How To Design A Drone-Proof City

as much as i appreciate having big brother not watching me, i dont think i would appreciate my windows detonating everytime a drone passes by

The smart windows are a confusing concept to me. The machines that operate the blinds will detonate when scanned by a drone? This is a feature? So you are sitting at your desk watching your automatic blinds on your multicolored window go up and down, and when a drone tries to peek in, your window blows up? Sounds great, if you are in the window replacement business.

^^^ I'm with them WTF does it detonate?

Dear Popular Science,
Thank you for the many years of enjoyed Reading.

I regret to inform you that I will no longer be subscribing to your syndication in Print, iPad or Reader.

As of late the opinions expressed in your articles have been offensive toward men, and offensive toward country.

I long for the days when you're articles were about science, technology and the future. I long for when your articles left the politics and agenda's at the door.

Please let me know if you fire any editors or in some other way return to the days of old.

Sincerely one of your biggest fans,
-Sean Reynolds

PS. Who, besides al qaeda and the taliban was this article written for?

@seanreynoldscs I'm sure Glenn Beck and his droves of paranoid morons would be interested in this. All far right wing fanatics are the same, doesn't matter what part of the would they come from. It's all god is good, government is bad, death to anyone not like me. Fracking cavemen.

@intrepidDesign Interesting... So you see Drones as being Liberal, and You think that the Right is anti Drone?

I see drones as being American, and saving the lives of our solders by gathering information and carrying out attacks from afar.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not all for "arming robots" by any stretch of the imagination. I long for a day when the use of Robots will be to immobilize the enemy so that we can capture them and hold them in international courts, with little or no risk to American lives.

But I definitely see this article as being Anti-American since we are the only people really using drones. I wonder how PopSci would feel if in five years all Al Qaeda camps modeled their wonderful designs?

By the way... I'm a Christian Conservative who votes Independent, with a masters degree in Computer Science who makes decent money and cares deeply about our environment and stewardship of all other things as well.

Fortunately, none of the ideas in this article have just about any chance of accomplishing the goal, so we don't have to worry about terrorists using it to an advantage. On the other hand... maybe it is a misinformation campaign to get terrorists to try and waste time and resources on this project, while simultaneously making them easy to track... hmmm...

Anyways, lamest ideas ever. Not even what I'd call technology. I've seen grade-school children come up with better ideas. This has to be one of the worst ideas I've ever seen presented on this site.

@intrepidDesign - Stereotype much?

@seanreynoldscs
You're ignoring the widespread and rapidly increasing use drones for non-military purposes, such as cattle-herd pattern tracking, criminal tracking, or myriad other local government uses. Partisan support for one or the other is contextual. Liberals tend to be less favorable of military violence and assassination, so I would expect less supportive of killdrones than the average conservative. And while both demographics are concerned about personal privacy, conservatives do tend to be more vocal about the subject and more liberals a little more accepting of their use among their own populace.

As for being "anti-american," that's just knee-jerk hyperbole. This is Popular Science, and it very well should keep an eye towards future possibilities, and no one can say that the US will have all the advanced drones forever. Or in a non-military sense, plenty of americans would consider it "unamerican" for the government, local or federal, to keep a drone-eye on the civilian populace, and might want to make widescale community measures to undermine some form of 'big-brother.' And regardless of context, the article is simply reporting on proposed concepts of an engineering nature. It'd be biased not to report it.

For the record I'm pro killdrone and pro civilian local surveillance drone.

@SayblFox Okay, I'll admit to the comment being a bit of a knee jerk reaction.

But I really dont think that this article is talking about civilian drones for the following reasons. The use of explosives in every day life is rare. The drawing looks like a military base or training camp. The effort to outfit a village with these ideas would take the efforts of a top down approach from the very government we would be protecting ourselves from. The civilian drones are usually voted on in our small municipalities and agreed upon by our communities, and used for our common good.

But I will admit that it's a bit reactionary, though I will cite the article the other day about Boeing as another example of Popsci not having America's best interests in mind when choosing the material and opinions they write about.

@seanreynoldscs I thought you were leaving... kidding

This is what happens when lawyers "do" architecture. Nothing, how this got here is beyond my comprehension. Can I doodle some futurist thoughts about a new in the news tech and get published in Popsci?

Seems so.

Whats wrong with caves, I think caves would be a good drone defense....

@seanreyoldscs

Is it irony that an early 2000 released anime cartoon has predicted both the political and social outcome of drone warfare?

"Tradition is a history. It's a history of caring built by deep true feelings of people. I do believe that fighting in battles can at times be beautiful. But at the same time, I'd like to express my regret over the lost souls by appealing to you to recognize how priceless man's life is. I believe what mankind needs is not absolute victory but a certain demeanor in fighting, an attitude toward fighting. I fear that the era of the soulless weapons called mobile dolls, in other words, the era that the Romefeller Foundation is creating, may become an embarassment to the people of the future."

"With a fancy gun that has long forgotten the meaning of battle, I would feel no emotion, even if I were to shoot an enemy right through the heart."

Treize Khushrenada - Gundam Wing

TL;DR version = when you remove people from battle - killing people merely becomes a video game. Victory is the real death of many, loss simply equates to your toy robot being blown up... shucks. Respawn in 3..2..1...

Heh, yeh, the anti-drone detonations were noticeable beyond simple visual surveillance concerns. Though if I were going to glean the writer's main sense of perspective I'd point to their repeated use of the term city (with further regard for the fact that a drone-strike can happen in a big city just as well as a remote camp of course). I just don't prefer to infer perspectives from what is by and large a reporting of proposed systems and offhand evaluation of their potential efficacy in thwarting systems that have a broad range of potential uses to address, whether observational or combative, at home or abroad

This is such a funny article, not science, but funny.
Thank you PoPSCi, lol..... oh my side hurts... ha ha.. snort.

I would imagine that the best defense against drones would be a hearty targeting system and accurate anti-air capabilities.

A wide ring of visual, thermal, and radar sensor with a network of high altitude weather-balloon type sensors would make getting a spy drone in undetected difficult.

Of course, the point of that is to identify and shoot down spy drones. Against active war drones, it simply creates a ring of zero-casualty targets around the city.

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We're definitely going to need this with the rolling out of 30,000 drones under paramilitary and DHS control in Amerikan skies within the next few years. We'll all be easy targets.

before I looked at the bank draft saying $9300, I have faith ...that...my best friend realy bringing home money in their spare time at their laptop.. there aunt started doing this for only about 17 months and resently took care of the mortgage on there mini mansion and got a great Smart ForTwo. this is where I went,
jump30.ℂom

This is a mostly passive means of preventing drone surveilance. But, advances in artificial intelligence would soon overcome most of those defenses. Isn't it more likely that such a community would use a radar guided laser to destroy any drones? One powerful laser could protect quite a large area and would be more practical to position and less likely to be overcome.

This is much like the city layout of neon-genesis evangelion.. This is no joke, these drones are dangerous and have already been hacked in government studies.

The computers on board of these drones are not bulletproof, leaving them vulnerable to attacks, this could only spell disaster. Leaving cities and families at the hands of such a threat is ridiculous, for the sake of some money?

I ask then what are your childrens lives worth to you, will you sell their lives for the sake of commercial drone industry? And entrust their lives and their future families lives in the hands of unsecured technology?