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

arstechnica.com

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

#341

Post by warumdarum »

codeduck wrote: post #340
warumdarum wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historybooks are 90% filled with tales of exterminations, slaughter of citystates and permanent area destruction. If you glass the villages and salt the fields, you even win against the taliban and vietkong.

> If you glass the villages and salt the fields, you even win against the taliban and vietkong. You may win tactically, but you lose strategically - firstly by demonstrating that surrender is pointless, and secondly by creating a martyr movement across the world. When you sow fields with salt, the only harvest you should reasonably expect is more blood.

Which binds the empire crime family together. This was how it was done allover until 1945. Its how its still done in russia, near china, how the middle east does things. That we "shall overcome" only applied to the west as a selfset achievement. And history tells us that the dead are forgotten. Nobody is out there avenging jews or armenians. Thus also the pro active paradigm of "better fuck around as a empire" then being "found out to be peace loving". Congrats to the anti western westerners, you won so much, you got the old world back.

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

#342

Post by Schweigerose »

avianlyric wrote: post #201
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…

> 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…

No. Certainly not. The fundamentals of modern flight safety rules, Procedures and organizations were created in the Second World War when losses of aircraft and crew due to weather, environment, maintenance, poor training and so on greatly exceeded the losses inflicted by enemy action.

Rules and regulations on safety and health will maintain combat effectiveness and manpower where the loss -even temporary due to injuries or sickness- of well trained specialists (and don't forget that even a "simple" infantryman is a highly specialized expert in his field!) is not acceptable. Those rules were written in blood and modern western militaries can not sustain the rate of loss that Russia seems to be ok with. Western leader will be well advised to try to minimize losses to real combat casualties.

But I sure think that they will start to cut corners, at least where it comes down to documentation and purely cya.

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

#343

Post by tim333 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #167
freedomben wrote: post #2

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…

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…

It's interesting that the red tape is still there on the Russian side. A Ukrainian drone maker can make a new one and put it on their brave1 website straight away, Russian ones have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic procurement process. I think Russian interceptor drones still can't use explosive warheads because regulation, health and safety etc. It's quite a plus for the Ukrainians.

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

#344

Post by im3w1l »

aidenn0 wrote: post #308
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds odd. The way it was done in every place I worked, is that a set of changes were approved for a release before they were planned and implemented. We organized the work as expected: each bug/feature on its own branch, with its own set of unit tests, etc., and automated testing applied on each commit. These branches are then merged to the integration branch once they are known good. Before the release proces…

What I described was for bugfixes, not features. Features were set in stone way before this. I also maintain that it is impossible to know which changes depend on other changes. In one case, applying a bugfix that changed the order of allocations at startup caused vtable corruption somewhere else because it changed how much padding a particular malloc() call was returning, and someone was writing past the end of thei…

It's may seem like a nitpick but I think it's a whole different way off looking at it to phrase it as "applying a bugfix that changed the order of allocations at startup exposed memory corruption somewhere else"

I do think there is something to be said for both perspectives, especially for code that is extremely critical. With sufficient testing and determinism maybe you can actually make sure that dormant issues stay dormant meaning there is real value in being change-averse. Still it's a very precarious situation having a known memory corruption hoping it's the testing has made sure its benign in practice.

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

#345

Post by [deleted] »

5upplied_demand wrote: post #191
joenot443 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My back of napkin figures gave me about $20-40b. I'm curious how you got to the $2 billion number?

I'm curious about your napkin math, care to share? I got mine from a paper published by the University of Chicago: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/735565 .

[deleted]

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

#346

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #134
yonaguska wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the drone footage is actually pretty horrific to see.

Most of us who build weapons of war live with some awful dilemmas. One of them is: We want to perform our work skillfully, effectively, and professionally. But we never want our tools to actually be needed. (Another is that we can't effectively create a shield without the risk of it being used as a sword.)

Well then don't make weapons of war.

If you make a hammer, it can always be used to murder someone, but if you make an AK-47, there's only one way it can be used. So if you don't want what you make to be used for killing, don't make an AK-47. If you 're good at toolmaking, choose to make tools that are not weapons.

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

#347

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

freedomben wrote: post #2

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…

>> On a separate note, I'm curious as to whether AI is making an inroads in that space. I would imagine very minimal, if at all, but very curious.

tl;dr, not in practice. Far as I can tell this is still the SOTA in FPOV drone autonomy:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-drone-racing

Basically, those guys trained a drone to beat human FPOV racers but they had access to the race course layout before the race and trained extensively on it. Can't do that on a battlefield.

Also: no shooting at enemy drones during FPOV races. Makes surviving to the end of the race simpler.

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

#348

Post by ethbr1 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #194
lokar wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know the details of that situation, but I have been on the other side of that debate. People say “it’s a one line change” (once they argued it was a 1 bit change!). But lacking a fully controlled and hermetic build system with its own exhaustive test suite you can’t be sure about the relationship between the source and the binary. And that continues to every step to get the binary into production (updating ex…

Welcome to Tradeoff Town. Sure, your ultra paranoid checking of everything might catch an extremely rare bug caused by something like interactions between a benign code change and a build system. But is it worth slowing down the development process by that much? Is it worth missing out on an entire generation of technology, like what happened with US and the shift from 00s drone warfare and 20s drone warfare? Usually…

In this case, it's probably more about preventing a foreign-compromised build system / developer from getting malicious code into lethal devices.

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

#349

Post by freedomben »

giardini wrote: post #207
freedomben wrote: post #2

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the…

a "hole pile" of ...?! I'm surprised that someone who uses such a phrase was working on classified hardware in the "mid and late 00s".

for sure, no way even an intelligent person could possibly make a text-to-speech typo when writing a comment on an informal internet forum. Definitely a lying liar who lies

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

#350

Post by pixl97 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #189
throwaway894345 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the anti-regulation people when NASA experiments: "look at all these failures! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!" The same people when SpaceX blows up a bunch of rockets: "wow, look at the innovation, they move so fast! Cut NASA funding and give public funds to the guy who purchases elections!"

NASA's failures as of late are less "dramatic explosions" and more "delays", "cost overruns" and "lack of ambition so severe it borders on criminal". The last time NASA caught any serious flak was what, the Starliner shitshow? And that was just splash damage from Boeing getting dunked on by everyone at once.

This is kind of an odd reply as what is going on now is exactly what one would expect from a culture that cannot take risks at all.

1. Something blows up.

2. It gets pasted all over the news.

3. People wonder why we give NASA money to blow stuff up

4. Congress people with room temperature IQs grill NASA admin for months.

5. NASA becomes risk adverse.

6. Today.

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