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Comment by goldenkey | Hacker News Reader

What about autonomous drones that fallback to using stars and the moon positions for navigation if comms/guidance are jammed? I know this wouldn't work during sunny daytime hours but it's an interesting technique isn't it?

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> I know this wouldn't work during sunny daytime hours

It would; you just need to filter out the sun. Apparently this is already a thing: http://www.trexenterprises.com/Pages/Products%20and%20Servic....

Wow, I was not aware that we could do such a feat with small(ish) equipment. Thanks for the link.

If communication or guidance is disabled, aircraft still need to function in a complex combat environment: they need to be able to intelligently identify targets, follow rules of engagement, engage correctly, and weigh the costs and benefits of different courses of action. An automated system will never be able to both practically do these things and also emotionally satisfy the humans in charge of militaries (you will never be able to convince a human officer that a drone will be able to autonomously follow rules of engagement and correctly discriminate friend from foe).

We're at the point now where you could put all the software required to control such a thing on a single-board computer the size of a credit card.

you'd have issues during instrument conditions (stars not visible regardless of daylight), but this could be interesting, especially combined with, say, SLAM fed by terrain-scanning radar.

at which point you're into extrapolation, I wonder how accurate it could be. I'd guess good enough for most situations.

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