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Why General Atomics? They are also yet another defense incumbent that needs to be disrupted. They make the Predator and other current UAVs, which are all expens
by blackeyeblitzar 3y ago
Why General Atomics? They are also yet another defense incumbent that needs to be disrupted. They make the Predator and other current UAVs, which are all expensive and uninteresting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_Aeronautical_S...
In general I think the government needs to move contracts away from older companies and fund young innovative ones. Partnerships between young and old simply sustain the incumbents and everything that comes with them (price structure, leadership, lobbying, etc). I would rather see many smaller companies in healthy competition for contracts.
- CamperBob2 3y agoBecause try to come up with a cooler name than "General Atomics," and I'll bet you can't.
- idontwantthis 3y agoNorth Central Positronics
- pclmulqdq 3y agoI assume andruil is doing the controller and consults on design, while GA largely does the aircraft. Building big aircrafts takes huge facilities, so it's not unreasonable to have a big incumbent doing this.
- modeless 3y agoNo, Anduril and General Atomics will work separately on competing prototypes and at the end likely only one of them will win a final order for production aircraft.
- blackeyeblitzar 3y agoMy point is we should be redirecting some funds to also support startups for those pieces, rather than resigning ourselves to the status quo.
- adastra22 3y agoBecause that's how the government operates. Same with the initial COTS and Commercial Crew awards to SpaceX: it was paired with a similar contracts to Orbital and Boeing, to make sure that if the untested startup failed there would be a traditional contractor ready to take up the slack.
- modeless 3y agoHopefully this time the incumbent doesn't get paid twice as much for a worse outcome, as happened with Commercial Crew... NASA paid Boeing 4.5 billion and counting, SpaceX 2.6 billion. SpaceX launched astronauts to ISS 7 times, completely fulfilling the original contract, and continues to launch on new contracts with NASA. Meanwhile Boeing has yet to fly a single astronaut and required NASA to pay them extra for their own delays and failures.
- adastra22 3y agoOh that's pretty much guaranteed.
- wmf 3y agoIf those are the two lowest bids what else are you going to do?
- adastra22 3y agoTried this kind of contract they don’t award to the lowest bids. There are 3-4 other factors that take higher priority.
- shantara 3y agoFrom what I recall from NASA Artemis contracts selection process, all bids are weighted with two parameters in addition to the proposed cost: technical merits of the proposal and the confidence score based on the company's management and previous performance.
- renewiltord 3y agoThat's just one contract. SpaceX will win the rest. ULA is dead. They're being sold for parts.
- Dalewyn 3y ago>They are also yet another defense incumbent that needs to be disrupted. The first and arguably only mission of the Department of Defense is to win wars. Diversifying the economy is none of their concern beyond having a economy with which to fuel their war machines. If you want diversification of the economy, look towards the Department of Commerce. Or to put it another way: Thumping your diversity drum doesn't win you wars.
- blackeyeblitzar 3y agoDiversifying the economy is a pathway to winning wars. Limiting themselves to a few expensive and stagnant vendors is a way to lose in the future. Other countries make these things much more efficiently because they don’t have lazy governments captured by old companies. Also I have no idea what this has to do with “diversity” or what you even mean by that.
- nytesky 3y agoWhat country has more efficient and effective military aircraft?
- throwup238 3y ago> Other countries make these things much more efficiently because they don’t have regulatory capture by old companies. This contract is for cutting edge unmanned fighter jets. Other countries don't make them at all!
- modeless 3y agoProbably because it's way better to make swarms of dirt cheap drones
- throwup238 3y agoNo one makes swarms in any real sense of the word, either. These unmanned Wingman jets will be the first in the world to do that too.
- bandrami 3y agoDoD wants a high level of confidence that your company will still be around and delivering the exact same product to the exact same specs 20 years from now. It's why startups are basically never the primes on defense acquisitions.