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Comment by vidarh

8 hours ago

You don't need to win any wars with it if you can use them to sow confusion, obscure the firing of more serious rockets, and/or trigger a sufficiently more expensive response.

It clearly needs more work, but if an amateur can get this far at this low cost, odds are you'll see attempts at overwhelming attackers or defense systems by sheer volume with cheap decoys like this long before they become an actual threat in and of themselves.

Get the rocket a bit more stable, and force an attack to try to take out dozens of these because one of them might be a real threat, and you'll have created a problem.

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vidarh

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jacquesm  7 hours ago

With a 3D printer and some 'ordinary household chemicals' to quote a certain movie you can do pretty scary stuff.

  • bluescrn  5 hours ago

    People can do very scary things with a knife, a car, or petrol+matches.

    We don't try to regulate those things out of existence like we do with new technology (drones and now 3D printers)

    Kind of ridiculous that a country with more guns than people and 45k firearms deaths per year wants to regulate 3D printed plastic. Yet collecting and shooting actual guns is still an acceptable hobby in many states.

    • ricardobeat  44 minutes ago

      Can a rocket be used to cut your food, take you to the supermarket or power your car?

      I'm completely against regulation of any sorts on 3D printing, but you have to admit there is a huge difference in purpose there.

    • tpmoney  3 hours ago

      The same states that want to regulate 3d printers and force you to register them and install only software that will prevent you from printing anything that even looks like a gun part are also the same states that have been trying (or succeeding) in enforcing those same sorts of broad and dubious regulations on firearms too. When you think of states whose legislatures think collecting and shooting guns is an acceptable hobby, California and New York don’t exactly top the list.

    • jacquesm  4 hours ago

      Oh, I totally agree. I always see this as evidence that the terrorism threat is overblown, if it were really as large as we are led to believe the number of successful attacks would be far higher than it is.

oofbey  6 hours ago

Exactly. Consider the current conflict in Iran. They have thousands of drones that cost $50k each. The US’s only real defense against one of these drones is to fire a million dollar missile at it. That assymmetry can win or lose a war.