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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

#91

Post by anigbrowl »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #72
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This is not as simple as you present it, which is why we import about 70% of our jet fuel from South Korea.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

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

#92

Post by anigbrowl »

rayiner wrote: post #88
FireBeyond wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

Why do conservatives hate doing anything for children so much? WTF. He gave you a clear answer which you just ignored so you could repeat your ideal of how things should work instead of addressing the realities of how they do. You are smart enough to understand the difference, but chose to give a BS reply.

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

#93

Post by anigbrowl »

boc wrote: post #42
cco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same reason Iran is using a lot of drones now. It doesn't seem like the US would be in a conflict where they don't have air superiority. Hmmm, this sentence appears to be a paradox? Is the US not fighting Iran right now? Iran has a very weak air force and the US claims air superiority, yet Iran is using a lot of drones. I think your comment proves GP's point, regardless of traditional air power, drones will fea…

Iranian drones have done nothing to prevent the US and Israel dropping gravity bombs en-mass over their capital right now. JDAMs and unguided munitions are still far cheaper for the explosion size than any drone today. That's not the situation in the Ukraine war on either side. The US has used one-way "drones" since the 80s or earlier. The entire Gulf War in the early 90s featured a ton of tomahawk cruise missiles. T…

I disagree. Iranian drones have taken out a lot of US sensing capabilities in the theater, from ground-based radars to AWACS planes, in addition to some logistical support like refueling tankers.

That has made US overflight of Iranian territory uch riskier than was expected at the beginning of the conflict, and it's notable that the US has continued to rely heavily on stand-off munitions.

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

#94

Post by nullocator »

tim-tday wrote: post #81
analogpixel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Are there any times in recent memory where they didn't report record profits though? Maybe they posted record profits despite the war not because of it (I don't think I actually believe this, not who knows).

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

#95

Post by nullocator »

rayiner wrote: post #40
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.

I would love to have a Japan-style universal lunch program. But this point is an empty appeal to emotion. Kids are being fed. The U.S. spends $100 billion a year on SNAP and $18 billion a year on the National School Lunch Program. We just focus most of the money on cash benefits to parents of children rather than feeding kids at school.

Not sure whether you're intentionally spreading misinformation on this subject or not, but based on who I'm responding to it probably is intentional.

Anyways in contrast to "Kids are being fed". Almost 14% of children in the U.S. face food insecurity according to the U.S. government. There is real evidence this improved during covid when the government did offer additional funding for school provided meals. The number of food insecure children is on the rise. And every year republican administered states make it harder to obtain and maintain SNAP and WIC benefits whether you qualify or not.

So no it's not an appeal to emotion because there is real data that disagrees with you, and no the kids arent universally being fed. I'm glad you and your family are so secure in your situation you can comfortably argue against children receiving meals on the internet. But for some of us any number of children going hungry for any reason is too many, it's not justifiable as "good enough" or "we spend enough" if there are still hungry children whom have no control of the situation themselves.

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

#96

Post by rayiner »

anigbrowl wrote: post #92
rayiner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

Why do conservatives hate doing anything for children so much? WTF. He gave you a clear answer which you just ignored so you could repeat your ideal of how things should work instead of addressing the realities of how they do. You are smart enough to understand the difference, but chose to give a BS reply.

It’s not liberal versus conservative. I’m a liberal on this. I support SNAP. It’s a generous benefit and that’s okay with me. We should give parents plenty of money to make sure their kids can eat.

Your position isn’t just liberal, it’s post-liberal. You’re saying that it’s not enough to have cash benefits that gives parents reasonable choices in feeding their kids. It’s not about having broad-based policies that work for the typical person in need. It’s a post-liberalism that’s obsessed with changing systems that work for normal people to cater to the most dysfunctional few percent of the population.

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

#97

Post by throw0101a »

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…

> 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.

As important as drones (short- and long-range) are in the current conflicts, it's not like Ukraine isn't using tanks or isn't asking for fighter planes (and non-cheap Tomahawk missiles).

* https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/europe/ukraine-sweden-gripen-...

On this general topic, the Baltic Defence Review channel just posted the video "1 Tank or 5,000 Drones: What Would You Choose?":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLJz5dva5qY

I'm not sure it's "either-or", but rather "both-and".

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

#98

Post by hulitu »

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.

They chose the wrong supplier. This was fixed. /s

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

#99

Post by hulitu »

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.

Why would i give you free breakfast, instead of increasing my profits ? /s

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

#100

Post by throw0101a »

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

If someone has high dominance, they can probably afford to take 20% of that capability and divert the funding to low dominance as well. The reverse will not necessarily be true: if you have low dominance does not mean you have the capability to go high.

> The US is a strategy of failure since Vietnam because it is profitable to war hawk supporters to lose every war in the economics and funnel the money back into more strategic losers.

The US generally does not lose militarily: it has 'lost' because they didn't have a strategic goal, or decided that their goal was no longer important.

The US could have stuck with South Vietnam just like it stuck with South Korea (to this day, in 2026), but decided to stop. There's no reason why they couldn't kept with it, and we have a North/South Vietnam like we have a North/South Korea.

That is the present situation with Iran: the US has/is trounced Iran military, but the problem is that the Administration cannot answer the question "What is the purpose of this war?". Hegseth is dunking on "elite" colleges and wanting a "warrior army", but one thing colleges do is things like teach von Clausewitz. You know, "War is the continuation of politics by other means."

The US managed to stick with Iraq a little longer, through the insurgency and then against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, and now Iraq has elections:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iraqi_parliamentary_elect...

There was enough of a civil culture in Iraq that wanted a system of government to keep it going. There seems to not have been enough a civic culture in Afghanistan to sustain a similar government and to fight against the Taliban. Militarily the US was doing just fine against the Taliban.

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