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This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing now with FPV and bomber quadcop

This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.

NotSammyHagar 2y ago
Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance. There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas. There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty This has always been much more important than dead capital.
  - NotSammyHagar 2y ago
    I think so too, but it doesn't seem like most people remember this.
- atlasunshrugged 2y ago
  One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will have an easier time getting access to some resources as production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may get pushed back from the first island chain, there are several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of material to support a war through their territory even if it is economical to do so.
Teever 2y ago
I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese industrial capacity for killbot type drones. Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded experience become a part of that?
- AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
  It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is if they're capable of doing so. We also don't know what form drones will take as the technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date. As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR, lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability etc).
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    We are already working on unmanned autonomous drones the size of a fighter jet https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-stages-dogfights-with-ai-flown-fighter-jet/ https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-stag...
    - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
      I'm well aware, but that's not what the commenter was referring to.
  - ramesh31 2y ago
    Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar or Reaper (not even including their 6 figure weapons payload). And we're already seeing drone carrying "motherships" that drop multiple quads and have RF repeaters to extend range to 50km+. It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt lost.

NotSammyHagar 2y ago

Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance. There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas. There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.

marcosdumay 2y ago
> Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty This has always been much more important than dead capital.
- NotSammyHagar 2y ago
  I think so too, but it doesn't seem like most people remember this.
atlasunshrugged 2y ago
One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will have an easier time getting access to some resources as production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may get pushed back from the first island chain, there are several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of material to support a war through their territory even if it is economical to do so.

Teever 2y ago

I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese industrial capacity for killbot type drones. Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded experience become a part of that?

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is if they're capable of doing so. We also don't know what form drones will take as the technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date. As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR, lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability etc).
- surfingdino 2y ago
  We are already working on unmanned autonomous drones the size of a fighter jet https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-stages-dogfights-with-ai-flown-fighter-jet/ https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-stag...
  - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
    I'm well aware, but that's not what the commenter was referring to.
- ramesh31 2y ago
  Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar or Reaper (not even including their 6 figure weapons payload). And we're already seeing drone carrying "motherships" that drop multiple quads and have RF repeaters to extend range to 50km+. It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt lost.