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The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine
If Israel was going to kill a top Iranian official [Mohsen Fakhrizadeh[*]], an act that had the potential to start a war, it needed the assent and protection of the United States. That meant acting before Mr. Biden could take office. In Mr. Netanyahu's best-case scenario, the assassination would derail any chance of resurrecting the nuclear agreement even if Mr. Biden won.
[...] A killer robot profoundly changes the calculus for the Mossad. The organization has a longstanding rule that if there is no rescue, there is no operation, meaning a foolproof plan to get the operatives out safely is essential. Having no agents in the field tips the equation in favor of the operation.
[...] [The] machine gun, the robot, its components and accessories together weigh about a ton. So the equipment was broken down into its smallest possible parts and smuggled into the country piece by piece, in various ways, routes and times, then secretly reassembled in Iran.
The robot was built to fit in the bed of a Zamyad pickup, a common model in Iran. Cameras pointing in multiple directions were mounted on the truck to give the command room a full picture not just of the target and his security detail, but of the surrounding environment. Finally, the truck was packed with explosives so it could be blown to bits after the kill, destroying all evidence. There were further complications in firing the weapon. A machine gun mounted on a truck, even a parked one, will shake after each shot's recoil, changing the trajectory of subsequent bullets.
[...] The time it took for the camera images to reach the sniper and for the sniper's response to reach the machine gun, not including his reaction time, was estimated to be 1.6 seconds, enough of a lag for the best-aimed shot to go astray. The A.I. was programmed to compensate for the delay, the shake and the car's speed.
[...] The entire operation took less than a minute. Fifteen bullets were fired. Iranian investigators noted that not one of them hit [Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's wife] Ms. Ghasemi, seated inches away, accuracy that they attributed to the use of facial recognition software.
[*] Mohsen Fakhrizadeh died 27 November 2020.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 20 2021, @08:29PM (4 children)
Any 700 class heli should be able to easily pop out a couple of miles, loiter for a while, and get back. I've not seen one optimized for range; it would be interesting to see what they could do.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 21 2021, @06:57AM (2 children)
Why would a Microsoft employee know so much about the potentials for weaponized drones? Asking for a friend, of course.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday September 21 2021, @09:53AM
Maybe they're planning a visit to Cupertino and want to be prepared.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday September 22 2021, @03:44AM
The answer isn't as interesting as you'd hope. At a makerspace I met a guy and we worked through his idea to use a quad to place top ropes for climbers so people didn't have to place prot/bolts and deface the rock. After playing with the idea we found it to be technically feasible with a couple of caveats. The biggest one was the weight of the rope. We tested it in a climbing gym, hanging a thin line (unwaxed bank line) and using that to haul up the top rope. The hard part is clipping the top hard point(s) from a fidgety quad. Real rock top mounts are placed assuming that a highly dexterous tailless monkey with plenty of digits and opposable thumbs would be clipping in, not a 7-dof quadcopter with a carabiner on a stick being thrown around in the wind.
Also it's annoyingly noisy and the quad+fpv+batteries is just more crap you have to haul out.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday September 23 2021, @04:25PM
Those 2nd Gen Mavic 2 is incredible. 26 minutes flight time depending on how you driver her. Collapsible for easy, discrete transport. Optical zo0m cams available with motion tracking and gimble stabilization. They cost a lot, but they are really nice. Now their balls are clipped because they require a cellular data connection to keep you out of restricted airspace. That will be the model going forward I suspect. Drones scale pretty well. So a delivery drone with range is doable, but the issue is automated flight. Just like driving, there's a million ways sh1t can go wrong. A serious issue is bird strikes. Hawks & Eagles do not like drones in their airspace and they will attack, ninja top gun style.