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US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

arstechnica.com

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Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#11

Post by pjc50 »

hvb2 wrote: post #7
exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

And let's not forget: the voters back them on this.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#12

Post by pixl97 »

freedomben wrote: post #2

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…

Life critical software that gets visibility by congress tends to be a very bureaucratic process. Your boss doesn't want your commit being the one that causes a worldwide diplomatic issue.

I assume that smaller/cheaper drones avoid a lot of this because the stakes aren't near as high and quite a bit of the development occurs in private industry first.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#13

Post by general1465 »

freedomben wrote: post #2

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…

The bureaucratic development process sounds like Autosar in automotive. I am not surprised that newcomers from USA and Chinese auto companies are able to completely dominate in software because Autosar based development has been like giving a birth to a hedgehog. Slow and painful.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#14

Post by BariumBlue »

exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

An MQ-9 has roughly the same wingspan as an A-10 - they're not small birds.

An MQ-9 needs to have a good sensor ball, ideally with both color and IR, gps jamming resistance, weapons integration with multiple types of missiles (ideally large enough to take out something larger than a motorcycle), good on-target time INCLUDING transit time (if it can only stare for one hour on target it'd be pointless), good uplink and downlink to reliably move that data (you don't want to lose track when a missile flies off), and the architecture to support, including ground control stations.

You CAN stuff someone in Cessna, give em a camera, a radio, and some mortar rounds to toss out the back, but that's not going to work for most use cases.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#16

Post by dribbiy8 »

hvb2 wrote: post #7
exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

[dead]

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#17

Post by paytonjjones »

exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

Correct, now let's also talk about US government-funded [research, healthcare, education, construction, foreign aid, intelligence, infrastructure, entitlements]

Except almost everyone has their pet topic where they'll defend any amount of spending.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#18

Post by Matl »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
hvb2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

And let's not forget: the voters back them on this.

From what I know, the 'defense' industry has their production cleverly across all 50 states so that they're seen as one of the few sources of stable employment for most, sadly.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#19

Post by herry6 »

hvb2 wrote: post #7
exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

[flagged]

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#20

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

ck2 wrote: post #4

there's a better way for 100% savings just completely exit like Afghanistan and remember all this military hardware eventually ends up in the hands of police departments domestically, next decade is going to be wild $21 TRILLION spent on militarization 2001-2021 * https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz... imagine how much by 2031, at least double ps. they are still executing fishermen without tr…

> ps. they are still executing fishermen without trial off

Oh. You should have started with this.

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