[HN Gopher] Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard
___________________________________________________________________
Ukraine uses Australian drones made of cardboard
Author : rmason
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-08-27 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aircosmosinternational.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aircosmosinternational.com)
| kgilpin wrote:
| Make your own!
|
| https://store.flitetest.com/ft-simple-cub-mkr2/
|
| This one's technically foam, but it's a very cardboardy foam.
| With a little bit of carbon fiber reinforcement (provided) it's
| surprisingly durable and MUCH simpler and easier to build that a
| balsa or fiberglass airplane.
|
| After building and flying one of these, I can certainly believe
| that cardboard/foam construction is great for a "disposable"
| (single use) airplane or even for a couple of missions - knowing
| that the life span will be short.
| Animats wrote:
| Ukraine has been going through about 10,000 drones a month. This
| should up the rate of production.
|
| No rear areas. No safe fire bases. No Green Zone. Another major
| change to war.
| mcphage wrote:
| Under negative points:
|
| > Declining reusability due to the stress on the structure: the
| cardboard will not be strong enough to make many flights.
|
| Which is no doubt absolutely true--but on the other hand, the
| cardboard isn't the valuable part of the drone. You could have a
| stockpile of the cardboard (which they claim is a little larger
| than a pizza box), and swap out the motor and electronics if a
| unit survives long enough that the cardboard starts to fail.
| ledauphin wrote:
| yeah, this struck me as strange too. the ongoing maintenance on
| long-lasting industrially-manufactured drones might well cost
| more than rebuilding a cardboard one every few weeks.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| I would expect Ukraine could learn how to produce their own in a
| couple of weeks. Have patterns and a press to cut out the pieces
| and mass produce them. The effect of thousands of these would be
| similar to massive volleys of arrows in medevil battle, only in
| this case each has targeting and 5kg warhead
| soligern wrote:
| Yeah but where are the Ukrainians going to get the electronic
| components? I'm sure some pieces of cardboard are not the
| limiting factor here.
| Teever wrote:
| digikey, mouser, aliexpress, amazon, banggood, ebay?
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| From their western allies, unlike russia who is limited to
| shady deals with iran, india and china.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| A lot of the stuff we would send them comes from the same
| places.
| tenpies wrote:
| FWIW the level of transparency between those "shady deals"
| is probably identical to presumably "not shady deals" of
| NATO.
|
| I mean the US Democrats voted down even the mere notion
| that maybe the most surface-level audit of US aid to
| Ukraine could be allowed[1].
|
| [1]https://theintercept.com/2023/08/02/ukraine-aid-special-
| insp...
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| It's already audited at several levels so it was voted
| down because it was a case of the Republicans wanting to
| add another layer. For the record almost all Republicans
| favor helping Ukraine just like the Democrats. What we
| are witnessing is Politics with Ukraine caught in the
| middle. Zelensky is putting a vote in front of the
| government that classifies any corruption as treason
| against the Nation and a minimum of 15 years in Prison
| with all assets seized.
| tenpies wrote:
| > It's already audited at several levels so it was voted
| down because it was a case of the Republicans wanting to
| add another layer.
|
| Can you provide a source, because everything I've seen
| says otherwise.
|
| Even Democrat-friendly media, has been essentially forced
| to reluctantly report that indeed, the US government has
| no idea where billions of dollars of weapons and aid are
| ending up[1]. And there is always a delay with these
| things, so we can only assume the amount is exponentially
| larger and will never be truly known.
|
| Clearly, if the material and monetary aid is already
| being audited, it's not being done well or correctly, so
| an actual auditor was more than warranted.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/14/us-ukraine-
| aid-cabl... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-
| security/2022/11/27/...
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > almost all Republicans favor helping Ukraine just like
| the Democrats
|
| That's a bit overstatement, no? I mean we have Trump who
| is very visibly admirer of Putin and his practices and
| various other dictatorial murderers like MBL and strongly
| supports current apartheid in Israel, no change there
| since invasion. If he wins the next elections, which
| seems more and more probable, Ukraine is going to lose
| all western support overnight with corresponding results
| for war.
|
| I don't get it at all, republicans should be as anti-
| russian as possible historically since current russia is
| much more Soviet russia rather than anything else, but
| they keep voting for him and he was very clear on the
| topic in the past. That says more about real opinions of
| republicans rather than anything else.
|
| Or am I missing something as an US outsider?
| EliRivers wrote:
| _If he wins the next elections... Ukraine is going to
| lose all western support overnight_
|
| I reckon Poland will still be pretty much in favour of
| helping Ukraine push Russia back. Probably a bunch of
| other European nations too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Absolutely.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| What you're missing is that all aid packages have had
| more or less bipartisan support from mainstream members.
|
| The issue with most of the news on the matter is that
| it's so deluded by partisan politics that even those
| reporting on their own poll results don't interpret them
| sanely.
|
| For example, on the surface polls might say that
| Republicans generally oppose aid to Ukraine. However, if
| you plainly ask them if they support aiding Ukraine they
| might be in favor, but if you ask them if they support
| Biden's handling of the war in Ukraine, they'll be more
| likely to be opposed.
|
| https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-
| atlanticist/americ...
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| The MAGA wing of the party is anti-war in general, much
| like the liberals of the early 2000s. At some point these
| positions flipped. It's not that these Republicans are
| "anti-Ukraine," or "pro-Russia" or even "not anti-
| Russia." It's that they don't want to send hundreds of
| billions of unaudited dollars to weapons manufacturers
| and highly corrupt foreign governments, especially given
| the glaring contrast with the lack of spending on
| problems much closer to home. From a geopolitical
| perspective, the position is simple: war is bad, we are
| prolonging the war in Ukraine by funding it, therefore
| funding it is bad. And further, it's a misdirection of
| resources when the real foreign threat is China, not
| Russia, and that's before considering the many domestic
| problems going unaddressed while the gang of neocons and
| neolibs ("the uniparty") redirects our tax dollars into
| the coffers of the Ukrainian military and Raytheon
| stockholders.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > If he wins the next elections, which seems more and
| more probable, Ukraine is going to lose all western
| support overnight with corresponding results for war.
|
| I'd bet that it will not. Because America can not afford
| to be dragged into the much larger war that will follow
| if that were the case. Ukraine is - cynically - the cheap
| option.
| gattr wrote:
| The logical conclusion (maybe in quite a near future) will be
| something like the space opera engagements in Honorverse ([1]).
| TL;DR: space battles involve fighting typically beyond the
| ship's main directed-energy armaments' range. Instead, massive
| (hundreds, thousands and more) missile salvos are exchanged.
| Due to the quirks of how their propulsion works, missiles are
| easy to track and target with counter-missiles and point-
| defense lasers... but launch enough of them (laced generously
| with EW platforms and decoys) and the enemy task force's
| systems become overwhelmed.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse
| andix wrote:
| If it's that easy, the Russians can do that too. They are not
| cave people. Although such drones might be much more useful for
| the Ukrainians.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| If drones are widespread in Ukraine, they're overwhelmingly
| likely to be used against Russian aggressor targets.
|
| If drones are widespread within Russia ... that logic might
| not hold so well.
|
| A blade cuts two ways, and much of that is at the initiative
| of the wielder.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Sure, but the Russians can move them into the war zone
| through their supply route almost as easy as the Ukrainians
| can, that isn't a huge advantage. What is an advantage is
| that the Russian supply lines are somewhat vulnerable and
| that Ukrainians don't have to work around any sanctions.
|
| Let's be happy the Germans didn't have access to any of
| this tech in the middle of WWII, their V weapons were bad
| enough as it was.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| [delayed]
| _joel wrote:
| The Ukranian drone industry has rocketed (no pun intended)
| since the invasion. I'd highly recommend checking out this
| video[1] from the FT on the tech industry that has popped up
| around this, inside Ukraine itself.
|
| Just such a travesty that they need to do this at all.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voPCPhzmL10
| jacquesm wrote:
| The kind of know-how they are building up there is making
| them a force to be reckoned with, it is one of those if-it-
| doesn't-kill-you-it-will-make-you-stronger things.
|
| Obviously Russia can do anything that Ukraine can do but
| Ukraine has a very large and wealthy contingent of the world
| behind them and they are motivated far beyond the Russians. I
| really hope they will be able to force some kind of
| breakthrough to the point that even Putin realizes that
| giving up is the better outcome.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russians are motivated by the fact that several million
| holders of Russian citizenship are living in the area that
| Ukraine is set to reconquer.
|
| Most of whose did not live under Ukrainian control for a
| decade now.
| tyingq wrote:
| Looking at it, I'm also curious if you could substitute
| corrugated plastic, like Coroplast. They have products that
| match the weight/size profiles of typical cardboard.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That would work but: more expensive, slightly harder to work.
| As long as it doesn't get wet cardboard would be the better
| option though, and depending on the availability it might be
| the only option.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| kramerger wrote:
| What kind of engine and batteries do these sort of drones use?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Lithium Ion (LiPo) and brushless DC.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| minor nitpick but why would you paint a drone in jungle camo?
| seems like it would be easier to spot that way given that its
| very easy to see in the sky
| qup wrote:
| You don't see the top of the drone from the ground. The bottom
| is painted differently.
| yeeeloit wrote:
| Assume that the belly is painted sky colours (white/blue) and
| top is painted land colours.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Ikea assemble your own drone when
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Also in Ukraine I've seen recently a bigger plane like drone
| carrying 4 DJI copter drones that it can drop. So a drone-
| carrier.
| sinkwool wrote:
| Do you have any source pls?
|
| Who controls the DJI copter drones? Does the plane act as a
| relay for the radio signals?
| [deleted]
| 71a54xd wrote:
| The brilliance of this is selling them to the gov to export for
| thousands of dollars a piece.
|
| I'm anti war and the idea that these are being flown into
| civilian areas is troubling.
|
| Having visited family in Armenia and Georgia it's incredibly
| troubling to see how much this war has decimated the Ukrainian
| people and their youngest generation, along with youth in Russia.
|
| We NEED an Armistice - our own country can't even afford this
| kind of war!
| dralley wrote:
| 1) That's for the Ukrainian people to decide and nobody else.
| If the Ukrainians want to fight then we should help them do so.
|
| 2) These were targets on a military airbase.
|
| 3) They had an "armistice" for 8 years. It was a joke to begin
| with, which provided no real guarantees (as Russia continued to
| lie that they had nothing to do with the conflict throughout
| and as such they didn't need to agree to anything), signed at
| the point of a gun, was often ignored by both sides, and was
| shattered by a full scale Russian invasion
|
| 4) Ukraine has no reason to believe that any new "armistice"
| will lead to different outcomes than the last one - that is,
| Russia will maintain it a little while and then invade from a
| stronger starting position than the last time. Russia ignored
| the Budapest Memorandum, both Minsk agreements, the "grain
| deal" and just this week we saw what happened to Prigozhin. Any
| deal with Putin will last exactly as long as it takes for him
| to feel that he would benefit from breaking it.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| The Russians were complaining that it is in most cases invisible
| to Radar and needs to be shot down by gunfire. It can also carry
| an explosive payload of 4-5 Kg. Apparently 3 out of 16 were shot
| down with machine gun fire using tracers but 13 got through to
| destroy several SU-30 and MIG aircraft along with several air
| defense and radar complexes at a Russian airbase in the Kursk
| Region.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Source please? The Russians complained? Or the Ukrainians
| reported that the Russians complained?
| endchanted wrote:
| Sure, check Fighterbomber's TG
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| Russian Military blogger on Telegram. He spoke about the
| attack and the challenges, Ukraine said that 13 of the 16
| made it to the intended targets. There will be video or
| satellite imagery released at some point. I tend to believe
| these reports since I understand who is providing the
| targeting information with precise coordinates and
| information. You can believe what you like.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| [flagged]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| There is absolutely 0 point on checking russian official
| channels for anything apart from maybe weather forecast.
| They say truth only by mistake in most topics which would
| matter to outside observer, or to anybody on anything
| even remotely political.
|
| Russia has a very very long tradition with lies left and
| right, to the point where entire generations of russian
| citizens are trained to take those lies apart and find
| some truth using some obscure negation logic. Or just
| zone out and ignore it completely, which is convenient
| for dictatorship there since those folks are very easy to
| manipulate.
|
| I mean in same vein that polar tribes have say 30 names
| for different types of snow and ice, russians have
| various names for various types of lies. Go figure.
| 93po wrote:
| Russia is far from unique in constantly lying
| jfengel wrote:
| They kind of are. Of course all countries use propaganda,
| and the US is at least as guilty as most.
|
| But Russia has a famous history of issuing a constant
| stream of outright lies. It has a name, maskirovka
| "maskirovka". It goes far past the literal meaning of
| "camouflage", to the point where a continuous
| disinformation is used to hide the notion that there
| might even be such a thing as truth. The idea is to make
| lying a reflex, in the hope of confusing an enemy into
| making a mistake.
|
| (It also causes your own side to make mistakes. The idea
| is that the Russian people themselves are used to it, but
| simply have a somewhat nihilistic approach to any kind of
| official speech and even unofficial speech.)
|
| As I said, every country uses deception. But the Russians
| really do consider it a cultural trait of its own,
| meriting its own name. The Wikipedia article doesn't even
| begin to cover it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
| [deleted]
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| it's called fog of war for a reason. You shouldn't take
| anything at face value.
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| This was about the Australian drone and it's possible
| potential as an extremely cheap and powerful weapon. The
| reason it's even in the news is because they were used
| recently and the imagery of a downed drone and attack
| location was released by the Russians, not the
| Ukrainians.
|
| Somehow your response has turned into a tirade against
| Ukraine and their claims and every other grievance you
| have for Ukraine.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| This is about accountability. When a person constantly
| lies you cannot just take their claims at face value. All
| the things I wrote were official statements from
| Ukrainian government officials including the Ukrainian
| MoD.
|
| As such there is currently no data corroborating the
| claims that the Australian drone is as good as it claims.
| What we do know so far is that the Geran(Shahed) and the
| Lancets have shown to be quite deadly for the reasons
| mentioned above. Although the Geran is not a loitering
| munition.
|
| It is entirely possible that the Australian drone is
| performing as well, but as of now there is no such data.
| The last drone that was seen in the battlefields from the
| Ukrainian side was the switchblade and it was orders of
| magnitude more expensive than the Australian one and
| performed abysmal.
|
| One thing to note here is that the Russians according to
| most western publications[1] have been quite successful
| at jamming GPS guided munition, so even if it is as
| successful as the Ukrainians claim it will probably not
| be a game changer in this conflict.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/special-
| report/2023/07/03/the-late...
| threeseed wrote:
| Your post is so ridiculous it's actually hilarious.
|
| The Australian drone is literally made of cardboard.
|
| No one is thinking that it will be a game-changer nor
| that it is anyway comparable to a high-end, military-spec
| drone from Iran, US, UK or whoever else. It's designed to
| be cheap, throwaway and if it is even moderately
| successful at avoiding detection then I am sure that's
| just a bonus.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I feel like you've taken a lot of memes as if they were
| facts
| tguvot wrote:
| For people who follow "this thing", its seriously hard to
| "find again" sources due to amount of information that
| created every day.
|
| but just for you: https://t.me/fighter_bomber/13797 (not sure
| where from op got his news)
| nradov wrote:
| There was an unconfirmed report today that Ukrainian forces
| used drones to destroy several Russian aircraft at the Kursk
| airbase. I wouldn't take it seriously until we see something
| from an independent source, or satellite imagery.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/russia-kursk-airbase-suffers-
| major-16...
| dontwearitout wrote:
| "You will live to see man-made horrors beyond your
| comprehension." - Tesla
|
| The prospect of low cost swarms of AI enabled drones terrifies
| me. If you've watched any drone combat footage from Ukraine you
| know it's just around the corner, and this is another step in
| that direction.
| hengheng wrote:
| It's not any AI that I'm scared of. It's the assembly line that
| produces thousands per month, and all it takes to deploy and
| launch them all at once, is one nondescript semi truck with a
| 40ft container. The saturation attacks will be real. And just
| as scary as AI sci-fi, even if the individual vehicles are
| simply waypoint controlled.
| [deleted]
| jgilias wrote:
| Does it terrify you more than long rage artillery and cluster
| bombs? All I see is a more efficient anti-personnel weapon that
| should be better at discerning between combatants and non-
| combatants. If it becomes a 'better' weapon than say cluster
| bombs, that's a great outcome.
|
| I'm somewhat gloomy about all of this. It's just that war is
| war, it means killing people. Once it's on, it's on. So you
| need to be able to kill the enemy as efficiently as possible
| while minimizing non-combatant casualties before and after the
| conflict.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| Using a cluster bomb against a political rival has a lot more
| friction than using an autonomous drone.
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| That's just emotional reaction to something very in-your-
| face, in same vein some folks are terrified of flying planes,
| despite it being consistently safest method of travel but can
| hop on a car and drive day and night without much of a worry.
|
| Long range artillery is _the_ killer in Ukraine in terms of
| numbers, combatants consistently say so on both sides. But it
| doesn 't have that wow effect of drone drop videos.
|
| It has been the same say in WWI, anybody who read for example
| All Quiet on the Western Front would see it there. Not
| typical US wars against some poor fuckers with rusty AKs, but
| this one is very different and much more symmetrical.
| Something tells me that any symmetrical non-nuclear conflict
| these days wouldn't look that different to Ukraine.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| This capability is mostly open source already isn't it? Granted
| the AI isn't fancy but it'd be reasonably trivial to adapt some
| foamboard or cardboard designs to carry a small payload and
| turn them into GPS guided bombs. Probably doesn't happen often
| more due to it being substantially easier to do what people
| inclined towards this action want another way.
| dontwearitout wrote:
| Yes, a software stack to turn these drones into autonomous
| area denial or autonomous trench clearing tools could be
| readily cobbled together using mostly open source components.
| It would be such a tide changer that it's only a matter of
| time, and god help the poor souls on the front lines.
| hackerlight wrote:
| If we have made an area that can't be traversed by humans on
| either side, doesn't this benefit the defenders the most?
| r00fus wrote:
| Exactly this is our future: https://youtu.be/TlO2gcs1YvM?si=bp-
| PL5tIEku_HXfO
| genericpenguin wrote:
| Disney version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHRbX3gDba8&
| ab_channel=TELL%...
| warning26 wrote:
| I find this movie fascinating -- I wonder how far we are from
| building the hypothetical autonomous drone swarms in the
| movie.
| Teever wrote:
| Honestly, it's about as far away as you or I want it to be.
|
| There's nothing stopping a group of motivated people from
| building a drone assembling factory that fits in a cargo
| container.
|
| There may come a time where we have to stop outdoor
| festivals and parades because of people like that Las Vegas
| shooter from a couple years ago.
|
| The real concern is when people can build a factory that
| can build the factory...
| toyg wrote:
| You can find cheap disposable drones for PS15 on Chinese
| sites. Weaponizing them should be pretty easy.
|
| The only problem is that the novelty of the approach would
| be such, that it would bring too much visibility to the
| attack. Most bad actors don't want to be detected: "he fell
| from the window" or "his plane crashed" leaves the door
| open to coincidental causes. Drones are noticeable,
| particularly in swarms. They would be useful only in
| "showy" attacks, i.e. open terrorism, a tactic that is
| largely out of favor after 20+ years of substantial
| failure.
| piker wrote:
| Seems like another example of the importance of battery
| improvements. With enough thrust-to-weight I've heard you can get
| a Buick to fly. Thus, some of the marginal aerodynamic
| optimizations that necessitate more complicated builds maybe can
| be dispensed with.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Single-use also dramatically expands the envelope of workable
| chemistries.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| One-way travel also _at least doubles_ effective range, which
| increases the _targetable area_ by a the square.
|
| For battery-powered craft, where there's no appreciable
| reduction in propellent mass over the course of the flight,
| this is a direct scaling. For _fuel-based_ craft (which I 'm
| surprised are not more heavily used), the fuel mass falls as
| it's consumed, such that the effective net mass is somewhat
| less than 1/2 the total launch fuel load (less fuel mass ->
| less lift and drag load).
|
| In the extreme case, ballistic missiles consume virtually
| their entire fuel load early in the flight ("boost phase").
| Cruise missiles / drones might fly to a higher altitude and
| glide to their targets. Even battery-powered drones might
| jettison their primary battery (retaining a small navigation
| power source) and glide to targets by first climbing to a
| high altitude.
|
| Another option is solar-powered (or assisted) drones, which
| for small payloads (most especially surveillance, though
| directed weapons / shaped charges would be another option)
| could achieve long ranges, high loiter times, or both.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _where there 's no appreciable reduction in propellent
| mass over the course of the flight_
|
| Staging?
| jacquesm wrote:
| As in: drop spent batteries? That would require another
| mechanism that can fail.
| barrkel wrote:
| Indeed, zinc air batteries (used in hearing aids) are more
| energy dense than lithium ion, and are cheap. Lithium air
| would be much better again (close to gasoline) but a harder
| material to work with, and more expensive.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Metal-air batteries have the somewhat unusual property of
| _gaining mass_ as they discharge (they fix oxygen from the
| air). How significant that mass gain is I 'm uncertain of,
| but it confounds the diminished-mass-with-flight logic of
| fuel-based powerplants.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In one-way drones for once the less nice properties of
| Lithium Ion batteries would be an advantage.
| taspeotis wrote:
| But the front will fall off if you use cardboard or cardboard
| derivatives?
| resolutebat wrote:
| Yeah, not sure this one is even going to uphold the minimum
| crew requirements.
|
| For non-Australian readers:
| https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?feature=shared
| ourmandave wrote:
| _Easy construction; you simply need to remove the various parts
| from the cardboard plate with a knife and then build the drone
| using glue, tape and some rubber bands._
|
| It's like reading a _MacGyver_ script.
| vntx wrote:
| The MacGyver military-industrial complex is something you just
| have to see to believe. Cheap Macguyver warfare makes a lot of
| sense economically for an economy like Ukraine's.
|
| Meanwhile in the US:
|
| _On top of the $22.4 billion it cost in research and
| development, the USS Zumwalt, one of three Zumwalt destroyer
| class ships, cost over $4 billion to create....Military Watch
| Magazine reported issues back in 2018, saying that the USS
| Zumwalt "suffered from poorly functioning weapons, stalling
| engines and an underperformance in their stealth capabilities,
| among other shortcomings."_
|
| Sometimes, worse is better.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-
| class_destroyer#:~:t....
|
| https://veteranlife.com/military-news/uss-zumwalt/
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Well, low hanging fruit is sometimes hanging very low, but if
| you want to move past that and reach higher, it gets
| exponentially harder and thus more expensive.
|
| Also things like reliability, durability under various
| extreme conditions, safety for humans involved and so on can
| escalate times and prices dramatically, but are not massive
| concerns in existential situation Ukraine currently is in due
| to russia's war.
|
| US is basically never aiming so low with new tech they want
| for its military, it wants brilliant solutions above
| everybody else, and has money to burn on it. And from time to
| time, when looking back those investments were well worth
| even with flops included. US global hegemony is not something
| that US wants to lose due to few hundreds billions not
| allocated as effectively as possible.
| threeseed wrote:
| 1) US military programs are a domestic jobs program /
| political pork barrelling exercise more than anything.
| Because of course support for the military is one of the only
| things left everyone can actually agree on.
|
| 2) US needs to build weapons for the future not the present.
| And as such the amount of cutting-edge R&D as a percentage of
| the total program spend will always be significantly higher
| than for most other countries.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's a classic 1951 science-fiction short story by Arthur
| C. Clarke, "Superiority" about a country that's developing an
| ultimate weapon, except that specifications and costs keep
| expanding to the point that only one can be afforded, and
| that of course comes too late.
|
| Mentioned here on SE:
|
| <https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/237557/science-
| fic...>
|
| And of course Wikipedia:
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)>.
|
| ISFDB: <https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40897>
|
| It's published in _Expedition to Earth_ (1953): <https://arc
| hive.org/details/expeditiontoeart0000arth/page/90...>
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Most notoriously, Zumwalt is built around the Advanced Gun
| System, since Congress is obsessed with naval shore
| bombardment. (See also how they kept Iowa in service decades
| after it was obsolete)
|
| But...
|
| >A total of six of the systems were installed, two on each of
| the three Zumwalt-class ships. The Navy has no plans for
| additional Zumwalt-class ships, and no plans to deploy AGS on
| any other ship. AGS can only use ammunition designed
| specifically for the system. Only one ammunition type was
| designed, and the Navy halted its procurement in November
| 2016 due to cost ($800,000 to $1,000,000 per round), so the
| AGS has no ammunition and cannot be used. The Navy will
| remove the AGS from the ships in 2023.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System
|
| A complete dead end, a decade spent doing nothing. Meanwhile,
| China is launching a dozen guided missile destroyers a year.
| woah wrote:
| Wow this thing could fire $300m worth of ammo in half an
| hour with no pauses
| moomin wrote:
| I have absolutely no information on the viability of the
| Chinese military. However, I will observe that the US
| military a) has people with combat experience at pretty
| much every level b) publishes documents detailing its fuck-
| ups. We're not comparing apples and oranges here.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The Ukrainians have one very big advantage: they know exactly
| where they want to wage war and against who. This allows them
| to do all kinds of optimizations.
| leonidasv wrote:
| The website seems to have been hugged to death. WebArchive has a
| copy, tho:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230827191921/https://aircosmos...
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