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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

#61

Post by stickfigure »

Loughla wrote: post #46
stickfigure wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody takes Trump's comments seriously. Possibly not even Trump. Putin is in a hot war right now. Xi seems to be actively preparing for one. The chance of the US sitting aside a military invasion of Taiwan seems very low to me.

It's been, what, 10 years of Trump now. If you're not taking what he says seriously, you have failed to learn anything.

His first term was mostly inconsequential. The second term looks different so far - especially for the Ukranians - but the Canadians, Mexicans, and Greenlanders/Danes aren't preparing for war. To be honest, I think the US military would flatly refuse. There would be violent revolution in the streets here.

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

#62

Post by CrimsonCape »

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…

I have the impression from reading history books that the workforce at the time of World War 2 was uniquely specialized and widely available. There were many machinists that had special knowledge and experience of how to run their lathes, presses, etc. This workforce was involved in the assembly line of passenger cars, so you had expert machinists involved in producing passenger cars which made expertise widely available. Because of their knowledge, they could easily pivot to an armored vehicle (for example).

In today's world the assembly line itself is derived from CAD, robot CNC machines, and the workforce is not specialized. The workforce consists of "assemblers" and machine operators, moreso than "machinists" or "machine designers"

This difference between workforces is a potentially profound difference.

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

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

throwup238 wrote: post #55
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. IM…

> 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

I’m not suggesting they aren’t a lethal fighting force. They’re just not a dynamic one. They still rely on static tactics, i.e. blowing up the enemy, versus dynamic ones that rely on manoeuvre.

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

#64

Post by tim333 »

throwup238 wrote: post #48
tim333 wrote: post #45

>But look, Ukraine are producing two-and-a-half drones a day now. That seems way off. See the recent euromaidanpress headline: >Defense News: Ukraine plans 15-km unmanned “kill zone” along Russian front as drone production hits 4,000+ daily https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/02/defense-news-ukraine-... Which is kind of interesting strategically. I was thinking Ukraine can't really afford to keep losing large numbers…

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…

The larger drones are having an effect too. Ukraine as of mid feb had taken out about 10% or Russia's refining capacity and it's ongoing - the Ufa oil refinery was hit a day or so ago which is one of the largest in Russia and 1300 km from Ukraine. And of course their naval drones have had quite an effect on Russia's warships.

(recent sky new footage of them being sent off https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEwObPT8zE)

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

#65

Post by nradov »

xnx wrote: post #57
Syonyk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The type of quadcopter style drones that can be produced in the thousands have very short range and limited sensors. How are they going to get to the aircraft carrier? The lessons learned in a land conflict in Eastern Europe have little relevance to the Pacific Theater, where the US Navy intends to focus now.

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

#66

Post by nradov »

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.

I guess you haven't been paying attention. The Marine Corps has divested its tanks in preparation for fighting an island-hopping campaign against China.

https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/2857680/fo...

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

#67

Post by 00N8 »

xnx wrote: post #57
Syonyk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The carriers aren't sailing around alone - they're escorted by a whole fleet (plus air patrol) that will intercept the drone launching vehicle at multiple dozen nautical miles range. Smaller quadcopter drones won't even get close to catching the carrier (which can travel over 40 kts while evading) before their batteries die. And even if a few hundred got through, how much damage can they really do? I'd imagine the flight decks can be patched quickly, although some radar equipment & any jets parked at the time of the attack would probably be lost.

It's definitely a concern as part of a larger attack, but I don't think a quadcopter drone swarm alone is likely to sink a carrier or leave it combat ineffective in the long term.

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

#68

Post by umbra07 »

hkpack wrote: post #58
palata wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Yes, but that is simply because they don't have a better choice.

Given the choice between a $200 DJI and a $100 homebuilt "killer" drone, you would probably want 2x of the killer drones. However, if your bottleneck is your manufacturing capabilities instead of your money, then you might be forced to use the DJI drones instead of the custom killers.

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

#69

Post by throwup238 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63
throwup238 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. IM…

> 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 I’m not suggesting they aren’t a lethal fighting force. They’re just not a dynamic one. They still rely on static tactics, i.e. blowing up the enemy, versus dynamic ones that rely on manoeuvre.

I don’t mean lethality either. It’s hard to craft an argument here without doing a blog post length comment (that I’m hardly qualified to write) but even from the last week there’s evidence of Russian FPV drone use with very mobile forces: https://armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/co...

I don’t know where you draw the line between static and dynamic/modern but IMO they’re clearly in the latter mode at least some of the time, even though it’s hard to tell which attacks are strategic and which are the result of combined arms tactics due to fog of war.

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

#70

Post by JumpCrisscross »

throwup238 wrote: post #69
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 I’m not suggesting they aren’t a lethal fighting force. They’re just not a dynamic one. They still rely on static tactics, i.e. blowing up the enemy, versus dynamic ones that rely on manoeuvre.

I don’t mean lethality either. It’s hard to craft an argument here without doing a blog post length comment (that I’m hardly qualified to write) but even from the last week there’s evidence of Russian FPV drone use with very mobile forces: https://armyrecognition.com/focus-analysis-conflicts/army/co... I don’t know where you draw the line between static and dynamic/modern but IMO they’re clearly in the latter mode at…

> don’t know where you draw the line between static and dynamic/modern

“Biddle identifies what he calls the ‘Modern System’ of combat (though I am going to treat it a bit more broadly than he does). In short, it’s a set of tactics and operational art that emerged out of the First World War and were refined in the European theaters (East and West) of the Second, to cope with the tremendous potency of industrialized firepower which had fundamentally reshaped war. Rather than relying on fixed positions for defense and dense shock-formations (‘shock’ here – think ‘bayonets, grenades and trench-knives’), the modern system relies on cover-and-concealment for survivability and maneuver in the offense (go around, not through your opponent’s overwhelming firepower). Adroit use of terrain on the tactical level is a key component of the system, which in turn requires both extensive training of junior officers and NCOs and devolving quite a bit of command agency down to them so that they can make local decisions (compare to, for instance, linear tactics which leave virtually no decision-making to the individual rifleman).

…

Static-System armies, since – as we’ll see – in modern warfare, they tend to be a fair bit more fixed and static than the modern system armies (note: I’m going to keep calling them ‘armies’ for simplicity, but the modern system combined land and air assets), preferring to dig in for sieges and trench warfare. So again: static system (old, cheap) vs. modern system (new, expensive). And remember: this is a difference in doctrine not equipment, in how an army expects to fight their battles and how they actually do – a difference in how, not in what. It is possible to have all of the tools of the modern system, and still not have the training or will to do the modern system (indeed, Iraq did just this in 1991 and got torn apart for it). You can buy tanks and planes, but you cannot buy the modern system, you must train it.“

Russia’s human waves are a trench tactic. Command flows entirely top down. They’re going straight at the enemy. And training is virtually impossible given the expendability of their troops.

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...

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