Anyway, please stay safe and don’t be afraid to defend yourself.

  • FrostyTrichs@walledgarden.xyz
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    5 days ago

    Anyone who thinks they stand a chance against drones with a gun hasn’t been paying attention to what’s happening in Ukraine.

    Gonna pew pew a CEO in the back? Sure, guns work for that.

    Trying to save your own life against a fast and agile target that needs way less precision than you to be effective and probably never even presents a target? Nah mate, you’re fucked.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      There are some, handheld firearms that are used as a last-ditch / cheap anti drone solution in Ukraine, by both sides.

      Drum roll…

      https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2024/analysis-shotguns-emerge-as-a-frontline-defense-against-drones-in-evolving-military-and-security-tactics

      Its shotguns.

      Because they have a spread of multiple shot pellets instead of a single bullet.

      Fucking obviously duh, they’ve been used to hunt small, evasive birds routinely, everywhere, for like 150+ years.

      Hunting a nimble flying object with a sniper rifle is a laughably absurd idea.

      This actual post from this woman is so stupid I would have thought it was from a 12 year old whose only experience with guns is from CoD… but nope, its a 50ish(?) year old woman.

      Guess she’s never hunted birds, and thinks its just the same as hunting deer or hogs or something???

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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          4 days ago

          I did not know an actual anti drone, net round existed!

          Not especially useful against drones, nor open warfare, there are also less than lethal rubber rounds…

          … and a self contained taser round:

          https://www.forgottenweapons.com/taser-x12-xrep-a-taser-in-a-shotgun-shell/

          I don’t know if the xrep is still actually manufactured though.

          Oh right! Dragon’s breath! Illegal in half the country!

          https://www.firequest.com/G12-113.html

          • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org
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            4 days ago

            People have been basically homebrewing shot gun shells since shotguns have existed. Everything from flachetes, to bolos, to XREP - even idiots that have shoved a shell full of .17 hmr rounds to see what happens. I 100% know that homebrewed anti drone shells exist and range from tying fishing line around pellets, to just launching a rope.

              • frezik@midwest.social
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                4 days ago

                There’s an old story that cowboys would load nickles. It ends up being something like $1.25 in nickles, which would be enough to spend the evening with several prostitutes at the time. So probably no unless they were in a real pinch.

                • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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                  4 days ago

                  So I have no actual source on any kind of coinshot…

                  But why not use half pennies?

                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_cent_(United_States_coin)

                  Yes, the US used to have half pennies.

                  Imagine buying an apple for $0.03½

                  Anyway, they stopped being minted in 1857, but that’s still within the early timeframe of ‘The West’, and I’d bet they were still used in circulation for another decade or two.

                  That’d be cheaper than using nickels, haha.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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        5 days ago

        Its shotguns.

        Using a gun with a 25’ effective range against a device hovering 50’ off the ground sounds not terribly effective, though.

        Hunting a nimble flying object with a sniper rifle is a laughably absurd idea.

        I mean, the whole idea that Iran has a 7th gen drone army it can project to the other side of the planet is laughably absurd. And yet here we are.

        • styxem@sh.itjust.works
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          5 days ago

          A quick Google search shows birdshot has an effective rang on the order of 40 - 50 yards. Now, you still have to be competant with a shotgun, but the public perception of shotguns is generally skewed. They have a much tighter spread and longer range than movies and games would have one believe.

          • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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            5 days ago

            Depends on the choke. A 12 gauge full choke turkey gun can probably put a pretty tight pattern that range, but it’s gonna work better with bigger shot. If you want super fine shot and a full pattern, you aren’t shooting that far.

            • JayDee@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              GarandThumb did some tests in a video a while back. IIRC he did both choked and not, along with different types of shot and slugs. everything but birdshot was pretty effective out to a couple dozen yards? I’ll track it down and drop a link after I’ve rewatched.

              EDIT: so in “How Deadly are Shotguns”, they fire 00 Buck unchoked at around 7 - 8 minutes, and it is still getting a drone-sized spread at 21 yards. In the video “How Far are Shotguns Deadly? BirdShot, Slugs, and 00 Buckshot”, we see birdshot and 00 Buck used choked all the way out to 120 yards. From my perspective, birdshot and 00 buck start having a potentially viable spread at 50 yards (slowmo spread footage at 14 minutes).

              I think that most likely, a pellet size between birdshot and 00 would be better, to provide that peppering effect while still delivering greater impulse per pellet. Garand also mentions in the first video that chokes can actually cause wider spread when used with shot, so unchoked shotguns may be ideal for an anti-drone function.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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            5 days ago

            A quick Google search shows birdshot has an effective rang on the order of 40 - 50 yards.

            Show me a shotgun with an effective range and I’ll show you a drone with a higher flight deck.

            • groet@feddit.org
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              5 days ago

              This is about drones that are cheap and can shoot you with a bullet. Sure a +1M$ drone will kill you from behind the horizon, but a repurposed consumer drone operates on the same ranges as handheld guns and as such could be shot by a handheld gun. If you can hit it, which is why you use a shotgun to increase your ods

              • JayDee@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                it’s not necessarily with a bullet. Most improvised attack drones drop explosive payloads, since it’s both simpler to set up and simpler to use. Outfitting a drone with a gun takes making a complicated system for aiming it, while a payload drone just needs some 3d-printed parts, some extra wiring, and usually just a single servo.

        • jawa21@lemmy.sdf.org
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          4 days ago

          This lets me know that you have never experienced a long term shot gun owner. Shotguns do not explicitly fire only shot or slugs. They never have. It is actually quite easy to tailor shells to a target. Someone with fishing line, a soldering iron, and a box of cheap pellets can make a net that will take out all commercial drones (or any of the 4 propeller style). And on top of that, there are widely available (albeit expensive) commercially available anti-drone shells. If you look in all of the footage of Russians being killed via drone, they all have a rifle with some kind of optic. These are very, very bad at shooting an agile flying target. Every hunter on the entire planet can tell you that. You know what’s great at that? A shotgun with the appropriate gauge and shell. Look, it isn’t that hard to hunt birds at over 50 yards (that’s 150’ as you so inaccurately put things in the range estimate) with a solid appropriate turkey gun. You have displayed a large amount of ignorance here.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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            4 days ago

            Someone with fishing line, a soldering iron, and a box of cheap pellets can make a net that will take out all commercial drones

            I would love to see the Rube Goldburg Shotgun you think you’ve invented and watch you try to fire it (from an extremely safe distance). Please post that shit to YouTube and share it, because god damn dude. Fishing line and cheap pellets shoved down the barrel of a shotgun for the purpose of butterfly netting an MQ-1 Predator?

            Lolz. Lmao, even.

            You have displayed a large amount of ignorance here.

            Happy Hunting!

            • frezik@midwest.social
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              4 days ago

              Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself. Yes, you can jam all that stuff in a shotgun shell and make a crude anti-drone shot.

              No, it’s not going to be an MQ-1 Predator (which is bigger than many WWII fighter planes), but nobody said that, either. Most of the drones in Ukraine are the size of a DJI Phantom.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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                4 days ago

                Most of the drones in Ukraine are the size of a DJI Phantom.

                The US manufactured drone weapons that have been coming over for the last two years are significantly larger than the DJI Phantom.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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          5 days ago

          Other people have already pointed out that your conception of shotgun spread is essentially based in video games, where the spread is (in all but basically milsim games) greatly exaggerated.

          You’ve countered that drones can fly higher than an actual shotgun range.

          Yep. They can.

          … Did you read the article I posted?

          Shotguns are being used fairly commonly by both sides.

          It doesn’t matter what you or I think about how practical or useful they are…

          The people fighting the war think they are practical and useful.

          Nonetheless, here’s my attempt to explain the popularity of shotguns in Ukraine as anti drone weapons:

          This is not a solution geared toward being able to shoot down any drone, of any size or capability, at any range, at any altitude.

          Obviously a shotgun is not going to be able to shootdown a greyhawk or reaper style drone.

          Most of the small FPV drones that attack infantry or ground vehicles do so by basically either dropping a bomb or grenade or mortar round from maybe 25 to 150 feet in the air…

          Or just being rigged with some kind of an explosive to explode on contact or via a remote trigger.

          (Also, these cheap FPV drones do not really handle altitudes above roughly 150 ft that well (though this will vary by exact model). Unless its a dead calm day, gusts of wind easily blow them around, draining its limited batteries as it tries to keep its position steady, severly shortening the drone’s range.)

          These kinds of drones are extremely cheap, plentiful, and effective against infantry and many ground vehicles…

          When it comes to these kinds of drones, shotguns are also extremely cheap and plentiful, and practical self defense weapons.

          Shotguns are more useful against these kinds of FPV drones than an average assault rifle, due to the spread of shot.

          They are way, way more cost effective than using a tunguska or gephard or some kind of MANPADS platform designed to shoot down jet aircraft.

          Shotguns are also just more numerous, and don’t require specialized training/equipment like a dedicated AA platform or EM jamming and all the equipment that entails.

          You can just give a few out to every squad or vehicle crew, and thats way, waaay better than just hoping you’re operating near enough to an expensive friendly AA platform that exists in far more limited numbers, or being SOL if you’re not.

          Further, a shotgun is also just useful as a general combat weapon.

          Sure, buckshot has limited range, but sometimes fights occur within tight conditions… namely trenches or an urban environment.

          Also slug rounds exist and can give you more range than buck or birdshot.

          Also you can use door breacher rounds, or slugs in a pinch, to blow apart door hinges and locks.

          • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            4 days ago

            You put a lot of effort into trying to teach someone who is clearly dedicated to not learning anything. I appreciated the information at least.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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            5 days ago

            You’ve countered that drones can fly higher than an actual shotgun range.

            Yep. They can.

            I’ve also noted that a lot of these sightings are of airplanes, satellites, and stars.

            Also you can use door breacher rounds, or slugs in a pinch, to blow apart door hinges and locks.

            I’m sure Betelgeuse is terrified.

    • LostXOR@fedia.io
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      5 days ago

      Now here’s a thought… What about using drones to “take care of” a CEO? The risk of being caught would be lower, as you can be located hundreds of meters away or more. It’s also relatively easy to acquire a drone, and you can make explosives with stuff you can buy at the hardware store.

      (Disclaimer: This is just a thought experiment, I’m not dumb enough to try this, don’t worry FBI :3)

    • ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      I don’t know anything about shooting or why a scoped gun is a bad thing…I know she won’t shoot down a single drone with that thing though.

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        A scope limits your field of view. It makes it easier to hit far away things moving relatively slowly/predictably.

        It would be the opposite of helpful against a fast/close small target. There’s a reason duck hunters use shotguns.

        • ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
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          4 days ago

          Ah. Thank you. I thought it would be the limited number of shots you’d be able to take versus the oppurtunity to hit something vital in the you had.

  • Tyfud@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    All she has in her house are succulents? That makes sense. They’re literally the only things someone like her could possibly hope to keep alive. They need almost zero attention, maintenance, or moisture.

    Just like her brain.

  • lugal@sopuli.xyz
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    4 days ago

    If it flies, it spies

    Birdwatching goes both ways

    c/birdsarentreal

  • Cyrus Draegur@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Aliens are not attacking.

    The drones have hurt no one.

    They are merely paying more attention now.

    Perhaps if society kills more CEOs, they will finally consider us sapient and establish contact.

  • Schmuppes@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    Goodness me, what hate does to people. She was born in 1987 but looks like she could well be in her 50’s.

  • abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 days ago

    So there’s a lot of things about these drones being Aliens (and a lot of things about Aliens in general).

    If they really are aliens, do you think beings who travelled here through interstellar space and the technology to come to earth within (we assume) a single lifetime are going to be felled by a fucking gun?

    I don’t think the Aliens are hostile because if they were, we’d be dead by now.

  • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    Are we saying Briant Thompson was an alien, and killing him started a galactic war?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldOP
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      5 days ago

      I’m simply making observations, suggesting you draw your own conclusions, and putting up a stall that reads “Magic Alien Killing Bullets $500/round”