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Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

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Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#171

Post by adastra22 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #96
zmgsabst wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US army has helped stop the russians from killing me and my friends in Ukraine. The russians launch missiles and drones at civilians, like me. Last October, I was sitting at my kitchen table, writing Haskell and working on my startup, when outside my kitchen window the local air defence successfully blasted a Shahed 136 out of the air. Both the missile trail and the cloud from the explosion hung in the air for se…

FYI as it was a little obscure, “sheep” and “sheepdogs” is a reference to a quite famous article by USMC LTC Dave Grossman, author of a widely read book “On Killing”:

https://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html

It is not meant as a disparaging remark in this context to call people sheep.

ChatGPT's summary: Dave Grossman explores the concept of three distinct types of people in society: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. He characterizes "sheep" as the general populace, who are peaceful and vulnerable; "wolves" as those who prey on the sheep, representing criminals and threats to society; and "sheepdogs" as individuals who protect the sheep, often law enforcement and military personnel. Grossman emphasizes the importance of recognizing and supporting the sheepdogs who keep society safe, and he encourages readers to understand the roles these groups play in maintaining a secure and orderly society.

My own note: to the sheep the wolves and the sheepdogs can often seem the same. They both have scary fangs, make growling noises, chase and bite, etc. It is common for the sheep to fear both wolves and the sheepdogs. Some sheep fail to distinguish the two, and if sheep wrote political essays they might call for defunding the sheepdogs as they are a menace to society. But wolves and sheepdogs are not the same, and it is a mistake to equate defensive investment in military capabilities to keep the peace (even if that sometimes involves military interventions and/or small-scale preemptive wars) with hostile, aggressive conquest of the sort we see carried out by actors like Russia, or the genocide conducted by Hamas.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#172

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

adastra22 wrote: post #171
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US army has helped stop the russians from killing me and my friends in Ukraine. The russians launch missiles and drones at civilians, like me. Last October, I was sitting at my kitchen table, writing Haskell and working on my startup, when outside my kitchen window the local air defence successfully blasted a Shahed 136 out of the air. Both the missile trail and the cloud from the explosion hung in the air for se…

FYI as it was a little obscure, “sheep” and “sheepdogs” is a reference to a quite famous article by USMC LTC Dave Grossman, author of a widely read book “On Killing”: https://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html It is not meant as a disparaging remark in this context to call people sheep. ChatGPT's summary: Dave Grossman explores the concept of three distinct types of people in society: sheep, wolves, and shee…

I appreciate the clarification, but I should also clarify that it's not the use of the word "sheep" which I find offensive or inaccurate. Instead, it's the idea that Ukraine is full of Nazis (which is implied by the constant use of "Banderites"), and the idea that civilians in Ukraine are somehow less safe with a military force to protect them.

The reason why Ukraine still exists today is because Ukrainian soldiers managed to kill so many russian invaders and destroy so much russian armour in the first couple of months of the war. This is largely thanks to Western ordnance.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#173

Post by Already__Taken »

remarkEon wrote: post #24

So the emergency services use-cases seem obvious and straightforward, but rare. Can't be that big of a market for that, at least for repeat customers. Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd figure that those emergency services organizations would buy 2-3 and keep one in the field and the balance in inventory. The armed HE variant, that one does not seem that straightforward to me because I don't quite see how this is b…

as for air defence it's a new paradigm in that you just launch ALL the air defence. Once the threat is eliminated you get them back. if you launch all of a patriot it's a decent reload time.

It changes the cost/benefit of firing to save a target Vs saving for a more valued save later. quite a big deal with cheaper swam strategies planned.

you still have to reload these but landing repack + fuel is pretty easy.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#174

Post by adastra22 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #172
adastra22 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI as it was a little obscure, “sheep” and “sheepdogs” is a reference to a quite famous article by USMC LTC Dave Grossman, author of a widely read book “On Killing”: https://mwkworks.com/onsheepwolvesandsheepdogs.html It is not meant as a disparaging remark in this context to call people sheep. ChatGPT's summary: Dave Grossman explores the concept of three distinct types of people in society: sheep, wolves, and shee…

I appreciate the clarification, but I should also clarify that it's not the use of the word "sheep" which I find offensive or inaccurate. Instead, it's the idea that Ukraine is full of Nazis (which is implied by the constant use of "Banderites"), and the idea that civilians in Ukraine are somehow less safe with a military force to protect them. The reason why Ukraine still exists today is because Ukrainian soldiers m…

Agreed, cheers.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#175

Post by baybal2 »

aaron695 wrote: post #23

Palmer Luckey was the founder of Oculus VR Very cool aesthetic - https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FGAPMRBva0AAiF0l.jpg Cost claim - low hundreds of thousands of dollars (I find it unlikely it'll be this low, we'll see if they can pull it off) Not sure I see the point of landing suicide drones at such a low price point.

[dead]

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#176

Post by swalsh »

throwaway234a wrote: post #146
Roritharr wrote: post #25

Anduril is one of these companies I would leave my own startup for to work for. I love what they are doing.

It's not that great. I would know, I work there. The marketing is the shit though. It makes all the tech look like it's the greatest thing ever. The mentality here at this company is hack hack hack and the quality of the product reflect this. Don't expect German engineered precision. Expect products with poor quality, poor reliability and a failure rate that is very very high. What is good about this company is that…

"You think we have a custom UI device to control this thing? No. It's react running in chrome on windows."

No, I'd expect a cost plus contract to do that. I wouldn't expected anyone else to do that.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#177

Post by marcusverus »

ansible wrote: post #137
goalonetwo wrote: post #47

The whole defense industry leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Once you peel the narrative that we are supposed to be the good guys (hint: in some/most cases, we are not), you realize that you really just help to kill people.

I get where you are coming from. In the last two decades, the USA and allies have spent trillions of dollars increasing the suffering and death in Iraq and Afghanistan, and didn't even gain much geopolitical advantage in return. A giant waste of time, money, and human life. Had we not invaded them, there might be a million more Iraqis alive today. Afghanistan would still be a failed state though. The 2014 invasion of…

> Nope! It turns out there is still a need for the USA to be an unrivaled global superpower, and for the rest of NATO to get its ass in gear and modernize.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Russia remains a backwater with a GDP the size of Italy. They are not a significant threat to US interests, any more than Italy could possibly hope to be.

If anything, a strong America just lends a false sense of security to countries like Ukraine, which might be better off understating that they must see to their own safety and security.

Historically speaking, few of America’s international adventures have had a beneficial outcome. Pretending that the world ‘needs’ our meddling is a stretch. We need to be able to defend ourselves and to ramp for war quickly. The rest is pork for the military industrial complex.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#178

Post by ansible »

danbruc wrote: post #165
ansible wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what got us the Ukraine war in the first place, an uncompromising hard line against a weak Russia because the USA was in the position to do so. Russia opposed each NATO expansion but did nothing in the end and it was the same gamble with Ukraine, hoping that Russia will once more do nothing. Ah, the classic "The West forced Russia to invade Ukraine. Like the government in Ukraine didn't have any legitimate…

Forced is not true and I did not say that, Russia could also have decided not to invaded. I also did not say that Ukraine has no reasons to want to join NATO, they have and they most likely had them long before 2014. But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of…

> But none of that even addresses my argument, Russia opposed NATO expansion, Russia threatened severe consequences, NATO gave no signs that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO or entered any kind of negotiations, Russia delivered on its promise. The outcome was rather predictable, at least ignoring that Russia did not react as strongly to previous NATO expansions.

Oh, so we're supposed to just listen and obey every dictator out there now? We are supposed to listen and obey when North Korea threatens our (or our ally's) destruction? Are we supposed to just sit back and let China dredge up new islands out of nothing in the South China Sea, and then claim the entire thing is now their territorial waters? Are we supposed to just let them have Taiwan too? How many times has China threatened something when we sold Taiwan some more F-16s or some other military hardware?

And what about our threats? Do you think the Kremlin wasn't warned about what the consequences to Russia would be if they invaded in 2022? Why shouldn't Putin have listened to us?

> My point is just that there was a relatively simple situation, Russia warns NATO, one step closer and there will be war, and NATO decides that it will make that step.

What's funny with all this is that Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO for decades, despite being very closely aligned with the rest of Europe. Russia made angry noises about that for years and years, and they listened. Wow! Exactly what you thought should happen! Fantastic!

And then Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Then those two countries decided they could no longer listen to the threats coming from Russia, and had to choose what was best for their own security and prosperity. And so they joined NATO to protect themselves.

Why do you think Poland, one of the poorest countries in Europe, has been giving proportionately so much aid to Ukraine? Because they fear for the war spreading, and want to stop Russia now. Why do you think Poland wanted to join NATO back in 1999? Even though one of the member countries of NATO (Germany) that had invaded them 50 years earlier? Did they fear that Poland was going to be invaded by NATO, that this was some coercion? No, because NATO doesn't invade other countries.

Poland joined NATO because they were worried about the other country that had also invaded them 50 years previously, Russia.

Are you starting to see that it is Russia that is the problem here?

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#179

Post by skjoldr »

dbspin wrote: post #158
adastra22 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that humanity is not an intrinsically violent species, and that if we all held hands and sang Kumbaya we'd be able to get along peaceably and without need for defensive tools. Or you can wake up to the reality that a strong defensive, and sometimes offensive capability is required in order to enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted, and be part of the pr…

> enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted The majority of the worlds population do not take peace for granted. The question is, to what extend has US hegemony extended war and violence, and to what extent has it depleted it (compared to the available alternatives). Clearly enormous loss of life has occurred in places like Latin America, Iran, South East Asia Cuba etc due to US led toppling of democrat…

That loss of life is not enormous if you look at the overall graph of civilian and military war-related deaths throughout 20th and 21st century. It very obviously trended downwards, especially after the Cold War, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine which caused a spike. Then again, communism resulted in millions more civilian deaths in the same time period. The US impact on the worldwide death toll is often overstated for some reason, it's as if people are entirely unaware of events like Holodomor and The Great Leap Forward.

Re: Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

#180

Post by skjoldr »

mplewis wrote: post #79
adastra22 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stick your head in the sand and pretend that humanity is not an intrinsically violent species, and that if we all held hands and sang Kumbaya we'd be able to get along peaceably and without need for defensive tools. Or you can wake up to the reality that a strong defensive, and sometimes offensive capability is required in order to enforce the state of peace that we all take for granted, and be part of the pr…

In reality, the “sheepdog” ends up being a government surveillance state that keeps you compliant with spending all the money on peacetime military waste, rather than serving any of the citizens. The chickens always come home to roost.

One man's "peacetime military waste" is another man's only hope of resisting Russian invasion and the reoccurrence of 20th century-style cleansings.
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