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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

#71

Post by gherkinnn »

ck2 wrote: post #40
pixl97 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>just completely exit like Afghanistan We can't just completely exit Iran without a time machine. Dufus Donny attempting to escape his Epstein folly by kicking the hornet's nest and now Iran holds the gulf hostage for as long as they want.

guess what, Iran will hold the gulf hostage regardless if US is there or not exactly like the nightmare Afghanistan is for women there now left to the Taliban regardless if US was there or not it would have happened world is an absolutely horrible place filled with monsters you can't say all these countries should be saved by US and then end USAID to let a million people die with food and medication already paid for…

> regardless if US was there or not it would have happened

Sources please. The war initiated by US and Israel motivated Iran put pressure on the US by closing the strait and attacking the regional US allies.

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

#72

Post by cricketsandmops »

newaccount670 wrote: post #27
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.

If you think you can produce them for cheaper, you could make yourself a lot of money and save taxpayers a lot of money by starting your own company.

Most government agencies cant even pick a different vendor for toilet paper. I cannot imagine the politics involved for trying to supply weapons. All those stories on Flock cameras and being insecure etc is politics at play. Companies know the government will take a decade or more to change vendors, if ever.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by Noaidi »

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…

Now you know why there is war. We have war because the U.S. is failing. Just look at the reversal of the 10 and 30 y bonds over the last 20 years. All the free money that was given to the oligarchs killed our economy.

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

#76

Post by mmooss »

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…

> 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

Roll back the change? Also, fix the approval process - no way that should have been approved.

Generally speaking that is risk management, an unavoidable engineering tradeoff. In lower stakes situations, for example a critical application or server for a small office, we let low-impact bugs accumulate: Imposing risks, and therefore eventual costs, to avoid minor workarounds and low-impact bugs is poor engineering and risk management.

Engineering and all risk management includes tradeoffs. It's easy to criticize the downside of the tradeoff - the same people criticize the reverse decision when the server (or drone) crashes - when someone is not responsible for both sides of it, when they are not accountable for their words when the outcome occurs.

That's speaking generally. It's also poor risk management to be overly safe. I don't know about the parents' situation. But drone crashes (risking humans), mission failure, $50 million losses, and associated downtime (including delays) and labor costs, seem like high costs that are worth some pain to avoid.

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

#77

Post by trkarlb »

The Defense Innovation Unit was founded in 2015 and is full of SV interest groups:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Innovation_Unit

They could obviously have foreseen the current failures in 2015. It is irrelevant, since the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Generals who routinely give theatrical performances for the cameras want the big toys for their districts.

The goal in Iran is also not to win but to keep the Gulf monarchies, the EU, Japan and China down by means of a low intensity forever war.

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

#78

Post by salemh »

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…

There is quite a good book on the various problems with the US Military, and its hegemony leading to losing the arms race in missiles, and its various industry problems by Andrei Martyanov - naturalized US citizen, former Soviet military officer. Loves America, hates what its turned into, and marvels at the delusion of our military. MIC bloat is discussed here, as well as our fake financialized economy - which is not an indicator of being able to win wars.

I have only read the first book, and it was nice and humbling experience to me as an American.

https://www.amazon.com/Disintegration-Indicators-Coming-Amer...

Blog:

https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/

Review:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/08/how-russia-views-...

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

#79

Post by dataflow »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #34
hvb2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would those fixes not be batched up? So fix 20% of those and do one round of testing?

The obvious answer is that the more bugs you batch up, the higher the chances the next build fails - this is why CI became a thing, small iterative changes are safer and lead to greater throughput

CI doesn't mean doing all the tests all the time though. The expensive tests still wait until there's a major reason to run them. I had the same question as the parent and I still don't quite see why this can't work.

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

#80

Post by strictnein »

scns wrote: post #46
piva00 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The last balanced budget was in 2001 and it was passed by a Republican controlled House and Senate [0]. Clinton somehow gets complete credit for it, even though the executive branch doesn't directly control the budget and congress controls the power of the purse.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/106th_United_States_Congress

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