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It'd be interesting to see what'd happen if the military just pivoted into having top consumer electronics companies manufacture weapons using best-available cu
by nostrademons 3y ago
It'd be interesting to see what'd happen if the military just pivoted into having top consumer electronics companies manufacture weapons using best-available current technology, perhaps designing them from scratch. The "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War was literally spent on the Internet - my wife's father used to make guidance systems for SLBMs in Silicon Valley, now his son and son-in-law both work for Google. The rapid progress in software, networking, and electronics over the last 30 years is because a lot of the top engineering minds who otherwise would've gone into defense are now going into tech.
This is also what happened in WW2 - the bulk of the U.S. war machine wasn't built by the shipyards and artillery vendors that had supplied WW1, but by new consumer giants like GM, Chrysler, Raytheon, Boeing, Hewlett Packard, Fairchild that pivoted from consumer markets to the war, or defense-specific startups like Grumman & Kaiser that were founded in the 10 years leading up to the war to capitalize on new technologies. WW1 technology was generally obsolete by WW2; the war was fought in a fundamentally different way, with different suppliers, because tech had advanced.
- selimthegrim 3y agoSo what happened to USSR MIC talent pool? We poached them too?
- nostrademons 3y agoA lot of them, yes - I work with a number of ethnically Russian engineers who probably would've gone into military hardware had they not emigrated to the U.S. In a company founded by someone whose parents were mathematicians who fled the then-moribund Soviet Union, no less. Bunch of my favorite computer games are written by programmers from former Soviet-bloc countries who now can make a lot more money writing projectile physics for computer games than guidance systems for actual projectiles.
- skhr0680 3y agoDefinitely not. It’s a total coincidence that the F-35 VTOL system is very similar to the innovative Soviet one used on the Yak-141 …
- selimthegrim 3y agoI think that happened before or around 1991 so is less relevant to the present discussion
- justsomehnguy 3y agoYou can already see it (somewhat) in the drones. It was already a thing in the middle of 2010s, now everyone is not only taking notes but already producing drones from OTC components. Seen those drone loght shows?
- wmf 3y agohaving top consumer electronics companies manufacture weapons Do you want your weapons to come from China and Taiwan?
- nostrademons 3y agoThey already do: https://archive.is/EgDT1 https://archive.is/EgDT1 This has been a known problem for 10 years, but supply chains are hard, and oftentimes the alternative to buying from foreign companies is having a worse-performing product.