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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

#61

Post by renewiltord »

modeless wrote: post #35
adastra22 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's how the government operates. Same with the initial COTS and Commercial Crew awards to SpaceX: it was paired with a similar contracts to Orbital and Boeing, to make sure that if the untested startup failed there would be a traditional contractor ready to take up the slack.

Hopefully this time the incumbent doesn't get paid twice as much for a worse outcome, as happened with Commercial Crew... NASA paid Boeing 4.5 billion and counting, SpaceX 2.6 billion. SpaceX launched astronauts to ISS 7 times, completely fulfilling the original contract, and continues to launch on new contracts with NASA. Meanwhile Boeing has yet to fly a single astronaut and required NASA to pay them extra for thei…

That's just one contract. SpaceX will win the rest. ULA is dead. They're being sold for parts.

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

#62

Post by bigbacaloa »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #60
anyfactor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much. I feel like engineering innovation has been concentrated on technology and not in defense engineering at all. Immigrants have helped a lot in building the tech sector's innovation in the last half of the century. But the defense industry often requires naturalized citizens to work on these projects. I think there is a difference between immigrants coming to North America to work and eventually se…

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…

[dead]

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

#63

Post by rapsey »

torginus wrote: post #46
anyfactor wrote: post #40

Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border protection, then they made drone-ramming drones and now unmanned fighter jets. I am genuinely curious. I was in the whole retail investor space since early 2010s which saw the EV hype. Workhorse was supposed to supply vans for federal postal vans, Nikola had that…

The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development. And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. I…

> 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.

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

#64

Post by qp11 »

mulmen wrote: post #17

This is for the next phase of the project that involves building flying prototypes. Later stages include mass production which could go to a Boeing or Lockheed. I wonder how much of the decision to give this to a smaller player is based on a desire to maintain diversity among defense contractors and the competitive advantages that come with. In other words the US Military continues to be a successful centrally planne…

Probably overthinking. The Europeans signed deals with Helsing and Palantir recently for similar projects. That must have lit a fire under someones ass.

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

#66

Post by labrador »

SushiHippie wrote: post #29

Even though I never heard about Anduril before, this is now the second time in a day that I 'hear' about it. The first time was a post about the latest Mark Rober video 'promoting' Anduril/military technology to a child/teen audience. https://lemmy.ca/post/19761360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU

In case you haven't noticed, there's a pretty serious drone war going on right now and Anduril makes drones. With the new US defense package they stand to get some business, among other reasons for them to be in the news.

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

#67

Post by 4gotunameagain »

ranger_danger wrote: post #52
ordinaryradical wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the more leftwing NixOS contributors hate that Anduril is using their technology and are trying to keep them from contributing/sponsoring/etc. via code of conduct changes.

Honestly I think military is just a scapegoat for these people, their real mission (like many before them) seems to be using the lack of CoC acceptance as their own weapon to justify bullying them for having opinions they don't like. That has always been the MO. They want the CoC to be able to silence undesired speech in the first place, and if they refuse, it becomes their strawman to allow them to keep arguing the…

While the phenomenon you describe certainly exists, it is vital to separate it from the phenomenon of not wanting to support the US "defense" sector.

I do not identify as a leftist, and would not be considered one, but as an aerospace engineer I would never work for something that aids the US war machine.

Those weapons are never used in "defense". Do they defend an unsustainable way of life ? Sure.

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

#68

Post by Animats »

It's impressive how much hardware they've been able to develop.

Their "Fury", which they acquired from Blue Force, is "a single engine business jet with no cabin." It was originally intended as a target drone, something for fighter pilots to practice against. Anduril repurposed it as an autonomous weapons system.

They do mean autonomous. Their slogan is "Autonomy for Every Mission".

We're seeing the future of warfare in Ukraine. The grunts are pinned down by drones and artillery, while the mobile forces are unmanned. Zipping around in helicopters is over, once the opposition has anything that can shoot them down. The expensive fighters are more agile and survivable, but they are few.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/03/30/a-drone-w...

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

#70

Post by renewiltord »

Dalewyn wrote: post #25
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #13

Why General Atomics? They are also yet another defense incumbent that needs to be disrupted. They make the Predator and other current UAVs, which are all expensive and uninteresting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_S... In general I think the government needs to move contracts away from older companies and fund young innovative ones. Partnerships between young and old simply sustain the inc…

>They are also yet another defense incumbent that needs to be disrupted. The first and arguably only mission of the Department of Defense is to win wars. Diversifying the economy is none of their concern beyond having a economy with which to fuel their war machines. If you want diversification of the economy, look towards the Department of Commerce. Or to put it another way: Thumping your diversity drum doesn't win y…

Competitive procurement is intentional US military method expressly for military purposes. Saying the DoD shouldn't care about it because it needs to win wars is a meaningless statement. Part of how it wins wars is by having effective equipment and part of how it has effective equipment is that it has a competitive process. Cultivating supplier diversity is intentional.

Honestly, quite an absurdity of a comment. Just says words without any coherent meaning.

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