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

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

#41

Post by ToucanLoucan »

mrtksn wrote: post #28

I’m no military expert by any means but US appears to be obsessed with destroying some super important target to win, like they did with killing Iran leaders only to find out that new leader replace the perished. The same with the other stuff, they have super important radar and super important ships that need to be defended and a failure creates irreplaceable loses. Iran on the other hand, just like with their super…

The US fails to learn the lessons of it's last... idk, every war since WWII. Leadership cites kill stats when it has nothing else to cite, but killing, while certainly an important part of war, is not the key to victory and that's why we keep losing. Actually winning wars requires controlling strategic points on the battlefield, both literally with armed combatants, and metaphorically by getting civilians to support you. The US fails at both. We show up with incredibly superior firepower, establish FOBs where we think we need, drive armored convoys to supply those FOBs but they take fire on every trip, have to look for and clear IEDs, what have you. There's no control apart from the FOBs themselves, and the enemy has easy run of all territory not being patrolled at that precise moment.

This is the same problem that doomed us in Vietnam, in Korea, in Iraq, and will doom us in Iran. It's also the same problem that fucked over South Africa and Rhodesia and seems to be a common problem for white supremacists, but that's just my editorializing.

In any case, showing up and killing shitloads of people and then leaving does not win wars, it just LOOKS kinda like it does if you have no idea how to win wars, and assures you promotions in your organization. As soon as your military leadership starts citing that instead of actual progress on the conflict and the objectives at hand, it's a safe bet they are on their way to loss via attrition.

And that's not the ONLY factor of course, our military is too expensive and relies too much on fancy tech as opposed to solid strategy, everything we use is hideously expensive so any losses we take tend to hit harder, etc. But I think this is the most important thing to cite when discussing America's inability to actually wage war in a way that does anything besides get service people killed and enrich the MIC.

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

#42

Post by koe123 »

herry6 wrote: post #24
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…

[flagged]

As much as I love democracy its unfortunate we both get to vote

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

#43

Post by yonaguska »

cm2012 wrote: post #35
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…

This is why Ukraine is making equivalent tech now for 1/10th the price. It's great to see.

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

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

#44

Post by Ylpertnodi »

herry6 wrote: post #24
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…

[flagged]

Empathy.

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

newaccount670 wrote: post #29
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ps. they are still executing fishermen without trial off Oh. You should have started with this.

The fact that this person thinks the Afghanistan exit was a success should have let you know he is a crackpot well before the last sentence.

[deleted]

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

#46

Post by scns »

piva00 wrote: post #6
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 I think it's even worse, it's funded a lot more by debt than excessive taxes, taxation in the USA is not even that excessive (to its own detriment since the budget is never balanced).

> since the budget is never balanced

When the Republicans rule.

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

#47

Post by peyton »

tehjoker wrote: post #9
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…

I don't really understand how any of this contributes to "defense". Sounds like "offense" to me. Just patrolling the skies over non-white countries and launching missiles at weddings. The reason the Pentagon invests so heavily in this kind of technology is our wars are so indefensible, they can't convince Americans to sacrifice blood in any quantity for other people's natural resources.

They are white [1].

[1]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21211671-1997-revisi...

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

#48

Post by delecti »

newaccount670 wrote: post #29
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ps. they are still executing fishermen without trial off Oh. You should have started with this.

The fact that this person thinks the Afghanistan exit was a success should have let you know he is a crackpot well before the last sentence.

The Afghanistan exit was a completely predictable colossal failure, but it did mean we stopped lighting money on fire in Afghanistan.

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

#49

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #26

There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for. What boggles my mind is that I make coffee at home because I'm frugal. I guess it is good the government and DoD are seeking cheap…

Or we can go even further with the fun thought exercise, by spreading the cost even more: Even $100,000,000,000,000,000 doesn't matter if you evenly distribute it across each atom in the usa.

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

#50

Post by jmyeet »

In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of establishing the military-industrial complex [1]. We are seeing the fruits of that now that despite an annual budget over $1T the US has been militarily defeated by Iran (and Afghanistan). We build $13B aircraft carriers that don't work [2].

Defense contracting is nothing more than a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy. This is what unfettered cost plus contracts looks like. We ridicule the Russian military for their insane levels of corruption (eg paying for tanks that never get built and the generals pocketing the money) but really the same thing has happened here. The things get built but they don't work and the entire industry is built around hiring former Pentagon people who specialize in procurement.

It doesn't have to be this way. Some of the US military's past equipment was legendary. The M1 rifle and M4/M16 family were cheap, reliable and effective. The Jeep was legendary for its reliability. The original M1 Abrams tank is widely considered the best tank the military ever built. If you listen to anyone in the military they'll tell you the vehicles are constantly broken down, hard to repair, expensive to maintain and outright dangerous.

Every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on roads, schools, bridges, hospitals and trains, things that would actually benefit people. We're bankrupting ourselves to enrich the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and General Dynamics for what exactly?

And the proposed "defense" budget for 2027 is $1.5T, a roughly 50% increase.

This is also why I laugh whenever anyone pushes the idea that China is the Big Bad [tm], for two reasons. First, they don't have to be. We just want their to be a scary enemy to justify all this. Second, if they were, they would destroy us because it would ultimately come down to military industrial capability and we would lose. Orders of magnitude lose.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...

[2]: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/04/the-ford-class-is-not-th...

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