[HN Gopher] Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the dro...
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Regulatory gridlock in the U.S. risks losing the drone arms race
Author : seanobannon
Score : 44 points
Date : 2025-03-03 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (seanobannon.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (seanobannon.substack.com)
| xnx wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the US had drones before Ukraine occurred. The
| US does invest in drones. Maybe they will more, but we're
| probably a little way away from them assuming the role of tanks
| any time soon.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| There's things like the Anduril Bolt. They cost like 100x as
| much as devices the Ukranians are building from cardboard.
| Another major innovation is TOW style fiber optic control
| which is immune to electronic countermeasures. There's
| definitely a lot to learn, but sadly necessity is the mother
| of invention and not since WW2 has manufacturing cost really
| been a serious concern for US defense production. Seems like
| we'll need a really big war to make that essential, and then
| there's an open question whether we'd actually be able to do
| it given that nobody knows how to _do_ anything anymore.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Seems like we'll need a really big war to make that
| essential, and then there's an open question whether we'd
| actually be able to do it given that nobody knows how to do
| anything anymore.
|
| I'm not sure if I'd be rooting for this eventuality.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| No, I'm definitely not! But I can't imagine the US
| defense sector doing anything sensible otherwise.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Drone" gets used to cover a lot of things; full aircraft
| sized Reaper/Predator drones down to toy-sized quadcopters.
| It's the latter which Ukraine has been developing, including
| a unique solution to ECM: the fiber-optic drone.
|
| Small drones do not assume the role of tanks. Drones assume
| the role of WW1 aircraft: artillery spotters and very light
| bombing capability. They have this role there because both
| sides have SAM superiority over the other's airforce.
|
| Drones solve the problem that combat aircraft are too
| expensive and too easy to shoot down.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Small drones do not assume the role of tanks
|
| I'm not saying they do. I was replying to a comment.
| V__ wrote:
| I would be really interested in a deep analysis. Ukraine
| doesn't have air superiority and the war has evolved into
| trench warfare.. thus drones are a very usefull tool.
|
| But would this still be the case for a conflict with US
| involvement?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The major threat is SAM and other anti air. Maybe the US's
| stealth or long range cruise missiles would be enough to
| knock down and keep down the opponents anti air coverage but
| it's not guaranteed. Neither side has been able to gain safe
| access to the skies in this whole conflict, modern AA is just
| able to cover such a wide area it's hard to get ground assets
| close enough to strike.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Maybe the US's stealth or long range cruise missiles
| would be enough to knock down and keep down the opponents
| anti air coverage but it's not guaranteed.
|
| That's what those capabilities are designed to do ("SEAD"),
| but they're very expensive. And so strategic that the US
| wasn't willing to let the Ukranians have any.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Of course yeah, the main thing is they've not really been
| tested in a while against OpFor radar or AA so I have
| some reservations about it actually working long term.
| The last time they really tested at all was 2003 during
| the second Iraq war. Even if they can knock out dedicated
| AA manpads could still pose a significant threat they
| haven't had to encounter in a while.
|
| If they work like they should on paper and can keep the
| opponents pinned to the ground under US air supremacy
| it'll be great but there's always that little doubt that
| it will work as well against a more evenly match opponent
| like a theoretical US v Russia/China when it's not
| punching down so far.
| moduspol wrote:
| Yep. It boggles my mind that we still do aircraft flyovers at
| big football games. Those should be drones doing coordinated
| light shows--even in heavy winds, rain, and unfavorable
| conditions. Just to show that we've mastered it, and that we
| can do it easily even when there are no stakes.
|
| My genuine hope is that secretly we actually are really good
| with drones and just strategically have decided not to
| broadcast it, but I don't think that's the way forward. It
| needs to be known that we've absolutely mastered them.
|
| You know, kind of like the Chinese have done with their drone
| shows at the Olympics and similar events.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _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 talked about here, but the US Military is pretty darn
| good at UAVs.
| xnx wrote:
| 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?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I saw someone claiming drones are the biggest military invention
| since the stirrup!
|
| The US would do well to start catching up on that technology.
|
| BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian
| drone industry will be the best in the world.
| floatrock wrote:
| The aircraft carrier made the battleship obsolete, and I think
| most war strategists acknowledge that drones and cruise
| missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot
| war. We haven't seen one of those sink yet, but well, Russia
| controls the historically strategic port of Sevastopol, and yet
| what's left of their Black Sea fleet has retreated to ports
| back behind Stormshadow range. Taiwan plans are definitely
| looking at cruise-missile-vs-airplane-range ratios.
|
| So yes, drones and other unmanned munitions are game changers.
| I just wish the argument wasn't "increase civilian drones so we
| have a rich and vibrant military industrial complex ready for
| when we get to destroy things."
|
| Then again, some of what the article is kinda saying is "if
| there's civilian applications for this, you don't need to have
| a military industrial complex (until you're forced to on a
| wartime footing, at which point you're not starting from
| zero)." Which is basically the strategic-importance argument
| that is keeping Boeing afloat these days...
| pjc50 wrote:
| Russia has exactly one aircraft carrier that nearly sank of
| its own accord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraf
| t_carrier_Admir...
|
| Taiwan should be building a lot of drones if they intend to
| fight. However, that's not the only possibility; recent
| shifts in US posture may encourage the "voluntary
| reintegration" local political faction, including the
| possibility of handing over TSMC intact.
| floatrock wrote:
| It's not Russia's aircraft carriers I'm concerned about.
|
| Russia's experience with drones vs. her guided missile
| cruisers has more than enough there to translate to more
| capable aircraft carriers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| If I remember rightly, one of the successful attacks was
| a floating "drone" made of a small boat packed with
| explosives. Kind of a hybrid between the torpedo and the
| fireship, and quite hard to defend against at night.
|
| China has (checks wikipedia) three operational carriers,
| one very modern _Fujian_ , the obsolete former training
| ship _Liaoning_ , and _Shandong_ , which appears to be
| halfway between the two, the first locally built carrier.
| During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers.
| Just a whole different order of magnitude.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Li
| aon... (interesting and varied history!)
| tw04 wrote:
| > During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers.
| Just a whole different order of magnitude.
|
| And would have absolutely no way to reach that scale
| again. Or the equivalent in drone production, which is
| why it's absolutely preposterous to take a hostile
| attitude towards our closest neighbors and trade and
| potentially put our geographical advantages at risk.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier
| obsolete in a true hot war_
|
| The notion of unsinkable carriers is mostly fiction. In WWII
| I think almost every CV America entered the war with (but 3,
| Enterprise, Saratoga and Ranger) was sunk by '44.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| I will take the other side of that bet.
| lawn wrote:
| > BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the
| Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.
|
| I'd say it already is.
| palata wrote:
| Don't forget China. China is way ahead everybody else when it
| comes to consumer drones and producing them at scale. Like
| way ahead.
| lawn wrote:
| They may have the manufacturing muscles but Ukraine has
| been able to develop and test their drones in live combat
| for years. There's nothing that propels technology forward
| as much as deadly necessity.
| palata wrote:
| > They may have the manufacturing muscles
|
| This sounds like it's dramatically under-estimating the
| Chinese engineers. If you take a drone today, like a DJI
| Mavic. Pretty much every single component of that drone
| is better than what we can do - at scale - in the West.
| It's not like we sent them blueprints and they mass
| produced the drones. Their technology is first class,
| arguably better than the West in the field of robotics.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Maybe shocked if China and even Russia didn't have the
| specs and designs for every Ukrainian drone.
|
| Drone hardware in software are mature. Adoption is more
| matter of observing tactics and human interaction
| clvx wrote:
| I'm just baffled how Russia switched the frontline using fiber
| drones. It's genius and worrisome at the same time.
| tim333 wrote:
| Ukraine has them too. They both buy the fiber tech from
| China.
| klipt wrote:
| Amazing that disposable drones can get fiber internet while
| residents of Silicon Valley can't!
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Unlikely. Ukraine does not have scale, manufacturing base and
| talent for that - right now it's mostly assembling drones from
| Chinese parts with very little innovation on top of that.
| People talked about AI swarms but very little of that
| materialized at the front line. Larger drones require satellite
| connections, advanced materials, etc - Ukraine does not have
| that either. I expect Ukrainian expertise in war drones will
| stagnate and become obsolete very quickly after the war.
| slimjimrick wrote:
| Interesting read
| TheBicPen wrote:
| This reads like a piece of defense propaganda. "Undoing the 1990s
| decision" - should we really return the US defense industry to
| cold-war levels? The world has changed, and the threat of
| outright war with the US is dramatically lower than 4 decades
| ago. Yes, China is an adversary, but to say that it's an
| existential threat to the US the same way the Soviet Union was is
| absurd.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| [deleted]
| ok_dad wrote:
| Claims that other people are propagandizing are ridiculous
| with zero evidence, that's some FUD BS. Make a better
| argument against OP if you're so sure.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > And they (China) are explicitly interested in overturning
| the global order.
|
| - Putin is actively taking Ukrainian territory by force
|
| - Trump is threatening to take Greenland, Canada and the
| Panama canal by (economic) force
|
| - Xi Jinping is threatening to take Taiwanese territory by
| force
|
| Of all three, Jinping seems like the smallest threat to the
| "world order".
|
| If you're talking about economic power, that's a different
| story but I wouldn't call them "adversary" in that context.
| stickfigure wrote:
| 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.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's been, what, 10 years of Trump now. If you're not
| taking what he says seriously, you have failed to learn
| anything.
| yimby2001 wrote:
| I think the weakness of this argument is that "domestic American
| drones" will just be using parts, or entire drones, made in China
|
| "Ukraine are producing two-and-a-half drones a day now." What is
| that supposed to mean? A drone has a lot of parts. I can make 2
| 1/2 drones a day if I have the parts.
| danielvf wrote:
| Ukraine announced a two weeks ago that they built 2.5 million
| drones last year. Maybe that number got garbled somewhere?
| lawn wrote:
| Ukraine is producing way more that that: they're up to millions
| per year: https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/03/ukraine-
| produce-millio...
| palata wrote:
| 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, deliver the payload _nicely_ (as in, smoothly leave
| a parcel on the ground), come back and be reusable. The drone
| flies by GPS, but doesn 't really need a radio signal (ideally
| there is no operator, the drone just goes, delivers and comes
| back).
|
| Killer drones are "one-way". They are defined by a lifetime of
| like 25min, ending up violently in a place where the operators
| care about maximising damage. They fly in war zones. Nobody
| really cares if some percentage of the drones falls from the sky
| or doesn't explode upon contact. They need to fly in GPS-denied
| mode, and they probably need a radio for the operator to select
| the target when the times comes. This has to be a military-grade
| radio that works in the presence of jamming to some extent.
|
| Those are very different projects. Feels a bit like saying that
| subsidising personal cars is good for the tank business.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Bomb and kamikaze drones based on civilian drones are already a
| reality though, Ukraine uses to defend itself. Don't know why
| you're talking as if that wasn't possible, when it's happening
| already.
| palata wrote:
| 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 because the
| specs are pretty different. If you subsidise heavily a
| civilian company making survey drones, for instance, and then
| try to attach a bomb to those and send them in a war zone,
| they won't do much today. In the end you will have subsidised
| work that went into making a drone that can make hundreds or
| thousands of flights during its lifetime, never fall from the
| sky, lands smoothly, doesn't make too much noise, follows
| drone regulations in civilian spaces, etc. But none of that
| work is useful for a killer drone (that has a lifetime of
| 25min in a war zone). On the other hand, your civilian drones
| will not have the ability to lock a target and crash into it,
| fly in GPS-denied environments and a jamming-resistant radio.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Thanks for explaining!
|
| I think the article says that the factories are important
| too, and can be altered to produce these different drones
| much faster than if starting from zero.
|
| And having one's own already verified and certified
| backdoor free electronics, rather than buying from what
| might turn out to be the adversary
| hkpack wrote:
| 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 in the air
| all the time to support modern warfare.
|
| And drones are being hunted by other drones too, so they
| don't last very long.
|
| "Millitary grade" digital communication and encryption is
| not that important as the scale itself.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're not "based on civilian drones" other than using some
| basic software and electronics and design principals.
| Everything else is built around cheap and short lifetime.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>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 production was literally the arsenal of
| democracy.
|
| It is a LOT easier to convert commercial manufacturing base to
| military purposes than to start from scratch. So, yes,
| subsidizing commercial production to stay in-country is
| definitely good for mil readiness (and ultimately, the tank
| business).
| maximusdrex wrote:
| While I agree with the ultimate conclusion of the article, that
| FAA regulations need to be modernized for commercial use of sUAS
| systems, it completely fails to analyze any of the other relevant
| dynamics facing the American drone industry. There are a plethora
| of American companies building drones for commercial and/or
| defense purposes (I work at one) but this article reads like the
| author knows only about the most publicized one and another
| company they heard about on a podcast. The article would benefit
| from an understanding of the Probably the most major blocker for
| the authors dreams of swarms of millions of American military
| drones is the following: jet engines and rocket motors can be
| produced in the US profitably, the American economy just isn't
| set up to build drones motors, props, etc. in an economically
| efficient manner. Because of this, the cost-optimized drones
| developed for the commercial sector will never be acceptable for
| the us military. Secondly, the author seems to think that self-
| organized systems are a brand new innovation and would trivially
| port to a battlefield environment. However, these techniques rely
| on 5G connectivity and gps, whereas military sUAS systems need
| GPS-denied autonomy and the ability to communicate in a heavily
| jammed environment.
| tim333 wrote:
| >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 of
| soldiers and will probably try switching to drones to hold the
| Russians back. It's probably a technology that favours defenders
| over attackers as the defenders can work from hidden bunkers but
| the attackers have to move above ground.
| throwup238 wrote:
| 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 that
| fact. Now a small drone can drop a grenade and do the same
| amount of damage at similar distances between combatants. It
| makes a huge difference when a combat engineer slash drone
| pilot can carry 20kg of drones and small explosives into the
| battlefield as part of a small team instead of manning an
| entire artillery unit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| 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. IMO the biggest thing getting
| in their way is the desperate human wave tactics that
| hamper their ability to grow a veteran core that could
| actually organize the combined arms.
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