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

131–140 of 439 posts

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

#131

Post by llamaimperative »

nbzso wrote: post #92

The problem you have, dear Americans is called MIC. Just quoting one of your presidents: >“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” So many wars for profit. History knows best that there is no free lunch. But I suppose…

Russia getting its ass kicked by 40 year old American equipment is the strongest argument I've yet seen for the military-industrial complex :)

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

#132

Post by RealityVoid »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #80
anyfactor wrote: post #40

Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border protection, then they made drone-ramming drones and now unmanned fighter jets. I am genuinely curious. I was in the whole retail investor space since early 2010s which saw the EV hype. Workhorse was supposed to supply vans for federal postal vans, Nikola had that…

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…

> Oh yeah this is supposed to be "classified" but I could give a flying shit.

Oh, never change Hacker News. Got to love the casual breach of classified information.

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

#133

Post by croon »

jpgvm wrote: post #123
api wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He certainly ramped up from W Bush, but I think it was more due to timing in technological advancements and reduced overall cost of life (American primarily, others distant second), compared to deployments. This[0] passed just a week after 9/11 (7 years before Obama).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Milit...

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

#134

Post by llamaimperative »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #83
dcgoss wrote: post #21

Anduril's Fury aircraft: https://www.anduril.com/fury/

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.

Umm... this product was acquired into the company via Blue Force. It was pretty much fully designed prior to Anduril getting its hands on it. It sounds like you don't know what you're talking about despite having "worked at the company," which could mean anything.

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

#135

Post by smallmancontrov »

basil-rash wrote: post #103
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovation has not been in defense engineering lately because the US has lost A LOT of public trust when it comes to the defense industry in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is not the country, nor do they have the reputation in front of the public that led to the Manhattan project, where the greatest minds would willingly work on defense projects, not just willingly but eagerly. The breakthroughs a…

I also went to a/the top CS school. When I graduated I would have never considered working at a defense company. Now, after bouncing around big tech and startups for a few years, I am a few days away from accepting a position at one. What changed? Appreciation for how entirely insignificant to downright harmful the rest of the industry is, perhaps. I made changes that impacted tens of millions of users in... no signi…

That, and Poorly Targeted Revenge for 9/11 was not the most inspiring mission. Great Power Competition, however? I can get my blood pumping red, white, and blue for Great Power Competition.

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

#136

Post by Dalewyn »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #78
Dalewyn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also I have no idea what this has to do with “diversity” or what you even mean by that. Diversity, or "the condition of having or being composed of differing elements"[1], in this case a wide variety of suppliers. I assume most of us are speaking English here. [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity >Limiting themselves to a few expensive and stagnant vendors is a way to lose in the future. You win…

…and at the level of the DoD your goals include ensuring that there ARE as many capable suppliers as possible, using your commercial power, to increase your chances of “winning wars as effectively as possible”. Wars are won on logistics; a corrupt, stagnant, or under-innovating market is a barrier to successful defence.

You aren't going to win wars by procuring from second and third rate suppliers just to keep the market diverse. You have to ask for proposals from across the market, but it's natural that suppliers will become centralized given how much money, time, and expertise is required.

The mission of keeping the economy healthy lies upon the Commerce and Justice Departments, whose missions are to manage the economy and keep industries within the confines of the law respectively.

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

#137

Post by gcanyon »

I'm hearing that dogfighting is a thing of the past because weapons systems operate at large distances anymore. Drones should do (at least?) three things well: dog fight, since they can make decisions in an instant and tolerate higher g-forces than a human can; prevent a human death if they get shot down; and be smaller/lighter/carry more/have greater range because they're not designed around carrying a pilot.

Any ideas on what the driving factors are for this?

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

#138

Post by mesofile »

dralley wrote: post #55
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…

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…

"Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

— Kelly Johnson

Shocking that this quote still rings true a half-century later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly...

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

#140

Post by galangalalgol »

Garvi wrote: post #115

It's hard to believe, but the times of "If I won't do it, someone else will." are back and it seems people forgot the lesson. It is my honest opinion that anyone who works on such weapons is a monster. 3 years ago this topic would be full of people protesting this. Pointing out the inhumanity, the potential for abuse, the hypocrisy, the dangers of desensitizing war. Censorship changed the game entirely.

That is indeed a horrible excuse for any action. But having been here for well over 3 years I think there has always been a diversity of opinions on such things. This is very far from an echo chamber, which is a good thing! I just hope ycombinator never tries to monetize that diversity of thought the way /. did by feeding in tangentially techincal topics they knew would be controversial. Not everyone here thinks pacifism is a good idea, not everyone here thinks the MIC is just a jobs program, not everyone here is even on the human's side in the Butlerian jihad. I'm glad they post because I am never completely sure of any of my views and they may have good arguments. And if we talk to each other it moderates the polarization.
Post reply on HN