- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
Japan’s Minister of Defense Shinjirō Koizumi posed with a cardboard drone on Monday during a meeting with drone manufacturer AirKamuy. The AirKamuy 150 is a cheap pre-fab cardboard drone meant to die on the battlefield and it comes shipped in a flatpack like an IKEA shelf.
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At least they don’t put people in them this time 😅
Sending young pilots to death in a rapidly aging society would be bad.
Seems sending old pilots it’s a win win then.
That’s the eco-friendliness we deserve, and from Japan no less.
Nintendo lab 2.0
Sell overpriced consoles with the tariff money they don’t have to pay anymore… But to what end…?
This will never fly in Seattle! Too wet.
It only needs to fly once. Honestly, it’d probably work.
But hey, I’m sure it’s all irrelevant, I mean who would ever want to vindictively drone strike Seattle…
I saw the cardboard festival tent hold up to a couple days of rain. Thats probably more than the maximum mission time it needs.
They could use waxed cardboard like fruit boxes.
There are cheap and easy ways to waterproof cardboard, but I’m not sure why you would want to attack Seattle.
Microslop has its headquarters there. That’s enough reason to flatten the city and salt the earth.
No, they’re headquartered in Redmond.
…which is basically just a bedroom community for Seattle.
We need to think big here, lads!
Trebuchet > wet lump of cardboard drone > boom! Your argument is invalid.
This is an approach that could never succeed in the U.S., because there the focus is always on throwing as much money as possible at the defense contractors so that the billionaires can get even richer.
A current example: the war of aggression against Iran that the U.S. is waging in violation of international law.
To my knowledge, not even a halfway plausible reason has been given for this. And so it becomes quite clear that this is simply about shifting state resources into the pockets of the super-rich - and U.S. citizens just go along with it, even though it isn’t even them who are dying by the thousands, but rather, among others, Iranian schoolchildren, hundreds of whom were murdered simply by a bombing of a school…
The usa military budget is non comparable to european military budgets, they pay for different things. IMO.
They do? What do you mean?
In addition, they patrol the entire planets oceans, and are the main reason why you don’t have pirates just taking ships constantly.
It includes costs for retired personnel and social security (social security is not in the military budget in most or any European countries) for example.
Australia made these in 2023 already.
…and supplied them to Ukraine.
The number of our amazon boxes will block out the sun.
Then we will fight in the shade.
So… like a very slow missile then?
Radar doesn’t work very well on cardboard. Ukraine has already been using drones like this since 2023.
Doubt they have much carrying capacity for explosives like a shahed drone which is $25k, while these $2k cardboard drones are great for surveillance with little concern for loss.
It doesn’t take much explosive to defeat infantry.
Sure, it isn’t flying across the country to hit an installation like a Shahed, but it could function as a longer-range, loitering mortar round.
Lots of small payloads would be useful if you can put a lot of them in the right place: blast fragmentation, HEDP, thermobaric, smoke, illumination, etc.
Thats one hell of a papercut
Cardkaze
Origamikaze
But why would you use a drone to commit suicide?
I may have a forgettable life, so I’ll make sure to have an unforgettable death.
Surprise suicide?
New Amazon assistance suicide subscription.
Suicide subscription might not be the most profitable business model.
Could be used as a family plan. Gotta do something about grandma when she becomes a burden.
I guess that makes the “suicide” part easier to achieve.
We really gotta stop using the term suicide I’m this context. It’s silly this ain’t no jihadi jeep
For single use it’s not a bad idea honestly but I can’t imagine they would carry much and things like the wind might play a big factor.
According to the article, they are mainly intended as defensive devices. Think of them as anti-drone cardboard chaff.
AirKamuy Chief Engineer Naoki Morita said that the cardboard drone was mainly envisioned as a counter-drone device. The idea is to fly a swarm of drones in front of other targets and absorb blows. “This is regular cardboard, so no special foam board or material, so every cardboard manufacturer can make this plane,” he said.
But other uses are possible. Naoki said that the AirKamuy 150 could carry around three pounds, which is just enough to carry a small amount of supplies or munitions to a target and it’s not hard to imagine swarms of incendiary cardboard drones slamming into targets in the near future.
Excited to see one of these bad boys show up at the next WHCD
