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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

#251

Post by NegativeLatency »

chaostheory wrote: post #202
willcipriano wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how you hear a lot of complaints about private prisons? How it creates perverse incentives that result in more people being imprisoned? We have a private war apparatus. We have been at war for 30 years without even a clear objective.

You’d have a point if you made this comment 15 years ago, but Russia invaded Ukraine 10 years ago. Around the same time, China started to make outlandish claims on the South China Sea. You can make a lot of complaints about the defense industry like waste and corruption, but a lack of a clear objective is no longer an issue.

Hopefully I’m beyond the draft age of it comes to it but I don’t want a shooting war in my lifetime.

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

#252

Post by justin66 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #203
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #195

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.

This seems just completely wrong. The trend for drones is that features and capabilities are increasing and costs are decreasing because they're based on cheap software and cheap consumer hardware. The trend for unguided mortar rounds or artillery shells is that they're as cheap as they're ever likely to be at thousands of dollars a round, plus the cost of the gun and its replacement barrels and crew. (guided artillery shells or missiles are so expensive they're a separate conversation)

If these small drones provide capabilities that are, as your comment implies, not new but they do it with a cost effectiveness that blows away anything that came before, that's a pretty big deal.

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

#253

Post by qarl »

ycombinete wrote: post #58
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…

This FT long piece on Palmer Lucky, and Anduril has some good context: https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2...

WHOAH.

Is this article really equating Palmer Lucky to Oppenheimer?

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

#254

Post by nonameiguess »

Animats wrote: post #68

It's impressive how much hardware they've been able to develop. Their "Fury", which they acquired from Blue Force, is "a single engine business jet with no cabin." It was originally intended as a target drone, something for fighter pilots to practice against. Anduril repurposed it as an autonomous weapons system. They do mean autonomous. Their slogan is "Autonomy for Every Mission". We're seeing the future of warfare…

Just remember that, unless your goal is just to kill everyone and scorch the earth, the aim of warfare is to occupy and control territory, which at some point necessitates humans to do the occupation. Nobody is yet trying to create permanent wastelands inhabited only by robots. It may become increasingly dangerous, but whether it's helicopters or some other means of transportation, you have to get humans into the land you're trying to take.

There are limits to autonomy as well. Presumably they mean these things can find targets and maneuver in real time without continual human intervention, but they still have human operators and someone has to give them a target. My brother-in-law works for Anduril, as a forward-deployed trainer of the drone operators. There are very much plenty of humans involved here. They can't just ship you a pallet of machines that you turn on and then they go fight a war for you.

Also remember that exactly what you're describing (all the grunts are pinned down by artillery and can't move) is exactly what happened in WWI. That didn't mean it was the future of war. Offensive forces adapted. Heavy armor, airborne troop insertion, long-range counter-battery. Having the upper hand in an arms race is never enduring. The other side always adapts.

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

#255

Post by jessriedel »

KineticLensman wrote: post #248
jessriedel wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not responding to my question. You’re listing reasons the elimination of the job valuable, which partially undermines your original comment (because some of these reasons do not apply to drone pilots) but does not answer why you think other people consider the eliminated job to be the key benefit. Like is any of this mentioned in the article or this comment section? Or are you just complaining about bad argume…

Getting the pilots out of the aircraft reduces the number of people killed in action, which has a significant effect on a war's support and popularity.

Yes I mentioned this in my first comment.

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

#256

Post by sandworm101 »

wildzzz wrote: post #230
sandworm101 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firing traditional artillery makes you vulnerable to counter-battery radar. Since rockets, mortars, howitzers, etc all fire in a predictable ballistic trajectory, you have to quickly move or risk being shot at before your rounds even hit their target. An anti-personnel drone can move in any direction and can operate much lower to ground to avoid radar so no one will know exactly where it came from. You don't get as m…

Ya, but the drone operators emit radio. So too the drones. They are visually stealthy but are more visible electronically than an oldschool motor team. From what I have seen, the Ukrainian drone teams have to "shoot and scoot" in much the same way as the motor/artillery teams.

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

#258

Post by Wohlf »

gcanyon wrote: post #137

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 id…

Unmanned fighters are a force multiplier, a single F-35 can coordinate its own squadron of drones (loyal wingman program). More ordnance, more coverage, more capabilities, more flexiblility, and less risk for lower relative costs.

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

#259

Post by kjkjadksj »

gnatman wrote: post #245

I guess autonomous platforms are exciting to defense procurement and war planners because they can use them much more aggressively in theatre without risking expensive pilots. It's hard not to think of the recent reporting on the "Lavender" AI targeting system and how these two ideas combined will lead to more indiscriminate killing of civilians. What's the calculus for human American pilot lives to collateral civili…

Collateral damage should be at historic lows with an ai army. Fly a swarm like birds over a city, identify your target, and you can selectively eliminate that target with a single bullet from the drone.

Sure beats filling the sky with bombers and flattening a city overnight as was done in wwii.

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

#260

Post by v8xi »

dgroshev wrote: post #207
Animats wrote: post #68

It's impressive how much hardware they've been able to develop. Their "Fury", which they acquired from Blue Force, is "a single engine business jet with no cabin." It was originally intended as a target drone, something for fighter pilots to practice against. Anduril repurposed it as an autonomous weapons system. They do mean autonomous. Their slogan is "Autonomy for Every Mission". We're seeing the future of warfare…

I don't think we as laypeople should even attempt to draw conclusions from Ukrainian battlefields ourselves, seeing how strong the survivorship bias is. Take FPV drones. In [1] Michael Kofman estimates (based on talking to a number of frontline units) that on average Or TB2s. Remember how they were the future of warfare after their success in Nagorno-Karabakh and the first few weeks in Ukraine? Few months later TB2s…

One of the advancements against EW is having on-device mapping systems (this goes back to the Tomahawk in the 70s) so that the projectile can adjust its flight in the absence of GPS. This is what one of the real advances of AI promises to be - a vehicle that can identify and change targets fully autonomously. Will especially apply to unmanned underwater vehicles which (as far as I know) haven't been deployed but will surely change the dynamic on the seas
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