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

French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 100 posts

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#11

Post by andrewstuart »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

There must be many ways to come at the problem of spotting drones including sound, visual, radio. Presumably it's just a matter of time once the boffins apply themselves to the task before drones are effectively defended against? Maybe this is a naive outlook. I can image drones sitting 300 feet above a tank dropping a bomb on it - hard to see or stop that. Or maybe drones that switch off all communication and glide…

I suspect we're going to see a big resurgence in anti-aircraft guns, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard .

Of all shapes and sizes. I can imagine a robot M16 attached to a drone spotter might be effective against the sort of small drones that are hitting tanks in Ukraine.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#12

Post by jazzyjackson »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

There must be many ways to come at the problem of spotting drones including sound, visual, radio. Presumably it's just a matter of time once the boffins apply themselves to the task before drones are effectively defended against? Maybe this is a naive outlook. I can image drones sitting 300 feet above a tank dropping a bomb on it - hard to see or stop that. Or maybe drones that switch off all communication and glide…

I suspect we're going to see a big resurgence in anti-aircraft guns, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard .

why fire ammo when you have laser beams?

https://bluehalo.com/c-uas-autonomous-systems/c-uas-directed...

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#13

Post by swores »

LunaSea wrote: post #7
bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

Few reasons, one of them is that the Maginot line was built during a time where France was an industrial powerhouse. This has not been the case in a long time. The other point, is that you are comparing a public infrastructure project with a private company. Said private company behaves like one and does not want to take unnecessary risks by recruiting and training too much staff and later not having enough orders to…

Minor pedantic FYI - although your comment was clear (I think, or maybe I did misunderstand it), there's a linguistic difference between "Few reasons" (meaning "there aren't many reasons) and "A few reasons" (meaning "more than one", but implying that you're introducing the reasons, not that you're quantifying them as not many).

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#14

Post by simmerup »

stefan_ wrote: post #5
bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

It's getting hard to believe anything in this world anymore. A million shells fired by the Germans in Verdun in a mere 8 hours and now the entirety of Europe can't make that number in a year.

Just wait until we see what China can produce for a war

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#15

Post by Twirrim »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

Unsurprisingly enough, complicated technology requires complicated manufacturing capabilities and finite time to create, QA etc.

These radar systems are many orders of magnitude more complicated than anything manufactured during WW2. It's not something easily scaled up.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#16

Post by mschuster91 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
andrewstuart wrote: post #4

There must be many ways to come at the problem of spotting drones including sound, visual, radio. Presumably it's just a matter of time once the boffins apply themselves to the task before drones are effectively defended against? Maybe this is a naive outlook. I can image drones sitting 300 feet above a tank dropping a bomb on it - hard to see or stop that. Or maybe drones that switch off all communication and glide…

I suspect we're going to see a big resurgence in anti-aircraft guns, like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard .

Or on a smaller scale, something homebrew like a bunch of AK-74s attached to something resembling a minigun [1]. Or the other way around, take old AA guns, place them on the back of a pickup and shred Russian infantry without mercy [2].

Certainly the Ukrainians are showing the future when it comes to land-based wars; the question is how many of these we're actually going to see.

[1] https://armourersbench.com/2023/07/09/ukraines-improvised-an...

[2] https://www.thedailybeast.com/ingenious-ukrainians-invent-ho...

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#17

Post by CrzyLngPwd »

When you are not at war, and your defence alliance is also not at war, and the only perception of war is from the most paranoid nation on the planet, who is also part of your alliance, then ramping up defence spending isn't about defence, it's about profit.

War is a racket. Nothing more. Maybe "Ar est une raquette" makes it sound sexier, I dunno.

https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#18

Post by adaml_623 »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #17

When you are not at war, and your defence alliance is also not at war, and the only perception of war is from the most paranoid nation on the planet, who is also part of your alliance, then ramping up defence spending isn't about defence, it's about profit. War is a racket. Nothing more. Maybe "Ar est une raquette" makes it sound sexier, I dunno. https://www.heritage-history.com/site/hclass/secret_societie...

Phew so glad we've fixed that war problem. Sadly defence spending is a bit like vaccinations.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#19

Post by boricj »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

> Since the war in Ukraine started, the French government has urged companies to produce more weapons, faster and cheaper. > However, the reality is complicated. > "It's an ongoing process. Up until now, we were producing around 10 radars a year, now the target is over 20 a year,” Descourvieres said. If there was an actual war on, and a nation was taking both combat and operational losses - then 10 or 20 per year har…

If France were to be at war with a nation knocking on our borders, our policy nowadays is to fire a nuclear-tipped ASMPA missile as a warning shot. We do not rely on our conventional forces or anyone else to safeguard our sovereignty should it escalate to that.

Our army and arms industry have suffered heavy cuts for thirty years after the end of the Cold War, prioritizing quality over quantity, but we've kept what we call a modèle d'armée complet, or an army with a complete set of capabilities, alongside the arms industry to sustain it. Said arms industry after spending decades surviving on frugal orders is now in the process of scaling up production substantially. It takes time, but we've already tripled production of Caesar self-propelled artillery with another doubling in sight for example.

If push comes to shove, we might take some time to wake up from our slumber, but we're French. Picking a fight with the Gallic rooster is usually a bad decision.

Re: French company ramps up production to meet demand for its military drone radar

#20

Post by throwaway9870 »

simmerup wrote: post #14
stefan_ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's getting hard to believe anything in this world anymore. A million shells fired by the Germans in Verdun in a mere 8 hours and now the entirety of Europe can't make that number in a year.

Just wait until we see what China can produce for a war

Add about two zeros to what the West collectively can build.
Post reply on HN