Should Drones Be Used to Deliver Subversive Media Into North Korea?
North Korean radar and anti-aircraft batteries along the DMZ would probably locate and take out a number of the drones. I think such an idea would actually work better if executed by activist groups in China if they are able to not get cracked down on by the Chinese authorities:
A researcher has called on the United States to consider using drones to send USB sticks with information that can effectively win the hearts of North Koreans and provide them with information about the outside world.
Senior Researcher Kim Yon-ho at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies made the call in his recent contribution to Foreign Policy on Saturday.
Kim said that there are limitations to the conventional methods of smuggling high-tech data into North Korea, claiming that delivering USBs with drones is a high-tech alternative to traditional smuggling tactics.
The researcher said that due to the flourishing black market and technological developments, the means of access to outside media has advanced beyond televisions, radios, and DVDs into more interactive forms such as PCs, tablets and USB drives.
Kim said that USB drives are considered effective means of accessing information about the outside world, as they are smuggled through balloons and easily made available on the black market. [KBS World Radio]
You can read the whole Foreign Policy article at this link. The article pretty much makes the case that I have been making for year to execute a coordinated information warfare strategy within North Korea which should be part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of the Kim regime.
At what point does a drone get big enough to cross the psychological barrier between an irritating toy and an invading aircraft?
Long before the word Drone became popular, I flew radio controlled aircraft. Along the way I came across an RC Blimp for indoor use. Helium filled, two small motors for steering, and a gondola you filled with pennies or washers for ballast. Cute kids toy.
After coming to Korea, I always wondered by the balloons sent north were left to the mercy of the winds, especially with GPS and computers available to guide a more advanced version of the toy blimp to a much more precise location. It’s one thing to dump a bunch of K-Drama DVDs and USB chips in an open field, it’s another to drop them in a small to medium sized town north of the border.
Pull up a map of towns in North Korea and give the blimp a GPS coordinate and off it goes.
Cruise Missiles on the cheap and slow, with a different kind of payload.
MTB… if I correctly recall my rough calculations years ago, the motor power needed to overcome wind and the fuel needed for distance starts requiring a rather large blimp to work as intended… as area (resistance) increases at a lower rate than volume (lift)… so bigger is better.
My intuition tells me a better USB stick bomber drone would be a large Styrofoam plane.
The flight computers for this are cheap and off-the-shelf. The one I use (on a hexcopter) plugs into a notebook and allows waypoints to be set with Google Maps.
I have built simple drones with uncontured sheets of Styrofoam and a few 5 dollar servos to move control surfaces… which are just more Styrofoam with duct tape hinges. This is shockingly cheap, quick, and easy.
With a little effort and much more expense, an actual airfoil could be made with carbon fiber.
Surplus first-generation Android phones with a few dollars in interface parts would make fantastic flight computers… as they have GPS/accelerometer/gyro built in… and could even give a status report or take commands when connected to a network.
One could even fantasize about flying low and using the camera to detect the color difference between sky and mountain for some ghetto nap-of-the-earth AI to avoid pesky radar-directed AA guns… if NK has such things that will detect Styrofoam planes.
Nothing beats the energy density of hydrocarbon fuel… no idea on what motor size and fuel capacity would be necessary to get a target range (and back)… gotta get some real numbers and put them into a calculator… but i intuitively believe I can get 100km pretty easily.
Another thought: no motor… send the plane up really, really high by balloon and let it glide to its target. A motor would give increased range. 10:1 glide ratio is reasonable at sea level… maybe 15:1 is possible… less at height… not sure of the specifics.
Bonus: have the accelerometer sense thermals and have it turn in a circle to catch them like a bird.
Those are some nice thought excercises.
I will whip up some of these if anybody has some funding to make it worth my time.
CH and MTB… Careful… This kind of talk could get you kidnapped by Dae Wonsu for the purposes of upgrading his baby blue drone forces. 😎
I prefer submersibles… much less to worry about than flying things.
I got to play around with one of the North Korean semi-submersibles. It was seriously impressive how they solved waterproofing issues with minimal parts, minimal tools (lots of file marks instead of machine tool marks), and an amazing amount of cleverness. It really influenced my design philosophies on underwater equipment when price and time are more important than beauty.
I would love to get my hands on one of the babyblue drones for a weekend. There is certainly a lot to learn in the do more with less category.
@3, Kickstarter.com?
Ha, Setnaffa…
If you actually develop a cheap, off-the-shelf drone capable of delivering anything from plutonium dust to organic mercury to anthrax spores over a precise spot a hundred miles away, your next project will be with Gerald Bull.
I like thought excercises… but I don’t get involved with projects that are political or destabilizing to motivated people unafraid to use their guns.
Well, no one said Engineering was a safe profession; but he should have known Brussels was a dead end…
BTW, my only interest in drones is inventing something (like the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner) that launches, takes hi-res photos of movement by humans/critters in my back yard at night, lands back in the charging station and uploads the video to my server (not in the bathroom as I don’t keep State Department emails on it).
Unfortunately, we have rather extreme weather in Texas (heat/cold/wind/hail/etc.) and can’t afford to lose any birds…
Setnaffa, such a thing might exist for sale… it certainly can be made easily.
…hmmm… custom drone builders… much like custom PC builders in the 90s?
If you want to take pictures of critters, you can use:
– wildlife cameras… rugged digital camera with hardware motion sensor
– DIY wildlife camera… motion sensor ($2), Arduino microcontroller ($6), old digital camera (free).
– IP cameras with motion recognition software (free on internet)
– Highres tilt pan camera with 30x motorized zoom lens up on a high pole overlooking the entire property (this is what I have)
– a drone
If you have more than just a line-of-sight yard and want to keep an eye on the back 40, a drone would work well. Software is fantastic… such as a video feed to a home PC could easily recognize a car or people wearing non-camo clothes. A 1000 dollar cheapo FLIR camera would easily spot any kind of vehicle or living thing. Cameras and video transmitters are small and cheap.
Chances are you would need to write your own software for best result… though there may be configurable software available.
If i were setting this up, i would likely build solar powered pods with motion and sound sensors througout the property which would transmit a signal to the server to launch the drone… better than having the drone hovering 24/7.
You could also have a big eye in the sky on a tethered balloon overlooking your spread… gyroscopically controlled FLIR scanning the entire area for unusual things and then sending the drone to investigate.
Lots of possibilities… dependimg on need and budget.
All this can be weaponized with some cheap guns on tilt/pan platforms and a servo on the trigger.
Thanks, CH. If we make it back to Korea soon I may ask GI to set up an anonymous meeting of the folks here to enable me to buy some seasonally-appropriate beverages and snacks. Each of us could wear a nametag with a certain troll’s online moniker to be determined at an undisclosed location…
Cool. I can test out that weaponized drone.
Eight propellers should be enough to carry a half pound of triacetone triperoxide, 2 pounds of ball bearings, and a wifi board that reads all smartphone MAC addresses to identify paricupants based on WordPress user logs.
Protip: Don’t sit at the same table as Tbone
I thought we’d all be “tbone” for a day… or “tom”, or even “setnaffa” if public opinion goes against me… 😉