For sale: no-name Chinese attack drones

Jeffrey sez,

The algorithmic overlords of Alibaba are sending me astonishing stuff via their "suggested crapgadgets you might be interested in" hourly email. Wireless car key duplicators and GPS jammers came first. But today they have truly outdone themselves, suggesting that I might be interested in a "small attack UAV". Yes, you heard right.
This actually does claim to be the real deal. From the page: "ball tripod head freely rotates to guide the UAV attacking targets. Engine uses mechanical and electronic three grades insurance with high security. The UAV is mainly used in the mountains, hills and complex terrain conditions; does effective short-range real-time attack to the fixed ground target or slowly move targets, such as artillery hole, command post, communication station, radar station, oil truck, oil depot and other small and temporary goals."
They state a production capability of ten pieces per month. I am tempted to ask for a price quote, if only to nudge the Alibaba Algorithm into sending me even more offers from the cloak and dagger side of the Crapgadget Universe....

SKY-02 small attack UAV (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: china • DRONES • Gadgets • military • war

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gellfex

Sure you can order it, but I bet it comes with a 90 day warranty and replacement parts are unavailable at any price. They figure everyone will upgrade their attack drones every 18 months anyway.
jgs

I know nothing of such things, but I do wonder what kind of payload you can actually carry on a vehicle with an 80 cm wingspan.
- jackbird
  
  According to the page, the takeoff weight is 3.7 kg.
  
  It also claims a >10m “killing radius”, so I wonder if these are single-use explodey devices with a kg or so of that weight being high explosive that’s simply detonated at the target.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    That’d be plausible enough. An M67 grenade(400grams total, ~180 grams explosive filler) asserts a kill radius of 5m and a ‘really, really, don’t stand here’ radius of 15m.
    
    If the total system weight is 3,700 grams, they wouldn’t need to achieve a terribly bleeding-edge cargo capacity to be carrying two or three grenades worth of explosives.
- http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns
  
  It’s like the xray specks in the back of the comic book all over gain!
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  the answer is ‘no, you can’t deliver tacos with it’
http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

If you have been banned from your local store for carrying an AR-15, then a UAV might be just the thing.
CSBD

Buying Groceries by Armed outsourced Chinese UAV might be just the ticket for a 2nd Amendment compromise
- Brainspore
  
  [Insert out-of-context quote implying that Benjamin Franklin would be aghast at any laws restricting ownership of attack drones]
Fantome_NR

What are they supposed to be armed with?
- http://www.fagerland.org tofagerl
  
  Strong worded letters and air-to-ground missiles.
- http://twitter.com/jonhendry Jonathan W. Hendry
  
  Angry chants about uninhabited islands also claimed by Japan.
Finnagain

Really, bath tubs kill more people every year than attack drones, so there is no reason whatsoever to restrict their ownership. 2A! 2A! 2A!
- Jellodyne
  
  I’d make the same case for multiple warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles. Safer than paperclips, just look at the record!
- Preston Sturges
  
  But evil liberals have a plot to make bathtubs deeper than 2 inches illegal and reduce the national speed limit to 7 miles per hour.
voiceinthedistance

Too late for last Christmas, too early for next.

Perhaps we should all chip in to see that Boing Boing becomes the first website with their own attack drone? It might bring new meaning to the term “heavily moderated” if Antinous was handed a joystick with a big red button on it.
- http://twitter.com/jonhendry Jonathan W. Hendry
  
  Just right for Easter.
Finnagain

In before That’s not really, technically, an “Attack” “Drone”? Just look at the fuel delivery system, noobs!
gumbowing

I wonder if they’ll send me a demo unit for evaluation. It might be handy for dealing with some pesky varmints around here.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

It’ll turn out to be just a cheaply-made knockoff of Apple’s iDrone.
- Brainspore
  
  Probably made in the same Foxconn factory too.
Preston Sturges

The last time I browsed alibaba my LinkedIn account got looked at by people on the Chinese mainland.

How did they make that connection? Do they have the identity and internet address of everybody in America?

Apparently anyone looking at alibaba gets scrutinized pretty closely by the Chinese.

I have also noticed that the urls of several biotech companies that went bankrupt are now owned by Chinese language websites, so people looking for those companies end up at Chinese sites, which are unsafe. Soon after I discovered this, I found several Java exploits on my PC. Soon after that the hard drive died, which may have been mere coincidence. But there is definitely an attempt to lure in techies and infect them.
jackbird

Wow, go up one level on that page and you get to see a LOT of UAVs for sale (no other armed ones, however). Including this fairly enormous 60 km/h blimp: http://uavstar.en.alibaba.com/product/656613402-213422866/Airship_Platform.html
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

The line that really worries me is

“Electronic equipment MTBF > 60 h”
- http://twitter.com/tadasyoyolt Tadas Jelinek
  
  For those who did not know: MTBF - Mean time between failures
Wibbly

I think this development needs to be correlated with the following two graphics:

US Drone bases in Africa
https://twitter.com/BruceWayneAnon/status/296359325096624128/photo/1

Chinese investment offers in Africa
https://twitter.com/BruceWayneAnon/status/296394870279532544/photo/1
http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

heh, they said “artillery hole”

artillery hole. giggity.
http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

I just want one that’s programmed to follow around guys who carry their assault rifles in public. Not do anything to them. Just follow and hover. Conspicuously. In JC Penny.