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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

#181

Post by throwaway894345 »

legitster wrote: post #82
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 one of the reasons weapons and technology development overall explodes during wartime. Desperation is the cure for risk aversion. It's also a reason to be skeptical of a military spending a bunch of money developing technology during peacetime. In reality the expensive stuff they went into the war with is always going to be less effective than the cheap stuff they came out with.

Maybe if you're in a war that actually threatens your country. In the US, the Republican Party wages wars (such as the Iran War) pretty exclusively to facilitate borrowing public money and dumping it into the pockets of the rich. What looks like waste to the taxpayer is a feature to Republicans and their paymasters (including Israel, in the case of the Iran War).

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

#182

Post by SanjayMehta »

ivell wrote: post #87
tehjoker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Drones can be used for both offense and defense. For example the usage of drones in Ukraine can be classified as defense.

[flagged]

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

#183

Post by lokar »

ACCount37 wrote: post #167
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…

In Ukraine, the first place that was bombed was the red tape factory. The drone industry was allowed to basically "do whatever as long as it works", consequences be damned. So they use civilian motors, batteries and SoCs, sketchy firmware with zero code inspection, and more. Does it work perfectly? No. It works well enough. I wonder if anyone is going to learn a lesson about overregulation. I'm not sure if "AI for re…

I don’t know the details of that situation, but I have been on the other side of that debate.

People say “it’s a one line change” (once they argued it was a 1 bit change!). But lacking a fully controlled and hermetic build system with its own exhaustive test suite you can’t be sure about the relationship between the source and the binary. And that continues to every step to get the binary into production (updating existing devices, etc).

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

#184

Post by throwaway894345 »

matwood wrote: post #22
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.

> visibility by congress tends to be a very bureaucratic process See also SpaceX vs. NASA. No way would NASA have been allowed to blow up as many rockets as SpaceX did to finally get to their working solution.

Yeah, the anti-regulation people when NASA experiments: "look at all these failures! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!"

The same people when SpaceX blows up a bunch of rockets: "wow, look at the innovation, they move so fast! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!"

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

vicnov wrote: post #173
red-iron-pine wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

not a fan of defending billionairs, but is mostly a useless populist slogan* You can do full Dekulakization ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization ) on them and it won't change anything in current economic situation. Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T): and pretty much kills US ability to…

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by cloverich »

vicnov wrote: post #173
red-iron-pine wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

not a fan of defending billionairs, but is mostly a useless populist slogan* You can do full Dekulakization ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization ) on them and it won't change anything in current economic situation. Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T): and pretty much kills US ability to…

IMO its a useful populist slogan because it solves a different problem: The power that comes with being a billionaire. E.g. its all well and good to focus on fixing democracy instead, but if (some specific) billionaires are focused on deploying their wealth to destroy democracy, then what?

I've generally come around to believe that we need to limit wealth from a purely power / control point of view.

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

#187

Post by Retric »

27183 wrote: post #146
pjc50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> if the US products fail, there's no real negative effect on the mainland United States It's even worse than that. Schedules slipping and cost overruns are good things for the manufacturer, because they can charge more on top of their initial contract. Cost-plus ftw.

Cost plus isn’t nearly as common as it used to be.

But you still run into similar issues regardless of the contract structure. Try and build a rail network without anyone in government wanting something changed from the initial design for 20 years.

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

#188

Post by jvanderbot »

pjc50 wrote: post #164
jvanderbot wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Nobody made Russia decide to invade Ukraine, without which there would be no burning refineries.

Nobody made China gear up to reclaim Taiwan. If we/EU didn't like Ukraine burning RU gas we could apply dissuasive power.

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

#189

Post by ACCount37 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #184
matwood wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> visibility by congress tends to be a very bureaucratic process See also SpaceX vs. NASA. No way would NASA have been allowed to blow up as many rockets as SpaceX did to finally get to their working solution.

Yeah, the anti-regulation people when NASA experiments: "look at all these failures! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!" The same people when SpaceX blows up a bunch of rockets: "wow, look at the innovation, they move so fast! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!"

NASA's failures as of late are less "dramatic explosions" and more "delays", "cost overruns" and "lack of ambition so severe it borders on criminal".

The last time NASA caught any serious flak was what, the Starliner shitshow? And that was just splash damage from Boeing getting dunked on by everyone at once.

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

#190

Post by xorcist »

ivell wrote: post #93
graemep wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly look white to me. Are Spanish people white or Hispanic according to those definitions? 'Original peoples' is an interesting phrase. Neanderthals? Beaker people? A single category for everyone from Pakistanis to Japanese is weird.

I think they meant Caucasian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

> Introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, the term denoted one of three purported major races of humans: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid

Sounds totally legit.

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