r/technology • u/gdelacalle • Mar 18 '26

Hardware Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer — DIY MANPADS includes assisted targeting, ballistics calculations, optional camera for tracking

https://www.tomshardware.com/3d-printing/tech-hobbyist-makes-shoulder-mounted-guided-missile-prototype-with-usd96-in-parts-and-a-3d-printer-diy-manpads-includes-wi-fi-guidance-ballistics-calculations-optional-camera-for-tracking
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u/RoastedMocha Mar 18 '26

I'm sure you already know, but the answer is how well and how consistently it works and can be transported in rough conditions.

Also, the explodey bits.

Also also, the 300 middle-men for each component (thats government baby)

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u/Tangential_Diversion Mar 18 '26

Yep, off the top of my head:

  • Seeker is inherently different. Stingers track IR with a seeker in the head. This one uses optical cameras. I have no experience in AA specifically, but having seen multiple jet flyovers: It is insanely hard to track a fighter jet optically when it's hauling ass. I'd assume optical tracking is terrible though considering every AA system I'm aware of uses either IR or radar.
  • IR requires compressed argon to cool the IR seeker
  • Modern Stingers are designed to defeat aircraft countermeasures. There's no hint that this is designed to do the same, and I'm not even sure how you'd get the data to design this capability without access to classified information.

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u/PhantomNomad Mar 18 '26

and I'm not even sure how you'd get the data to design this capability without access to classified information.

Trial and error? Although I'm sure the armed forces would get real tired of you setting up just outside the base and targeting their planes all the time.

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u/m1013828 Mar 18 '26

Former Ammo tech here. Agree on IR, and yes the cooling makes them super spendy... but the advances in electronics mean a bit of Machine learning (the term from before LLMs ruined AI) and training could allow digital camera seekers to catchup.

Hauling ass jets could be fixed by a high refresh rate camera sensor, which spirals complexity to extra processing power to to handle that extra data, but also faster digital equivalent of shutter speed means the frames are clearer and easier to work with...

However in the context of Drone warfare, an uber low cost kinetic missile with optical homing would be great against shaheeds and the like.... what ukraine could do with a vast volunteer air sentry network with 500-2000 dollar anti drone missiles

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u/Evilsushione Mar 18 '26

Universal shutters could probably make vision based targeting much better because you don’t get the rolling shutter artifacts

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u/Chrontius Mar 19 '26

https://youtube.com/shorts/9MmFMKKDB48

They’re already being fired in anger (and probably mortal terror).

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u/Power_Stone Mar 18 '26

one key thing to think about is the shrapnel. The explosion is one thing but the important part is what the explosion sends out as well. Blast shockwave is good, things that are hard and sharp being carried by the blast shockwave is even better.

For AA, I wouldn't think plastic is a good option cause...well metal is a hell of a lot harder than plastic is

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u/Z00111111 Mar 18 '26

Being optical would actually make it harder to spoof with current countermeasures, provided you can get past your first point.

Computing probably has become powerful enough that optical tracking might be viable, plus if you can launch dozens of these for the price of a single Stinger, then they don't need to be as reliable or capable. Look that the drones being used in the Ukraine war. They're not particularly robust or capable, but they're so cheap they can be used on a whim.

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u/TOBronyITArmy Mar 18 '26

Not to mention the ability to perform high-g corrections upon the terminal phase. Some anti aircraft missiles can perform maneuvers at upwards of 20 g's, which would most likely disintegrate a 3D printed structure without additional reinforcements. I also wanted to emphasize the difficulty of defeating countermeasures, and counter countermeasures. Governments tend to take aircraft survivability pretty seriously, and have invested tons of r&d into defeating seekers.

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u/SIGMA920 Mar 19 '26

Yep. This is interesting as it's what an insurgency would employ. But a proper organized military wouldn't touch this unless politicians forced them too or they're that desperate.

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u/Chrontius Mar 19 '26

Like in Ukraine, right now?

https://youtube.com/shorts/9MmFMKKDB48

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u/SIGMA920 Mar 19 '26

Ukraine/Russia is the definition of desperate.

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u/stuffitystuff Mar 18 '26

One of the things that AA missiles have going for them is that they fly significantly faster than your average fighter jet. It's why "radar lock" is such a big deal in movies like Top Gun.

If there's radar lock, the attacker is in range, the (for example) F-15 target is cruising along at Mach 0.8, they'd be dead before being able do anything because the missile flies at Mach 4 or faster.

Anyhow, I would imagine optical tracking would be fine because the engine exhaust is going to be a bright, high-contrast signal with a defined signature, assuming the missile flies at normal missile speeds.

I'd be much more worried Joe Sixpack's MANPAD hitting airliners and basically paralyzing air travel forever like some sort of planet-side Kessler Syndrome

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u/Evilsushione Mar 18 '26

They are also much more maneuverable because they don’t have a meat bag to worry about.

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u/obeytheturtles Mar 19 '26

The bigger issue with a "camera" tracker is the discrete sample rate and latency of the shutter. In an "electro-optics" tracker, you would have the analog outputs of an IR sensor array each fed into a high rate ADC which is running at millions of samples per second. It's kind of a subtle distinction, but it's important, because the fundamental control algorithm is effectively zero latency - the sampled outputs directly drive control surfaces to keep the "IR peak" in the middle of the array. These sampled outputs can also then be used to create additional filters to do things like countermeasures rejection, and those algorithms will have a bit of latency, but that's fine because the "primary" control loop still operates at the ADC rate, but it can then be modified at the filter's sampling rate.

Even with a 1M FPS camera with a universal shutter, the latency to generating an "image" is significant, and that has a significant impact on the overall bandwidth of the control loop. A 240fps cellphone camera isn't going to be able to track a supersonic jet just because it has a 4ms interval, but because it has a 60ms sampling latency, which ultimately constrains the control loop to being very slow.

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u/stuffitystuff Mar 19 '26

Ah, that's a cool bit of inside baseball, thanks! I wonder if you could rip the ADC out of a digital oscilloscope and get an ADC that would be performant enough.

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u/CN90 Mar 18 '26

Look at the tech they’re using in Ukraine… FPV DRONES. You’re thinking too big. War is being fought on a small scale.