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It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have mo
by Balgair 10mo ago
It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership.
It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.
- krige 10mo agoInside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.
- Animats 10mo agoRight. What's more likely is a box launcher in a shipping container. Both China and the US have prototyped that. Launch from anything that can carry a shipping container. Such as a small, expendable self-propelled barge.
- ivandenysov 10mo agoAs an example loitering munition with foldable wings is already fairly compact. 2x storage space savings might not justify assembly space and effort
- elictronic 10mo agoThere is no might not, it just doesn’t. Someone played StarCraft and wants their carriers. Maintaining fielded equipment is costly enough.
- schiffern 10mo agoThat's fine, it's just the wrong nomenclature. Lots of weapon systems already require some assembly before use (for compact storage and other reasons), but we don't call that "production" of weapons.