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Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

seanobannon.substack.com

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Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#51

Post by JumpCrisscross »

floatrock wrote: post #8
BurningFrog wrote: post #4

I saw someone claiming drones are the biggest military invention since the stirrup! The US would do well to start catching up on that technology. BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.

The aircraft carrier made the battleship obsolete, and I think most war strategists acknowledge that drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot war. We haven't seen one of those sink yet, but well, Russia controls the historically strategic port of Sevastopol, and yet what's left of their Black Sea fleet has retreated to ports back behind Stormshadow range. Taiwan plans are defin…

> drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot war

The notion of unsinkable carriers is mostly fiction. In WWII I think almost every CV America entered the war with (but 3, Enterprise, Saratoga and Ranger) was sunk by ‘44.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#52

Post by s1artibartfast »

lawn wrote: post #33
palata wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget China. China is way ahead everybody else when it comes to consumer drones and producing them at scale. Like way ahead.

They may have the manufacturing muscles but Ukraine has been able to develop and test their drones in live combat for years. There's nothing that propels technology forward as much as deadly necessity.

Maybe shocked if China and even Russia didn't have the specs and designs for every Ukrainian drone.

Drone hardware in software are mature. Adoption is more matter of observing tactics and human interaction

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#53

Post by toss1 »

palata wrote: post #31

The problem I have with the idea of subsidising small drones as a proxy for defense is that they solve very different problems: Making a small quadcopter that flies is now entirely solved: you take an open source autopilot, put it on some open source autopilot board, and that's it. If you go further than that, successfully producing delivery drones means that they need to carry a payload safely to some destination, d…

>>Feels a bit like saying that subsidising personal cars is good for the tank business.

Funny you should say that. The US had in 1938 a grand total of about 38 tanks. WWII started a few years later, and after converting prewar automobile factories to tank factories, the USA built more tanks than every other nation combined.

Pretty much the same thing happened for airplanes, as mentioned in the article.

US industrial production was literally the arsenal of democracy.

It is a LOT easier to convert commercial manufacturing base to military purposes than to start from scratch. So, yes, subsidizing commercial production to stay in-country is definitely good for mil readiness (and ultimately, the tank business).

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#54

Post by dfadsadsf »

BurningFrog wrote: post #4

I saw someone claiming drones are the biggest military invention since the stirrup! The US would do well to start catching up on that technology. BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.

Unlikely. Ukraine does not have scale, manufacturing base and talent for that - right now it's mostly assembling drones from Chinese parts with very little innovation on top of that. People talked about AI swarms but very little of that materialized at the front line. Larger drones require satellite connections, advanced materials, etc - Ukraine does not have that either. I expect Ukrainian expertise in war drones will stagnate and become obsolete very quickly after the war.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#55

Post by throwup238 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
throwup238 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not being talked about much outside of military analyst circles but those small drones have significantly changed the logistics of modern warfare possibly more than anything in the 21st century. Before, with cover and conceal warfare, armies had to deliver massive firepower to even have a chance of hitting an enemy unit from a another dynamic military, with ever more expensive precision munitions to make up for…

> hitting an enemy unit from a another dynamic military Would note that Russia’s failure to execute combined-arms manoeuvre-based warfare technically makes it a static fighting force.

I think it’s better to look at it as a spectrum and Russia’s place on it differs based on time and place. They don’t have the air superiority to carry out the kinds of operations the US could and what seems like a suboptimal command structure but they are getting increasingly more organized, especially as the war drags on and they develop/acquire more adaptions like the Shahed drones or glide bomb conversion kits. IMO the biggest thing getting in their way is the desperate human wave tactics that hamper their ability to grow a veteran core that could actually organize the combined arms.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#56

Post by potato3732842 »

cutemonster wrote: post #35
palata wrote: post #31

The problem I have with the idea of subsidising small drones as a proxy for defense is that they solve very different problems: Making a small quadcopter that flies is now entirely solved: you take an open source autopilot, put it on some open source autopilot board, and that's it. If you go further than that, successfully producing delivery drones means that they need to carry a payload safely to some destination, d…

Bomb and kamikaze drones based on civilian drones are already a reality though, Ukraine uses to defend itself. Don't know why you're talking as if that wasn't possible, when it's happening already.

They're not "based on civilian drones" other than using some basic software and electronics and design principals. Everything else is built around cheap and short lifetime.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#57

Post by xnx »

Syonyk wrote: post #47
moduspol wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. It boggles my mind that we still do aircraft flyovers at big football games. Those should be drones doing coordinated light shows--even in heavy winds, rain, and unfavorable conditions. Just to show that we've mastered it, and that we can do it easily even when there are no stakes. My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it, bu…

> My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it... What would you call the Reapers and such? The US has a massive fleet of large, armed drones, remotely operated, and quite a few are capable of being armed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicles_in_th... It's different from the consumer/small commercial drones being tal…

True. This is a very different class of drone. What is the defense against an adversary who releases a thousand quadcopter style drones against a US aircraft carrier?

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#58

Post by hkpack »

palata wrote: post #36
cutemonster wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bomb and kamikaze drones based on civilian drones are already a reality though, Ukraine uses to defend itself. Don't know why you're talking as if that wasn't possible, when it's happening already.

Hmm maybe I'm not being very clear, I didn't want to write a 20 pages essay :-). I was saying that I don't think it's a particularly efficient way to approach defense. My point was that Ukraine doesn't buy 2 millions civilian drones and use them as killer drones. Ukraine is actually producing killer drones. If you are good at producing civilian drones, it doesn't mean that you are good at producing killer drones beca…

Ukraine is absolutely buying all the civilian drones it can get, especially the larger ones with good optics.

One of the previous defense minister was skeptical of their utility too and called them “wedding drones”, and now you can see very frequently in war footages mentions how they are using “wedding drones” in this or that reconnaissance or surveillance operation.

You absolutely need tens of thousands of drones in the air all the time to support modern warfare.

And drones are being hunted by other drones too, so they don’t last very long.

“Millitary grade” digital communication and encryption is not that important as the scale itself.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#59

Post by nradov »

toss1 wrote: post #53
palata wrote: post #31

The problem I have with the idea of subsidising small drones as a proxy for defense is that they solve very different problems: Making a small quadcopter that flies is now entirely solved: you take an open source autopilot, put it on some open source autopilot board, and that's it. If you go further than that, successfully producing delivery drones means that they need to carry a payload safely to some destination, d…

>>Feels a bit like saying that subsidising personal cars is good for the tank business. Funny you should say that. The US had in 1938 a grand total of about 38 tanks. WWII started a few years later, and after converting prewar automobile factories to tank factories, the USA built more tanks than every other nation combined. Pretty much the same thing happened for airplanes, as mentioned in the article. US industrial…

Military vehicles had much more in common with their civilian counterparts in the WWII era. Technologies have almost entirely diverged since then. An M4 Sherman tank had a gasoline piston engine and steel armor. An M1 Abrams tank has a turbine engine, and uranium and ceramic composite armor. To convert a factory from one to the other you'll have to rip out almost everything and start over.

Re: Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race

#60

Post by jandrewrogers »

moduspol wrote: post #44
xnx wrote: post #2

It's shocking to me the Secretary of Defense confirmation hearing only mentioned "drone" once, and that was not in reference to the future of warfare. Ukraine has made pretty clear that drones will play a huge roll in future major conflicts. It's crazy that we haven't already shifted major portions of the defense budget from legacy weapons systems (e.g. tanks) to drones.

Yep. It boggles my mind that we still do aircraft flyovers at big football games. Those should be drones doing coordinated light shows--even in heavy winds, rain, and unfavorable conditions. Just to show that we've mastered it, and that we can do it easily even when there are no stakes. My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it, bu…

> My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good with drones and just strategically have decided not to broadcast it

I am confused.

The US has massive fleets of military drones of every type and size that have been proven in combat environments. They literally pioneered the development of this type of military system and have been using them operationally decades before anyone else. Did everyone just forget this?

The US has extremely mature and capable drone technology, much better than a lot of what is being used in Ukraine. Really the only question is the ability of the US to scale production if it needed to.

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