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Comment by sintaxi | Hacker News Reader

You are vastly underestimating the strength and durability of an eagle. Eagles are birds of prey. They can fuck up wolves and goats both of which have significant characteristics to deal out damage themselves. I would guess an Eagle could take down any consumer level drone without any issue what-so-ever. Military drones are another matter completely.

Eagles manufacture themselves and training them to take something out of the sky is probably not much more difficult than training a dog to play fetch.

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> You are vastly underestimating the strength and durability of an eagle. Eagles are birds of prey. They can fuck up wolves and goats both of which have significant characteristics to deal out damage themselves.

To the best of my knowledge, wolves and goats have no spinning blades covering the most natural places to grab them.

Long term he is correct though. Drone makers will just about figure out how to circumvent birds one way or another, either from changes in selectivity, sounds, or even as someone suggested - chemical counters.

Drones set to hunt drones are a no brainer. The military will certainly have them so it won't be long before the police do. Even a ground based solution might work against any non hardened drone - just fry its electronics. You can pretty much limit the range of such an effect and I can imagine scenarios where all drones are just dropped from the sky.

Japanese drone catching drones with nets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vknRo7aLhc

> Drone makers will just about figure out how to circumvent birds one way or another

As anyone who has ever armed a fighting kite with razor blades can tell you. Sharpening drone blades might even cause an aerodynamic improvement.

Except drone makers have no reason to do this. I've seen the hype with these anti-drone-falcons, but there is still not one case where thy actually caught a drone in the wild.

Even if it were, drone builders do not want to be associated with rule-breaking drones. They are fine with falcons removing drones around, let's say... an airport. And so am I. so no reason to employ such anti-measures.

But from the get-go, the antidrone falcons are such an idiotic idea I can't even begin to take is seriously. The falcon would be killed by the drone. I say that as someone who injured himself with a drone (an average one, even) so I know firsthand how serious the damage can be. It barely can find a place to catch the drone with the models the used in the demo video. If someone flied an octocopter, the only place it can hook onto it is right from below, on the landing gear, and I find that unlikely. This would kill the bird for sure.

I find the very existence of anti-drone tech ridiculous. The who hysteria around this is right out of the middle ages witch-hunt.

There was a guy who decapitated himself with a drone just a few years ago. I think you vastly underestimate how easily carbon fiber propellers going at full speed cut through things.

With an RC Heli, not a quad/octocopter "drone". It had 28 inch (700mm) carbon fiber blades.

Here's hoping the birds are smart enough to tell the difference between quadcopters and RC helis, otherwise we're going to see some spectacular bird-fragging incidents.

You are vastly underestimating the power of a large multirotor.

A typical domestic lawnmower has about the same motor power and the same sized blade as a heavy lift quadcopter. Do you think an eagle could survive being run over by a lawnmower?

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