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

breakingdefense.com

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

#151

Post by ajmurmann »

ein0p wrote: post #89

I find it remarkable how the readers of this site are at the same time “worried about LLMs”, and totally enthusiastic towards what will inevitably become a no-human-in-the-loop Skynet. Sure, we’ll all get smashed with drones if we stop paying taxes or otherwise disobey, but at least our LLMs won’t accidentally praise Hitler or something.

IMO with defense the prisoner dilemma is out in full force. Ideally nobody would build autonomous weapon platforms like this. I'm under the impression though that out opponents are already working on these as well. Building these ourselves turns the situation from a lose/lose (we lose because our enemy has these weapons and we don't or we lose because the weapons kill us) to a potential win/lose (we win or avoid way because we have solid weapons or we may lose because the weapons turn against us)

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

#152

Post by ajmurmann »

nikolay wrote: post #65

I like Anduril, but it seems that their stuff is overcomplicated and expensive compared to what we see on the battlefield in Ukraine where hundreds of drones are downed daily. An unmanned fighter jet is a whole different ball game for them.

AFAIK Anduril capabilities go quite a bit further. From their marketing materials I understand that devices are networked sensor data is shared. All drones sees what any given drone sees and so do soldiers on the ground and the commanders. IMO this can be a massive advantage over the slow, fairly dumb drones in use in Ukraine.

That said, I agree, we also need lots of cheap drones.

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

#153

Post by ajmurmann »

merman wrote: post #119
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.

let’s all be diplomats instead. That will save our allies!

Let's also focus on telling our allies to always restrain themselves when fighting their enemies.

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

#154

Post by ethbr1 »

eropple wrote: post #145
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…

> 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. Whe…

Imho, the service branches are defined by and structured around the type of equipment required to complete their missions.

The Navy builds years-long expensive ships, then sends them halfway around the world under command of someone. It has a structure to facilitate that.

The Army (at best) efficiency organizes a huge amount of people and material, and it deploys and sustains it wherever needed. It has a structure to facilitate that.

The Air Force procures, operates, and sustains the most technical platforms. So it's gotten halfway decent at doing that, or at least learned some lessons from repeated mistakes. It has a structure to facilitate that.

(And the Marines scrounge through everyone's trash bin, cobble something together, and come out armed to the teeth)

Point being, if you look at the people who have risen to the ranks of power, they've been moulded to fit their service culture. Which means some services might not be as good as procurement...

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

#155

Post by mongol »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #109
mongol wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, there is not a community that is in agreement about this. There is a subset of the community, that like to pretend they are and speak for "the community", and when they get pushback from those that disagree they call it concern-trolling.

I'm confused about what the problem is then – why are you paying attention to those people?

How could I not? They are incredibly loud.

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

#156

Post by paganel »

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…

Let these Westerners drive directly into a ditch, they deserve it. It's like they've learned nothing from the current war in Ukraine. Some people are even mentioning dog-fights, like this is a freaking Top Gun movie or some such (there's no dog-fight against a S-300, I can tell them that).

The best thing that they could do would be to "import" a few dozen Ukrainian drone operators and engineers, people who have actively and directly fought against a near-peer US adversary, and let them design whatever they think will win the next war. But that won't make the current ghouls in the US the buttloads of money they are betting on, so that will never happen.

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

#157

Post by ethbr1 »

relaxing wrote: post #124
7thaccount wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're also upgrading some Arleigh Burkes (and everything bigger that will stay in service) with SEWIP Block III (EW).

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

#158

Post by some_random »

ein0p wrote: post #89

I find it remarkable how the readers of this site are at the same time “worried about LLMs”, and totally enthusiastic towards what will inevitably become a no-human-in-the-loop Skynet. Sure, we’ll all get smashed with drones if we stop paying taxes or otherwise disobey, but at least our LLMs won’t accidentally praise Hitler or something.

I think it's entirely coherent for someone to be worried about losing their place in the world but not worried about autonomous jet fighters.

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

#159

Post by shitlord »

RealityVoid wrote: post #132
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…

> 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.

He was even kind enough to point out exactly how to defeat such a system!

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

#160

Post by bandrami »

Aeolun wrote: post #142
bandrami wrote: post #93

I wonder how much the Tolkien estate is getting from them and Palantir

They’re hardly trademarked are they?

As original names they're under copyright in the US and UK, and in the UK the estate also retains right of publicity.
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