Reading the comments here is giving me the disturbing realization that the war in Ukraine is extremely valuable to the US because the US gets to collect immense amounts of data to inform perspectives on how modern technology is revolutionizing warfare with minimal risk to American troops. And that's with technology in the hands of an extremely motivated ally against one of our top rivals. This opportunity doesn't com…
I have been watching the warfare via several Telegram channels and observe how important drone warfare now is. I watched 5 $10M Abrams tanks destroyed by $500 FPV drones. Close combat on troops is also conducted with drones with remarkable precision. We don't know how much of the targeting and execution by Russia is automated verses manual, but many experts in this field agree that Russia's technical capability is at parity and sometimes exceeds NATO's such as hypersonic missiles.
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.
Israel did flatten Gaza. They don't care about killing innocent civilians.
Well they tried to wait for the civilian population in the north to evacuate before they advanced, unlike the Americans to say the Japanese, Germans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and scores more who they bombed indiscriminately. I’d say that this conflict is a huge step in the right direction in terms of the treatment of civilians in war. War is ugly especially when the adversary embeds their infrastructure with their civilian population, in order to maximize collateral damage and shift international sentiment.
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…
The point is the maneuvers can be much more extreme because the done doesn't need to prevent a bag of meat from rupturing due to high g forces.
I don't know why people keep bringing that up. It's hardly relevant. Extreme maneuvers at high G forces are mostly only useful in very limited circumstances for evading a missile in the terminal phase of an engagement. In the real world it's far less important than low observability, data links, sensor fusion, EW, decoys, fuel fraction, and stand-off range.
Building an airframe strong enough to handle G forces beyond what a human can endure also comes at the price of greater weight and reduced range. It's not worth the trade-off.
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?
if it was not more effective than existing options, both sides would not be scaling production and deployment at an unparalleled rate
Innovation has not been in defense engineering lately because the US has lost A LOT of public trust when it comes to the defense industry in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is not the country, nor do they have the reputation in front of the public that led to the Manhattan project, where the greatest minds would willingly work on defense projects, not just willingly but eagerly. The breakthroughs a…
> and it was often considered a black mark if you went to work for a defense company (even Palantir) Yeah, this always tickled me. Obviously smart people should just go work somewhere innocuous like Meta or ByteDance. Also FWIW this is Palantir and Anduril's bread and butter. They get to vacuum up all the wrongthinkers.
"I'll make products that cause civil unrest, poison the political systems of entire countries, and give young girls mental issues, but I'll be damned if I work for that nasty military-industrial complex; I'm too moral for that!"
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.
> I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. Having interacted with Luckey in a number of unpleasant ways, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
So you disagree his achievements are impressive? That's my only assertion.
And if so, you are saying his achievements are nullified by his behavior?
In your view, does any company that does business with government organizations count as sucking on the government teat?
Pretty much, yes. Personally I don't mind the idea of sucking on the government teat - seems pretty reasonable. But when you're a libertarian doing it - I just have to laugh. Ditto Tesla. It's not a coincidence that all these guys are suffering the same hypocrisy.
Libertarians aren't anarchists. They don't generally believe that there should be no government (although you can find people who believe just about anything). I don't think there's anything hypocritical about libertarians taking government contracts for defense. If they were taking government contracts or jobs around regulating markets or building public housing, then that would be closer to hypocritical, but I'm not sure that even qualifies. Hypocrisy isn't benefiting from something you disapprove of, it's engaging in it, so arguably, they'd have to be the ones issuing the laws they disapprove of for it to be hypocrisy.
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…
Aren't these "cheap" drones tens to hundreds of thousands each? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HESA_Shahed_136
There are also modified commercial drones that just drop explosives, and that is what is mentioned here. Those drones drop their payload and may return to reload if not shutdown. Those drones aren't "hundreds of thousands each", but around $500 each.
As for the drone you linked - we don't know how much it cost Russian to produce Geran-2, but definitely less than you imagine.
Reading the comments here is giving me the disturbing realization that the war in Ukraine is extremely valuable to the US because the US gets to collect immense amounts of data to inform perspectives on how modern technology is revolutionizing warfare with minimal risk to American troops. And that's with technology in the hands of an extremely motivated ally against one of our top rivals. This opportunity doesn't com…
It's worth considering that while the equipment in use in the ukraine conflict is obviously relevant, the nature of the conflict is radically different from what the US would face. Ukraine is literally on Russia's doorstep, allowing Russia to send its units in and pull them back for repairs with relatively limited logistical strain. This allows it to use massive numbers of cold war surplus assets that would not be viable anywhere else on earth. Ukraine started the war with an extremely small air force and has received only very limited support in that regard, meaning it has spent the entire war without air control. This both limits Ukraine's capacity to use tactics which rely on air support and gives Russia the ability to operate its air forces in relative safety. US doctrine is completely based around air superiority. Ukraine had an extremely limited standing army and military industrial capacity prior to the war, and has relied heavily on non-professional troops who volunteered or were conscripted after the war started and received only moderate training, and it is dependent on foriegn support for advanced arms and munitions. The US has both the strongest standing army and the most advanced military industrial complex in human history. The issues Ukraine is struggling with now - pushing into areas Russian troops have spent months fortifying while having to conserve artillery shells, holding off an unending trickle of 60 year old soviet tanks, and having to jerry-rig long range drones to attack targets in Russia - are challenges that simply wouldn't exist if the US were fighting a war. If our goal was really to get useful data that would be applicable to US conflicts, we'd be giving the Ukrainians the means to fight the way we fight.
> but know that East Europeans see clearly who is the reason for this bloodbath Eastern European here. The putin regime is the reason for this bloodbath.
So you have the facts, kid? Are you sure?
Yes, I am absolutely sure.
Each of the propagandists I mentioned in this comment[0] made assertions that are demonstrably false, e.g., russia isn't going to invade Ukraine; this is just a western conspiracy theory.
They each insisted that Ukraine has no chance, like you do. They each insisted repeatedly that Ukraine was just about to collapse. They said that several times in 2022. They said that several times in 2023. They're saying that now in 2024, like you are.