[Polpolion]

How are drones any different from manned fighters when it comes to vulnerability to hacking or EMP?

They're both controlled completely electronically.

In a manned craft, the thing that decides what to shoot is a person, not a program. (assuming we're not talking about remotely operated craft)

[Akalabeth Angel]

How can you hack a system without a hard line? If the drone is autonomous, it's not receiving target data from it's mothership. There's no link to disrupt. If the drone's target is preprogrammed prior to launch, and heads out to do it's thing. And has no sort of data recieving method other than its sensors, how can it be interfered with, aside from direct attacks??

People probably point to the BSG episode, Separate or whatever it was called, season 2 ep 1 where the BSG loses the fleet and gets hacked by the Cylons while they're doing their calculations. but I've heard more than a few people say that's a pile of BS.

[Polpolion]

People probably point to the BSG episode, Separate or whatever it was called, season 2 ep 1 where the BSG loses the fleet and gets hacked by the Cylons while they're doing their calculations. but I've heard more than a few people say that's a pile of BS.

It's not only a pile of BS but it's got AIDS, too. AFAIK all they did was hook one computer up to another physically, with wires and stuff. Hacking that like the cylons is like using a wifi packet sniffer to hack into a USB cable.

[General Battuta]

How are drones any different from manned fighters when it comes to vulnerability to hacking or EMP?

They're both controlled completely electronically.

In a manned craft, the thing that decides what to shoot is a person, not a program. (assuming we're not talking about remotely operated craft)

But the flight controls are totally electronic. If you can get in to the system deep enough to reprogram a drone AI, surely you can send false commands into the flight systems.

[Aardwolf]

But what they're saying is that the drones don't have any input that could be used to reprogram it in flight...

[Spicious]

And he's saying that if a drone could be reprogrammed, then why not just reprogram fighters with pilots. There's no reason to assume that there would be major differences in terms of effort or skill required between the two.

[Aardwolf]

Well you could reprogram a fighter maybe, but the pilot would probably have manual overrides, and it takes completely different stuff to reprogram a person than to reprogram a machine.

[Spicious]

What could this manual override do?

[Aardwolf]

Disable any autopilot/weapons lockdown/something, idunno.

[Spicious]

Despite all that being controlled electronically?

[General Battuta]

But what they're saying is that the drones don't have any input that could be used to reprogram it in flight...

I agree with that, but...

And he's saying that if a drone could be reprogrammed, then why not just reprogram fighters with pilots. There's no reason to assume that there would be major differences in terms of effort or skill required between the two.

This.

Well you could reprogram a fighter maybe, but the pilot would probably have manual overrides, and it takes completely different stuff to reprogram a person than to reprogram a machine.

And again, as Spicious said, the pilot can only interact with his fighter via electronic controls -- unless the manual overrides are somehow analog, like a big guillotine that chops some important connection. If the fighters of FS2 are anything like today's fighters, they can't be flown without computer assistance.

[Polpolion]

What could this manual override do?

Axe in the control panel.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, but then you can't fly your ship.

[unit2]

But at least then, your ship can't fly to death.

[General Battuta]

Not to restart this debate, but it's very unlikely either side can reprogram drones in-flight. If such a technique was available it could just as easily be used on the fly-by-wire commands of manned fighters.

Reprogramming sentry guns could be done via disruption and hard contact with the drone systems.

[Flaser]

How are drones any different from manned fighters when it comes to vulnerability to hacking or EMP?

They're both controlled completely electronically.

In a manned craft, the thing that decides what to shoot is a person, not a program. (assuming we're not talking about remotely operated craft)

But the flight controls are totally electronic. If you can get in to the system deep enough to reprogram a drone AI, surely you can send false commands into the flight systems.

I am afraid this is a whole "hack the manned fighters" is based on a fallacious assumption: that because they're both electronic they operate in the same manner.

Nothing could be further from the truth:
-A manned fighter is controlled by the pilot and the pilot alone. All control systems are slaved to him, and the fighter doesn't react to any external input/transmission by default. You can have some rudimentary stuff like a self-destruct code, but since those codes are rarely ever transmitted and can be kept very complex the enemy is really unlikely to decrypt and use those.
-A drone on the other hand has to be remote controlled all the time. It is *by design* only acting on external commands. There is lots of communication toward the drones, so the enemy has a lot of data to analyze and this makes cracking the control codes easier. To circumvent this you'd need drones with a good enough AI to fight on their own...
...and at one point they'll say: You can't do that Dave.

[General Battuta]

That is a good point.

In the modern sense, yes, a drone is remote-operated. But Freespace drones could go either way. We don't know if they're run by a remote pilot on some sort of subspace link, or if they have autonomous AI.

[Mobius]

Read the Amazon's Tech Description. Drones are definitely autonomous.

[General Battuta]

Yep. Which is why they'd be no easier to reprogram (probably) than manned fighters. Perhaps a slight edge.

[Mobius]

Uhm, moving this split thread to General FreeSpace Discussion would be more appropriate.

On a side note, it's kind of strange that in the future(according to the FS Universe) AIs will not be good enough to be effectively used to create drones.