Oh man, can anyone imagine a non-Terminator scenario for this?
Update: I'm not saying people shouldn't develop this, we're never going to squash human curiosity. But when I see this kind of stuff, I'm deeply troubled by how bad actors (state and non-state) will use this.
I hope our security services are working hard on countering these potential threats.
Im more worried about these type of things causing us to blast each other and ourselves back to the 1920s or so during conflicts when small explosive EMPs start being viewed as less damaging than drones and robots. A fast explosive on the back of a neodynium magnet and a few coils of copper can make a hell of an EMP blast. The only reason we don't use them now is due to all the collateral damage, but if drone bombs represent even more damage they become viable. Yeah it will destroy all the radios around and fuck up a bunch of expensive equipment, but you would still have soldiers with guns rather than just smoking craters.
> A fast explosive on the back of a neodynium magnet and a few coils of copper can make a hell of an EMP blast.
I'm having a hard time believing this is effective.
> The only reason we don't use them now is due to all the collateral damage
Russians don't care about collateral damage and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of them using such weapons?
Nobody really uses much undirected EM warfare in my opinion because it represents a huge escalation in a war, similar to the use of indiscriminate chemical weapons, or even nuclear weapons.
It would be devastating in the local battlefield, potentially frying radio or other equipment depending on the size of the device or how close you could lob it towards the enemy before going off; but with the low wattages many non-military communication devices use today you would also be blasting horrible noise to all of them beyond the local area and disrupting communications across potentially multiple neutral countries.
It would be a large act of aggression against any countries around them and NATO, and at scale possibly even piss off far away countries like the US and China. Especially large EMP devices could even be temporarily misidentified as a nuclear explosion and gain the immediate full attention by any nuclear powers watching out for it.
I think you're wildly over stating the effective range of EMP. This isn't Goldeneye.
You could do EMP, but you could also do some sort of point-defense turret. Drones are lightweight and fragile, so it doesn't need to be big - just fast and auto-targeting.
Didn't they try this in Ukraine and it doesn't work? Any point installation is quickly overwhelmed. The only answer to FPV drones so far seems to be more FPV drones. Though they're not using fully-autonomous drones in Ukraine yet, so that might still play out.
“[As of May 2025] Ukraine has developed and successfully tested the Sky Sentinel – an AI-powered, fully automated turret designed to shoot down Russian drones and missiles… the M2 is known to have an effective range of 1.5 kilometers against airborne threats. Each unit costs approximately $150,000. Developers estimate that protecting a city would require 10 to 30 turrets… Given that each Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone used by Russia costs around $100,000, Sky Sentinel offers a scalable and cost-effective solution to a persistent and deadly threat.”
This doesn’t address “Quickly overwhelmed”.
Yes, a wall of $150,000 bushmasters with some servos can take hurl enough lead in the air to protect a city from a single gulf-war era $100,000 lawnmower engine on two meter wings bumbling in a straight line at jogging pace.
We’re currently in the “a shipping container on a semi can could launch dozens of $2000 racing quads with molotov cocktails zip-tied to the bottom with enough agility to thread a needle faster than a turret can swing its own mass”
And the writing is on the wall for some near-future “any nation state could drop sci-fi cluster bombs that shed ten-thousand 250gram racing quads that can overwhelm even the most advanced point defence just by numbers and it’ll be cheaper than a conventional 2000lb bomb”
>with enough agility to thread a needle faster than a turret can swing its own mass
If it has a range of 1.5km, then the drone needs to be moving really fast in order to move a couple of degrees per second.
If it's going like 80mph, then that's 36m/s, which comes out to <1.4 degrees/s at 1500m away. For 1000m, you get ~2 degrees/s. Not to mention that this velocity is at a right angle to the turret, and you have to close the distance.
I feel like search and rescue after an earthquake where a drone swarm can canvas and categorize if it saw movement or not is one possible "non-bad" use.
Fire departments and police in Germany are deploying more and more drone units, too.
Firefighters use them to search for missing persons but also to get aerial images and a better overview of larger scenes as "running around" is often not possible or doesn't help that much with the overview.
Police is using them to take pictures of accidents. It's easier to see tire marks and the whole "history" of an accident from above. Really reduces their time on a scenery to take pictures of everything.
Drones flying through your windows to deliver things faster.
Cons: massive invasion of privacy and probably illegal.
Pros: looks cool.
I've always thought a user-installable drone-pad in the style of a window AC unit would be the ideal.
very prompt burrito delivery?
If by burrito you mean shaped charge high explosives with lethal shrapnel, triggered by facial recognition, delivered by drones the size of house sparrows at the speed of sound, then yes, burrito delivery.
Christ, you sound like my nutritionist.
In china probably very soon. In the US? Regulation has already killed that.
Paul Christiano has thought about these scenarios. I recommend his interview with Dwarkesh a while ago where he goes in depth about it.
This will definitely be used in drone vs drone dogfight. Interceptors hunting spy, bombers, and kamikaze drones.
Sure, just strap a nuke to it and watch WWIII kick off. No terminator necessary.