I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
> sticks and stones
Sticks and drones?
Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
141–150 of 439 posts
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#142I wonder how much the Tolkien estate is getting from them and Palantir
They’re hardly trademarked are they?
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#143Earlier 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…
I still think the defense industry is the greater evil (since nearly everything that starts out as "defense" ends up being used for "offense"), but I 100% agree with your argument against the modern tech industry.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#144Even though I never heard about Anduril before, this is now the second time in a day that I 'hear' about it. The first time was a post about the latest Mark Rober video 'promoting' Anduril/military technology to a child/teen audience. https://lemmy.ca/post/19761360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU
In case you haven't noticed, there's a pretty serious drone war going on right now and Anduril makes drones. With the new US defense package they stand to get some business, among other reasons for them to be in the news.
Okay sorry, I'm not from the US and sometimes I think I live behind the moon.
Do you mean with drone war, the usage of drones in a war (like they do in Ukraine and middle east) or a 'war' between manufacturers?
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#145Earlier 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…
> Compare that to the Navy's LCS program, a massively expensive clusterfuck with very few redeeming qualities.
Which, to be fair to the Navy, is as much Congressional meddling and military procurement seeding--if you stop paying your contractors, they stop being military contractors and the knowledge you'd like walks out the door, which doesn't excuse the LCS program but does explain some of it--as anything else.
When we say that we're bad at procurement in the United States, there's a lot of targets for blame. (I think you're right that the Air Force tends to have the best project execution of the service branches though.)
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#146I'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 id…
I think the amount of space and weight a human and their required hardware need is pretty low on a jet. However the aerodynamics probably benefit a lot from not needing a high up bulbous cockpit with really good visibility
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#147I'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 id…
One important distinction, though - lethal drones should not be making decisions.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#148I'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 id…
Dog fighting requires much more situational awareness from a sensor perspective. One reason the recent VISTA demonstration had the adversary feed its own position via data link to the autonomously flown plane.
Magazine depth and endurance/range seem to be the initial goals.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
Every single time.
Re: Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
#150I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
> sticks and stones Sticks and drones?