be used for air defense, even conceptually. Typically manpads would use something like an infrared/optical or radar guidance system which would run way more than $5. This does seem like a cool home made AGM-176 or similar. There's always been a side project idea in the back of my head about what the cheapest IR or laser guided RC Plane launched rocket would look like. A cheap rocket design powered by some model rocket engines that could be used for a drone -> drone intercept cheaply.
Awesome job taking a fun idea into reality. It's really impressive to see the design work
mikkupikku 4 hours ago [-]
Straight up admitting that it's meant to implement MANPADS is certainly a choice, I hope the author doesn't get himself in hot water.. ITAR or something..
(Would be cool to see an ATGM variant too!)
codethief 4 hours ago [-]
As the YouTube comments say:
> This guy really wants that defense contract.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
They may just give it to him to buy him. It’s the first stage of neutralizing the peasantry of rebellious thoughts against the aristocracy.
neatze 3 hours ago [-]
Many mention ITAR or some other issue, nothing about this project is even close to ITAR (as far I understand), connecting camera to rocket using it as guidance will get in trouble most likely, if not mistake only thing allowed is using camera to AIM at sun.
MANPADS are certainly covered by ITAR. It could probably be effectively argued by his lawyers that what he has created isn't truly MANPADS but rather just an edgy toy that superficially resembles a weapon system but isn't actually capable of performing as one. Maybe that would work, but I think his chance of getting dragged into the legal system for this or for some chickenshit like weed possession are very high, particularly if the media at large picks up this story.
mothballed 29 minutes ago [-]
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g states that just having a system "intended to launch or guide a rocked or missile described in... [description of MANPAD type rocket]" carries life imprisonment. He calls it a manpad and then shows a system intended to launch it.
There is no consideration in the law whether he actually plans to use it or ever meant any violence, nor any consideration of whether it violates ITAR.
As someone who has a lot of interest in weapons law, this is probably about the only kind of weapon that can't be even legally contemplated in the USA, worst case for almost anything else you can get an NFA stamp. The USA is absolutely paranoid about yielding their air power so they come down like a ton of bricks against anyone that might want to defend against that.
charcircuit 14 minutes ago [-]
So design a system for launching test vehicles?
isoprophlex 3 hours ago [-]
This is obviously a missile, and I'm not well-versed in weapons tech, but won't this need a camera to actually track and take out a flying object? So far I just see gps and barometric sensing...
Also 3D printing and some electronics, ok fine, but where do you get the rocket propellant? That seems at least as critical as the software and sensing side of things...
icegreentea2 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this current project uses external sensors (a camera array/grid) for guidance.
He's using potassium nitrate/sugar as his rocket fuel.
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
Watch the video. He makes his own propellant.
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
> rocket propellant
You can homemade it, kno3+sugar
holografix 3 hours ago [-]
Fascinating, is miniaturisation and “democratisation” of offensive capabilities via 3d printing and consumer tech going to impact defensive capabilities as well?
Are we going to see foot troops carry one of these strapped to their backpacks and launched autonomously to counteract incoming drones?
tzury 3 hours ago [-]
Given the navigation is done by the cameras (not GPS) you will also need to do some work with the second repository (by the same guy)-
It still doesn't cease to amaze me what can be done with modern ultra-cheap electronics. $1 for the accelerometer. $17 for four servos. But as DIY cheap weapon development? Only if the ultra-cheap electronics pipeline will keep flowing.
jofzar 3 hours ago [-]
God, I feel like I am going to be on a list after clicking that link.
The future is scary
doodlebugging 53 minutes ago [-]
But you get more followers and that's the goal today isn't it? You have to take the good with the bad. No one is categorizing the follower ranks by "good guys" versus "bad guys" so you never know when one of your "admirers" is only there to monitor you in case you get out of line.
roysting 2 hours ago [-]
What the “government” has in store for you is way scarier. You just don’t know it any more than a cow on a pasture knows what a slaughter house is, yet.
realo 2 hours ago [-]
But in Canada we ...
Oh shit. You're right.
nbernard 1 hours ago [-]
> God, I feel like I am going to be on a list after clicking that link.
It's a poor life that doesn't put you on a few such lists!
getcrunk 3 hours ago [-]
I watched a YouTube video the other day about how the usa tracks missle launches globally. I would assume they have to pass a minimum threshold of power/heat/energy to be detectable.
Let’s all pray this toy project, if readily upgradable, is also trackable and well … the way we keep law and order is by actual policing and prosecuting. So hopefully this doesn’t get out of hand.
Very impressive, but very troubling.
nik282000 2 hours ago [-]
Right now, today, the US government and it's three letter agencies are being run by a club of human trafficking peodophiles and rapists. Not individual, isolated, crimes. An organized group of very twisted people, having 'immigrants' rounded up and killed, pushing women back into the 1920s, and trying to make anyone who strays from heteronormative a criminal.
Having some independent developers in the defence market is not necessarily a bad thing.
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
Isn't it obvious that, if one person can do it, many more can do it as well, and probably have? It's not like they'll put it on GitHub.
lm28469 3 hours ago [-]
This thing doesn't do anything a launcher from the 70s couldn't do.
Global detection is for balistic missiles, not things launched by human portable devices
kuberwastaken 2 hours ago [-]
This is the coolest thing I've seen all week, possibly this month
Acquireyet 2 hours ago [-]
This is insanely clever—especially using a $5 sensor to adjust the rocket mid-flight. Shows how much you can do now with cheap electronics and open-source software. Curious how reliable the recalculations are under real-world conditions.
alansaber 3 hours ago [-]
Kid knows how to advertise
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
Yes to three-letter agencies.
roysting 3 hours ago [-]
I hope the kid is aware that he better not commit anything even remotely like a crime, because they will try to stitch him up quick.
This provides a distributed camera network to provide realtime updatable telemetry for target acquisition.
Only thing missing is he should have used LoRa as the backend comms. Meshtastic devices provide encryption and full comms with mesh for cheap.
Thankfully ive already downloaded everything. I suggest you all do the same, cause this repo is getting purged and the student Alisher Khojayev at Los Angeles Valley College is likely going to get black bagged.
lightedman 16 minutes ago [-]
Uhhh, as someone who is very much under the thumb of ITAR and EAR as an aerospace employee, this is absolutely asking for prison time, and a LOT of it.
throwaway290 4 hours ago [-]
Insanity. Airbus fighter jets, open-source rockets on github...
RobotToaster 4 hours ago [-]
Can't wait for the open source fighter jet.
abhikul0 3 hours ago [-]
Clawjet, secured with sandboxing, bring your own SKILLs.
throwaway290 1 hours ago [-]
this is not funny yall!
mschuster91 4 hours ago [-]
Just a few days ago, we got a legitimate from scratch open source design for a phased array radar [1].
Airbus has been in the defense industry for a long time.
And the deadliest weapons in war today are repurposed toys.
relaxing 2 hours ago [-]
I’m waiting for the open source EW project that attacks the uplink.
Now that would be a fun competition.
And then the rocket maker pivot back to control by wire, as in the drone sphere. DIY TOW when?
MagicMoonlight 4 hours ago [-]
Be very careful. Google and GitHub will turn you over without hesitation, and everyone who downloads this will probably be vanned.
Remember kids, the warrantless search is only illegal if they don’t find a surface to air missile. Anything can be made retroactively legal if they find something like this.
phplovesong 2 hours ago [-]
Its scary that you can whip something like this in under 100 bucks. Add a small warhead and you got a small missile.
Like we see in Iran, with trumps idiotic war the US cant even protect its allies and own soldiers, even with a whopping 1.5 trillion budget.
alexnewman 3 hours ago [-]
So you are going to see the following cope
Coper: But it's sensors are so low end it will never be reliable enough.
Response: We can use AI to make up for low quality sensors, we can add a camera if we want it to be as reliable as self driving cars for a small amount of money
Coper: AI what a joke that doesn't work
Response: It's live in production
Coper: But you can't fit a big enough payload
Response: Lets see
planerde 3 hours ago [-]
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planerde 3 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 15:14:18 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The guy has a talent, and he put together a nice prototype based on OpenRocket [3], but with all due respect, this is not a rocket, and you are not going to win any war with this toy, even if all your enemy has are rocks thrown at you from pretty much similar distance.
The remix of computer games / Ukraine / Martin Luther King / Vietnam / David Koresh just adding more to the amateur spirit and confusion.
[1] https://youtu.be/DDO2EvXyncE [2] https://youtu.be/DDO2EvXyncE?t=280 [3] https://openrocket.info/
For all the technical info given in the video, there is a curious lack of any data regarding the actual accuracy of the system. What percentage of rockets tested managed to hit anything and at what range?
No lack of entrackment data generated by digital twin of "the system".
It clearly needs more work, but if an amateur can get this far at this low cost, odds are you'll see attempts at overwhelming attackers or defense systems by sheer volume with cheap decoys like this long before they become an actual threat in and of themselves.
Get the rocket a bit more stable, and force an attack to try to take out dozens of these because one of them might be a real threat, and you'll have created a problem.
You could integrate acceleration to get speed - the flight is short enough to make compounding errors easy to ignore.
I think thanks to drones and RC hobbyists, there's a generally nice body of knowledge on how to get good enough data from consumer hardware to keep things flying.
‘Easy to ignore’ is not a term I would use here, especially given the motion environment of a rocket. It seems like it might be beginning to be borderline possible.
I saw this pop up alongside its video thumbnail and nearly shit myself watching it and going "damn, that looks exactly like what's on those RU/UA drones going at each other"... https://www.ebay.com/itm/197224214645
"HS AI Vision Cube For Ultra-long-range Target Recognition tracking & Thermal" for as low as $175. I am feeling the potential ITAR violations straight through my screen.
And possibly landing on all kinds of watch lists.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the sellers there are just honeypots.
A name like “Ultra-long-range Target Recognition tracking” just screams “Hey, FBI, please come visit me and ask what I am building in the basement”
Realistically, I doubt there’s ANY system out there will be able to counter small weaponized drones that are flown manually let alone with AI, you might have some workarounds, but never a real counter.
Weaponized drones (say D_A) can be countered by other weaponized drones (say D_B), equally cheap or cheaper than D_A because the D_A is usually targeting something larger (so more payload) and typically has a longer range. D_B only needs to wreck D_A at a shorter defensive range. That's what Ukraine is doing.
You can also use drone swarms with coordinated action so that each drone in the swarm is only targeting one other drone, and automatic re-targeting if one node misses. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_robotics
I doubt it, as D_A's target is stationary (and could be reduced to GPS coords) while D_B's target is moving.
It's a good point, though I should point out that GPS denial is assumed in those sort of contexts as a first countermeasure so D_A likely has alternative targeting, and that smaller drones can move faster with less energy storage, which itself requires less weight, compounding the benefits of being smaller.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/9-mothers-corporation
Given the war in Ukraine, wanting to build such things is certainly understandable. But still, this is the stuff of nightmares.
Why would lasers not work?
Those cheap drones are made from plastic, if you have a laser powerful enough and a target guidance system (like a camera and a PI) - then you would just need enough of them.
Not impossible but many times more expensive than the drone
- are cheap to shoot - do not fall on someones head if they miss (unlike firing bullets and rockets at a drone that will come down again) - do hit the target immediately if aimed right
Problems with lasers are, cooling, power consumption limiting mobile use - and indeed targeting and fog and clouds.
Even the fastest "real-time" LLM frameworks currently report sub-second latencies around 120ms. This is fine for high-level mission planning (e.g., "fly to the red house") but too slow to prevent a drone from hitting a tree at 50mph (80 KM/h)[1]
Whilst the Shahed-136 kamikaze drone typically flies at a maximum speed of around 185 km/h (roughly 115 mph or 100 knots).
[1] https://arxiv.org/html/2602.19534v1 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
LLMs (Large Language Models) are far from the only type of AI around. It's a pretty broad field, and there are real-time AI systems, for example, self-driving cars, which have the response times you're thinking of. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence:_A_Mod...
YOLO is a good example for something that can work.
https://docs.ultralytics.com/models/yolov8/
What kind of systems are you thinking about? Jet airplanes for sure are completely safe from small drones.
That feels like a bold and unsupported assertion. Ask a pilot how they'd feel about takeoffs or landings through airspace filled with adversarial drones.
The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking and this is a pretty stark demonstration of where that trend leads. A few years ago this would have required an IMU that cost more than this entire build. The democratization angle cuts both ways though - the same accessibility that makes this cool for hobbyists makes it genuinely concerning from a proliferation standpoint.
My friend's brother works in munitions and had, in his spare time, designed and prototyped a missile that could be built for about 10k. He pretty much was ignored by the contractor he works for.
Shockingly, as of a couple weeks ago, they are all hot and bothered to talk.
Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to specification every time. You can stockpile the packaged missiles in a non-climate-controlled shed for years, replenish them at sea while being showered with salt water, subject them to shock of a nearby blast while in a VLS, and they will still launch, go up to Mach 13, and catch an incoming ballistic missile nearly every time.
Sure, Iran's ballistic missiles are simpler than SM-3, but they are still subject to most of the constraints. They still need perfectly cast large size solid rocket motors that don't crack after being stored for a year, they need warheads that only go off when they are supposed to, they still need to trace every part for QA, etc. There's a vast gap, largely invisible to amateurs, between garage prototypes and stockpiled AURs.
> propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.
You're entirely missing the point.
These do not need to be reliable for the scenario I hinted at. They also do not need to be armed.
They need to be large enough that if one of them is a higher quality rocket (not part of the $10k) that contains actual explosives, you have serious destruction on your hand. Maybe something that looks large enough for that will drive the cost up and we're talking $20k or even $100k instead of $10k.
The precise cost is largely irrelevant, as long as the total cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of a missile interception.
The point is you'd be multiplying the cost assymmetry by forcing a massively outsized response. Because if you don't try to intercept them, every future barrage will include a real rocket. If you do try to intercept them all, you'll be burning through massively expensive interceptors to take out a bunch of cheap toys.
If I was ever considering an insurgency, or a war, I'd be stocking up on vast quantities of toys, with the intent of making every radar constantly lit up by a number of possible threats.
Where you're right is repeatability. Mil-spec works the same on launch 1 and launch 500 across temperature extremes. Consumer MEMS you'd need to characterize each unit individually — fine for a demo, impractical at any scale.
While the pure gyro/accelerometer stuff does suffer from major problems the improvements in SLAM using just cameras in the last 15 years are insane.
He implemented a 1D tracker in his garage, took it to work and showed people. A few years later these bombs are taking out bridges and even sometimes hitting moving trucks.
Other than that, GPS is a one-way system, it does not know you exist, how fast your receiver is moving or "give" different information to one client vs another.
Even if it did, this is essentially a toy and moving slower and lower than a general aviation plane.
It uses accelerometers and other sensors because they can be sampled and integrated hundreds of times a second. The $5 gps module is 9600 baud serial and provides one update/second (or maybe 5/sec depending on which part number you pick).
I even have 1 that can remove up to 8 active jamming signals.
Gotta love what you can buy for $20
If China allows those unrestricted chips to be sold internationally but not domestically it would be a strategic long-term decision, I would think. Destabilize the neighbors but not themselves.
The more likely reason is that their government has simply not gotten around to restricting it.
Are you sure about this? MEMS IMUs have been popular and cheap for ~10-15 years.
Merely having a device intended to guide the rocket is also the same penalty.
[] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g
I'm impressed by the kid's engineering and gumption, but I think he's a bit.. misguided, if you'll pardon the pun. The video ends with shots of Russian drone war, and, bizarrely, photos of David Koresh.
I don't think this ends well.
You're omitting that the end of the video also features pictures of Martin Luther King, Vietnamese civilians during America's invasion of their country and Afghani Mujahideen freedom fighters during the Soviet Union's invasion of theirs; I think he's trying to make a point about technology enhancing the capabilities of people who are in any conflict with conventionally powerful forces, not an endorsement of David Koresh.
There now carpet bombing and murdering people in Iran, just like they mass murdered people in Gaza, and they’re doing it to cover up and distract from the fact that our government consists of raping pedophiles. That is who we are governed by. … but David Koresh excuses it and makes any opposition invalid, of close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
The choice of targets is not legally legitimate (and the entire campaign is illegal AFAICT), and sometimes they used old/invalid intel, like what happened with that girls' school that's supposedly close to an IRGC base. Still, it is mostly individual buildings or installations rather than an attempt to flatten entire areas.
Not so sure about South Lebanon. From whatever media coverage I saw, some look not that different from carpet bombing.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/09/lebanon-israel-unlawfull...
(they have also previously documented that Israel has done this in the past)
Two, at the very least, the most generous interpretation, the very first strike to start an illegal war of aggression that the Nuremberg trial clearly established as the “mother of all subsequent evil”, was not only on a girls school that killed dozens and dozens of young girls, but did so in a “double tap“ process where they observed that people arrived in ambulances and parents in cars to pick up very small humans, and then they hit them again with another missile. Let us be clear about what you are excusing… They intentionally splattered the guts and flesh of young girls and their parents rushing to save them all over a 300 foot diameter blast radius.
We can lie to ourselves that may have been a “mistake“ but as established during the Nunberg trials, there is no defense in claiming that if you started the illegal and immoral war of aggression.
Three, why are they hiding what is happening if it’s all above board? Why would they not permit unfettered access showing what is being targeted bombing and that the Iranians are lying when they say that thousands of civilian structures have been bombed including schools and hospitals? You trust Hegseth? Trump? Need I say more?
And all that is without even addressing that these people have done nothing but lie and lie about lying about lying.
And let’s also remember that as shocking as the files that gave been released, they have not even released even the slightly uncomfortable parts of the Epstein Files, let alone arrested any of the rapists and pedophiles that are now on yet another murder spree, starting that prosecuting everyone would cause the whole system to collapse!
If want to believe people like that, people who do nothing but lie, rape, murder and cover up for it; then I guess there is nothing else to say and you will have to deal with that on your own as it eats you up from the inside. I for one am opposed to these types of people and actions and will speak out about it even if people don’t like it. And I refuse to make excuses for it for any reason, be it personal weakness or comfort.
They also said nothing about Gaza.
I share your concern about both Gaza and Iran, but criticising people for calling out an exaggeration is not helping anyone.
Which is absurd, since all the technology he used was manufactured by the conventionally powerful forces and they can decide to not sell you their stuff.
Out of five and a half minutes of video, David Koresh appears for perhaps three seconds.
It does put a new twist on the recent controversy about 3d printers needing to be licensed, however.
edit: Ok, I googled the guy
The russians have taken close to 1.5 million casulties because ukraine engineering for cheap drones. Putin really, really f-ed up his "3 day military operation".
Be careful who you let manipulate those emotions.
Ascribing evil to someone who is trying to make a point in the gentlest and most respectful way possible makes you look like a crazy person, btw.
But that is not at all the actual story. Just think of how much the government has lied about and how much it constantly lies about everything all the time. You think it’s plausible they were just the most honest and righteous angels that didn’t do nothing at all in Waco? They pathological, murderous liars? I’m just trying to suggest you reconsider things, your relationship with the murderous, lying, psychopathic government.
Ironically, you seem to not understand what he is saying and doing with his inept, smug comment from a place of ignorance to protect his propaganda… a kind of self-hiding mental virus.
I get it is easier to believe we understand how the world works because we “learned it” from a government approved teacher when we were kids and we are now successful alpha slaves that have accumulated shiny things, but reality is simply that Waco was not what the government said it was.
And yet another level of irony, it is precisely what the government relies on, people simply rejecting anything that does not come from the biggest cult, government; the belief that these vile people we call government are any better than Koresh.
We are now governed by lying, murderous, raping, pedophiles … how is that different than Koresh… just on a massively larger and more evil planet sized scale?
Why did almost all Presidents up to and including Eisenhower praise Robert E Lee? Was Eisenhower a traitor also?
I guess a lot of people will not be happy with this xD
Seeing people in Israel, Iran, the general Middle East as well as the Ukraine live in fear of drone strikes might have incentivised this person to come up with a potential way to deal with these threats.
Cheap air defense would equilibrate drone warfare again:
Currently drones are much cheaper that the systems that take them down.
The fact that home made drones can cause such havoc to even the best funded military is an equalizer when the military with all the power is actively trying to completely eliminate the otherside.
There are no home made devices a Gazan can build that can protect from a 2000lbs bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sting_(drone)
FPV.
But I really hate the whole weaponization of these FPV drones (as opposed to the bigger fixed wings ones), not just they ruined the fun hobby that a lot enjoy, but also increased the prices for the parts. Before 2022 whenever I talk about drones everyone is enthusiastic about them, what benefits they can bring like drone deliveries and all, after that, you get a hostile reaction or the government putting you on some watchlist.
I wonder why he calls it a MANPADS (Man portable Air Defense System) It does slightly resemble a Manpads, but with a GPS based guidance system it would not able to be used for air defense, even conceptually. Typically manpads would use something like an infrared/optical or radar guidance system which would run way more than $5. This does seem like a cool home made AGM-176 or similar. There's always been a side project idea in the back of my head about what the cheapest IR or laser guided RC Plane launched rocket would look like. A cheap rocket design powered by some model rocket engines that could be used for a drone -> drone intercept cheaply.
Awesome job taking a fun idea into reality. It's really impressive to see the design work
(Would be cool to see an ATGM variant too!)
> This guy really wants that defense contract.
https://www.youtube.com/@LafayetteSystems is similar project, also by actual defense contractor, and less opensource.
There is no consideration in the law whether he actually plans to use it or ever meant any violence, nor any consideration of whether it violates ITAR.
As someone who has a lot of interest in weapons law, this is probably about the only kind of weapon that can't be even legally contemplated in the USA, worst case for almost anything else you can get an NFA stamp. The USA is absolutely paranoid about yielding their air power so they come down like a ton of bricks against anyone that might want to defend against that.
Also 3D printing and some electronics, ok fine, but where do you get the rocket propellant? That seems at least as critical as the software and sensing side of things...
He's using potassium nitrate/sugar as his rocket fuel.
You can homemade it, kno3+sugar
Are we going to see foot troops carry one of these strapped to their backpacks and launched autonomously to counteract incoming drones?
https://github.com/novatic14/Distributed-Camera-Node-Trackin...
The future is scary
Oh shit. You're right.
It's a poor life that doesn't put you on a few such lists!
Let’s all pray this toy project, if readily upgradable, is also trackable and well … the way we keep law and order is by actual policing and prosecuting. So hopefully this doesn’t get out of hand.
Very impressive, but very troubling.
Having some independent developers in the defence market is not necessarily a bad thing.
Global detection is for balistic missiles, not things launched by human portable devices
This provides a distributed camera network to provide realtime updatable telemetry for target acquisition.
Only thing missing is he should have used LoRa as the backend comms. Meshtastic devices provide encryption and full comms with mesh for cheap.
Thankfully ive already downloaded everything. I suggest you all do the same, cause this repo is getting purged and the student Alisher Khojayev at Los Angeles Valley College is likely going to get black bagged.
[1] https://hackaday.com/2026/03/12/open-source-radar-has-up-to-...
And the deadliest weapons in war today are repurposed toys.
And then the rocket maker pivot back to control by wire, as in the drone sphere. DIY TOW when?
Remember kids, the warrantless search is only illegal if they don’t find a surface to air missile. Anything can be made retroactively legal if they find something like this.
Like we see in Iran, with trumps idiotic war the US cant even protect its allies and own soldiers, even with a whopping 1.5 trillion budget.
Coper: But it's sensors are so low end it will never be reliable enough. Response: We can use AI to make up for low quality sensors, we can add a camera if we want it to be as reliable as self driving cars for a small amount of money Coper: AI what a joke that doesn't work Response: It's live in production Coper: But you can't fit a big enough payload Response: Lets see