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Anduril Builds a Tiny, Reusable Fighter Jet That Blows Up Drones
- lettergram 3y agoImagine, in 5 years we'll have 1 starship deploying 50k tesla autonomous drones on battle fields anywhere in the world in <1 hr...
- bozhark 3y agoAh fuck starlink’s actually orbital drones waiting to drop
- Ancapistani 3y agoStarship is a kinetic energy weapon.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoIt's not a cluster munition if they're drones!
- gvkhna 3y agoNever thought we would be building protoss carriers but here we are.
- fakedang 3y agoNot joking here. At my old startup, we had made significant progress in executing something along those lines. It was technically feasible, but neither economical nor relevant for that time, so the concept had to be ditched in the semi-prototype stage.
- sneak 3y agoIt’s a real shame if SpaceX’s technology gets co-opted by the US military, because then any point to point Starship trajectory needs to be treated as a hostile ICBM, even if it’s just passenger transport.
- nickspacek 3y agoNot sure about alternative paywall-free sources, but here's one I found: https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/anduril-unveils-roadrunner-a-fighter-jet-weapon-that-lands-like-a-falcon-9/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/30/anduril-unveils-roadrunner...
- MikusR 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353 thread from earlier. Warning, contains a bunch of russian trolls.
- marcellus23 3y ago"Blows up drones" Is there any reason this would be limited to drones, and not manned aircraft? Or is that just to make the announcement more palatable?
- themadturk 3y agoCan't read the article because it's behind Bloomberg's paywall so I don't know this wee beastie's capabilities, but my first thought would be because most manned aircraft are much faster, fly higher, carry more weapons, and have self-defense systems built in, which drones usually don't.
- marcellus23 3y agoThat makes sense.
- world2vec 3y agoSpending $100k to defeat a $500 drone. Asymmetric warfare is brutal.
- willcipriano 3y agoBrutal for the taxpayer. Heaven for the shareholders, lobbyists and politicians.
- Justsignedup 3y agoEven if it is extremely effective. This thing would need to blow up between 500 - 2000 drones (depending on drone cost, which is going down) to make itself worth the expense. Meanwhile such a vehicle might be something that can be shot down with some AA fire. Also no areal vehicle can go on say 500 missions without maintenance, that price is going to only go up. I cannot fathom the cost justification.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoI think you have to consider the opportunity cost. Spending $100k to kill a $500 drone sounds like a bad deal, but if that drone kills a soldier it could cost hundreds of thousands (or even millions) to train a new one and pay out death benefits.
- Justsignedup 3y agoThis is true.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Spending $100k to defeat a $500 drone Source on $500 drones being a threat to modern militaries? (Russia doesn’t have a modern, i.e. manoeuvre-based, military.)
- anizan 3y ago[dead]
- Hayvok 3y agoCounter-drone warfare is going to be huge over the next couple decades, so this is very interesting to see. Drone warfare right now is small in numbers and small in range, because of limitations around the technology — even so it is having a ton of impact on the ground in Ukraine. A good analog might be early World War 1: planes were incredible scouts and they were occasionally disruptive to troops, but it wasn't really practical to deploy them in large, coordinated formations, fit them with heavy payloads, or use them out over the oceans. By World War 2 that entire calculus had changed, with horrifying results for all combatants. Right now an American carrier group might be vulnerable in littoral (shoreline) combat to drones, but retreating even a few dozen miles offshore would be enough distance to dampen the threat — drones just don't have the range and anti-jamming to be useful on the scale of hundreds or thousands of miles. In 15 years though? 10x the range, the speed, the numbers, and potentially outfit a carrier ship specifically for deploying drones en masse. Play the same scenario out underwater with "drone carrier submarines". The key question for all American military commanders and defense contractors to answer: how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship?
- jamesTee49 3y agoIt is cost issue. If American can build 1K drones like that, Chinese and Russians can do easily at 100x due to their industries bases. Amercian lacks those industries within America right now. You hear a lot of Made iN China components slip into F35. So the cost for Americans are just too high especially with coming dedollarisation and persistent high inflation. It doesnt matter what Americans build as defense to drones attack, the enemy combatant will just outproduce and swamp you directly and/or slip in another ttacks during those saturation (e.g. surface base unmmaned speedboat with tactical nukes/thermo right at the center of Ametican warships/carriers. From what I have read, it is already developed and tested. We shluld be seeing American spanish armada wipeout in coming decades if WW3 happen.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> how do you shoot down 1,000 drones without losing a ship? A hangar of 10,000 anti-drone gnats. Barring a breakthrough in high explosives, an anti-drone drone will be lighter and cheaper than an anti-ship drone. We played this game with planes and boats.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoLots more discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353
- karmakaze 3y agoHow do I know this name? Oh, Palmer Luckey is the one who made the Oculus Rift.