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$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor

2026-03-1510:15404361github.com

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30 Second Overview
30 Second Overview

Full System Overview (5 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDO2EvXyncE&t=54s

Full Development Media and Documentation
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17zpks6_R59H0iXJaGkTrtp1SzIFFAQtY?usp=sharing

The Google Drive archive contains additional development media and documentation including:

  • mechanical design and assembly
  • system electronics and firmware testing
  • launch tests and rocket motor development
  • system flow diagram
  • rocket specifications
  • bill of materials and cost breakdown

This project is a proof-of-concept prototype of a low-cost rocket launcher and guided rocket system built using consumer electronics and 3D-printed components. The rocket uses folding fins and canard stabilization controlled by an onboard ESP32 flight computer and MPU6050 inertial measurement unit, while the launcher integrates sensors such as GPS, compass, and barometric modules for orientation and telemetry. The system was designed in Fusion 360, simulated using OpenRocket, and developed through iterative mechanical, electronics, and launch testing. The total hardware cost of the prototype is approximately $96.

This repository contains the core engineering components of the project:

  • mechanical CAD files for the rocket and launcher
  • firmware source code for the rocket flight controller and launcher system
  • OpenRocket simulation files used for aerodynamic stability analysis

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Comments

  • By ralferoo 2026-03-1517:0013 reply

    I remember an anecdote our robotics lecturer told our university class in 1995, which was about how in the west we try to make expensive things that are the absolute best of technology and how the other side didn't have that luxury and relied on ingenuity.

    He described a cold war Russian missile they had somehow obtained and were tasked with trying to reverse engineer. Ostensibly, it was thought to be a heat seeking missile, but there seemed to be no control or guidance circuitry at all. There was a single LDR (light dependent resistor) attached to a coil which moved a fin. That was it. Total cost for the guidance system maybe a couple of dollars, compared to hundreds of thousands for the cheapest guidance systems we had at the time.

    The key insight was that if you shined a light at it, the fin moved one way and if there was no light the fin moved the opposite way. That still didn't explain how this was able to guide a missile, but the next realisation was that the other fins were angled so when this was flying (propelled by burning rocket fuel), the missile was inherently unstable - rotating around the axis of thrust and wobbling slightly. With the moveable fin in place, it was enough to straighten it up when it was facing a bright light, and wobble more when there was no bright light. Because it was constantly rotating, you could think of it as defaulting to exploring a cone around its current direction, and when it could see a light it aimed towards the centre of that cone. It was then able to "explore the sky" and latch on to the brightest thing it could see, which would hopefully be the exhaust from a plane, and so it would be able to lock on, and adjust course on a moving target with no "brain" at all.

    • By Animats 2026-03-1520:39

      That's roughly how the original Sidewinder worked. The original concept was to reduce near-misses. If the pilot could get on the target's tail and aim at the engines, it usually got a hit. That was the same task as getting into firing position for guns. Hit rate about 8% in combat.

      Later versions allowed launches from longer ranges and from off-angles.

    • By gorgoiler 2026-03-1517:121 reply

      I believe there was a similar weapon being developed in the west, only recently, which involved a missile with contra rotating halves joined by a clutch. The fixed fins caused it to always steer one way. It flew straight by releasing the clutch to spin up the front half, negating the steering effect. Grabbing the clutch caused it to stop spinning and veer off in one direction.

      Presto! Two axis continuous flight control with a 1-bit input.

      Edit: my memory wasn’t far off. It’s Starstreak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak

      • By coredog64 2026-03-1517:34

        35-ish years ago there was a pitch for cheap, high velocity, spin-stabilized rockets that were deployed in dense pods on the A-10. The rocket's seeker could divert some small amount of thrust at an angle for guidance, but otherwise that was it. I can't recall if it ever made it out of the pilot phase, but obviously nothing new under the sun.

    • By srean 2026-03-1517:131 reply

      Strike a light in front of a parked but otherwise active fin guided heat-seeker and its freaky to watch it come alive like a lazy beagle eyeing a treat.

    • By snitty 2026-03-1518:57

      This is shockingly similar to microbial motility mechanisms. Like random walk plus chemotaxis.

    • By mapt 2026-03-1519:56

      This sounds like the early Sidewinder or other 1940's/1950's attempts at infrared homing missiles.

    • By 3abiton 2026-03-1522:47

      This is an interesting thought, as if I remember correctly, there was this theory that once something is known to be possible to discover, it only takes dedication to achieve it (George Dantzig as an example)

    • By crtified 2026-03-1520:14

      That frugal, creative mindset is also the default for people of modest income everywhere in the world - borne of necessity.

    • By chroma 2026-03-1517:081 reply

      Unless it was nighttime or the engagement happened at low altitude on a cloudy day, wouldn’t that usually lock onto the sun?

      • By bluescrn 2026-03-1517:351 reply

        The wobble would only 'scan' a limited field of view, so only if the sun was in that view

        • By chroma 2026-03-1519:291 reply

          Also wouldn't it only work for aircraft that are flying away from the launcher? IR & light signatures are much weaker from the front. At best I think this guidance system would only be economical for ground-based launchers, as the cost of aircraft and their limited payloads mean you want the most effective weapons onboard, not the cheapest.

          Annoyingly, I can't find any information online about such a simple guidance system. The earliest homing missile fielded by the Soviets was the K-13[1], which used technology reversed-engineered from the AIM-9 Sidewinder[2]. Later systems seem to be improvements upon that technology, not simplifications.

          1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)

          2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder

          • By Tadpole9181 2026-03-1519:36

            > Also wouldn't it only work for aircraft that are flying away from the launcher?

            Yes, pretty much all early guided missiles of the sort were what's called "rear-aspect".

            Can't see the plume - can't make a boom.

    • By dosssman 2026-03-1517:07

      Similar to how moths guide themselves toward light

    • By trhway 2026-03-1519:11

      that sounds like crude-fied version of first Sidewinders.

    • By Gud 2026-03-1517:04

      Incredible

    • By dzhiurgis 2026-03-1520:21

      > That still didn't explain how this was able to guide a missile

      That does explain why it lands on civilian areas tho

    • By dandanua 2026-03-1519:26

      > with no "brain" at all

      It seems this is how Russia moves in general. Hopefully, this will end at some point.

  • By Mizza 2026-03-1511:236 reply

    This is bonkers. Video on GitHub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDO2EvXyncE

    I'm impressed by the kid's engineering and gumption, but I think he's a bit.. misguided, if you'll pardon the pun. The video ends with shots of Russian drone war, and, bizarrely, photos of David Koresh.

    I don't think this ends well.

    • By mikkupikku 2026-03-1511:372 reply

      > The video ends with shots of Russian drone war, and, bizarrely, photos of David Koresh.

      You're omitting that the end of the video also features pictures of Martin Luther King, Vietnamese civilians during America's invasion of their country and Afghani Mujahideen freedom fighters during the Soviet Union's invasion of theirs; I think he's trying to make a point about technology enhancing the capabilities of people who are in any conflict with conventionally powerful forces, not an endorsement of David Koresh.

      • By roysting 2026-03-1512:252 reply

        It’s really odd how people will so easily fixate on the bone the government consisting of maniacal, narcissistic, psychopathic, pathological liars will throw them; while totally ignoring that the pathological lying, evil, murderous people in and of the government are constantly and ceaselessly, lying and murdering.

        There now carpet bombing and murdering people in Iran, just like they mass murdered people in Gaza, and they’re doing it to cover up and distract from the fact that our government consists of raping pedophiles. That is who we are governed by. … but David Koresh excuses it and makes any opposition invalid, of close.

        • By einpoklum 2026-03-1512:364 reply

          I am completely against the US-Israeli war on Iran. That said, they are not carpet-bombing Iran. That is, they appear to be selecting individual targets rather than engaging in carpet bombing entire areas:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing

          The choice of targets is not legally legitimate (and the entire campaign is illegal AFAICT), and sometimes they used old/invalid intel, like what happened with that girls' school that's supposedly close to an IRGC base. Still, it is mostly individual buildings or installations rather than an attempt to flatten entire areas.

          • By mda 2026-03-1518:442 reply

            Oh so your line is carpet bombing? The attackers has shown they can do almost any atrocity many times (already killed thousands of woman and children in Gaza with zero remorse or accountability)

            • By einpoklum 2026-03-1521:58

              Yes, they have shown that. I don't understand your question about my "line", you'll need to be more explicit.

            • By itsthecourier 2026-03-1519:001 reply

              what's your line? respecting "sovereignty" of dictators and mass murders/internet blocks/Armageddonian Islamic cosmology?

              talking about "your line" is way too simplistic. think in second and third order consequences. Iran exported and financially supported terrorists because of a repressive theological dictatorship

              • By mda 2026-03-1520:08

                I see, so this was to free Iranians from their dictators right? How is it going so far?

          • By Saline9515 2026-03-1512:54

            Not carpet bombing, yet. Israelis said the same at the start of the most recent Gaza war, which ended with large neighborhoods being destroyed.

          • By srean 2026-03-1512:474 reply

            They are using white phosphorus on populated areas in South Lebanon. That's as vile as one can get.

            • By saati 2026-03-1513:011 reply

              Be that as it may, carpet bombing has a specific meaning, and it's not bombing one's not on board with.

              • By srean 2026-03-1513:03

                In the context of Iran I agree with you.

                Not so sure about South Lebanon. From whatever media coverage I saw, some look not that different from carpet bombing.

            • By victorbjorklund 2026-03-1513:022 reply

              Evidence for the claim?

            • By einpoklum 2026-03-1522:01

              Indeed, Israel and the US are quite vile. I have said so many times on placard which have then been ripped apart by the Israeli police. I only made a comment about the term "carpet bombing", as that is a specific term which means something else than "wide-scale bombing".

            • By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-03-1519:362 reply

              I always loved the "white phosphorous" stuff. The meme appeared on reddit out of nowhere, and once it did it made everyone who heard it completely utterly stupid. Suddenly it's a chemical weapon, the worst sort of atrocity anyone's heard of.

              The meme will never die. Skynet could be hunting down the last of humanity hiding in caves, and those humans will be crying "maybe it will just be nukes, please god, don't let the robots white phosphorous us!".

              • By srean 2026-03-1519:48

                I have handled this stuff (from remnants of unexploded munitions) and I know what it is.

                It is not spectacular but it is vile and terrifying. No amount of your "rape, oh that's just surprise sex" will diminish what it is.

              • By rexpop 2026-03-1523:162 reply

                Reasonable people know to take your flippant tone for the colorful warning of a rotten, toxic brain.

                • By srean 2026-03-169:01

                  A pinhead side pellet on his body would shut him up pretty quick.

                  Well, not, it would be screams of agony.

                • By NoMoreNicksLeft 2026-03-165:171 reply

                  If these reasonable people knew that, then why did you have to say this? It's the dog whistle that they need so that they'll behave as expected...

                  White phosphorous is a way to light up the night sky during warfare. Like all warfare, it is dangerous to human life even when that's not it's direct intent... people fall off cliffs and shit while fighting (or running from it). Their deaths are no less tragic for it.

                  But when crackpots start screaming "they're trying to make people stampede off cliffs to their deaths!", it shows you for the very unreasonable and quite likely mentally ill person that you are.

                  • By srean 2026-03-168:40

                    > White phosphorous is a way to light up the night sky during warfare

                    Lol No. Hilariously no. The thing to use to light up night sky is Magnesium (mostly, also aluminum. nowadays specialized resins). The primary use of WP is for smoke, but it is used illegally as an incendiary munition.

                    For someone who talks so much about WP I did not expect this level of ignorance. Empty vessels sounds much, I suppose.

                    Use of WP is banned * in warfare by international treaty, on the grounds of avoiding unnecessary cruelty and suffering. There are other banned weapons, for example, dumdum bullets. *There is a specific exception made for WP, which the Israeli army habitually and illegally abuses.

                    No other army is known to be a repeat offender with regards to WP. It's use in an area with civilian population is strictly prohibited. Cliffs are not.

                    Given the number of false equivalences you have been drawing you sound like a shill.

          • By roysting 2026-03-1514:342 reply

            I understand your compulsion to rationalize things, make excuses for your abusers, but I ask you to contemplate for a moment what you are defending. One, hopefully we have all seen the genocidal bombing of Gaza turning whole regions of large apartment blocks into an hell-scape of rubble with tens of thousands of people buried underneath them; people, not animals, not “just brown people”, not “terrorists”… people like you, like your wife or girlfriend, like your daughter or son or nephew…people who also want to live just like you even if far more humbly, without all the waste and decadence of the avg American. Should your loved ones be bombed and buried under a resort and luxury condo towers because a clan of billionaires do not like that you won’t leave your land?

            Two, at the very least, the most generous interpretation, the very first strike to start an illegal war of aggression that the Nuremberg trial clearly established as the “mother of all subsequent evil”, was not only on a girls school that killed dozens and dozens of young girls, but did so in a “double tap“ process where they observed that people arrived in ambulances and parents in cars to pick up very small humans, and then they hit them again with another missile. Let us be clear about what you are excusing… They intentionally splattered the guts and flesh of young girls and their parents rushing to save them all over a 300 foot diameter blast radius.

            We can lie to ourselves that may have been a “mistake“ but as established during the Nunberg trials, there is no defense in claiming that if you started the illegal and immoral war of aggression.

            Three, why are they hiding what is happening if it’s all above board? Why would they not permit unfettered access showing what is being targeted bombing and that the Iranians are lying when they say that thousands of civilian structures have been bombed including schools and hospitals? You trust Hegseth? Trump? Need I say more?

            And all that is without even addressing that these people have done nothing but lie and lie about lying about lying.

            And let’s also remember that as shocking as the files that gave been released, they have not even released even the slightly uncomfortable parts of the Epstein Files, let alone arrested any of the rapists and pedophiles that are now on yet another murder spree, starting that prosecuting everyone would cause the whole system to collapse!

            If want to believe people like that, people who do nothing but lie, rape, murder and cover up for it; then I guess there is nothing else to say and you will have to deal with that on your own as it eats you up from the inside. I for one am opposed to these types of people and actions and will speak out about it even if people don’t like it. And I refuse to make excuses for it for any reason, be it personal weakness or comfort.

            • By vidarh 2026-03-1514:561 reply

              They did not defend it or make excuses for it. They argued about the very specific claim of carpet bombing in Iran, before pointing out the entire campaign is illlegal and calling the choice of targets "not legally legitimate".

              They also said nothing about Gaza.

              I share your concern about both Gaza and Iran, but criticising people for calling out an exaggeration is not helping anyone.

              • By mda 2026-03-1518:461 reply

                "Ah look but they haven't carped bombed Iran" was their argument and it sounds really weird.

                • By koshergweilo 2026-03-1522:22

                  That was not their argument at all. Their argument was that we're not carpet bombing Iran.

                  They're quite explicit that they're on your side, why question their motivations?

            • By wombatpm 2026-03-1517:50

              And now they are claiming due to the war, they will stop releasing the remaining files.

        • By huijzer 2026-03-1512:38

          I was reading your comment and thought you were a bit too extreme, but then I thought about it and was like "Hmmm. Yes. Sounds pretty accurate actually." So yes I agree.

      • By radialstub 2026-03-1512:23

        > I think he's trying to make a point about technology enhancing the capabilities of people who are in any conflict with conventionally powerful forces

        Which is absurd, since all the technology he used was manufactured by the conventionally powerful forces and they can decide to not sell you their stuff.

    • By shrubble 2026-03-1512:452 reply

      The fact that Koresh and his group held off Federal officers who stormed their building with simple guns that anyone can buy, is likely the point.

      Out of five and a half minutes of video, David Koresh appears for perhaps three seconds.

      It does put a new twist on the recent controversy about 3d printers needing to be licensed, however.

      • By steve-atx-7600 2026-03-1520:11

        I think this is within the intent of the 2nd amendment. Having groups of citizens check the power of their government by being armed comes with the the downside of abusive types forming cults. I think this tradeoff is worth it. Mass shooting evens and cults harming people are obviously terrible. But, I prefer living with some of that knowing that it provides recourse for becoming like the majority of Iranians that are so helpless that at least 10s of thousands were slaughtered in daylight by their government merely for protesting. It’s easy to discount the possibility of becoming an oppressed citizenry if you grew up in the US where the worst you’ve heard about is maybe Kent state or early 2026 ice murdering unarmed citizens. Armed citizens are not a guarantee from oppression, but I think it’s important insurance.

      • By randomNumber7 2026-03-1516:17

        Yeah the solution is simple.

        Just licence everything private people can buy except (healthy food). /S

        Microcontrollers and electric motors are too dangerous for the general public.

    • By laborcontract 2026-03-1512:303 reply

      soo... i have no kept up with what's gone on in russia/ukraine. Are those drone videos what i think they are – drones sneaking up on humans and, presumably, ceasing them of life?

      edit: Ok, I googled the guy

        > I have read the works of authors such as Jean Baudrillard, Desmod Morris, 
  and Ted Kaczynski who believe that technology is harming us and the world.

  https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/User:Alisherkhojayev

      • By sorenjan 2026-03-1512:52

        Both Russia and Ukraine build millions of drones per year, most of them fpv drones that are basically remote controlled flying grenades. There's plenty of electronic warfare with radio jamming, so in some places they use drone mounted spools of fiber optic cable to control them. It's probably been the most impactful weapon type in the war for the past years.

      • By mikkupikku 2026-03-1512:321 reply

        Yes. Both sides are using explosive FPV drones, flown directly into soldiers (as well as other forms of drone warfare.)

      • By pjc50 2026-03-1516:11

        > have no kept up with what's gone on in russia/ukraine

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

        "between 400,000 and 1.5 million estimated casualties (killed and wounded) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 24 February 2022 to November 2025"

        Mostly due to artillery. Both sides are firing in the region of 10,000 155mm shells per day. For years.

    • By phplovesong 2026-03-1513:06

      What started in Ukraine, this is modern warfare. Like most "consumer" goods that are mass produced, you can now get a capable strike force for peanuts.

      The russians have taken close to 1.5 million casulties because ukraine engineering for cheap drones. Putin really, really f-ed up his "3 day military operation".

    • By JKCalhoun 2026-03-1511:511 reply

      Who knew there were war bros.

      • By tclancy 2026-03-1512:14

        We might need them. Would be better than my theory that this country will recover at some point after they destroy the EPA and reintroduce leaded gas because that's what made this country great which leads to a generation of kids who are willing to throw bricks at cops again.

    • By roysting 2026-03-1512:022 reply

      [flagged]

      • By Hnrobert42 2026-03-1512:271 reply

        It is exciting to know a secret no one else does. David vs Goliath stories have always been powerful. It is seductive to think you have outsmarted the rest of society.

        Be careful who you let manipulate those emotions.

        • By roysting 2026-03-1512:371 reply

          [flagged]

          • By idiotsecant 2026-03-1512:521 reply

            You get that the post you're replying to is saying that the idea that you have knowledge that few others do is appealing and can lead to bad decision making, right?

            Ascribing evil to someone who is trying to make a point in the gentlest and most respectful way possible makes you look like a crazy person, btw.

            • By roysting 2026-03-1515:03

              I used to not think much of Waco and even remember seeing it on TV and my takeaway being basically “some crazies burned themselves instead of submitting”, because that was the line.

              But that is not at all the actual story. Just think of how much the government has lied about and how much it constantly lies about everything all the time. You think it’s plausible they were just the most honest and righteous angels that didn’t do nothing at all in Waco? They pathological, murderous liars? I’m just trying to suggest you reconsider things, your relationship with the murderous, lying, psychopathic government.

              Ironically, you seem to not understand what he is saying and doing with his inept, smug comment from a place of ignorance to protect his propaganda… a kind of self-hiding mental virus.

              I get it is easier to believe we understand how the world works because we “learned it” from a government approved teacher when we were kids and we are now successful alpha slaves that have accumulated shiny things, but reality is simply that Waco was not what the government said it was.

              And yet another level of irony, it is precisely what the government relies on, people simply rejecting anything that does not come from the biggest cult, government; the belief that these vile people we call government are any better than Koresh.

              We are now governed by lying, murderous, raping, pedophiles … how is that different than Koresh… just on a massively larger and more evil planet sized scale?

      • By myko 2026-03-1512:192 reply

        The white washing of Koresh is sickening to see. Similar to how some in the US idolize the traitor Colonel Robert E Lee.

        • By shrubble 2026-03-1512:481 reply

          If this was Usenet, your post would result in a “plonk” very likely.

          Why did almost all Presidents up to and including Eisenhower praise Robert E Lee? Was Eisenhower a traitor also?

          • By mikkupikku 2026-03-1513:15

            To be fair, Eisenhower praised Lee's personal and leadership qualities, not the Confederate cause. The GP comment speaks of people who "idolize" Lee, which I think can be presumed to mean people who are on-board with the Confederate cause and by extension racism and slavery, which is pretty much how the subject is viewed by a great many today, but in Eisenhower's time people weren't tuned for twitter-sized ideas and were more capable of recognizing the way some people excelled while also simultaneously being strongly against other aspects of that person. Nuance like having complicated views on complicated people, doesn't do well on much of the internet these days, our culture has moved away from that. Now if you say Lee was a great military officer and also a traitor, people will assume that you mean one of those and just threw in the other to mask your extremist intent or something. People are assumed to be simple, with simple opinions about other simple people.

        • By roysting 2026-03-1512:391 reply

          Try to pay attention please. Let’s try this; are you opposed to the government pumping 100 rounds into a person for some imagined “threat” they rationalize about after the fact? Koresh was not a great guy, kind of a piece of shit, just like the people the cops usually gun down, but that does not mean you need to take the low IQ government bait to excuse their lying and wanton murder and constant evil.

          • By myko 2026-03-1514:192 reply

            I'm okay with criticizing the government response - they should have arrested him in town. But pretending he was not an awful person is beyond the pale, and I felt the comment I replied to came close to that line.

            • By roysting 2026-03-1515:18

              I don’t think anyone claims he wasn’t and awful person, let alone some great person, but it all comes down to government installing the propaganda script in your mind likely all your life through “education” and “entertainment”.

              It’s amazing to me that people who complained about the government’s evils at various points or at the very least whine about how much of a meanie poopy-head the other team is, will just give the government a pass simply because they took the government propaganda bait; hook, line, and sinker.

            • By mothballed 2026-03-1515:12

              Maybe he was an awful person, but their warrant was completely bogus. Legal inert grenade shells, legal black powder, and the "automatic gunfire" complete BS accusation that the government never provided evidence of was likely "hellfire triggers" at best.

  • By redgridtactical 2026-03-1511:429 reply

    The engineering is genuinely impressive for $96, but naming the repo "MANPADS-System-Launcher-and-Rocket" on GitHub is going to attract exactly the kind of attention you don't want. ITAR implications aside, the interesting part is the mid-flight trajectory recalculation on a $5 sensor. That's the same basic problem military guidance systems solve with hardware that costs thousands.

    The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking and this is a pretty stark demonstration of where that trend leads. A few years ago this would have required an IMU that cost more than this entire build. The democratization angle cuts both ways though - the same accessibility that makes this cool for hobbyists makes it genuinely concerning from a proliferation standpoint.

    • By tclancy 2026-03-1512:234 reply

      > The gap between consumer electronics and mil-spec capability keeps shrinking

      My friend's brother works in munitions and had, in his spare time, designed and prototyped a missile that could be built for about 10k. He pretty much was ignored by the contractor he works for.

      Shockingly, as of a couple weeks ago, they are all hot and bothered to talk.

      • By redgridtactical 2026-03-1517:391 reply

        That tracks. The defense primes have zero incentive to make things cheaper — their business model is cost-plus. A guy building something for 10k in his garage is an existential threat to programs billing 500k per unit. Of course they ignored him until the geopolitical situation made it impossible to keep ignoring.

        • By srean 2026-03-1519:071 reply

          > That tracks. The defense primes have zero incentive to make things cheaper

          Same in medical imaging industry.

          • By Mars008 2026-03-1519:261 reply

            Well, there are cheap portable ultrasound scanners and endoscopes.

            • By srean 2026-03-1519:331 reply

              True.

              I was talking about those that are meant for hospitals. Was peripherally involved with a fledgling startup that was developing something cheap. Hospitals straightaway said noway.

              • By projektfu 2026-03-1520:47

                They would be desirable in places with poor advanced imaging penetration like Brazil. Usually only the largest city in a state has this sort of imaging.

      • By infinitewars 2026-03-1517:56

        If you build a tool optimized for human destruction, you are feeding a system where violence is the default currency

      • By Mars008 2026-03-1519:23

        We are heading to robotic wars where abilities and cost efficiency are the key factors. Like today drones in Ukraine war. Attack + defense + automation, + money + production

      • By redgridtactical 2026-03-1512:30

        I wonder what could have possibly sparked that... lol

    • By hrmtst93837 2026-03-1512:326 reply

      Cheap sensors look impressive in demos but drift and calibration wreck repeatability unless you babysit launches so nobody in defense is sweating this yet.

      • By vidarh 2026-03-1513:062 reply

        They should be sweating, because if the other side can fire 100 rockets for $10k that are close enough to not immediately and obviously be off target, and you don't know whether a more expensive one with actual explosives is hiding within that barrage, you now have 100 targets to try to intercept, and suddenly your costs have gone up dramatically while the other sides costs has barely moved.

        • By philistine 2026-03-162:051 reply

          It is warfare, not mere product delivery. The second you fire one of these you reveal your position, making you a target for immediate reprisal. You don't win wars by losing very fine soldiers on homemade close enough shots.

          • By vidarh 2026-03-168:55

            So mount a battery on a truck, fire, move, fire again. Do that on a few hundred trucks, and drive around places without any real target and you have the other side burning through their arsenal real quick.

            This isn't a rocket that is viable when you need to e.g. cross the Persian gulf. But it is a rocket that shows there are potentially viable decoys at a similar cost sufficient to spead fear in an enemy force if you can drive a bunch of trucks close enough to fire off dozens of them each, with the enemy knowing odds are you've hidden a handful of small warheads in there.

            It'd be pointless for a conventional force that has the upper hand. It'd not be pointless for a weaker force or insurgency that needs massive asymmetry in cost to stand a chance.

            EDIT: Heck, build tiny launch batteries in a crate, and drive around dropping launch batteries with a timer, and by the time the first rocket goes off you might've already dropped 10 of them and driven off. Now every car large enough to hold even a small box is a threat, and you have a real quagmire.

        • By dgroshev 2026-03-1513:415 reply

          100 rockets for $10k is not happening. The price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

          Take a look at Raytheon's manufacturing line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCkVAHSzrc That's what it takes to have missiles that are nearly guaranteed to perform to specification every time. You can stockpile the packaged missiles in a non-climate-controlled shed for years, replenish them at sea while being showered with salt water, subject them to shock of a nearby blast while in a VLS, and they will still launch, go up to Mach 13, and catch an incoming ballistic missile nearly every time.

          Sure, Iran's ballistic missiles are simpler than SM-3, but they are still subject to most of the constraints. They still need perfectly cast large size solid rocket motors that don't crack after being stored for a year, they need warheads that only go off when they are supposed to, they still need to trace every part for QA, etc. There's a vast gap, largely invisible to amateurs, between garage prototypes and stockpiled AURs.

          • By tgsovlerkhgsel 2026-03-1520:222 reply

            > propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

            The further down the list you go, the more optional the requirements get in a sufficiently dire scenario.

            Shelf life doesn't matter if you are firing them as quickly as you can make them, especially if you actually can make them as quickly as you need them because they're so simple. QA and traceability may matter less if you just accept that you'll occasionally lose a launcher, and even occasionally have a stray missile land in someone's living room because that's better than having a non-stray Shahed in said living room.

            In terms of safety, I bet it'll still beat "cutting open existing munitions and literally duct taping random other fuzes to them", which seems to be the bar for "good enough".

            • By Animats 2026-03-1520:501 reply

              Shelf life doesn't matter if you are firing them as quickly as you can make them, especially if you actually can make them as quickly as you need them because they're so simple.

              Right. High-volume users can skip the thermal batteries with decades-long shelf life, and just spot-weld a few AAA batteries inside the weapon. Just stencil the thing "Best if used by DATE". Good for a year or two at least. Skip the anti-corrosion stuff and ship it in consumer-grade shrink wrap. Ukraine ships drones to the field in lightweight cardboard boxes, not rugged weapons containers.

              Many US weapons are really old designs. The Patriot went into production in 1980. The Stinger went into service in 1981. There's been progress since then. Consumer-grade parts can do most of what's needed.

              • By dgroshev 2026-03-1521:422 reply

                AAA batteries don't have the current. Li-Ion is too fussy and has a pretty high self-discharge.

                Ukraine can afford the cardboard boxes because they are fighting in their own country. The US has an ocean to cross.

                Ukraine can get away with short shelf life because they are at war right now. The US has to stockpile because the supply chain has to run at some capacity in peace time to be able to ramp up quickly when needed, and discarding the produced ammunition after a year would be incredibly wasteful.

                Neither Ukraine nor Russia can defeat each others' air defence networks. The US has a lot of experience doing just that, while successfully defending against ballistic missiles. High tier capabilities matter.

                The Patriot in 1980 is a very different system from the Patriot that is fielded today. Between PAC-2 and PAC-3, AN/MPQ-65A and LTAMDS it's a cutting edge air defence system. The progress is constantly incorporated.

                The Stinger is a bit old, but mostly because the US doctrine has few uses for it. Regardless, NGSRI is coming.

                • By vidarh 2026-03-168:57

                  > The US has an ocean to cross.

                  But this is exactly the point: This approach allows for insurgents or parties subject to overwhelming but expensive force to strain the logistics and budgets of their opponent. This is something that would be far more costly for the US to counter.

                • By bigiain 2026-03-1522:09

                  > AAA batteries don't have the current.

                  Triple As might not, but back in the day plenty of rc planes flew just fine for an hour or three using 4 AA batteries to run the receiver and servos..

            • By dgroshev 2026-03-1520:312 reply

              I don't understand your point. Sure, Ukraine can cut a few corners that western militaries are unwilling to cut. They still can't produce a domestic ballistic missile at scale, because it's genuinely hard, and simple terror weapons like Qassams are useless for militaries. "100 rockets for $10k" is off by orders of magnitude.

              • By vidarh 2026-03-169:081 reply

                100 harmful rockets for $10k is off by orders of magnitude, but that was entirely not the point.

                The point is that if you're in a asymmetric position where you can't do much damage directly, then whatever you can do to make the other side waste expensive resources while putting them on constant alert is a win.

                You don't need a warhead, or a viable rocket, to do that. You need something that looks enough like a viable rocket to force a response, because the other side knows that x% are real.

                If that thing is cheap enough for you to fire large numbers of them, you multiply the problem for your opponent. Cheap enough, and you have the potential to overwhelm the capacity of their countermeasures entirely, at which point you increase the chance that some of their real rockets will make it through.

                • By dgroshev 2026-03-1610:091 reply

                  To "look enough" like a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away with enough precision to not be ignored you need a missile that can fly a hundred kilometres. This is not cheap.

                  Instead of repeating myself, I'll just link a reply, if you don't mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47389309

                  • By vidarh 2026-03-1610:54

                    > a missile that can hit something a hundred kilometres away

                    At no point did I mention "a hundred kilometres away"

              • By edmundsauto 2026-03-1520:54

                I think the point is to look at the US requirements compared to the cost and explore ways that a country could gain strategic advantages by building objectively worse products. (But cheaper/faster, gaining an asymmetric advantage in the offense/defense scaling)

                I used to think the US dollars were well spent, because we felt it was morally important to deliver precision strikes which had higher cost requirements. Recent evidence demonstrates that is insufficient when the wetware making the targeting decisions is faulty.

          • By regularfry 2026-03-1516:351 reply

            Without necessarily disagreeing with your point, the driving consideration for Raytheon's production line is arguably not reliability. It's being able to charge the customer for perceived reliability. It's very hard to know from the outside how much of it is theatre, even if earnestly arrived at. There are incentives for these things to be expensive.

            • By esseph 2026-03-1519:03

              The US military is not "new" at this. There are whole career professions in the military around just this topic.

          • By kdheiwns 2026-03-1518:056 reply

            If you think shelf life, QA, safety, blah blah blah matters when a rocket is 100 bucks, I have just three words: you will lose.

            The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere. The US got their bases blown to pieces across the Middle East by cheap drones that gently float through the air like a paper airplane in comparison to absolutely any missile.

            And let's not forget. The US had napalm, helicopters, bombers, incredible logistics, cutting edge equipment of all sorts. Vietnam had a bunch of sticks in a hole covered in poop. Those sticks sent Americans crying home and we still get movies and games with them crying about how bad it was.

            In war between great powers, yeah, high tech works because it's scary and civilians don't want to have that kind of stuff coming home. In a war where civilians are being targeted by great powers who terrorize them by blowing up schools and hospitals, a lot of people are thinking about how many weapons they can make to defend their home and for cheap. If America thinks an invasion is a good idea, they're going to be bringing their 50 million dollar tanks face to face with a few $100 toy rockets. And those toy rockets will be picking off tanks like fish in a barrel while a drone streams it in 4K live to the internet. I really do not think American who support current happenings are ready for the absolute mental torment they're going to endure if this continues.

            • By smileysteve 2026-03-1519:12

              It's even worse when your goal is commercial viability of carrying a relatively flammable liquid.

              Tankers moving at a slow speed, across a narrow strait.

              They don't have to sink to not be commercially viable; a few deck fires negatively impact your days at sea without incident.

            • By philistine 2026-03-162:09

              The vietcong had some incredible technology, courtesy of Russia. Their fighter planes were breaking the Air Force's back, thanks in large part to their far better doctrine. They had the fabled AK-47, the toy drone of its day.

            • By computerdork 2026-03-1518:282 reply

              You have a point - cheap drones have changed warfare - but you might be simplifying the issue. As some warfare experts online have discussed, it isn't that cheap drones are the only weapon that is used in Ukraine (or warfare in general), it is one option in vast array of options based on the situation (although, agreed, it is taking on a much bigger significance). Look at the war in Iran. They did a pretty standard playbook and use stealth jets and cruise missiles to surgically take out air defenses in order to gain air dominance. This would be very difficult with just cheap drones.

              ... but, do agree that cheap weapons are still becoming extremely important. Iran is terrorizing the middle east and strait of hormuz with cheap drones, so they are definitely important. Yeah, in the war of attrition, low cost, high-volume options are clearly very important.

              • By jacquesm 2026-03-160:12

                Bombing stuff is relatively easy, holding territory is not.

              • By dgroshev 2026-03-1518:582 reply

                It's fairly important to distinguish what kind of drones are we talking about [1]. Iran's using Group 3 drones.

                The GP is confusing Iran's neighbours not being ready to counter group 3 drones with the drones being inevitably effective. These drones are by necessity large and slow, because they need a lot of energy and aerodynamic efficiency to get their range. That means that they are vulnerable to cheap counters, which Ukraine is demonstrating very convincingly: even though Russia is now launching 800+-drone raids, the vast majority is shot down.

                Even when those drones do get through, they are extremely inefficient. It's not just that they can't carry a heavy or sophisticated payload (more complex warheads are more effective, but way more expensive), the extremely high attrition ratio forces the enemy to try to target way too many drones per aimpoint. Instead of serving a few hundred aimpoints, the 800-strong raid is forced to concentrate on just a few, otherwise most aimpoints will get no hits whatsoever.

                But also the only reason 800-strong raids can even be launched is Ukraine lacking the capability to interdict the launches. 800 group 3 drones have an enormous logistics and manufacturing tail, which a Western force would have no problem destroying way before the raid can be launched. For example, Iran in its current state can't launch such raids. So in practice Iran's neighbours would need to intercept only a handful of drones, which is hardly an insurmountable challenge.

                [1]: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FL1.jpg

                • By srean 2026-03-1519:131 reply

                  How resistant are these drones to electronic countermeasures ?

                  • By dgroshev 2026-03-1519:171 reply

                    GPS denial is a mixed bag. After about two years of efforts and counter-efforts, the Russians seemingly managed to build GPS receivers that are pretty resistant to jamming.

                • By esseph 2026-03-1520:121 reply

                  > Iran's neighbours would need to intercept only a handful of drones, which is hardly an insurmountable challenge.

                  It's a big challenge when you run out of interceptors...

                  • By dgroshev 2026-03-1520:332 reply

                    We're absolutely not running out of APKWS. They are manufactured by tens of thousands, and Hydra 70s are even more numerous.

                    • By esseph 2026-03-1522:06

                      APKWS is great for certain drone classes, but we don't enough enough launching systems tied to detection and targeting systems fielded.

                      Need more range for larger drones.

            • By littlestymaar 2026-03-1518:461 reply

              So much this. Reliability and durability only matters because the thing costs a million dollar a piece. When you have stuff with a mere 5-digits price tag or less, you simply don't care if half of them miss their mark or doesn't fire 10% of the time.

              • By dgroshev 2026-03-1519:111 reply

                Half of munitions missing means doubling the logistical burden of delivering the munitions to where they need to be employed. The trucks/plains/ships that carry your munitions need to be fuelled and protected, too, so the expense is super-linear, especially when it's a distant war and not a war fought on the country's own soil, like in Ukraine.

                Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews and destroying platforms.

                Cheap munitions mean that CAS is a roulette. You waited for ten minutes for a support fire mission? Sorry, wait for ten more, whatever we launched has failed. Or maybe you're dead because the munition has hit you instead.

                Cheap munitions can pin you down. Those cheap FPV drones that are supposedly cheaper than Javelins require dedicated immobile units to launch and guide to targets. Javelins are organic to infantry squads.

                Cheap munitions are either very expensive or impossible. There's no cheap anti-ballistic missile and no cheap missile that can sink a warship in the Taiwan strait when launched[*] from Guam.

                [*]: alright alright an LRASM would need to be flown closer by an F-35 but the point still stands

                • By littlestymaar 2026-03-168:011 reply

                  > Half of munitions missing means doubling the logistical burden of delivering the munitions to where they need to be employed

                  It means doubling the transport capacity, but not doubling the burden. A bunch of crates carrying 155mm shell (cheap munitions) is much easier logistically than a PAC-3 missile for the same weight.

                  > Cheap munitions sometimes explode before they are launched, killing crews and destroying platforms.

                  Ill designed/manufactured munitions do, but it's not proportional to cost (again, a 155mm shell is a cheap munition even though it's being manufactured and designed in a way to reduce the kind of risk you're talking about).

                  > Cheap munitions mean that CAS is a roulette. You waited for ten minutes for a support fire mission? Sorry, wait for ten more, whatever we launched has failed.

                  That's not how it works. You'd launch two at the same time to take the possibility of failure into account (in fact we already do that with expensive anti-air missiles).

                  > Or maybe you're dead because the munition has hit you instead

                  Every munition can do a blue on blue strike, we mitigate those through engagement rules, which are calibrated by weapon types.

                  > Cheap munitions can pin you down. Those cheap FPV drones that are supposedly cheaper than Javelins require dedicated immobile units to launch and guide to targets.

                  They don't "require" it, it's how they are being employed today in Ukraine. Notice that javelins have pretty much disappeared from the Ukrainian battlefield so it's really not a good comparison.

                  > Cheap munitions are either very expensive or impossible. There's no cheap anti-ballistic missile

                  And it's fine to use an expensive weapon for that reason. Nobody is saying no to all expensive weapons (nukes ain't cheap either).

                  > no cheap missile that can sink a warship in the Taiwan strait when launched[] from Guam. > []: alright alright an LRASM would need to be flown closer by an F-35 but the point still stands

                  A Magura isn't a missile, but it has shown its capability of completely shutting down the Black Sea Fleet.

                  • By dgroshev 2026-03-1610:21

                    > It means doubling the transport capacity, but not doubling the burden

                    Which is my point, doubling the capacity at the end of the spear is more than double the burden. The scale is superlinear. The further out the front is (for the US, it's over at least one ocean), the more superlinear the scaling is.

                    > but it's not proportional to cost

                    You might've heard of the cheap North Korean shells exploding in barrels, destroying Russian howitzers. It is indeed very disproportional, that's why spending severalfold on better shells is a great tradeoff.

                    > You'd launch two at the same time to take the possibility of failure into account

                    It depends on the ability to launch two. Oftentimes it's impossible; cheap FPV drones interfere with each other, or maybe you don't have double the planes to fly CAS.

                    > how they are being employed today in Ukraine

                    It's logistically impossible to employ the kind of drones Ukraine is employing on the go and organically to infantry. Features and CONOPS that enable organic employment lead to a substantial increase in per-unit prices, see Rogue 1.

                    > A Magura isn't a missile, but it has shown its capability of completely shutting down the Black Sea Fleet.

                    It's three Black Seas worth of distance between Guam and the Taiwan strait. On top of that, nowadays those boats are pretty effectively countered. Overindexing on the war in Ukraine would be a mistake.

            • By sofixa 2026-03-1521:24

              > The Ukraine war is being fought with a bunch of cheap toy style drones dropping grenades everywhere

              This hasn't been true for 3-4 years now, most of the combat drones being used now are purpose built kamikaze drones. Notably the Russians are using Iranian designed Shahed 136s, while the Ukranians have the similar Liutyi. Among many, many, many other models in various roles.

              > And let's not forget. The US had napalm, helicopters, bombers, incredible logistics, cutting edge equipment of all sorts. Vietnam had a bunch of sticks in a hole covered in poop. Those sticks sent Americans crying home and we still get movies and games with them crying about how bad it was.

              While the Americans absolutely lost in Vietnam really bad, the Vietnamese regular army (PAVN) was extremely well equipped with some of the latest Soviet and Chinese equipment. Hanoi was one of the most densely defended anti-air spaces in the world (because the Americans insisted on trying, again, to kill civiliasn to get them to surrender, which never works), with top notch systems. The PAVN had mechanised batallions with tanks, armoured personnel carriers, anti-tank missiles, even amphibious tanks. The air force also had pretty good quality fighters.

              The VietCong on the other hand was a guerilla force equipped only with light and mobile equipment.

            • By dgroshev 2026-03-1518:411 reply

              I'm just not sure what to even say when you're both so assertive and completely wrong. Please stop relying on twitter/reddit to inform your takes.

              The war in Ukraine is being fought with all tiers of systems, ranging from Zircons and PAC-3 on the high end to booby traps on the low end. All of them are essential, and shortcomings on any of the tiers is ruthlessly exploited by the other side. Saying that it's only the small drones that matter betrays over-reliance on the gory FPV kill footage.

              "QA, safety, blah blah blah" get implemented on every level as soon as it's feasible. You can just look at photos from Yelabuga and see how their assembly lines are not fundamentally different from Raytheon's. Ukraine is standardising their drone manufacturing. This is inevitable, because faulty munitions lead to

              - killed friendly soldiers if the munitions explode pre-launch

              - wasted logistic resources if they don't launch

              - wasted time and targeting opportunity or friendly units not getting fire support when they fail after launch

              The cost of faults is severe and much higher than just the cost of the munition itself.

              It seems that you're misinformed about the real cost of modern FPVs used in Ukraine. Reports of sub-$1000 drones are years out of date and heavily relied on salvaged munitions, but there are only so many RPG warheads you can get for "free". Current FPVs are heavier, more capable, and cost a few thousand dollars. Further, it's reported that it takes dozens of FPVs to kill a single "hedgehog tank", which brings the total cost of one kill to a rough parity with "classic", "expensive" systems like the Javelin, except Javelins can be carried by a mobile squad, and launching FPVs requires a dedicated immobile unit with a long logistical tail.

              Don't mistake forces not being ready to counter low-tier threats immediately with the threats being impossible to counter. Group 3 drones are very effectively countered in Ukraine, to the extent that it takes hundreds to deliver maybe a few TLAMs worth of payload to the target. There are mature systems being rolled out right now across western armies, from various gun-based solutions to APKWS. Group 2 drones are decimated with cheap anti-air drones. Group 1 drones are being handled with APSes, which work pretty well even in urban environments, as Israel has (very unfortunately) demonstrated lately.

              • By kdheiwns 2026-03-162:11

                So now they're standardizing it, cool. Would Ukraine still be around if they had not fought defended themselves initially with cheap toy drones and waited until they had 4 years of QA, non-combat testing, verifying shelf life, etc etc?

                The history of war is a nonstop story of armies who consider themselves advanced over investing in old strategies and technology, then being wiped out by a ragtag group of rebels with cheap tools and new techniques beyond the imagination of the "better" military. The natural process is the new tech works, then improves.

                A $100 rocket can easily turn the tide in war. Thinking that means that these $100 rockets will stay as they are and never change is absolutely not the point. Users will continue to refine them while keeping them affordable.

                And if you're in a country that's being bombed nonstop, frankly, losing a few soldiers or having launch failures is meaningless. Having one successful missile out of 20 still has more benefit than 0 missile launch attempts and just waiting around for some "better" tech.

                And while Japan ultimately lost, they effectively used kamikaze attacks where the pilot dies by design in order to terrorize and slow down an invasion. If they told every soldier to just stay on land and hold a gun, it a land invasion would've been more likely and more messy. And by consequence, since the Japanese were so willing to give their life to defend themselves and attempting so would just mean massive deaths on both sides, America avoided invading the mainland entirely and realized just firebombing every inch of the country would be a much cheaper technique that was impossible to defend from. And firebombing worked because it was dropping very cheap and ridiculously large numbers of bombs.

          • By vidarh 2026-03-1514:321 reply

            TFA is literally about a $96 rocket.

            > propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

            You're entirely missing the point.

            These do not need to be reliable for the scenario I hinted at. They also do not need to be armed.

            They need to be large enough that if one of them is a higher quality rocket (not part of the $10k) that contains actual explosives, you have serious destruction on your hand. Maybe something that looks large enough for that will drive the cost up and we're talking $20k or even $100k instead of $10k.

            The precise cost is largely irrelevant, as long as the total cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of a missile interception.

            The point is you'd be multiplying the cost assymmetry by forcing a massively outsized response. Because if you don't try to intercept them, every future barrage will include a real rocket. If you do try to intercept them all, you'll be burning through massively expensive interceptors to take out a bunch of cheap toys.

            If I was ever considering an insurgency, or a war, I'd be stocking up on vast quantities of toys, with the intent of making every radar constantly lit up by a number of possible threats.

            • By dgroshev 2026-03-1517:023 reply

              > TFA is literally about a $96 rocket

              It's a firework-grade rocket with no payload that can't even ignite reliably.

              To imitate even a TBM or a MBRM, you need similar kinematics, even if you're running without a payload. Maybe your solid rocket motor would be a touch smaller because you're not delivering hundreds of kilograms of explosives, but it still has to be large because of the rocket equation. With a large motor you're looking at a lot of damage if it explodes at the launch point, so you need quality casting. You can't really save much money on the motor.

              Then, you need a TEL. Because the motor is large, the launcher has to be comparable to the real thing. You probably don't want to have two different vehicles, so you keep the same vehicle; it needs to be armed, driven around, and set for launch. Not that different from the real thing.

              So you've done all of that, and then you realise that your empty warheads are too light and the missiles (or warheads, if you split) don't interact with the atmosphere in the same way as non-decoy missiles do. What's worse, modern radars are perfectly capable of noticing that and discriminating the decoys. All of that effort, and you didn't win anything. Might as well add the payload.

              The US and the UK spent vast amount of money chasing exactly your line of reasoning with nuclear warhead decoys. Chevaline is a culmination of the effort, and it's retired for 30 years. In the end, relying on decoys doesn't really work, they are too expensive.

              Fancier CPUs change very little of this calculation, because compute is a very little part of the cost to begin with.

              • By vidarh 2026-03-169:31

                > It's a firework-grade rocket with no payload that can't even ignite reliably.

                Doesn't matter at that cost.

                > To imitate even a TBM or a MBRM, you need similar kinematics, even if you're running without a payload.

                That is relevant in a conflict like Iran at the moment, where the distance that needs to be covered is large. It's not relevant in e.g. an insurgency or the moment you put boots on the ground, where it only needs to look like something potentially explosive coming towards your truck or your helicopter or your people and you have 20 seconds to decide whether to waste munitions on it or not.

              • By mosura 2026-03-1520:32

                > The US and the UK spent vast amount of money chasing exactly your line of reasoning with nuclear warhead decoys. Chevaline is a culmination of the effort, and it's retired for 30 years.

                OTOH if you built a successful decoy system that is exactly what you would want people to believe.

          • By pjc50 2026-03-1516:002 reply

            > price floor is not dictated by the electronics (which did get cheaper), it's dictated by the rest of the system: propulsion, warheads, arming and safety, QA, traceability, climate and shelf life stability.

            I wonder how much of that Ukraine is bothering with. Or Iran. Certainly Hezbollah are building down to a budget.

            • By hermitcrab 2026-03-1516:352 reply

              I wonder how many Hezbollah rocket operators get blown up by their own rockets? A not insignificant number, I suspect.

              • By halflife 2026-03-1518:55

                Last week they launched 200 rockets in the span of one day, about 40 of those fell inside Lebanon border, that’s not counting the number of rockets that did not fire at all.

              • By coredog64 2026-03-1517:371 reply

                And then as a follow-up question, how many civilians next door to a Hezbollah launch site get blown up by poorly manufactured rockets?

                • By WaxProlix 2026-03-1518:36

                  Probably some fraction of the civilians blown up by Israeli terrorist phone strikes and bombing raids; there's a reason Hezbollah maintains some level of support in the region.

            • By dgroshev 2026-03-1516:412 reply

              Ukraine does bother with all of that when they can afford it. I'd even say that FPV drones are the main exception, and only because Ukraine was so pressed for immediate results and had stockpiles to repurpose. There are only so many old RPG warheads you can reuse with a detonator made of live wires, and maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day under artillery fire gets old fast.

              Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, they don't need their contraptions to work reliably. GMLRS serves an entirely different purpose to rockets made of repurposed telephone poles, and is much more useful for a military force.

              Also, don't forget the distances. Ukraine is fighting a war in their own country, with direct ground lines of communication to the frontline. On the other hand, you can fit three Ukraines just between Guam and Taiwan.

              • By cuu508 2026-03-1518:091 reply

                > maiming your own launch crews because someone made a tiny wrong movement arming their thirtieth drone of the day

                I was thinking about that. Wouldn't you be able to make it so the detonator gets armed by the operator remotely only once in the air and away?

                • By dgroshev 2026-03-1518:16

                  That's entirely possible, but doing so reliably and safely is difficult and expensive enough that for a very long time Ukrainians were accepting the risk instead.

                  The risk appetite countries in existential conflicts have is quite different from what we're used to. For example, there are plenty of videos of Ukrainian soldiers angle grinding cluster munitions open to extract submunitions to put on drones, but that's not a strategy that western armies can rely on.

              • By Mars008 2026-03-1520:191 reply

                > Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation

                That depends from which side you are looking. From the other side they are patriots and defending their people and land, sacrificing their lives. Looks like in NATO you haven't seen that. The same in Vietnam, Iraq,.. there is a long list of 'terrorists' of this sort. Almost like 'suffering minorities'.

                • By dgroshev 2026-03-1520:45

                  It's an objective statement of their tactics, not something relative.

                  Modern precision guided weaponry is meant to selectively destroy military targets. WW2 style strategic bombing was targeting civilian populations mostly trying to disrupt industrial production in support of military action. Randomly firing a few unguided rockets into civilian population centres can't possibly achieve either. The only goal is to provoke terror in the civilian population, therefore it's a terrorist organisation.

                  You can see similar tactics in the "human safari" the Russians are running in several Ukrainian population centres.

      • By redgridtactical 2026-03-1514:472 reply

        For a sub-minute flight the drift budget is actually pretty forgiving — a MEMS gyro drifts maybe 1-3 deg/sec, and if you're fusing with accelerometer data you really just need "which way is up" and "am I still pointed at the target." A $5 IMU can hold that for tens of seconds.

        Where you're right is repeatability. Mil-spec works the same on launch 1 and launch 500 across temperature extremes. Consumer MEMS you'd need to characterize each unit individually — fine for a demo, impractical at any scale.

        • By nippoo 2026-03-1518:58

          Good $3 MEMS gyros are about 100x better than that now - look at anything new made by Invensense in the past couple years. And their drift is pretty Gaussian-distributed, so the error scales as sqrt(n). If you combine 8+ of them on one board you can get about 5deg/hour stability...

        • By regularfry 2026-03-1516:37

          Hm. Is it, though? If what you wanted to do was produce a large batch of calibrated IMUs, building a rig to do so wouldn't be an enormous undertaking.

          Or do you mean to characterise the assembled vehicle?

      • By mosura 2026-03-1512:542 reply

        For different definitions of cheap though.

        While the pure gyro/accelerometer stuff does suffer from major problems the improvements in SLAM using just cameras in the last 15 years are insane.

        • By redgridtactical 2026-03-1514:49

          Visual SLAM on a rocket would be wild. The frame rates you'd need at those velocities are brutal though — feature tracking falls apart fast when your entire visual field is changing at hundreds of m/s. Drones are the sweet spot where camera-based nav really shines.

        • By jacquesm 2026-03-160:13

          That's because for short term they are really good, for the longer term the drift is too large so you will need many layers of sensors with different characteristics.

      • By torginus 2026-03-1514:441 reply

        You can calibrate any sensor, its just a manufacturing step, and while cheap ones may be inaccurate and drift over time, I'm pretty sure the good enough ones (which cost tens of dollars, not fractions of a dollar) are accurate enough to work for the seconds-to-minutes flight time of a rocket like this.

        • By jacquesm 2026-03-160:14

          Seconds, yes. Minutes, not so much. Then you will need another layer.

      • By gmerc 2026-03-1512:404 reply

        But do they drift enough to hit girls schools?

      • By Mars008 2026-03-1519:28

        Cheap sensors are the future ;) onboard ML can help with signals interpretation.

    • By mikkupikku 2026-03-1512:031 reply

      It's not really terribly new actually, in the past, rapid advances in consumer technology have enabled other sort of weapon guidance systems. For instance, the development of extremely compact television cameras available to consumers directly lead to the development of the Walleye television bomb. It happened when one nerdy guy was fucking around with his new camera and realized that he could automatically track track features in an analogue television signal using some quite basic analogue electronics. Point the camera into the general direction of the target and you can then "lock on" to some target feature and based on contrast it could tell how that feature was moving around in the image.

      He implemented a 1D tracker in his garage, took it to work and showed people. A few years later these bombs are taking out bridges and even sometimes hitting moving trucks.

      • By jeffbee 2026-03-1514:182 reply

        People made self-guided missiles with 1940s technology, in the 1940s. It can't be too much of a surprise if someone right now can make guided missiles in their garage with 2026 electronics. At this point the "guided" feature is trivial, the "missile" part is doable, and the weapon has probably become the tricky part.

        • By dw_arthur 2026-03-1515:461 reply

          Throwing an aside here that anyone interested in 1940s war technology must check out the old BBC documentary The Secret War (1977) which goes into depth on solving the engineering challenges of the war.

          • By hermitcrab 2026-03-1516:39

            Well worth a watch. I think I watched it on Youtube.

        • By mikkupikku 2026-03-1516:37

          I think the hard part was and will usually continue to be making the whole thing work effectively together with enough performance to actually work in practice. It's a lot of details across a lot of disciplines to get right.

    • By shrubble 2026-03-1512:524 reply

      Consumer GPS chips are specifically nerfed for using them in rockets; they give erroneous readings on purpose if altitude is above a certain height and/or if speeds exceed a certain speed. That’s likely why the mid-course correction software uses other methods.

      • By bragr 2026-03-1513:04

        The restrictions on GPS prevent ballistic missiles, not MANPADs. Typical limits are 515 m/s and 18,000 meters (try using your phone's GPS on a commercial flight, it works fine near a window). Update rate is probably the biggest issue with GPS and MANPADs.

      • By cozzyd 2026-03-160:48

        The altitude limit by itself is not a problem (just make sure you fix the kinematic model). Consumer u-blox chips work great in balloons

      • By nekusar 2026-03-1513:371 reply

        Chinese GPS chips dont have those restrictions.

        I even have 1 that can remove up to 8 active jamming signals.

        Gotta love what you can buy for $20

        • By ninjagoo 2026-03-1513:48

          It would be interesting to see if those are only for external sale vs restricted for sale within China.

          If China allows those unrestricted chips to be sold internationally but not domestically it would be a strategic long-term decision, I would think. Destabilize the neighbors but not themselves.

          The more likely reason is that their government has simply not gotten around to restricting it.

      • By V99 2026-03-1513:271 reply

        What you are likely thinking of is the "selective availability" system, which intentionally provided slightly inaccurate data to civilian clients, while military receivers could decrypt the most accurate info. But this has not been used for many years now.

        Other than that, GPS is a one-way system, it does not know you exist, how fast your receiver is moving or "give" different information to one client vs another.

        Even if it did, this is essentially a toy and moving slower and lower than a general aviation plane.

        It uses accelerometers and other sensors because they can be sampled and integrated hundreds of times a second. The $5 gps module is 9600 baud serial and provides one update/second (or maybe 5/sec depending on which part number you pick).

        • By BenjiWiebe 2026-03-1513:391 reply

          No, he's thinking of the "CoCom limits". It's built into the receiver.

          • By ninjagoo 2026-03-1513:45

            There's a lot of room within those 18km/59000ft and 1000kts/1200mph limits.

    • By the__alchemist 2026-03-1513:04

      > A few years ago this would have required an IMU that cost more than this entire build.

      Are you sure about this? MEMS IMUs have been popular and cheap for ~10-15 years.

    • By danmaz74 2026-03-1513:432 reply

      More than the electronics, I would be curious about the performance of 3d-printed plastic parts on a rocket. Are they strong enough?

      • By hermitcrab 2026-03-1516:41

        3d printed PLA and spiral wound cardboard is generally fine for hobby rockets, until they start going supersonic - then you need metal.

        I'm not sure the launch tube could withstand the heat of the rocket exhaust though. Although that might depend what it is printed with.

      • By regularfry 2026-03-1516:41

        People have been doing 3d printed model rockets for a while now. With no payload they experience higher acceleration than this will.

    • By gos9 2026-03-1518:101 reply

      AI slop comment

      • By dzhiurgis 2026-03-1520:26

        Bingo. Against guidelines.

    • By FergusArgyll 2026-03-1523:37

      beep boop

    • By mothballed 2026-03-1514:191 reply

      Owning a system designed for surface to air weapon carries life imprisonment any USA, without any intent for violence, just simple possession or conspiracy to possess[]. Doesn't even matter if you have an NFA stamp, there is no exception except if it's done with authorization and behalf of the government.

      Merely having a device intended to guide the rocket is also the same penalty.

      [] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332g

      • By blincoln 2026-03-1517:42

        Seems like the quick fix is to rebrand this from "MANPADS" to "anti-tank", right? Then it would just be a standard destructive device?

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