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US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

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Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#271

Post by randcraw »

consensus1 wrote: post #256
ACCount37 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ukraine, the first place that was bombed was the red tape factory. The drone industry was allowed to basically "do whatever as long as it works", consequences be damned. So they use civilian motors, batteries and SoCs, sketchy firmware with zero code inspection, and more. Does it work perfectly? No. It works well enough. I wonder if anyone is going to learn a lesson about overregulation. I'm not sure if "AI for re…

Correct, but it goes deeper than just the building components. In the US you have to go through an entire military procurement process within each iteration loop. So you design a weapon, then try to sell it to the military, but just the process of demonstrating it and selling it to the military takes a long time and costs money. If you fail you can go back to the drawing board, but each iteration loop is probably a y…

Emergency is the mother of making exceptions. During both US gulf wars, the army broke from its long tradition of over-regulating new systems before they could be fielded, especially for small semi-autonomous platforms like flying drones and robots. Entirely new systems as well as major updates to fielded system were routinely prototyped in-country / on-the-battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. The demand for new capabilities and fixes was simply too great not to ship ASAP.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#272

Post by myrmidon »

BariumBlue wrote: post #253
myrmidon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern (UA) take is to strap the warhead directly on the thing, make it just as big as needed and directly fly everything into the target. If you insist on firing guided missiles at ground targets from a drone that returns to base you're never gonna be able to compete on cost.

It really depends on the kind of war being fought. If the cheap solution involves having troops only a dozen miles away from the enemy, then you're going to take casualties, and funeral costs are FAR more expensive then the cost to buy a large bird and fly it from a 100+ miles away.

Yeah, but you can always buy a slightly smaller bird, strap the warhead directly to it, and fly that into your target 100+ miles away.

Guided missiles specifically are insanely pricey by comparison to the warhead alone; just for the possibility that your slow, vulnerable drone might be able to return (and be used again) you have to make very expensive engineering tradeoffs, and even when the thing comes back you have to repair and service it, too (and stock it up with more expensive missiles).

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#273

Post by ButlerianJihad »

alex43578 wrote: post #56
swiftcoder wrote: post #25

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The…

While it's clear the US is working on those types of drones too (cloning Shaheds, basically), the likely mission profile of the US requires we have that capability. Pick your potential future US conflict and it won't look like us flinging disposable drones over the border at Canada, but rather needing to project power from an aircraft carrier or forward base against an adversary, where range, payload, sensors, and mo…

> potential future US conflict

I'm not sure if "future" is a good word for the widespread civil unrest, nascent insurgencies, and very normal soft-target gun battles that happen weekly here, but our "US conflict" looks like street-to-street fighting, within our own borders, with people who are already here.

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." -- Ambassador Kosh, Babylon 5

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#274

Post by scottyah »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #224
danans wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Confiscating 100% of all billionaire wealth (~$8.4T) covers - ~1.1 years of federal spending (~$7.4T) - ~4.4 years of deficits (~$1.9T) - ~23% of debt (~$36T): Adding a wealth tax doesn't mean eliminating existing income taxes. > Cities like NYC pretty much can afford UBI (look at per capita spending on homelessness, public schools etc). Perhaps , but what about poor states like West Virginia or Alabama. It's not u…

Just remember those states are already handout states. They take more money in than they give back. They also have some bizarre cultural hatred for the blue states and cities that make this country an economic superpower. The idea NYC shouldn't do its best to take care of its own because people in Alabama aren't getting enough is nonsensical. Imo they already get far more than they deserve.

It mostly goes back to when mortgages (then other debts) were handled by local banks by law, then people in NYC changed those laws so all the money was routed to them. It's not like NYC is just purely more productive, it just found a way to ensure all money must go through them, and they take some of it as almost a form of a new tax. Not that this more central form of banking is all bad, but when almost all the "real" work (farming, building, factories, etc) is done outside the city and they have no real say in the matter it leads to resentment.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#275

Post by graemep »

ivell wrote: post #93
graemep wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly look white to me. Are Spanish people white or Hispanic according to those definitions? 'Original peoples' is an interesting phrase. Neanderthals? Beaker people? A single category for everyone from Pakistanis to Japanese is weird.

I think they meant Caucasian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

Caucasian includes South Asians and some East Africans according to that definition.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#276

Post by scottyah »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #259
budsniffer952 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the common person benefits from high interest rates? Pray tell, how?

It helps keep inflation under control, for one thing. For another, it helps prevent billionaires from wasting even more money on boondoggles.

> prevent billionaires from wasting even more money on boondoggles

This is what you want though? If everyone stops "wasting even more money on boondoggles" there is no innovation, and no jobs if nobody is making more boondoggles.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#277

Post by myrmidon »

consensus1 wrote: post #246
avianlyric wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if anyone is going to learn a lesson about overregulation. Seems unlikely. Regulation and Health & Safety are both societal luxuries, which only happen once societies are stable and prosperous enough to start valuing human life beyond its ability to perform labour. The moment the bombs start dropping, the time for luxuries also stops, and the value of human life drops to value a person can produce defendin…

And yet the regulation actually will result in more dead soldiers or else it wouldn't be the first thing that goes out the window in a war.

The regulation crucially results in your recruits not dying for no good reason during training just because some random piece of trash equipment predictably failed.

Preventing that is much more important than the exact dollar efficiency of said equipment during peacetime.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#278

Post by apparent »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #26

There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for. What boggles my mind is that I make coffee at home because I'm frugal. I guess it is good the government and DoD are seeking cheap…

> There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that.

Less than half are net income tax payers, IIRC. So if you pay income tax, you're actually on the hook for more $6, on average.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#279

Post by randcraw »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #135
LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully making the real horrors of war visible to the public/world will make war less frequent. Alas...

People have been saying this since Vietnam (and actually now that I think about a little more, this may actually have happened).

In the late 1960s daily TV news coverage revealed the horrors of war to the American public as never before (just as Brady's photos had done in the Civil War). That palpable gruesomeness was instrumental in the rising tide of unpopularity enjoyed by the war (and Johnson) by the elections of 1968.

Re: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

#280

Post by Lomlioto »

CMay wrote: post #240
Lomlioto wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the issue of the orange clown. The USA Military was quite aware that killing Irans Leadership is not 'it'. But Trump saw how well venezuela worked so that was it. Yeah USA politics is not 4D Chess.

The US didn't do that, Israel did. I suspect behind closed doors, Trump thought Bibi went a little overboard there

? It was a coordinated air strike from USA and Isreal.

Isreals only power to doing so, was knowing USA was behind it.

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