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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

#121

Post by SubiculumCode »

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 was not brought down to its knees. That is propaganda speaking, not reality. Jeez.

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

#122

Post by pchristensen »

jschveibinz wrote: post #62
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…

Side note: The federal government costs about $19 billion per day to operate based on an annual budget of roughly $7 trillion. So $1 billion is about equal to 4 hour hours of government spending.

Operations is about 1/4 of the budget ($1.75T), and half of that is DoD. 60% is payments for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The remaining 15% is debt service.

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

#123

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
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…

cf the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845442 ; Ukraine has a hugely inventive and effective drone industry because it has to work . If it doesn't succeed, there is no Ukraine, and everyone involved in making the drones is dead, fled, in a POW camp, or sucked into the internal Russian displacement system away from their family. By comparison, if the US products fail, there's no real negative effe…

[flagged]

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

#124

Post by aidenn0 »

dataflow wrote: post #79
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't work on this project, but I've been involved with similar ones.

There is a process for getting a change into version control. Each change needs to have a (virtual) paper trail: motivation, risk analysis, sign-offs &c.

If you can't get something into VC quickly, you can't really do CI.

The obvious solution would be to have an integration branch that doesn't need the process to get in, do CI testing on that branch and then make the process for merging to the real branch.

I've never seen this done personally, but I have been told some places do it, and then you end up with "Change X, which got approved had a dependency on Change Y that didn't get approved and we didn't realize it until now because Change Y was put in the integration branch before Change X"

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

#125

Post by ponector »

yonaguska wrote: post #43
cm2012 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A month ago Sternenko had a crowdfunding campaign for the secret drones. Recently he showed the fruits of that campaign: new drones have better connection and now you can watch kills in 4k!

Also recent advances in battery tech brought increased energy density: the same drones which had range 20km now have 40km.

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

#126

Post by Noaidi »

dawnerd wrote: post #113
Noaidi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And they’re still on cnbc daily saying rates need to go down to save the us. There’s a guy on right now saying rates need to be lower to save the ai bubble.

Yes, save the asset holders, damn the peasants. even Trump said he wants to see housing prices go higher.

These people do not care about you. You need to hate them more.

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

#127

Post by rayiner »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
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…

cf the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48845442 ; Ukraine has a hugely inventive and effective drone industry because it has to work . If it doesn't succeed, there is no Ukraine, and everyone involved in making the drones is dead, fled, in a POW camp, or sucked into the internal Russian displacement system away from their family. By comparison, if the US products fail, there's no real negative effe…

Yeah, their tech development in drones is really impressive. An invading army has a way of focusing the mind and bureaucracy.

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

#128

Post by WarmWash »

Jblx2 wrote: post #66
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…

Don't overlook the "the people of this foreign land are yearning to be free of their current rulers, and just need a little help from their neighborly U.S. armed forces" trope. I think there are plenty of people who actually believe it.

People seem to forget that Iranians were rioting in the streets in the weeks leading up to the US attacking. The Iranian government was shooting protestors and pulled the plug on the internet.

The US (well Israel) saw this as the stars aligning. Trump even called on Iranians early in the engagement to seize the opportunity.

But the ground swell didn't happen, and the US got played. Trump rolled a critical fail.

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

#129

Post by rayiner »

yonaguska wrote: post #43
cm2012 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#130

Post by jvanderbot »

delecti wrote: post #38
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 in general, and this administration in particular, has bought into US exceptionalism and action movie tropes. Just gotta blow up the death star with the leader on board and then the war is over. In reality there's a chain of command and line of succession, and military equipment all around the country. If they had been smart, they would have been learning from Ukraine, because we've found ourselves in basicall…

Viewed independently, I think VZ, Ukraine, and Iran look like a hodgepodge of strange actions. There is a consistent view that joins them, namely as we approach the end of the davidson window, putting pressure on China and Russia via oil restrictions might help dissuade a larger war in the Pacific.

This is just a personal opinion, but lines up with Ukraine (burning refineries), EU (seizing sanctioned tankers FINALLY), VZ (cutting exports to China and moving to USA), and Iran (close the strait every so often). The unifying thread seems to be applying consistent pressure around China.

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