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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

#361

Post by qarl »

seti0Cha wrote: post #357
qarl wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But they almost certainly don't just take this work. They advocate for more work. They lobby for more funds. I'm not a libertarian, so I don't know the details, but I believe advocated for larger government must be contrary to their beliefs, no?

Maybe, but not necessarily. It really depends on what they actually believe (or say they believe) specifically. If their belief is "societies work better when governments don't interfere with markets", then their beliefs say nothing about what individual people should do in situations where a government does interfere with markets. They may also believe that if you can't fix something, taking advantage of it is justi…

> They may also believe that if you can't fix something, taking advantage of it is justified

Yes, but you're ignoring my central point. They aren't merely taking advantage of something, they are pushing to expand and enlarge it.

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

#362

Post by gantron »

attentive wrote: post #359
acjohnson55 wrote: post #294

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 an impression that no modern technology is tested there but rather supplied with ready to be decommissioned 50 year old antics.

You're mostly correct that the older tech is the bulk of what's been sent, but there have been lots of batches of newer tech that the US has delivered. [0]

These newer companies (Anduril, Skydio, etc.) do it for a few reasons. Some are obvious: they get paid and their systems have a chance at influencing real-world events that the leadership & rank-and-file employees might care about personally.

But from a pure product development perspective, fielding these systems is a valuable test opportunity. You've built a great drone but you're not sure how it'll perform in a GPS-denied environment with S-band radio completely unusable? Russian Electronic Warfare teams are happy to curate that environment for you.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2024-01-08...

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

#363

Post by gantron »

kube-system wrote: post #285
justin66 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even this is almost certainly an underestimate. Open source intelligence that just the bill of materials for a Shahed is more than the tens of thousands previously estimated. These are probably more on the order of ~$400k [0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2024/02/07/375000the...

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

#364

Post by RealityVoid »

Gud wrote: post #335
mig39 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer drones already deal with a hostile RF environment well. Finding the frequency with the least interference, using a wide bandwidth for control, and a different one for video, and programmable signal-loss behaviour. 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…

We are not talking "interference", but an enemy actively looking for your signals and overpowering it with massive high powered RF. Flying your drone around in a city is not the same as flying it against an opponent skilled in electronic warfare.

Most drone RC systems use FHSS. Those make them resistant to naive jamming. You can get fancy with jamming, but so can the way the FHSS works.

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

#365

Post by gantron »

relaxing wrote: post #126
rapsey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space. The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.

That seems misleading. The DOD was the reason inasmuch as the budget to pay contractors was slashed, and the alternative was letting the smaller companies go out of business and losing the knowledge and manufacturing capabilities altogether.

It's actually exactly correct. That comment is referring to 1993's "last supper" in which the SECDEF gathered the defense CEOs at the time and literally did tell them to consolidate/merge.

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-...

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

#366

Post by RealityVoid »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #235
shitlord wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was even kind enough to point out exactly how to defeat such a system!

Drones are so cheap you can send a full constellation of drones waaaay cheaper than the cost of one sentry tower and it will defeat it. These systems have limited handling capacity. With enough drones you can get through anything. The main problem is, there are more than enough drones. All I’m saying above is you probably just need 8 of them to get through Andurils system. Also, the method to defeat such systems is n…

My only disagreement with your position is that you seem to evaluate it in a void. Compared to other systems out there, is Anduril really that bad? I suspect if you're in a trench you'd much rather have a system that can down "just" 8 drones at a time than one that can down zero.

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

#367

Post by gantron »

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?

I'd argue that working on the right projects reduces the likelihood of collateral damage.

Take for example the R9X [0]. Instead of an explosive warhead it has a set of blades on the tip. The US has used it to assassinate single people in the passenger seat of a car while leaving the driver untouched. I'd rather this than dropping bombs on terrorists that come with a blast radius that takes out everyone else nearby.

This seems net-good to me. There are certainly people alive today because of the R9X team's work.

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

#368

Post by qarl »

literallycancer wrote: post #358
qarl wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can argue for changes while still recognizing that the current rules make it more optimal to do the things you argue against. There is no contradiction.

But you cannot advocate to extend the current rules for the profit of your company.

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

#369

Post by shrimp_emoji »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #294

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…

Did you get the disturbing realization that Russia gets data on the materiel too?

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

#370

Post by Sammi »

sangnoir wrote: post #356
Balgair wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was always going to be a terrible tragedy with Ukraine. Vlad committed something much worse than a crime, he committed a mistake (to paraphrase Talleyrand). NATO+ countries aren't fighting him, they are using Ukraine as a proxy, while Vlad is fighting with his own army. NATO has been waiting nearly 80 years to attack Russia directly. They very motivated to make sure that Vlad continues making errors. As such, the…

> And, unfortunately, the worse for Ukraine In what way would having the whole of Ukraine annexed like Crimea be better for Ukraine?

Are charitable reading would be that that was not what was said.

It was not said that Ukraine would be better off it it stopped fighting. Only that Ukraine will be worse off the longer the war takes.

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