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

Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

breakingdefense.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 439 posts

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#121

Post by api »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #114

I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Einstein was referring to the hydrogen bomb of course.

If high tech superpowers went at each other full bore with H bombs we’d probably be LARPing Mad Max, but so far that hasn’t happened and seems unlikely. All leaders in all these powers know that any such exchange would be mutual and thus suicidal (MAD) so the only way it happens is if you get someone truly insane in power.

What has happened since the bomb was developed and what’s likely to continue are skirmishes and proxy wars. Drones are the modern weapon of such conflicts with Ukraine and the Israel-Iran skirmish being heavily drone based.

This is ugly because it’s often not the soldiers of the superpower puppet masters dying but those of puppet states, and drones allow more technological powers to beat up on less technological people like it’s a video game.

If nukes are used in conflict in this century it will probably be just a few in one of these conflicts, followed by an overwhelming condemnation.

But the silver lining is that since the bomb was developed the overall per capita number of humans dying in war globally has fallen dramatically. As long as we continue to avoid huge scale conflict this number will probably stay low. Without the bomb it’s likely that a WWII style conflict between the US and USSR would have erupted and killed many millions more.

Some argue based on this that the bomb was a peacekeeping invention. So far that’s been true but we will see how the future goes.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#122

Post by robertlagrant »

rapsey wrote: post #63
torginus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development. And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. I…

> I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space. The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.

After you retire from politics or government it's much easier to be a highly paid board member of one company than a badly paid member of five companies.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#123

Post by jpgvm »

api wrote: post #121
p0w3n3d wrote: post #114

I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Einstein was referring to the hydrogen bomb of course. If high tech superpowers went at each other full bore with H bombs we’d probably be LARPing Mad Max, but so far that hasn’t happened and seems unlikely. All leaders in all these powers know that any such exchange would be mutual and thus suicidal (MAD) so the only way it happens is if you get someone truly insane in power. What has happened since the bomb was dev…

It's been going on much longer in places like Yemen. Obama was the first to recognise that by switching to drones you basically don't have to face any domestic political opposition to combat.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#124

Post by relaxing »

7thaccount wrote: post #112
dralley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely more than one problem with defense procurement, one of the biggest problems is simply having straightforward, acheivable goals in the first place and not fucking with them halfway through the process. And honestly at this point the Air Force is handling this much better than the other branches. Despite all the delays and cost overruns on the F-22 and F-35 projects, at least we ended up with really…

The LCS situation is embarrassing. What is the navy working on now? Replacements to the Arleigh Burke destroyers?

Depends on what you mean by “working.” DDG-1000 is still kicking around trying to figure out what to do with itself. DDG(X) is in a requirements development phase. FFG-62 is actually getting built. There are various autonomous surface and sub efforts that may turn into something.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#125

Post by jpgvm »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #117
ninetyninenine wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing. Trust me... it's not that cool. They hire artists to design this stuff. Not kidding. The exterior is made by an industrial designer more so then an actual engineer. I would know, I worked at the company previously.

He’s stated they have a no renders policy so would be weird if they had that then did what you suggest.

Well they may have physically made the shell and thus not a render.

As for if it does what it says on the tin I have no idea, maybe the commenter that suggests they have insider knowledge can clarify.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#126

Post by relaxing »

rapsey wrote: post #63
torginus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development. And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. I…

> I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space. The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.

That seems misleading. The DOD was the reason inasmuch as the budget to pay contractors was slashed, and the alternative was letting the smaller companies go out of business and losing the knowledge and manufacturing capabilities altogether.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#127

Post by iraqmtpizza »

7thaccount wrote: post #112
dralley wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely more than one problem with defense procurement, one of the biggest problems is simply having straightforward, acheivable goals in the first place and not fucking with them halfway through the process. And honestly at this point the Air Force is handling this much better than the other branches. Despite all the delays and cost overruns on the F-22 and F-35 projects, at least we ended up with really…

The LCS situation is embarrassing. What is the navy working on now? Replacements to the Arleigh Burke destroyers?

The new hotness is the Constellation-class frigate which chose a mature design to keep costs down. That was until feature creep completely consumed it in record time:

"At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News."

https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-deliv...

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#128

Post by actionfromafar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110
matthewmacleod wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as you might be aware, sometimes they aren’t.

Are you asking what the nuance is in this case? Ukraine is a strategically important region to Russia. They don't have to invade as long as they can threaten to invade, and thereby get concessions without armed conflict. If Ukraine joins NATO then Russia could no longer credibly threaten to invade because it would put Russia at war with NATO. Ukraine about to join NATO is thereby destabilizing, because then Russia ha…

It would be nice if this story more often were told from the perspective that the friend also has agency. Maybe the friend eyed the odds and thought:

Yep, better deal with this damn dog once and for all.

Can't live in uncertainty like this, never knowing when the dog will break in to the back yard and bite the kids

Ukraine is stuck between a rock and hard place, but they also have agency.

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#129

Post by bogtog »

mulmen wrote: post #17

This is for the next phase of the project that involves building flying prototypes. Later stages include mass production which could go to a Boeing or Lockheed. I wonder how much of the decision to give this to a smaller player is based on a desire to maintain diversity among defense contractors and the competitive advantages that come with. In other words the US Military continues to be a successful centrally planne…

Around the globe, I think militaries regularly give contracts beyond just to the lowest bidders to maintain a strong base

Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

#130

Post by llamaimperative »

possiblelion wrote: post #108
ninetyninenine wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked there. Think: budget defense contractor and you'll be really accurate. Their whole thing is to move fast and produce shit that breaks often and a lot. Pretty unreliable overall. Their major success is marketing and B2G (business to government) and funding. Ultimately it is these three things that will make them successful. You iterate on crap long enough (which defense contracts tend to allow) eventually the…

Interesting perspective. Coming from the perspective of a non-US defence executive, I will have to say that failing demos are quite normal in defence applications. It happens, and you still win contracts, because the end client sees the value prop and trusts you to sort out the issues. Still nerve wrecking though.

Not to mention an unscheduled demo. How often do software engineers have a reliably working local state of a repository that they could just start up and demo whenever someone walks by their desk?
Post reply on HN