Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 365 posts

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

#131

Post by 5upplied_demand »

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…

> When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that.

I like to think about how providing 4-week paid parental leave would cost $2 billion annually and actually help US families. Meanwhile we have spent over $100 billion on this war.

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

#132

Post by CoastalCoder »

quickthrowman wrote: post #105
pixl97 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would guess that DoD procurement rules have more to do with it than Congress, but perhaps Congress defined DoD procurement rules. Milspec is expensive and process heavy, see what a B52 replacement trash can costs, for just one example.

If you think Milspec is expensive, you should see the cost of not having a Milspec supply chain while still being risk-averse.

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

#133

Post by red-iron-pine »

ndiddy wrote: post #116
yonaguska wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

Yeah FPV drones have massively increased the cost of invading a country. It's basically a return to WWI style trench warfare, except no man's land is the size of the range of the drones (20+ KM).

the gray zone is ~200km so long as you have ISR drones able to see it

artillery, missiles, and long range drones are in the mix too. AI enabled spotting makes ISR detection rapid and effective.

some kubernetes container spots a random pixel that means hidden vehicles and a HIMARS strike is dispatched ASAP

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

#134

Post by CoastalCoder »

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.

Most of us who build weapons of war live with some awful dilemmas. One of them is:

We want to perform our work skillfully, effectively, and professionally. But we never want our tools to actually be needed.

(Another is that we can't effectively create a shield without the risk of it being used as a sword.)

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

#135

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #110
yonaguska wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

Hopefully making the real horrors of war visible to the public/world will make war less frequent. Alas...

People have been saying this since Vietnam (and actually now that I think about a little more, this may actually have happened).

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

#136

Post by pjc50 »

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.

Yes, but it's not necessarily more horrific than the unseen effect of the 155mm shells. It's just that those don't come with killcams.

(The killcam is a WW2 invention, starting with linking cine cameras to the machine guns of fighter aircraft)

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

#137

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

> 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.

tax billionaires, then

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

#138

Post by wafflemaker »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #95
delecti wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Ignore that we funded the taliban and warlords for the next 50 years with 1.9 billion in vehicles, machine guns, small arms, night vision, and explosives?

Don't forget that before, the Talibs were seen as crazy fundamentalists and outsiders, probably called Khariji IIRC.

US bombings convinced the people to them and made them into state protecting freedom fighters, which they initially were not.

What you resist, persists. What you fight, grows stronger.

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

#139

Post by red-iron-pine »

xienze wrote: post #114
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.

In this particular case I think it's just because Trump can't resist doing every single thing Israel wants.

its because they have him on tape having sex with children

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

#140

Post by letitgo12345 »

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…

Well there's long term impact but yea that doesn't create enough political pressure to make process efficient
Post reply on HN