I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have 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.
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, he is promoting 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. While the Anvil could be used to hurt people, at least it is designed for small flying drones. The Roadrunner is not:
The Roadrunner is a 6 ft (1.8 m)-long twin turbojet-powered delta-winged craft capable of high subsonic speeds and extreme maneuverability. Company officials describe it as somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile. The basic version can be fitted with modular payloads such as intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The Roadrunner-M has an explosive warhead to intercept UAS, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft.
Also a 5mn ad break to sell his kit felt much too long.
It’s like 1/3 of the video.
That’s his videos now. Get you to watch them to hype Crunch Labs.
It does seem interesting though. I was thinking of getting one for my sister but I believe the price deterred me.
This, I think, is more a symptom of YouTube no longer supporting creators. Most every big channel is looking to alternate income sources. YouTube ad revenue and sponsor inserts aren’t good enough.
Thing is, I wouldn’t mind it if channels could self-fund by things like this, but it’s being done on top of all the ads, not replacing them.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a great interest in war when I was a boy. Now as an adult, I’d rather have Mark explaining things to kids than anyone else they might seek out.
I had to stop watching his videos because I can’t stand his overly enthusiastic personality.
Sure, and I went through the video looking for some nuanced explanation of the technology, the risks, and what safeguards were being put in place. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any, and the cheerful music throughout the video seems to be promoting the content more than anything else.
I find that there are other engineering channels that discuss technologies while focussing on the technology itself, both the good and the bad. I’m not opposed to such content being accessible to children, but the way this video goes about it did not sit right with me
If it’s military tech, then the finer details are likely not part of the public domain. Anything that could be used to understand or develop a way to counteract the weapon more effectively, or sometimes even just understand its precise capabilities, would be secret.
It’s understandable that it does not sit well, I think that’s healthy. War is hell.
Such a nice name wasted. Same as Palantir
So far, US start-up made drones have proved to be useless trash when tested in Ukraine.
Can you elaborate? I’m interested in this subject.
There are a number of articles regarding this both from US and Ukrainian news sources. Here is one of the quick search results. Also, Ukraine has found the most success with modified, Chinese made, off the shelf DJI drones and regular consumer grade Chinese parts. I saw another article that said that Ukraine’s aim is to crank out about 2000 drones a day using these parts.
That’s just because they’re much cheaper, actual American drones are much more capable but they can’t afford them
The breathless enthusiasm for the military industrial complex while dropping scary descriptions of terrorism that hasn’t happened gave me exactly the same impression.
I hate this kind of content, especially from someone who seems like a pretty genuine person.
Please Mark: be a bit more critical.
Is it just me, or does that discussion of the various ways to counter drones, kinda miss the obvious of just shooting them with a conventional gun?
Those fpv drones are almost invisible until they’re about 5 m out and then they hit you within about half a second. It’s almost impossible to describe the speed maneuverability they have, and combined with their tiny size it’s very hard to even see them, let alone hit them.
We’ve had that technology since the 70’s, it’s called the Phalanx system and it automatically defends naval vessels against incoming missiles.
To do this the Phalanx fires 4,500 rounds per minute. While it only has to fire for 1-3 seconds per incoming object, that’s still an ungodly number of rounds, each one about the length of your hand.
To do the same with a human operated firearm would take such a degree of luck that you may as well pray for the incoming drone to get struck by lightning.
I didn’t really think human operated, I was imagining something pretty much exactly like phalanx, but with a much smaller caliber and turret size owing to the small size of drones. Like a phalanx type software controller mounted to a small turret with a small caliber machinegun or automatic shotgun type weapon.
There are enormous downsides including mechanical reliability and weight.
Raytheon is already selling a system that assists a human operator in drone targeting, then knocks them out with a laser emitter. The whole thing fits on the back of a Polaris off-road vehicle and runs on electricity. That means the ammo is a gallon or two of fuel.
Don’t forget that projectiles have to obey the laws of gravity. Firing a couple hundred rounds over a stadium in a busy city doesn’t seem like a great idea
You’re approaching the issue incorrectly, because you’re omitting cost.
For example: Russia is using suicide drones that cost a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each.
It’s not economically(or logistically) viable to fire a few hundred rounds of ammunition at every drone.
Firing a several thousand dollars worth of bullets at a missile works because the missile is at least several hundred thousand.
That’s why Raytheon developed a laser based anti-drone system. Electricity is cheaper than bullets.
I suppose that depending on the location you might not want to have stray bullets landing at random, also depending on the size and the speed of the drone it might be hard to target.
Been tried quite a bit now in the Russo-Ukrainian theater. Not as easy as it sounds.
You’d think that a bot could target it, but some drones are just super agile
Not saying they’d dodge a bullet or shell, just saying that they’re hard to aim at
If you can target them with a laser though, why would a gun be much different? I know there’s dramatically more travel time, but bullets are still extremely fast, and even if one shot misses, something like a machinegun with a computerized control system seems like it ought to hit the thing before too long? Maybe the risk of missed shots causing harm might be too high for populated areas?
You shoot much?
I have to think no because then you’d know how difficult it is to hit a stationary target and then be able to extrapolate that to one that moves and changes direction on a dime in 3 dimensions.
Then you’d also consider what’s happening to the projectiles that inevitably miss even in a computerized targeting system.
At range sure, nearby though an open choke shotgun would be pretty viable. Skeet shooting has been a thing for a while and unless it can change direction between the trigger and the pellets reaching it the drone’s likely at least impaired.
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.
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How nearby is nearby though? And, in the context of the proposed use case for defending a crowded stadium in a populated area, does this put people down range as well that could also be impaired by the pellets?
Crowded spaces it’s a problem, I was more talking to notion of just plain shooting them rather than a use case. A rifle would be dang near impossible, but a scattered spray, you really only need to stop one prop and it’s probably on the ground for a standard 4 prop deal. At least mine got real screwy when a blade split mid flight.
Admittedly not, no. I was making the assumption, possibly a naive one, that a computer should be capable of understanding the physics behind bullet trajectories well enough to shoot accurately even if the target is mobile.
You should check out some videos of CIWS (Close In Weapon Systems) in action. They’re systems designed to shoot down projectiles like missiles and mortar rounds (as well as targeting small vehicles and planes). The sheer number of rounds they spray to take out a target that is moving on a single ballistic trajectory is crazy.
The closest thing I know of to what you’re talking about would be hard-kill APS (Active Protection Systems). These are systems designed to protect vehicles like tanks from incoming rounds and missiles. Using radar and optical sensors, they can detect a round and predict whether or not it’s going to hit the vehicle and respond in nanoseconds, firing an explosive back at a target traveling 1-2km per second. However, this isn’t like shooting a bullet out of the air with another bullet. It’s more like chucking a grenade at a missile to either deflect it or destroy enough of it that the pieces (still going 1-2km/s) don’t damage the vehicle.
But both of these systems are designed mainly for destroying targets on a ballistic trajectory. When you throw drones into the mix, now you have a target that can react to your reaction. With slower moving drones like the helicopter ones, that’s easy enough. But what about a drone that’s moving at mach 2 and capable of sustaining 20g’s, like a missile. Now you’re talking about basically firing missiles at missiles, which has proven to be very difficult before a missile has spent its fuel and is coasting towards its target on its final ballistic trajectory.
One of the use cases is it flying around a packed stadium. Without the drone standing rather still so you can get under and shoot right up at it, there’s no clear shot.
That’s an absolutely awful video. Loud, obnoxious, disingenuous and not even remotely as funny, informative, comprehensive, or clever as the idiot who made it thinks it is. It’s valueless content made to be ingested and served up by an algorithm.
Yeah I just watched it and it seemed off. Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
I had to stop watching his videos because I can’t stand his overly enthusiastic personality.
Even his voice is so fucking annoying he’s got that youtube shorts tone down to a tee and it physically repulses me.
Yeah I also definitely stopped paying much attention to him. He just seems so over enthusiastic about everything and some of his videos are quite bad
Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
The channel Boy Boy (I Did A Thing’s brother) did a great response video to that one.
Small correction: Boy Boy is Aleksa (I Did A Thing’s friend) and Alex (I Did A Thing), not his brother
Yeah that is how I know about this. I never watched the original video because I am not interested in prisons.
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Brother? Are you sure about that?
I always assumed they were brothers, idk why
They look nothing alike. Also Aleksa or at least his family is from the Balkans.
I’m sure it’s been implied by some joke they’ve made in one of their videos, but yeah fair enough that they look nothing alike.
He talks serbo-croatian to his grandpa and I also believe he mentions running from the balkans when he was a couple years old. Might have been in the north korea video
I know he mentioned being from the Balkans in the video where he interviews the American gun nut.
I also was not happy about the video.
Remember when he faked his first fart bomb video because he used his friends to play the part of the porch pirates? That was years ago.
I’m sorry to be that guy but I’m genuinely curious. Source?
My memory of this was a little off, but here’s the source: Engadget
Some children may grow to be the “bad guys” making and employing the “bad guy drones”, so it may be useful for them. War is part of life.
But if you want a certain kind of atmosphere, then I wouldn’t.
While I’m not linking to an external article, I’m hoping that my write-up within the post can still fit with the intent of this community :)
Maybe I’ve watched too much Black Mirror, but this video felt too similar to the tech demos at the start of a sci-fi thriller. In fact, it made me think of the Slaughterbots short film from 2017.
Two relevant points from that video:
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The person in the tech demo for the drones also uses language such as “bad guys”
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The address at the end:
This short film is more than just speculation. It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies that we already have. I’m Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley. I’ve worked in AI for more than 35 years. It’s potential to benefit humanity is enormous, even in defense. But allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom. Thousands of my fellow researchers agree we have an opportunity to prevent the future you just saw, but the window to act is closing fast.
I mean what’s being shown here is effectively “how do you stop something like a slaughter bot or a ‘terrorist bomb bot’?”
I thought it was a neat video … We need people thinking about these problems.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU
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I watched it with my kids and felt uncomfortable. This sort of video is not the same as elephants toothpaste.
I don’t suffer through rober videos so my kids can now worry people want to drop bombs on them at a stadium.
Thanks mark.
Why did they name a canon the same name as a flashlight OS?
^/s
