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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

#271

Post by psunavy03 »

potatoman22 wrote: post #240
basil-rash wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The defense industry isn't just "defense" against bad people. Is it better to optimize the colors of buttons, or work on projects that could potentially kill innocent civilians?

Wars suck. But sometimes the result of not fighting a war sucks more. Sure, military projects could POTENTIALLY kill innocent civilians. But that's not a guarantee, modern Western militaries go out of their way to minimize that, and again sometimes the result of not fighting a war would cause even more innocent people to suffer or die.

The idea that "this one bad thing could happen, therefore I will do nothing that could remotely cause this one bad thing" is childish reasoning.

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

#272

Post by lossolo »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #259
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.

Read this https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

It's not as simple as you say and it doesn't work currently as you say.

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

#273

Post by nyolfen »

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…

quadcopter manufacturing has been dramatically increasing over the last year to the order of 10k+/mo on both sides with no sign of slowing down (i believe it's actually much higher than this but can't find the source i saw a few weeks ago); your argument seems to butt up against this reality

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

#274

Post by nyolfen »

potatoman22 wrote: post #240
basil-rash wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The defense industry isn't just "defense" against bad people. Is it better to optimize the colors of buttons, or work on projects that could potentially kill innocent civilians?

"cars don't just transport you, they also kill people in wrecks sometimes"

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

#275

Post by nyolfen »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #147
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…

One important distinction, though - lethal drones should not be making decisions.

this consensus will last until the first actor defects

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

#276

Post by nradov »

Aeolun wrote: post #139

Wait how are these representative of a 5th gen fighter if they have a max speed below mach 1?

Efficient supersonic capability is only one minor aspect of 5th generation fighters, and not even particularly useful for most missions. It's less important than low observability, data links, and sensor fusion.

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

#277

Post by dgroshev »

nyolfen wrote: post #273
dgroshev wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

quadcopter manufacturing has been dramatically increasing over the last year to the order of 10k+/mo on both sides with no sign of slowing down (i believe it's actually much higher than this but can't find the source i saw a few weeks ago); your argument seems to butt up against this reality

Can you please elaborate which part of the comment you are refuting?

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

#278

Post by thexumaker »

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…

Drones have changed warfare at a local tactical level. But your drones and smaller autonomous systems aren't helping if you have overwhelming firepower superiority, ie in Gaza drones haven't inflicted too much damage if you can just drop a couple thousand JDAMS and level out a territory.

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

#279

Post by ein0p »

Aeolun wrote: post #200
brunoqc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are on a venture capital website. Don't be surprised that when people read an article about killer drones, they just salivate at the sweet pentagon money.

If we don’t end up needing it: enjoy the sweet pentagon money. If we do end up needing it: enjoy the adoration of the people _and_ the money. Win-win.

You’re missing a couple use cases there. Particularly the ones when these weapons, which can’t refuse an order like a meat sack soldier would, shoot at _you_. I’m not saying “don’t build weapons”, btw. By all means do. I’m saying as far as risk is concerned, this is by far the riskiest direction imaginable

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

#280

Post by fancyfredbot »

sandworm101 wrote: post #256
wildzzz wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There can be a long wire between the (cheap) radio and the person operating it. You probably don't mind if you lose the radio or the drone.

This is very different to artillery which is too expensive to lose to return fire and even more expensive if you try and make it operable remotely.

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