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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

#191

Post by 5upplied_demand »

joenot443 wrote: post #152
5upplied_demand wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My back of napkin figures gave me about $20-40b. I'm curious how you got to the $2 billion number?

I'm curious about your napkin math, care to share?

I got mine from a paper published by the University of Chicago: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735565.

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

#192

Post by setgree »

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'm not an expert but I think this is an old lesson in warfare, that guerillas can triumph over larger adversaries by being more exploratory/iterative and less rules-bound. Tolstoy tells this story in the second half of War and Peace. Likewise with Iraqi militants wreaking havoc with IEDs. People repelling an invader have every incentive to move fast.

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

#193

Post by kingnothing »

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…

> My favorite interview question: If I gave you a swarm of autonomous drones, what would you do with them?

What signal are you looking for with that question? It feels much more like a thought experiment with friends while having a few pints than something reasonable for a job interview.

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

#194

Post by ACCount37 »

lokar wrote: post #183
ACCount37 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

Welcome to Tradeoff Town.

Sure, your ultra paranoid checking of everything might catch an extremely rare bug caused by something like interactions between a benign code change and a build system. But is it worth slowing down the development process by that much?

Is it worth missing out on an entire generation of technology, like what happened with US and the shift from 00s drone warfare and 20s drone warfare?

Usually not.

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

#195

Post by jmyeet »

WarmWash wrote: post #165
jmyeet wrote: post #50

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…

>We're bankrupting ourselves to enrich the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and General Dynamics for what exactly? We do it to keep manufacturing knowledge and ability in the country. I really cannot stress enough how many thousands of companies exist purely because of the defense budget. It's never going away because it employs so many people. That's why red or blue or independent…

You're making a different argument.

You're saying we need to retain manufacturing capability and expertise. I agree.

I'm saying we need to stop being bled dry by private weapons manufacturers on cost plus contracts who are rewarded, by definition, by making the system as expensive as possible.

If we were truly interested in having an effective military, we would bring production in-house and focus on standardized vehicles and weapons systems with standardized interchangeable parts on production lines that can be scaled up if necessary.

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

#196

Post by convolvatron »

RetroTechie wrote: post #60

It's disappointing how often the public gives a silent thumbs up on military spend. Okay I'll grant most US citizens would have preferred Trump hadn't gotten into this war. But most talk is about the $$ cost of this war, how little Trump has to show for it, and price of gasoline & groceries. Instead (for US citizens), the talk should be about what else could have benefitted from those $$, and now isn't because it'll…

that's still comes up far short of the total bill. the US never talks about the destruction to civilian infrastructure, the number of innocents killed, the loss of any ability to claim to be on the 'right side'.

these are seeds that will ensure that the US is treated like Russia, or WWII Germany, or Iran. A rabid aggressor that will need to be isolated and eventually contained.

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

#197

Post by zmmmmm »

> It envisions delivery of “20 mission-ready aircraft” by 2031.

Hmm, I'm not sure they fully address the problem if that is what is being proposed. The world will be an entirely different place by 2031 and 20 drones is .... meaningless? Surely they should be talking in the thousands or tens of thousands.

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

#198

Post by milkytron »

5upplied_demand wrote: post #131
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.

Considering the push for reproduction from this admin and his technocrats, I'm curious if they would consider something like this.

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

#199

Post by jandrewrogers »

swiftcoder wrote: post #25

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The…

A 50-100kg payload is only useful against soft targets if the purpose is to "blow shit up". It is the reason Ukraine needed to develop platforms like Flamingo with a much larger warhead capacity than a cheap drone can carry.

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

#200

Post by scottyah »

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…

They can pop out defects and if things go wrong and there's friendly fire or civilian loss, it's chalked up to scrappy efforts in war. The USA does not get the same amount of leeway, saving our people is a top priority and the media harps on any mistake.
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