There's a bunch of killer problems faced by aerial antipersonnel weapons platforms. The target is usually:
- Small.
- Far away
- Moving quickly in relation to the aircraft.
Additionally, you have lots of vibration (from the engine, and air turbulence) and you have to count every gram of payload; which makes precision weapons unhappy, since they're both heavy and want to be held very still.
You can solve the killer trio with very high rates of fire, or explosive projectiles.[1] These are both either very expensive or illegal for civilians; and you wouldn't want to be using them on a rice field anyway.
There's a reason Predator UAVs use guided missiles, not small arms.
Those guided missiles while very explosive can be delivered with some shockingly accurate precision. I believe it was a recent Frontline where I heard they could guide these missiles through a car window (no reference sorry) of a moving vehicle.
The high explosive part seems more for insurance than a requirement for a successful hit.
Civilians of course don't have access to this stuff, but if the military has the capability now, it will eventually trickle down.
The other difference is that a predator or reaper drone is the size of a small plane, his plane (or anything like it) is about just a basic remote controlled model, a bigger plane would fly much higher and be much more stable.
Equipping it with weaponry would almost certainly be illegal, let alone the fact that it would be next to impossible to aim if you don't use very expensive weapons.
Obviously it would be illegal in most of Europe and probably elsewhere too.
This is something I've spent a fair few idle afternoons daydreaming about, and to be honest I'm quite worried about the future possibility of semi-autonomous weaponised drones. The average HN reader probably has the knowledge and access to resources necessary to build a basic manually-controlled drone. An iPhone or even an Arduino would provide the necessary computing power for semi-autonomous activity (and a whole bunch of useful sensors, including GPS, camera etc.) and it can't be long before someone builds some open source software to enable these things to fly basic missions (go to these coordinates, film for 30 minutes, return to base, avoid obvious obstacles whilst doing so). Mounting some kind of weapon on there is a fairly simple step. You could even print the weapon parts with a 3D printer...
What really scares me is the arms race that will occur when law enforcement has to deal with this kind of thing.
If you're building this for purposes law enforcement will be concerned with, a flying bomb / guided makes far more sense than a gun platform IMHO. Build a few kamikaze drones, load them up with semtex and shrapnel, put them into a steep dive from altitude over your target...
(I should stress I'm a very peaceful chap with no revolutionary or violent inclinations whatsoever!)
There are exemptions to most of these laws, including ones concerning "hunting seasons" for farmers.
I knew a guy with an orchard who had the coveted right in Ohio to shoot deer all year long. 80% of that man's familys' protein came from those hungry deer.
"Coveted" by flakes and suburbanites, maybe. If he's like most of the farmers and orchardists I know, he would probably much prefer to buy his meat and not have to worry about the deer eating his money crop. Farmers, and even just general gardeners, mostly hate deer, usually intensely.
I hear you about that. I have a small garden. We live in the Sierra foothills in north/central California. Usually, things are OK with the dog and people coming and going. But when we go on vacation, they tear stuff up badly.
... And I like to fly small R/C foamies, as well :-) No plans to build any flying defenses, though.
From what I understand, regular folk can't automate firearm actuation. Off he top of my head, you would at least need a Type 7 license with a class 2 SOT from our friends at the ATF to automate weapon fire on a drone.
The FAA other alphabet soup agencies probably have other regulations regarding the manufacture and use of a flying killing machine.
Dude. Putting any kind of weaponry payload on a civilian aircraft (RC or otherwise) is highly, highly illegal in the US. I'm sure it's illegal practically everywhere else that's sane for the exact same reasons.
It's not just "remote hunting" that's banned. It's the attachment of any weapon to an aerial or moving platform that's banned. A slingshot on a paper plane would qualify by a literal interpretation of the laws as written.
Do you have a source for this? It sounds quite likely, but any time law gets discussed I always try to find the relevant texts. I'm having trouble finding anything other than laws about carrying firearms on your person while on a commercial airliner.
See section 91.15 for the part about "dropping of items."
I'm still looking for the BATF regs on this. IANAL, so it's a bit of work, but I do know a few guys that do weapons systems (govt contractor) and my younger brother is a pilot.
Unless you're talking about missiles or some other relatively recoilless weapon, firing anything powerful enough to kill a hog would tear this plane apart.
Yes. He guides his brother(?) with the aircraft via walkie-talkie. There seemed like there was a point where the resolution of the camera wasn't high enough to figure out which was the hunter and which was the pig. Maybe easily solved if the hunter wore a flashing IR beacon or something.
This is a very cool build indeed.