Drone Miniaturization, Facial Recognition, Kamikaze Missions
Prediction
On June 9, 2014, Natural News reported Tiny, low-cost drones may one day assassinate corrupt politicians, corporate CEOs and street criminals.
From studying trends in drone development, both in terms of software and hardware, I am now predicting the development of facial-recognition “kamikaze micro drones” capable of carrying out targeted human assassination missions with remarkable precision and reliability. The four trends that will lead to this are:
- Drone miniaturization: The development of mass-produced, affordable “micro drones” about the size of a common bird. These will likely be produced as hobby aircraft which will be easily modified to take on a more aggressive role.
- Facial recognition systems: The miniaturization of facial recognition software / hardware systems which may be deployed on micro drones and powered by very small on-board power supplies.
- Rapid advances in drone manufacturing efficiency, resulting in greater affordability of drone platforms by smaller and smaller groups, including corporations, smaller nations, universities, vigilantes and even activist groups.
- Incremental improvements in the power density of on-board batteries, allowing greater flight time and more CPU-intensive on-board computations.
These four trends will ultimately result in the creation of “Kamikaze assassination micro drones” with the ability to search for, identify and terminate a specific human target. It is likely, in fact, that many governments of the world are already working on this technology.
This technology will reshape the meaning of “war” by allowing rogue nations like North Korea, for example, to simply ship tens of thousands of such drones into the USA via China, marked as “toys” on import manifests.
What If?
What if anyone could kill almost anyone else for a few thousand dollars?
There will not even be a trace of who did it if the drone obliterates itself in the process.
Two Questions
- Are assassination micro-drones a good thing?
- Is this a more realistic worry than rogue nation nuclear war?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
We want nano-assassination drones!
Oh oh, the Fat Little Rocket Man has put out a death warrant on The Donald (for insulting the Fat Little Rocket Man). I hope he doesn’t get hold of these things, or, I hope The Donald gets them first (more likely). Really these things are seriously scary, anyone with a grudge could use one, and they are too small to shoot down.
Sales of Trump masks just tripled
Just plain scary. Be the first on your block to own a cruise missile. The difference is only the range and magnitude of the blast. We are building a world that no one can live in.
@ReadyKilowatt, you are too optimistic… Explosives like shaped charges do not need a heavy back plate either. And the drone doesn’t have to fly even a minute… These things can accelerate to 60 mph in less then a second, and just have to fly 20 seconds for half a mile or more, which is ‘beyond visual range’ in most urban or even countryside situations… The computer can also be less discriminatory, one could let it just attack something standing out 2 meters above the ground in the same way a mosquito finds you at 10 meters distance. It is way more scary then you think…. Think of the power one wields if releasing 100k of them in a city is just one mouse click away.
@MissionAccomplished, that’s hilarious. I would guess a little sparkly makeup would work just as well.
Cool Effendi, glad you skipped that fifth pot of coffee, you sound much more reasonable now.
SleemoG. I don’t do anything harder than caffeine. But yes, I’m sure that some pretty amazing (or weird) possibilities could be thought of by those who are high. Those who are not high could also sift through all the crazy ideas out there to perfect the ideal techniques. Currently there are on ebay and Amazon drones for $5, drones that weigh 7 grams etc and hardly a week goes by without hearing about advances in autonomous technology. The OP video was 3 years old and think of the advances in those 3 years, in another 3 years of advances Mish will probably be posting to this site while riding in a self driving car.
Just a little dab of plutonium on the nose, and one more swamp creature bites the dust.
Mission Accomplished, your technology is no match for Effendi’s psilocybin-induced imagination.
Maybe the U.S. could drop these things in Yemen and cut down the number of innocent children assassinated each year.
@ReadyKilowatt
The main point of the video was about automated targeting. Small, flying drones, were just chosen as a videogenic payload delivery vehicle. Sniper rifles on stepper motor jigs, that can recognize and decide to fire at a target autonomously, does largely the same thing, if a bit on a smaller scale. Ditto for Robocops. Also, for crowd targeting: A larger, higher payload freight drone can get to within range of the crowd, then drop off a swarm of individual kamikazes; who then only need from seconds to a minute or two to pick and attack it’s programmed target. The autonomous cars/trucks everyone is raving about today, can deliver massive amounts of either explosives, or kamikaze drones, without the attackers putting themselves at risk.
Pentagon announces new $35,000 anti-assassination drone helmet. The AADH to be available in limited numbers by Q1 2018 pending further tests.http://www.oilersaddict.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/daly_jewelism1_800.jpg
You do realize you’re fretting over a fictional product, right? I fly drones for a hobby and hope someday to earn a living of sorts flying professionally. There is no way there’s enough power in a palm sized drone to lift anything more than itself, and then only for a few minutes at best. A good wind gust will carry it away never to be seen again. My smallest drone, a DJI Mavic Pro, will fit nicely in a backpack, weighs in at about 1 1/2 pounds and 99% of that weight is just the aircraft itself and battery. The actual payload of the drone; the camera, gimbal and a micro-SD card, is only a few ounces (basically a mobile phone camera). Oh I hear you saying “but that’s today’s tech, what about everything getting faster/better/cheaper/smaller due to Moore’s law?” Well, the electronics might get smaller, but motors are basically unchanged since the 1980s, just minor incremental improvements due to conversion to rare Earth magnets. We’re still waiting on the battery “breakthrough” that will change everything, despite industry and governments throwing blank checks at the problem. And trying to direct a blast will require a whole lot of very strong material on the back side of the blast chamber. Material that has mass and weight. Not to mention the whole equal and opposite reaction thing…
2. The first rogue nation to employ suchh technology is likely the USA. They already have a drone project active in 36 or more countries. The CIA has always been about covert murder, rendition, and coups. No country has such a huge “secret” sector (1 million employed) co-opting the people and the government as does the USA. So yes, it seems a perfect gift to the CIA.
1. Yes, it is more realistic than rogue nation nuclear war. It may not be clear who launched the attack, the killing is more discriminate and selective, and doesn’t leave large tracts of land uninhabitable, and there is no risk of an overwhelming retaliatory annihilation. The thresholds are much lower, because it is not in practical terms the end of human life on earth.
“Are assassination micro-drones a good thing?” – well they could put a stop to people reneging on their obligations to government. No more deliquent receivables at the IRS etc..
SleemoG, the mask as a countermeasure only works if the drones are not programmed to recognise a masked person as a hostile target. Also you cannot wear a mask 24/7 (in the shower, at the gym etc) so as a bad guy wanting to assassinate you I’d leave some drones waiting for you. A heavy duty mask (helmet) might also stop my drone blowing a hole in your forehead but if drones are cheap I’d have a few programmed to attack the back of your neck (take out the cortex) or to spray a few grams of ricin in your face. Whatever evil ideas I can think of in 5 minutes to overcome your countermeasures I’m sure are outnumbered by what the MIC can think of over a few years (and they and other s have he funds to develop).
Post updated with complete video – Thanks to SweetKenny
Thanks SweetKenny – I could not find that
The full video is here https://youtu.be/6L1__ooD5-M
scary…
Get a job there as a programmer and jimmy the software. Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer….
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000MU2MJA/?tag=thewire06-20&linkCode=xm2&ascsubtag=AgEAAAAAAAAAAN92
ExecutionerTM Fly Swat:
Hillary just bought a thousand on eBay.
Countermeasure — a mask
Done and done
Clearly it has a camera, maybe no wifi or cellular. There has got to be counter measures, like a strong puff of air might blow that thing off course.
On-demand videos coming in assassin release 2