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

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

#51

Post by RugnirViking » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

BariumBlue wrote: post #14

exabrial wrote: post #3

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability. These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

An MQ-9 has roughly the same wingspan as an A-10 - they're not small birds. An MQ-9 needs to have a good sensor ball, ideally with both color and IR, gps jamming resistance, weapons integration with multiple types of missiles (ideally large enough to take out something larger than a motorcycle), good on-target time INCLUDING transit time (if it can only stare for one hour on target it'd be pointless), good uplink and…

between these extremes there are, parent posits, some efficiencies to be had. Do you agree that its at least possible to get a cheaper solution thats 90% of the way there? Ukraine seems to do pretty well for themselves on this front, and several other countries around the world are no slouches either. Even iran themselves do quite well. Sure their drones dont have the fanciest optics or whatever, but when looking at a cost per millitary effectiveness standpoint, are five redundant drones with worse optics better than one big one? what about five hundred vs one? five thousand? The same logic goes for most of the components.

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

#52

Post by davrosthedalek » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #31

swiftcoder wrote: post #25

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The…

Yeah, it's about requirements. The Ukraine war has shown that fast-iterating MVPs are better in many battlefield situations. The saying that militaries end up preparing for the prior war instead of the next, comes to mind.

True, but I think the US requirements are indeed different. Ukraine must repel invading forces in their own country -> lowish range, mass produced, not necessarily precision strike.

US want to project power far away from its shores -> long range, precision strike, long loitering time.

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

#53

Post by yonaguska » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

mountainb wrote: post #30

hvb2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA Not excessive taxes, a political choice to spend a lot of the revenue on defense. And anyone who wants to reduce military spending will get asked: "Don't you support our troops?" And that'll be the end of that

Taxes in the US go to a cluster of major items. Medicare, other medical, Social Security, interest, VA benefits and veteran's medical care, federal spending on the indigent or disabled, and Defense. Those together are 94% of annual federal spending. None of that spending is subject to that much debate; all the remaining "debate" is over the remaining 6%. I don't think defense is really as discretionary as it seems. A…

I think there is a lot of discord over medicare/medical, social security, and interest at least, but maybe I'm just in a bubble.

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

#54

Post by megous » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

US should be split up so it can't do any more damage to the world. Americans can't be trusted with putting that much power in the hands of a few people anyway.

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

#55

Post by tclancy » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #25

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The…

Always fighting the last war. But wait until you see how the next generation of our drones fails in a future war!

Being less flip, the pull quote suggests (per my bias) our drone design is as much influenced by how much shit contractors can sell to put on a drone as it is by tactical needs. The kinds of targets that would require one ton of explosive are fixed sites that have been specifically hardened against attack. You'd hope some modern McArthur would look at the situation and say, "Screw it, we will just go around those sites and bomb the hell out of their supply lines with tiny drones", but what the hell do I know?

In short: War is sell.

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

#56

Post by alex43578 » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #25

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The…

While it's clear the US is working on those types of drones too (cloning Shaheds, basically), the likely mission profile of the US requires we have that capability. Pick your potential future US conflict and it won't look like us flinging disposable drones over the border at Canada, but rather needing to project power from an aircraft carrier or forward base against an adversary, where range, payload, sensors, and more matter. Quantity has a quality all its own, but there's no world where the US doesn't need a Reaper style drone in the arsenal.

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

#57

Post by thatmf » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

Another novel approach to saving money: stop fighting Israel's wars

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

#58

Post by tclancy » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #38

mrtksn wrote: post #28

I’m no military expert by any means but US appears to be obsessed with destroying some super important target to win, like they did with killing Iran leaders only to find out that new leader replace the perished. The same with the other stuff, they have super important radar and super important ships that need to be defended and a failure creates irreplaceable loses. Iran on the other hand, just like with their super…

The US in general, and this administration in particular, has bought into US exceptionalism and action movie tropes. Just gotta blow up the death star with the leader on board and then the war is over. In reality there's a chain of command and line of succession, and military equipment all around the country. If they had been smart, they would have been learning from Ukraine, because we've found ourselves in basicall…

>Just gotta blow up the death star with the leader on board

The fact they unironically used Star Wars in their war memes was an amazing self-own.

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

#59

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #12

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…

Life critical software that gets visibility by congress tends to be a very bureaucratic process. Your boss doesn't want your commit being the one that causes a worldwide diplomatic issue. I assume that smaller/cheaper drones avoid a lot of this because the stakes aren't near as high and quite a bit of the development occurs in private industry first.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by RetroTechie » Thu, Jul 09, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

It's disappointing how often the public gives a silent thumbs up on military spend. Okay I'll grant most US citizens would have preferred Trump hadn't gotten into this war.

But most talk is about the $$ cost of this war, how little Trump has to show for it, and price of gasoline & groceries.

Instead (for US citizens), the talk should be about what else could have benefitted from those $$, and now isn't because it'll be used to re-stock weaponry. Think healthcare, infrastructure, education, research, etc etc.

That's the real cost of wars like this.