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Nowhere is safe

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Re: Nowhere is safe

#151

Post by cindyllm »

roncesvalles wrote: post #105
brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

>The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. The fallacy in the line of thinking that "why don't we all just shake hands, say something nice, and get along with each other" comes from the erroneous belief that everyone in the world just wants peace and material prosperity for themselves and their people. This isn't the…

[dead]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#152

Post by SkyeCA »

XorNot wrote: post #133
SkyeCA wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes? I'll understand if you aren't a hardware person, but I think you severely overestimate how complex a drone needs to be if you only intend for it to be single use (which is apparently all the rage in modern war). You don't even need drone specific parts, the parts you need are used in all kinds of other applica…

No they're exactly right: drones need cheap, powerful parts which have only become possible due to highly concentrated mass production in places like China. You aren't fabbing up integrated machine learning SOCs in a shed in Ukraine, and the cheapness of the parts depends on large unfettered supply chains. They're not "with some skill, you can build a lathe and then machine a pipe gun" simple. In a direct conflict, n…

> You aren't fabbing up integrated machine learning SOCs

All the basic sensors you need for flight exist in the literal billions of Android phones produced in the last 15 years.

I'm trying to be evasive about how you'd build such a thing because I don't want a visit over a comment online, but if you understand aerodynamics you can make almost anything fly.

I think the disconnect here is people reading "drone" and thinking something super high tech and precise, whereas I'm thinking of the minimum thing viable thing to create chaos/fear for you enemy.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#153

Post by defrost »

gpm wrote: post #104
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about the problems outside of N. Korea that have resulted from N. Korea's ownership of nuclear weapons?

Why are we ignoring the problems inside of North Korea? I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens. That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate, with the government sponsoring everything from extorting hospitals with ransomware, to dealing drugs, to counterfeiting currency, t…

> I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.

A great many of us feel that way, however historically GreatPowers do not - it's control of resources that move the needle for them.

Currently the US makes much of 30K protesters killed in Iran (number in dispute) but it is very much an action rooted in petro dollar geopolitics, oil, and Israel.

Starving people globally no longer get USAID .. a fractional cost compared to the Iran excursion.

The US didn't feel the need to get involved in regime change following any part of the Rwanda Genocide, and the US took the side of Indonesia (who were going for the resource control) against the West Papuans .. the US and UN turned a blind eye to exactly who and how people were tortured to get a favourable vote.

There's a long long list of starving and essentially enslaved people globally that have been ignored in favour of others by the French, the Dutch, the British, Belgium, USofA, etc.

> That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate

In real politik terms the same can be said about the USofA and has been said about the former British Empire.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#154

Post by defrost »

towledev wrote: post #150
krisoft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time. There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it. Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.

[flagged]

An accord reached between Iran and several world powers, including the United States, in July 2015.

Not Just Obama.

Can the world be saved from central north American partisan squabbling please.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#155

Post by gpm »

defrost wrote: post #153
gpm wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we ignoring the problems inside of North Korea? I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens. That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate, with the government sponsoring everything from extorting hospitals with ransomware, to dealing drugs, to counterfeiting currency, t…

> I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens. A great many of us feel that way, however historically GreatPowers do not - it's control of resources that move the needle for them. Currently the US makes much of 30K protesters killed in Iran (number in dispute) but it is very much an action rooted in petro dollar geopolitics, oil, and Israel. Starving people globally no longer get U…

> In real politik terms the same can be said about the USofA and has been said about the former British Empire.

Sure... I think minimizing the number of entities who have this sort of impunity is a good thing even if we can't eliminate all of them.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#156

Post by defrost »

varjag wrote: post #92

A tunnel 15-30 feet underground is not "shallow" at all, it's a major earthworks undertaking.

Often undertaken by subsistance miners with hand tools .. eg: Coober Pedy is surrounded by a rabbit warren of tunnels 30 ft down and fanning out following opal.

Admittedly that's "soft" rock, but 30 foot is shallow underground mining compared to major league underground mines and open cut super pits.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#157

Post by [deleted] »

poszlem wrote: post #51
brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

I think the reason we can imagine conflict easier than peace is pretty structural. Wars usually happen because of disequilibrium, and we're sitting right in the middle of a big one. The world order we know was built by and for the US when it was the uncontested superpower. Thats just not the case anymore. Countries that spent decades being the West's cheap labor pool have risen up, industrialized, built real militari…

[deleted]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#158

Post by pianopatrick »

Seems to me that instead of digging a tunnel, you could get the same protection from ISR by building those road coverings out of corrugated metal, plywood, or even just laying vines over them. The benefit of the vines is they are cheap and could regrow after a drone hit.

Also, in addition to underground and outer space, we should consider underwater. Underwater bases would be safe against most missiles and drones. Cargo submarines could bring gear to our bases safe from drones and anti ship missiles. And we may want to revisit the idea of a submarine aircraft carrier but with drones instead of manned aircraft.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#159

Post by krisoft »

towledev wrote: post #150
krisoft wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time. There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it. Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.

[flagged]

Unilateraly on the level of countries. The other signatories (China, France, Russia, the U.K., Germany and the EU) believed that the deal was good and Iran was holding up their end of the bargain at that time.

If the USA government had credible evidence that it is not so, they could have picked up the phone and presented their case to the other signatories. Or at least to their allies. Then once those countries were convinced that something is off they could have withdrawn together from the agreement. Would have less of a terrible optics than how it went down.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#160

Post by pianopatrick »

intended wrote: post #46

Drones have upended the unit economics of combat and made older doctrines less relevant. Drones seem to combine the benefits of missiles level payloads, aircraft level control and ability to project force over a distance. I don’t see any technical way we can stop them - but it’s not like we stopped guns. The drone and LLM era are the end of many things we older folk are used to. The information commons are sunk with…

I dunno, seems to me that they're slow enough and fly low enough you could shoot them down with 50 cal ammo. The hard part is aiming and hitting them. But seems to me that someone could make a radar assisted point defense system that automatically aimed and fired a 50 cal gun, like automatic skeet shooting. Such a system would have limited range and could not hit very fast moving or high altitude targets, but would be cheap enough to deal with the cheap slow drones.
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