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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

#81

Post by tim-tday »

analogpixel wrote: post #66
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.

If we don't need foreign oil, why are gas prices going up?

Oil companies reported record profits this week. Surely that’s unrelated?

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

#82

Post by tim-tday »

GerryAdamsSF wrote: post #68
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The causative relationship of funding on student performance is not strong. Please don't pretend that "school funding" is the same as feeding children or that we don't have established research showing a connection between school meal programs and improved academic performance and reduced student suspensions.

[flagged]

You are misreading the science.

The parental effect only shows up for the immediate parents not grandparents. Hereditary causes would result in persistent effects. The cause is therefore not genetics but rather family environment. (See studies of children of immigrants)

Successful and wealthy parents support their children, giving them a calm and supportive environment in which to excel. (Poor parents who do that have high achieving children even if they themselves didn’t achieve at a high level).

It’s not genetics it’s environment.

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

#83

Post by tim-tday »

tristanj wrote: post #25

A Chinese drone manufacturer [Poly Technologies] has disclosed a massive government order for almost a million lightweight kamikaze drones, to be delivered by 2026 https://defence-blog.com/china-places-massive-order-for-kami... https://www.warquants.com/p/one-million-suicide-drones-with-...

Chinese leadership has instructed their military to be ready for all operations for reunifying with Taiwan by 2027.

I can only think of a short list of options a military could provide for that.

A million drones would feature high in any such plan.

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

#84

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ohnei wrote: post #69
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have to keep the aircraft carriers hundreds of miles off shore Drones + cheap antidrones + aircraft carriers + stealth aircraft looks like a solid high/low optimum. Anyone pitching an only-high or only-low strategy is leaving chips on the table.

I'm not familiar with a stealth meant for even when you have to park it sometimes. If anyone has a great drone dominance then all your anti drone should go into drone related infrastructure. If someone has the corresponding high dominance then you can wait until nature runs out of resources for maintaining the absurd. The US is a strategy of failure since Vietnam because it is profitable to war hawk supporters to los…

> If anyone has a great drone dominance then all your anti drone should go into drone related infrastructure

If your opponent has drone dominance, you neutralize that advantage with anti-drone kit and then build your own advantage. Part of that will be drones. But part will be heavier, more sophisticated platforms. (Which will eventually pilot themselves, but aren’t drones since they aren’t cheap.) You can’t win a war only playing defense.

> someone has the corresponding high dominance then you can wait until nature runs out of resources for maintaining the absurd

Their high technology destroys your industry while you wait. This is strategy as old as the Bronze Age.

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

#85

Post by FireBeyond »

rayiner wrote: post #50
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The causative relationship of funding on student performance is not strong. Please don't pretend that "school funding" is the same as feeding children or that we don't have established research showing a connection between school meal programs and improved academic performance and reduced student suspensions.

We spend $100 billion a year on SNAP, which goes primarily to feeding children and mothers. Why is it so important to you to structure the program in one way (providing kids lunches in school) versus feeding kids a different way (providing parents cash to feed their kids)?

On one hand, studies on outcomes...

... on the other, your "way of life".

But why, to answer your question? Because those studies show, among other thing, that a non-negligible number of parents, given cash, can't or won't use it to feed their kids.

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

#86

Post by hackable_sand »

GerryAdamsSF wrote: post #68
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The causative relationship of funding on student performance is not strong. Please don't pretend that "school funding" is the same as feeding children or that we don't have established research showing a connection between school meal programs and improved academic performance and reduced student suspensions.

[flagged]

It's not, you just have a supremacist world view that requires alternative facts to stay coherent.

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

#87

Post by none2585 »

tim-tday wrote: post #80
analogpixel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Because the money is the most important thing being lost?

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

#88

Post by rayiner »

FireBeyond wrote: post #85
rayiner wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spend $100 billion a year on SNAP, which goes primarily to feeding children and mothers. Why is it so important to you to structure the program in one way (providing kids lunches in school) versus feeding kids a different way (providing parents cash to feed their kids)?

On one hand, studies on outcomes... ... on the other, your "way of life". But why, to answer your question? Because those studies show, among other thing, that a non-negligible number of parents, given cash, can't or won't use it to feed their kids.

Why should a system that's already designed for a fraction of the population be further beholden to an even smaller fraction of the population?

The SNAP system we have is good, and it's generous. The SNAP benefit for my family of five (two adults, three kids) would be $1,183 a month, which is about what we spend on groceries shopping at ALDI and LIDL. It's good to let parents choose how to use that money to feed their kids, instead of the government imposing a top-down, one-size-fits all system.

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

#89

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #28
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.

We spend drastically more money than this on education; it isn't even in the same ballpark. People get tripped up about this because the funding comes from different taxing bodies (most education funding is state and local) --- but all taxation is linked. We also couldn't fully fund free school meals for this sum, this sum is an ambit claim by the administration not a budget, and a large component of this funding req…

Capex becomes opex if the enemy is shooting your drones down or if you're using disposable drones to deliver fatal payloads.

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

#90

Post by anigbrowl »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #52
analogpixel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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.

Any wars related to oil are about other countries' dependence on foreign oil and refining.

This implies that only they have an interest in starting oil wars, but of course it suits the US to be able to inflict supply shocks on other countries. This is an ancient military strategy which the US has leveraged in the past, eg in the runup to WW2. Under the current administration however, it seems to be imposing them indiscriminately, hurting erstwhile allies as well as opponents.

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