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Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

arstechnica.com

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Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#101

Post by spwa4 »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #91
spwa4 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and Iran's islamist regime has for 5 decades boasted of committing warcrimes, inside and outside of Iran. Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.

You sound like your problem with the horrible Iranian regime is that your own regime is not allowed to be as horrible as them.

No of course not. The problem is that the point of morality is to achieve a just world. Therefore using morality to allow one side to commit more crimes must be immoral, even if the actions taken to prevent are pretty bad ones. Any moral system must allow for this if it is to exist.

In other words: shooting someone to prevent a murder is not immoral. Despite the fact that shooting someone is obviously immoral under almost all circumstances.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#102

Post by rbanffy »

everforward wrote: post #95
rbanffy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should only make the US able to churn a lot more drones than a couple people working out of a basement. Assembly lines can work wonders.

Assembly lines are much faster but less flexible, which is probably a bad fit for something evolving as quickly as drone weapons. A basement lab can start making new drones as soon as you can get them the components. An assembly line will take months to get any new machinery it needs, set it up, ensure production works, figure out how to QA it at scale, etc. It doesn’t matter if you can make 8 million drones if the e…

You need to make the hardware modular and the lines easy to change.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#103

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

genxy wrote: post #86
spwa4 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don't. In fact nvidia is one of the few that's NOT involved. It's definitely a group effort: https://militarnyi.com/en/news/czech-engine-and-western-elec... Component / part Company Company country Public factory / manufacturing-origin info TJ150 turbojet engine PBS Velka Bites Czechia EU Czechia; manufacturer is PBS Velka Bites TW1721 GNSS antennas, block of 4 Calian / Tallysman Canada Canada / West Ottawa,…

All of that stuff minus the turbojet is like water. It is everywhere. No supply chain control is going to stop it. Not only are these specific parts ubiquitous, but they have set the standard in the industry, so there are numerous compatible and competing parts that could easily substitute.

Reminds me of the news program in the early 2000's that breathlessly reported that an American company was contributing to terrorism.

The "evidence?" Someone found an unexploded IED that had a component with a logo that's familiar to probably every EE in the Western world: Texas Instruments!

Problem is that it was a generic "jellybean" 74LS logic IC that's churned out by the millions and sold everywhere, to everyone and also made by a dozen other manufacturers. Hell, I probably had a dozen or so in my parts drawers.

The drawback to having easily obtainable electronic components is that the people you don't like can also get them.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#104

Post by Planktonne »

spwa4 wrote: post #90
Planktonne wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But Iran did it!" is not the clinching argument you think it is. If killing civilians is bad for Iran to do, then it's bad for the US to do, and you can't commit the same evils as the ones you're using to justify your actions. You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.

You misunderstand the argument I'm making. Legislation is only what is enforced, is only it's consequences, otherwise it is about as relevant as pointing out Iran has severely violated the "magic for all" legislation of Equestria. As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal. The world has ch…

War crimes aren't bad just because they have the word 'crime' in them. They're morally abhorrent.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#105

Post by spwa4 »

Planktonne wrote: post #104
spwa4 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the argument I'm making. Legislation is only what is enforced, is only it's consequences, otherwise it is about as relevant as pointing out Iran has severely violated the "magic for all" legislation of Equestria. As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal. The world has ch…

War crimes aren't bad just because they have the word 'crime' in them. They're morally abhorrent.

If you're going to talk morality you have a similar problem. Every moral system I've ever seen has an enforcement mechanism, and it's always the same: if somebody starts acting immoral, you "get to" violate morality towards this person. You get to violate rules to stop the problem. Normal restrictions, against violence for example, are lifted. And without anyone's permission, by the way. YOU have to judge for yourself if you're in such a situation. There is even tolerance for some reasonable amount of collateral damage.

Example: Somebody starts, or even threatens, to kill a child, you can empty a clip of bullets into them. You can break their bones. You can hit them with a bat. Hard. That's fine, sometimes even described as "heroic".

And if you empty a clip of bullets into a random person, well, that's against morality.

You can do a lot of things to such a person that would never be acceptable under normal circumstances. In fact, in western countries, violating normal rules to prevent worse outcomes than those rules are meant to achieve to is a duty. This goes from being forced to help if someone's in real trouble to if you are blocked by a red light and refuse to violate the law and prevent an ambulance's passage, that's a serious crime.

You read that right, under those specific circumstances not violating the law is a serious crime.

There is no moral or legal system that has an absolutist view like your statement makes. 12 year olds think like that. And of course, if you actually read this law, you won't find such an unqualified rule.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#106

Post by tristanj »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #98
wolvoleo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pretense that has already been debunked you mean. Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. The purpose of the war was keeping Netanyahu in power by having a constant war going on. And Trump went along because he was promised a quick win which he could have used to turn his midterms around.

Why does HN flag valid replies like this dead? tristanj 3 hours ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–] > Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. No, that's outdated. Iran had ~440kg of uranium enriched to 60%, enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons enriched to weapons grade. Given Iran's enormous centrifuge fleet, enrichment to enough material for a single weapons grade nuke would take 2-3 days. To enrich the entire am…

It's automatic, the information trips the content filters.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#107

Post by tristanj »

Hikikomori wrote: post #61
tristanj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the US/Israel didn't strike Iran, Iran would have ICBMs with nuclear warheads, which Iran could use for peace. Did you forget the purpose of the war?

The "reason" for this war was created by Trump in 2017 when the US left the agreement with Iran, while US intelligence agencies all testified to congress Iran was following the agreement and was not working towards a bomb. Then US imposed sanctions and Iran eventually started enrichment again. Such a dumb lie.

JCPOA was a terribly designed deal, it never addressed the Iranian missile issue, which is arguably just as bad the Iranian nuclear issue.

While following JCPOA, Iran decided to build tens of thousands of conventional missiles and drones instead. Enough to swarm and overwhelm air defense systems. 1000 conventional missiles cause as much infrastructure damage as a single nuclear warhead. Iran basically bypassed JCPOA, and built the equivalent to a nuke with conventional weapons.

Obama had the choice to negotiate missile limits in JCPOA, but chose not to, because he wanted a quick politcal win, without realizing the future consequences.

And if you think paying a country tens of billions of dollars not to develop a nuke is a great deal, that incentives every other country to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#108

Post by tristanj »

Hikikomori wrote: post #67
tristanj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran would largely be left to itself if it did not pursue hostile foreign policy against countries in the region. Is Iran in a better position after firing missiles at Azerbaijan, Oman, and Turkey? All three of these countries were neutral or friendly towards Iran, until Iran fired missiles at each unprompted. Its current situation is largely self-inflicted, and a result of poor foreign policy choices. > If anything,…

>Iran would largely be left to itself if it did not pursue hostile foreign policy against countries in the region. Nice to show how ignorant of history you are.

Same to you. The events you are referring to occurred over half a century ago. Iran has had far more than enough time to move on, and adapt its foreign policy.

Attacking the majority of your neighbors in 2026, including countries who are pursuing friendly relations to you, is a stupid foreign policy.

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#109

Post by tristanj »

rbanffy wrote: post #71
tristanj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe Iran should not be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons? Why do you think this entire conflict started?

It started because Trump abandoned the agreement Obama signed and that was working, then sanctioned Iran for no good reason. At this point, every country with the ability to do so should be procuring nuclear deterrence capability, if for no other reason than to defend themselves from the US.

You dodged the question: JCOPA happened because Iran was developing nuclear weapons. If Iran wasn't pursuing nukes, there would be no JCOPA.

Why should Iran be allowed to develop nuclear weapons in the first place?

Re: Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

#110

Post by belorn »

conartist6 wrote: post #25

I just want to confirm that people don't think hitting civilian drinking water as retaliation for a military helicopter is normal or ok

There should be two rules in wars. Do not hit civilian infrastructure, and do not put military infrastructure near civilian infrastructure. Both should be a war crime, both during and outside of wars.

Military infrastructure should also not be dependent on civilian infrastructure as that blur the line between military and civilian.

It is an open question what media and thus we the public should do when nations ignore this. If a nation put military surveillance equipment onto fishing boats, like the Russian shadow fleet did, with some military personal onboard that operate the equipment, does that make the civilian fishermen also military personal, or should the military equipment and personal be treated as civilian since they are in a technically civilian ship?

I don't think the question we should ask is if people think hitting civilian drinking water as retaliation for a military helicopter is ok. It is obviously not ok and framing it like that only normalize the idea that hitting civilian targets could ever be acceptable. The only question we should be looking at is if the civilian infrastructure and military infrastructure was intentional built close to each other, thus making this two war crimes.

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