4 ms·

At the turn of the century, the Wright brothers were building their bicycle planes. Within 10 years, by the start of WW1 there were triplanes fit for war use.

by netcan 8y ago

At the turn of the century, the Wright brothers were building their bicycle planes. Within 10 years, by the start of WW1 there were triplanes fit for war use. By the end of the war, Germany had metal planes with a single wing... not all that different from a modern crop duster. Amazing what the competitive (and "save our nation") pressure of an industrial war can do. Immediately after the great war, helicopters and all sorts of new planes were invented. By the time WW2 rolled around 20 years later, there were Spitfires & heavy bombers. Japan had floating airports. The sky became the place where land, naval and air battles were won or lost. The pace kept up in the generation after the war. Jet engines. 3 generations of jet fighters, each outclassing the last. Airliners more or less like modern ones. The f-15 is still The Cavalary. 747s are not out of place in a modern airport. 1967 & 1977 respectively. 50 years of peace, 50 years of stagnation. This is a lesson about people and a lesson about progress.

0xcafecafe 8y ago
It might seem like stagnation but we have made rapid advancements in other sectors (the mobile computing revolution being an example). About air travel, I think the evolution has been more about safety than anything else ever since (barring exception of concorde which tried to optimize for speed). The modern passenger jet is much safer than its 60s counterpart.
derefr 8y ago
That's one way to explain the last 100 years, sure. Another way: militaries around the world stumbled upon a new source of low-hanging fruit (air supremacy), one that could win wars with just the slightest investment, as long as the enemy had invested less/none. Technological progress sped up in the space as everyone exploited the low-hanging fruit. Then, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, further advances in avionics were now just as expensive as advances in any other domain—so the world's military spending moved back to a general balance. This same thing happened for submarines, and for steel-hulled warships before that. When R&D has higher ROI (i.e. wins more battles for less money) than simply building more of what you've got, you invest in R&D. When it doesn't, you don't. For the latest 50-year period, the low-hanging fruit in military spending has been satellite technology—i.e., C2 and intelligence superiority. GPS-guided ICBMs on the one hand; reports from spies delivered over Iridium on the other. We got the Internet and cell phones from this one, before it slowed down. But this latest R&D "sprint" has indeed had most of its low-hanging fruit plucked as well, which is why we've lately seen military R&D spending leak away from satellites and back into other targets—including avionics R&D! (Sometimes a mesh-network of jet fighters works better than a satellite uplink. Expensive, though.) Not sure what the world's next military R&D focus might be. Cyberwar, maybe, but that might be point-of-view bias.
- netcan 8y ago
  OK. That's a possible antithesis. It could be the ROI curve on the technology flattening out, the lack of competitive pressure or some combination.
- Balgair 8y ago
  I worked with one of the BIG defense contractors for a while. There was this guy, Willy. Willy was a 'fellow' with the company, an engineer so advanced and critical to the company that they just let him do whatever he wanted. One of his PhDs was in chemistry, I think he was about 80 years old back then (~2010). He did not use email at all. I thought it was crazy at the time, but man, was WIlly right about that one. If you wanted to see him, you'd have to go over to him and talk or drop off the memo. He had a phone, but it was the bar down the street from the campus, as Willy was usually there, watching a game or working on something. I remember WIlly telling us about a time, back in the Cold War, when he'd be given briefcases with empty aluminum bottles inside. They'd tell him to measure the air inside and tell them if he found anything strange about that air, chemically speaking. He didn't say if he had discovered anything strange, though. WIlly's general expertise was ablative nose-cone chemistry, for re-entry. In fact, as he told it, his brain was the entire field of ablative nose-cone chemistry; at least in The West. He never wrote anything down about it, at least not much. It was all in his head. This is what Willy had on the company and he had them over a barrel. I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost. They were the only non-soviets that knew the engineering about so much of what the company did. That's why Willy could just not do email and have a bar as his phone number and be a general asshat about things. He was literally untouchable. In fact, there were a lot of 'fellows' at the company. And it bled them dry [0]. In my view, that is why so much of the US's defense tech is going 'backwards'. There just isn't the work force. They called it the 'silver tsunami' [1]. Basically, the US hired for the Cold War and just really never hired again. That's why drones have been so big in the last few years: no humans on board means easier reqs to go through so that even undergrads can get the work done. The same is somewhat true in space and all the other aspects of warfighting. So it's not just that the low-hanging fruit is already plucked, though I totally agree with you. It's that there just isn't the workforce anymore. It's a complicated issue, so it's going to have a lot of things that are 'wrong' with it and no one aspect is THE problem. That said, the cyberwar has been going on for a while now. I'd look at CRISPR-CAS9 and optogenetics as the bleeding edge frontiers to get into. [0] https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-estate/2015/03/lockheed-martin-sells-large-newtown-site-to-pharma.html https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-estate/20... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami
pjc50 8y ago
Diminishing returns are definitely a thing. But the technology of mass destruction peaked in the 60s with the invention of the ICBM: finally we had the power to destroy everything. Where can you really go from there? The cutting edges are missile interception (Iron Dome), drones for urban combat, and hybrid/deniable warfare.
pohl 8y ago
Don't let anybody give you a hard time for saying "at the turn of the century." I keep writing 1999 on my checks, too.

by netcan 8y ago

0xcafecafe 8y ago

It might seem like stagnation but we have made rapid advancements in other sectors (the mobile computing revolution being an example). About air travel, I think the evolution has been more about safety than anything else ever since (barring exception of concorde which tried to optimize for speed). The modern passenger jet is much safer than its 60s counterpart.

derefr 8y ago

That's one way to explain the last 100 years, sure. Another way: militaries around the world stumbled upon a new source of low-hanging fruit (air supremacy), one that could win wars with just the slightest investment, as long as the enemy had invested less/none. Technological progress sped up in the space as everyone exploited the low-hanging fruit. Then, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, further advances in avionics were now just as expensive as advances in any other domain—so the world's military spending moved back to a general balance. This same thing happened for submarines, and for steel-hulled warships before that. When R&D has higher ROI (i.e. wins more battles for less money) than simply building more of what you've got, you invest in R&D. When it doesn't, you don't. For the latest 50-year period, the low-hanging fruit in military spending has been satellite technology—i.e., C2 and intelligence superiority. GPS-guided ICBMs on the one hand; reports from spies delivered over Iridium on the other. We got the Internet and cell phones from this one, before it slowed down. But this latest R&D "sprint" has indeed had most of its low-hanging fruit plucked as well, which is why we've lately seen military R&D spending leak away from satellites and back into other targets—including avionics R&D! (Sometimes a mesh-network of jet fighters works better than a satellite uplink. Expensive, though.) Not sure what the world's next military R&D focus might be. Cyberwar, maybe, but that might be point-of-view bias.

netcan 8y ago
OK. That's a possible antithesis. It could be the ROI curve on the technology flattening out, the lack of competitive pressure or some combination.
Balgair 8y ago
I worked with one of the BIG defense contractors for a while. There was this guy, Willy. Willy was a 'fellow' with the company, an engineer so advanced and critical to the company that they just let him do whatever he wanted. One of his PhDs was in chemistry, I think he was about 80 years old back then (~2010). He did not use email at all. I thought it was crazy at the time, but man, was WIlly right about that one. If you wanted to see him, you'd have to go over to him and talk or drop off the memo. He had a phone, but it was the bar down the street from the campus, as Willy was usually there, watching a game or working on something. I remember WIlly telling us about a time, back in the Cold War, when he'd be given briefcases with empty aluminum bottles inside. They'd tell him to measure the air inside and tell them if he found anything strange about that air, chemically speaking. He didn't say if he had discovered anything strange, though. WIlly's general expertise was ablative nose-cone chemistry, for re-entry. In fact, as he told it, his brain was the entire field of ablative nose-cone chemistry; at least in The West. He never wrote anything down about it, at least not much. It was all in his head. This is what Willy had on the company and he had them over a barrel. I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost. They were the only non-soviets that knew the engineering about so much of what the company did. That's why Willy could just not do email and have a bar as his phone number and be a general asshat about things. He was literally untouchable. In fact, there were a lot of 'fellows' at the company. And it bled them dry [0]. In my view, that is why so much of the US's defense tech is going 'backwards'. There just isn't the work force. They called it the 'silver tsunami' [1]. Basically, the US hired for the Cold War and just really never hired again. That's why drones have been so big in the last few years: no humans on board means easier reqs to go through so that even undergrads can get the work done. The same is somewhat true in space and all the other aspects of warfighting. So it's not just that the low-hanging fruit is already plucked, though I totally agree with you. It's that there just isn't the workforce anymore. It's a complicated issue, so it's going to have a lot of things that are 'wrong' with it and no one aspect is THE problem. That said, the cyberwar has been going on for a while now. I'd look at CRISPR-CAS9 and optogenetics as the bleeding edge frontiers to get into. [0] https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-estate/2015/03/lockheed-martin-sells-large-newtown-site-to-pharma.html https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-estate/20... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami

pjc50 8y ago

Diminishing returns are definitely a thing. But the technology of mass destruction peaked in the 60s with the invention of the ICBM: finally we had the power to destroy everything. Where can you really go from there? The cutting edges are missile interception (Iron Dome), drones for urban combat, and hybrid/deniable warfare.

pohl 8y ago

Don't let anybody give you a hard time for saying "at the turn of the century." I keep writing 1999 on my checks, too.