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Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

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Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#71

Post by 91bananas »

nickff wrote: post #49
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We spend well over a trillion dollars on education. And we spend well over a trillion dollars on defense. And yet the straight of hormuz is still closed, just like there are still children who don't have enough food and suffer for it. Comparing the total budget of one thing against a budget delta of another thing is wrong. Compare deltas of each and compare their benefits.

> "And we spend well over a trillion dollars on defense." That's just not true; the US Military Budget for 2025 was (USD) $768 BB. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

They're asking for 1.5B right now

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#72

Post by jandrewrogers »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #60
jandrewrogers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remove our dependence on oil, and thus never need to fight wars for it The US is the largest oil producer in the world by a significant margin. They don't have a dependency on foreign oil. They are also the largest refiner of oil products in the world. Any wars related to oil are about other countries' dependence on foreign oil and refining.

> The US is the largest oil producer in the world by a significant margin. The US is also the second largest oil importer in the world. A true fact about oil is that it's not all the same, so lumping them all into a single category is a mistake when talking about production/refining/consumption. > They don't have a dependency on foreign oil. It does still, because local refining is optimized for a global market not d…

> The US is also the second largest oil importer in the world.

The US sells oil refinery services to the rest of the world. They "import" crude oil and then "export" the refined product.

US refinery capacity far exceeds its domestic oil production. What did you think they were doing with all that capacity?

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#73

Post by phil21 »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #60
jandrewrogers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> remove our dependence on oil, and thus never need to fight wars for it The US is the largest oil producer in the world by a significant margin. They don't have a dependency on foreign oil. They are also the largest refiner of oil products in the world. Any wars related to oil are about other countries' dependence on foreign oil and refining.

> The US is the largest oil producer in the world by a significant margin. The US is also the second largest oil importer in the world. A true fact about oil is that it's not all the same, so lumping them all into a single category is a mistake when talking about production/refining/consumption. > They don't have a dependency on foreign oil. It does still, because local refining is optimized for a global market not d…

Local refining is setup for refining heavier crudes. They can process sweet domestic crudes just fine at a technical level. It would be an economic loss due to underutilized stuff like Cokers, and likely at somewhat reduced overall throughput. Light crude is typically more expensive than heavy which accounts for much of the theoretical economic loss, but perhaps that will be inverted for some time if trends continue.

You would lose some of the bottom of the barrel products like asphalt and the high sulphur products sour crudes have as well, but I'm unsure of how impactful that would be in practice.

I'm certainly no petroleum engineer so I'm sure someone will be along to correct me - but I looked into this when I kept seeing this trotted out. You can definitely refine domestic light crude oils in local refineries setup for heavier crudes. The resulting products will simply be more expensive due to the refinery operating less efficiently. Self-sufficiency for fuel products at least is likely not a major concern for the US if the shit hits the fan for real.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#74

Post by b3ing »

canucker2016 wrote: post #70
jonplackett wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is weird is that all these current super expensive high tech weapons like aircraft carriers, f22s are basically like cavalry in the tank era. Drones (and cheap-ish ballistic missiles) have turned it all on its head. In the war with Iran you have the USA shooting down 50k drones with multiple multi-million dollar missiles. Some of the THAAD missiles are over 10 million each - and you have to launch 2 to get an in…

In the book "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich (former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works), the authour talks about the behaviour of the military officers. Spy planes weren't seen as valuable/important to the typical officer who was looking to get promoted to higher levels versus the typical sexy fighter jets or bombers. Just as in any group, there are certain positions that are more prestigious/desired than other positions. Typi…

I'm sure the defense contractors wanted to sell the expensive planes that require more maintenance rather than drones

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#75

Post by Leonard_of_Q »

jonplackett wrote: post #53
Aboutplants wrote: post #9

The most surprising thing here is that the US was previously only spending $225 Million on drones when it’s been fully apparent for the past decade(s) that drones were the future of warfare.

What is weird is that all these current super expensive high tech weapons like aircraft carriers, f22s are basically like cavalry in the tank era. Drones (and cheap-ish ballistic missiles) have turned it all on its head. In the war with Iran you have the USA shooting down 50k drones with multiple multi-million dollar missiles. Some of the THAAD missiles are over 10 million each - and you have to launch 2 to get an in…

> like cavalry in the tank era

Ehhh, tanks are the cavalry of the tank era. Cavalry did not go away, it changed from its namesake horses to armoured battle vehicles but its task remains more or less the same. Drones and 'cheap-ish' ballistic missiles can make life harder for the mentioned expensive high-tech weaponry until cost-effective counter-measures are widely available. For drones that'll probably end up being directed energy weapons - lasers and the likes - while ballistic weaponry can (for now) be countered by moving out of their (ballistic) path. Eventually aircraft carriers will probably be replaced by multiple drone carriers, that may happen sooner or later depending on how the current fleets end up performing in coming conflicts.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#76

Post by ASalazarMX »

chung8123 wrote: post #63
SimianSci wrote: post #61

I see drones as more of a side-affect to the new era of warfare we are in. The more powerful your economy, the more autonomous weapons you can create and eventually deploy. Manufacturing capacity and economic resiliancy are becoming far more important than a nation's ability to equip and train its military. The alarming part of this to me is that this heavily implies that wars will be decided more by who can successf…

It feels like the drone factories should be targetable and who controls that may control a war.

Ukraine has shown that a drone factory can be made on any old building, it's not like they need huge machines. Would you carpet bomb all usable buildings? Cheap drones as a defensive weapon make war way more costly to the aggressor.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#77

Post by nullocator »

This should be a massive wakeup call to anyone who believes the ~$500B-1T per year "defense" tax burden placed on U.S. citizens for the last 20 years is keeping them safe.

Apparently it wasn't until Ukraine+Iran that the most sophisticated and well funded military in the world realized that cheap drones and missiles weren't just the future but they are the present. We've been getting raked over the coals by these defense contractors and I'm guessing we probably have no idea how far down are pants actually are.

And the response: 1.5x the budget and unboard a new generation of corrupt defense contractors who will sell the american military and people more shit tier products at top dollar.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#78

Post by chung8123 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #76
chung8123 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the drone factories should be targetable and who controls that may control a war.

Ukraine has shown that a drone factory can be made on any old building, it's not like they need huge machines. Would you carpet bomb all usable buildings? Cheap drones as a defensive weapon make war way more costly to the aggressor.

Cheap drones have made war more expensive for people that care about where they inflict the damage.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#79

Post by 9x39 »

nullocator wrote: post #77

This should be a massive wakeup call to anyone who believes the ~$500B-1T per year "defense" tax burden placed on U.S. citizens for the last 20 years is keeping them safe. Apparently it wasn't until Ukraine+Iran that the most sophisticated and well funded military in the world realized that cheap drones and missiles weren't just the future but they are the present. We've been getting raked over the coals by these def…

It could also be that the tide is changing and we did have the security ROI until cheap drone tech emerged to push us to a new gen of warfare.

For example, there is still a stable petrodollar, there are 11 carrier battle groups and 70 nuclear subs out there, there is an experienced US military capable of force projection. These are a few random metrics from a casual observer, and we seem to get more out of spending than some rival countries.

Re: Pentagon spending on drones jumps from $225M to $55B in one year

#80

Post by tim-tday »

analogpixel wrote: post #38
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #20

It would cost less to provide free breakfast and lunch to all public school students in the US, but that might actually improve the country's future instead of blowing things up.

If we took all the money we spent on war for 2 years, and diverted it to buying $10k electric cars, we could buy everyone in America an electric car, remove our dependence on oil, and thus never need to fight wars for it ever again; let other countries fight it out for oil while we move on to bigger and better things. or we could continue spending all of our money on wars to get oil, fall further and further behind,…

We had no need to fight Iran to begin with. We just did it as a bro move to support a buddy.

And it isn’t over oil it’s over Israel being sick of Iran funding groups that continuously launch rockets at their cities. (Which, frankly I get, but maybe not enough to crash the global economy)

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