TIL Saab was an aerospace company.
My Dad had a '98 Saab. It had an "S" button on the shifter. It stood for "speed". When we were 7/8 years old we'd beg him to press it and it would speed up 10mph. I got my license in 2011, immediately took that car onto the highway and pressed the S button.
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
The goal of concept to aircraft in 36 months is admirable. Anduril recently built a jet in a similar timeframe. In the US at least, the last 30 years after defense industry consolidation has caused great stagnation. The F-35 took over a decade and went monstrously over budget, more as a jobs program than as a functional product. Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors.
Canada is (rightfully) re-thinking their F-35 commitment after the current U.S. Administration bullied them in trade negotiations: https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg
Yup, while I'm sure that part of it is that the big players got used to this modus operandi, part of it it just your client not knowing what they want. I work for a financial institution, I see this everyday. Our IT partners just have to wait for our ill-conceived and ill-defined tickets and changes of priorities, keep track of the tickets and the money keeps flowing by itself. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but still.
Hats off to Anduril for shaking up the space. Wonder if the Swedes will be able to match them.
Make the Pentagon finally pass an audit. Cut its funding. It is clear the profligacy is incentivizing bad decisions - the new normal in the Strait of Hormuz being only the latest.
It's clearly too much of a toy and too much capability for the past few decades of both civilian and military administration. An entire generation only knows the United States military as an institution of blunder, excess and failure.
After cleaning house, the United States should also bring back the draft. More social spending should be paired with more public service. It will be harder to start wars of choice and treat veterans like beggars when everyone's kids will have to sacrifice. This will not degrade capability, as many of the most capable militaries in the world have a draft - notably Israel. Making people from Iowa and New York serve together would be good for a dangerously fracturing country. The "volunteer professional" military was created to get around opposition to Vietnam. It's a disgrace.
> Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors.
The problem is, will there be enough of a demand? Part of why military procurement programs are stretched so long now is because the hot war that these things might be used in (aka, an all out direct war with Russia or China) is... increasingly unrealistic, but at the same time the US (or EU) still have to maintain the know-how, and we don't need hundreds or thousands of unit which makes the unit price including R&D extremely high.
As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_Uncrewed_Combat_Attac... is almost a straight copy of the infamous Iranian Shahed for ~$35,000 USD. (Perhaps the US sourced their Shahed from Ukraine, though that, like many things about this program, has not been officially discussed.)
I mean looking at the state of that conflict… the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great. Maybe other countries will want to go with this kind of attritable aircraft concept instead.
If we're going to expend time and effort on finding new and exciting ways to destroy other members of our species, it might be worth noting that the major change in battles over the last decade seems to have been flooding the zone with cheap, micro-to-small drones, not something like this.
That being said, perhaps we find something more productive to do with our time as humans?
All of the current conflicts (russia / ukraine, us / iran) would consider drones as a nuisance if:
#1. For russia / ukraine neither side has air superiority. If one side had it, they could be obliterating the other side with a constant stream of 500 lb gravity bombs. Each of which has more explosives than 100 drones.
#2. For us / iran, the US is unwilling to risk any pilots. And iran has some air defenses in place. The US could drop bombs from up close, gravity mk-82's and jdams every hour for months. Currently they are using standoff weapons which are either minimally effective (drones) or crazy expensive (Tomohawk, Standard Missile, etc.)
One B1 gets shot down, and 4 crew get paraded around in downtown Tehran, and what little support trump has will vanish.
What am I trying to say? Drones have a place. They don't obsolete anything. The key is to have the weapons available to meet the time in which they are needed.
Be careful that you're not able to fight the next war because all your effort is working on solving the problems of the past war when your enemy has found a better way around it.
It would be nice if humans could find ways to not kill each other, but the reality is humans have a very poor track record and you would be a fool to not put at least some effort into defending yourself.
We unfortunately have not found a way to turn our kleptokratic dictatorship neighbor into one.
The greatest failure of the past 20 years was the belief that if we open up trade and grow rich together, rational self-interest will lead to liberalization and peace. Instead, it just gave our enemies more resources to spend on self-destructive imperialist ambitions.
There is no way no know. Any number is an acceptable answer. For a good answer you can find lots of reasoning/logic/history to justify your guess, but it is still a guess.
This might have to be put into the context that they do in fact move the conflict over resources to economic wars. They also actively engage in wars over ressources when they think they can win outside of MAD, see U. S. vs Iran.
Economic warfare also does in fact kill people. Denying a population, e. g., Cuba, the ability to access medicine/food kills humans just as well as a bullet in the long term.
There are various other ways this causes suffering. Different forms of warfare are still warfare, even if you don't to hold a gun for all of them.
Being "rich" also requires someone else to be "poor".
>Economic warfare also does in fact kill people. Denying a population, e. g., Cuba, the ability to access medicine/food kills humans just as well as a bullet in the long term.
Deny them jobs, investment that could create jobs and paths to prosperity.
Give them drugs.
Shocked Pikachu when they don't like you.
Edit: Revised language to be more broadly applicable.
Well, as long as they’re poor free market democracies, it’s a mulligan, right? Bonus points if you use special ops or intelligence agencies to kick it off so it doesn’t count as a war.
The DARPA LongShot is a cruise missile barge that deploys another short range missile from its bay. That could be repurposed for other munitions like drones.
Nothing happened. I went home and read the manual. S stand for sport. It keeps the engine in a higher gear than normal for quicker response
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