281–290 of 439 posts
TIL there is a LOTR themed company that is making weapons, neat.
It's closely related to Palantir. Both are by right wing Silicon Valley libertarians sucking on the government teat.
Palmer Luckey got kicked out of Meta for funding Trump ads, I don't think you can classify him as a libertarian lol
(though there are many other self-described libertarians who are even more right-wing-authoritarian, so maybe nitpicking isn't worthwhile)
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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?
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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…
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WHOAH. Is this article really equating Palmer Lucky to Oppenheimer?
I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. I think people are blinded by his political activity.
Having interacted with Luckey in a number of unpleasant ways, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
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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.
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 artille…
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Russia's aggression against Ukraine, started a decade ago, the war on Palestinians has been going on for ~55 years.
This comparison is irrelevant to the conversation. But even otherwise it is misleading and leaves out lots of history. The modern state of Israel has existed for that long - but if anything, it’s a war for Jewish people’s existence in land that was historically Jewish. And it wouldn’t be a “war” if Israel could exist peacefully and not constantly be threatened by terrorists. Most people don’t see a problem with a war…
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.
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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.
Frontline on both sides is saturated with electronic warfare system which are essentially microwaves with open doors. Both sides put them on trucks, armored vehicles, set up near trenches and even carry on their backpacks. There were absurd cases like this https://imgur.com/a/4LqgLED Drones evolve under this pressure. Dynamic frequency changes, computer vision, maneuvering (like "go up when lost signal") and many mor…
Cities are hugely hostile to low power transmission, especially in the 2.4 and 5ghz frequencies.
The effective range of cheap DJI "mini" drones in cities is measured in kilometres. If you get away from the city, you can double and triple your effective range.
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.
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It's closely related to Palantir. Both are by right wing Silicon Valley libertarians sucking on the government teat.
>libertarians Palmer Luckey got kicked out of Meta for funding Trump ads, I don't think you can classify him as a libertarian lol (though there are many other self-described libertarians who are even more right-wing-authoritarian, so maybe nitpicking isn't worthwhile)