221–230 of 439 posts
They are pilotless. Ok. That is one job that has been removed from the equation, but take a look at any airforce base. Not everyone is a pilot. The vast majority of personnel are not pilots. These things will still need the engine techs, the avionics people, the ground crew, fuel people, air traffic controllers, all the way down to the guy driving the mule. The net change in manning between an "autonomous" drone and…
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They're using drones as killbots against individual infantrymen, actively chasing them down rather than taking a lucky grenade drop. That changes everything about force deployment on the ground.
While this does create dramatic videos, it does not represent much of an actual change. Most of these small drone operate well within the range of traditional infantry-killing weapons such as mortar shells. The tactics have changed, but the idea of an infantry unit killing another infantry unit at a couple miles distance isn't a revolution.
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> 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…
Space force. It is like flying a billion-dollar fighter jet that you will never be allowed to repair after it takes off for the first time.
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…
It's probably much easier to make a deal with a company that is able to meet pricing and delivery dates
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Ukraine is constantly inventing new techniques that are re-thinking what drones can do. Recently they have been using them to drop spikes to slow vehicles which are then hit by a second set of drones. At some point soon these drones will have specialised capabilities and will go out in swarms to autonomously figure out how to take down objects.
Aren’t these drones regular cots drones with some modification? Wouldn’t taking the door off a microwave and pointing it at the drone cause it to fall to the ground? Surely it’s more complex than that and I’m missing something.
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While this does create dramatic videos, it does not represent much of an actual change. Most of these small drone operate well within the range of traditional infantry-killing weapons such as mortar shells. The tactics have changed, but the idea of an infantry unit killing another infantry unit at a couple miles distance isn't a revolution.
The impact on logistics is at least somewhat revolutionary. Previously it probably took several cases of mortar shells to inflict one casualty. Now that can be done with a couple of drones. Much lighter.
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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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're using drones as killbots against individual infantrymen, actively chasing them down rather than taking a lucky grenade drop. That changes everything about force deployment on the ground.
While this does create dramatic videos, it does not represent much of an actual change. Most of these small drone operate well within the range of traditional infantry-killing weapons such as mortar shells. The tactics have changed, but the idea of an infantry unit killing another infantry unit at a couple miles distance isn't a revolution.