Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/air-force-picks-anduril-general-atomics-for-next-round-of-cca-work/

by dcgoss • 2 years ago

259 420 2 years ago

breakingdefense.com

xenospn• 2 years ago

Can you imagine the size of the spreadsheet used for this RFC? Dear Lord

ranger_danger6• 2 years ago

NixOS imploding in 3 2 1

geor9e• 2 years ago

That term isn't in the article, and it's Wikipedia page doesn't have anything about military. It just says it's a Linux distro. I'm out of the loop.

ordinaryradical2• 2 years ago

Some of the more leftwing NixOS contributors hate that Anduril is using their technology and are trying to keep them from contributing/sponsoring/etc. via code of conduct changes.

klausa2• 2 years ago

Anduril was supposed to be a sponsor for a Nix conference; it was then dropped after community reacted negatively to having a weapons manufacturer being a sponsor.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37418351

colinsane2• 2 years ago

please, don't. whatever this announcement changes, we don't need the paparazzi.

dralley4• 2 years ago

It's nice to see a contract go to someone that isn't Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or Boeing every now and then.

throwup2385• 2 years ago

And to a new-ish company like Anduril, too! Palmer Lucky and Co founded it in 2017 which is baby years for a lead defense contractor on a major project like this.

IIUC this is the Wingman program for the F22 and F35 so these aren't "slow" drones like predators, these are going to be high performance jets. This is a serious contract!

bglazer• 2 years ago

Their website says .95 Mach and 9Gs… in simulation. It’s definitely going to be high powered.

mrpippy• 2 years ago

The Fury program being sold here was developed by Blue Force Technologies (founded in 2010), which Anduril purchased last year.

blackeyeblitzar5• 2 years 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_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.

CamperBob22• 2 years ago

Because try to come up with a cooler name than "General Atomics," and I'll bet you can't.

idontwantthis• 2 years ago

North Central Positronics

pclmulqdq• 2 years ago

I 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.

blackeyeblitzar5• 2 years ago

My point is we should be redirecting some funds to also support startups for those pieces, rather than resigning ourselves to the status quo.

modeless3• 2 years ago

No, 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.

adastra224• 2 years ago

Because 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.

modeless3• 2 years ago

Hopefully 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.

Dalewyn3• 2 years 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.

blackeyeblitzar5• 2 years ago

Diversifying 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.

gantron5• 2 years ago

Optionality, even for a monopsony like the Defense industry, is good for the consumer (Pentagon). They still want suppliers to compete.

What incentive is there for a company to innovate if the DoD allows their competitors to die out? When it's time to buy a new fighter jet (or whatever else) those acquisitions chiefs want several options, same as any consumer.

The OUSD for Acquisition & Sustainment publishes lengthy analyses on competition within the industry and how to stoke it. [0]

[0] https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/15/2002939087/-1/-1/1/STA...

renewiltord2• 2 years ago

Competitive procurement is intentional US military method expressly for military purposes. Saying the DoD shouldn't care about it because it needs to win wars is a meaningless statement. Part of how it wins wars is by having effective equipment and part of how it has effective equipment is that it has a competitive process. Cultivating supplier diversity is intentional.

Honestly, quite an absurdity of a comment. Just says words without any coherent meaning.

bandrami4• 2 years ago

DoD 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.

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

Macross Plus

mulmen2• 2 years ago

This is for the next phase of the project that involves building flying prototypes. Later stages include mass production which could go to a Boeing or Lockheed. I wonder how much of the decision to give this to a smaller player is based on a desire to maintain diversity among defense contractors and the competitive advantages that come with.

In other words the US Military continues to be a successful centrally planned socio-capitlaist organization.

qp11• 2 years ago

Probably overthinking. The Europeans signed deals with Helsing and Palantir recently for similar projects. That must have lit a fire under someones ass.

mulmen2• 2 years ago

Sorry I don’t follow. What did I overthink?

bogtog• 2 years ago

Around the globe, I think militaries regularly give contracts beyond just to the lowest bidders to maintain a strong base

dcgoss• 2 years ago

Anduril's Fury aircraft: https://www.anduril.com/fury/

ninetyninenine9• 2 years ago

Marketing. Trust me... it's not that cool. They hire artists to design this stuff. Not kidding. The exterior is made by an industrial designer more so then an actual engineer. I would know, I worked at the company previously.

whywhywhywhy2• 2 years ago

He’s stated they have a no renders policy so would be weird if they had that then did what you suggest.

llamaimperative5• 2 years ago

Umm... this product was acquired into the company via Blue Force. It was pretty much fully designed prior to Anduril getting its hands on it. It sounds like you don't know what you're talking about despite having "worked at the company," which could mean anything.

SushiHippie2• 2 years ago

Even though I never heard about Anduril before, this is now the second time in a day that I 'hear' about it.

The first time was a post about the latest Mark Rober video 'promoting' Anduril/military technology to a child/teen audience.

https://lemmy.ca/post/19761360

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU

strictnein• 2 years ago

I mean, it's not some secret company. It's been featured here plenty and the founder was the guy behind the Oculus VR stuff which was sold to Facebook.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=anduril

labrador2• 2 years ago

In case you haven't noticed, there's a pretty serious drone war going on right now and Anduril makes drones. With the new US defense package they stand to get some business, among other reasons for them to be in the news.

SushiHippie2• 2 years ago

Okay sorry, I'm not from the US and sometimes I think I live behind the moon.

Do you mean with drone war, the usage of drones in a war (like they do in Ukraine and middle east) or a 'war' between manufacturers?

anyfactor2• 2 years ago

Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border protection, then they made drone-ramming drones and now unmanned fighter jets.

I am genuinely curious. I was in the whole retail investor space since early 2010s which saw the EV hype. Workhorse was supposed to supply vans for federal postal vans, Nikola had that GM deal going on etc.

Hanging around retail investor space helped made me be very skeptical about the idea of enterprise led innovation. Contract like this in my opinion requires seasoned engineering managers who have survived decades of bureaucracy but never forgot the essence of no-BS engineering. I believe SpaceX was able to bring some of these people in before they had a functional rocket. Where does Anduril stands with their management and innovation?

torginus• 2 years ago

The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development.

And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. Imagine that there isn't a single engineer today at Boeing who has gone through a clean sheet fighter aircraft development cycle throughout his career.

Boeing and LM, 2 of the biggest manufacturers of aircraft, have spotty reputations.

I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space.

dralley4• 2 years ago

There's definitely more than one problem with defense procurement, one of the biggest problems is simply having straightforward, acheivable goals in the first place and not fucking with them halfway through the process.

And honestly at this point the Air Force is handling this much better than the other branches. Despite all the delays and cost overruns on the F-22 and F-35 projects, at least we ended up with really fantastic and capable platforms. The B-21 is also basically on time and budget, which is nice.

Compare that to the Navy's LCS program, a massively expensive clusterfuck with very few redeeming qualities.

The Army is somewhere in the middle.

anyfactor2• 2 years ago

Thank you very much. I feel like engineering innovation has been concentrated on technology and not in defense engineering at all.

Immigrants have helped a lot in building the tech sector's innovation in the last half of the century. But the defense industry often requires naturalized citizens to work on these projects. I think there is a difference between immigrants coming to North America to work and eventually settling down, and offshoring work outside of North America. Immigrants cannot work in the defense sector while private companies are more than glad to have them work on their projects. The challenge is that the current framework for innovation may not qualify for the defense industry.

In the pre-Cold War era, the concept of American innovation was largely fueled by industrialization and academic participation in government sectors. Post-2000s, I feel like American innovation is rooted in the idea of diversity and America's ability to bring talent from across the world and concentrate it in major cities.

My thesis is that the US wants one or two American companies with monopolistic nature to build their future defense sector.

rapsey• 2 years ago

I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space.

The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.

willcipriano5• 2 years ago

You know how you hear a lot of complaints about private prisons?

How it creates perverse incentives that result in more people being imprisoned?

We have a private war apparatus.

We have been at war for 30 years without even a clear objective.

greedo• 2 years ago

Your timeframe is a bit off. Piston powered aircraft were not in use in the US military 30 years ago. 30 years ago was 1994. We had B2 bombers, and the F22 was in full development.

Also Boeing was developing the F-32 (which lost out to the F-35) in the mid 90's, so it's conceivable that an engineer on that program might still be around in some role.

ycombinete2• 2 years ago

This FT long piece on Palmer Lucky, and Anduril has some good context: https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2...

qarl13• 2 years ago

WHOAH.

Is this article really equating Palmer Lucky to Oppenheimer?

ninetyninenine9• 2 years ago

I worked there. Think: budget defense contractor and you'll be really accurate.

Their whole thing is to move fast and produce shit that breaks often and a lot. Pretty unreliable overall.

Their major success is marketing and B2G (business to government) and funding. Ultimately it is these three things that will make them successful. You iterate on crap long enough (which defense contracts tend to allow) eventually there's a good chance it will get good.

I would say anduril can't hold a candle to any chinese company in the same space. That being said Chinese companies can't yet hold a candle to the old US defense contractors.

The hype for anduril is through the roof though. Many people in the company and outside have drunk the koolaid and will vehemently deny what I'm saying here.

to sum it up:

When I was there, there was a story of this general who suddenly (off schedule) told anduril to test their drone ramming system to see if it worked. The startled field operator turned it on, and the entire thing fucking failed. And Anduril STILL won the billion dollar contract. Oh yeah this is supposed to be "classified" but I could give a flying shit. Very flagrant misuse of government secrecy protocols to hide incompetency.

It's probably better now, but I'm positive Even to this day, if you launch 8 cheap ass drones simultaneously at their defense system you WILL overwhelm it.

possiblelion• 2 years ago

Interesting perspective. Coming from the perspective of a non-US defence executive, I will have to say that failing demos are quite normal in defence applications. It happens, and you still win contracts, because the end client sees the value prop and trusts you to sort out the issues. Still nerve wrecking though.

RealityVoid3• 2 years ago

Oh yeah this is supposed to be "classified" but I could give a flying shit.

Oh, never change Hacker News. Got to love the casual breach of classified information.

leoqa• 2 years ago

I also worked at a new defense company that partnered with Anduril and other newer defense companies. It’s the same experience: unreliable software built week over week, thrashed by contract demands, and frankly mediocre engineers that make simple things complicated.

surfingdino• 2 years ago

It doesn't have to be good. What matters is that near peer adversaries see these developments and spend some of their resources on trying on R&D efforts to match ours. An arms race is a non-kinetic way to weaken your enemies before hostilities start. Unfortunately, AK-47s are cheap to produce at scale and our enemies have millions of people to give them to, so regardless of the fancy toys, the military still needs ammo, mines, grenades, rockets, bombs, and napalm to disable enemy soldiers at scale.

pantsforbirds• 2 years ago

I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products. They haven't made a habit of winning big research contracts, blowing past the budget, and then blowing past the original per-unit manufacturing price estimates.

It's probably much easier to make a deal with a company that is able to meet pricing and delivery dates

wbl• 2 years ago

You've forgotten blow past the previous state of the art in those contracts. That's part of why overruns happen is the goals tend to be ambitious.

caeril• 2 years ago

I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products.

They still sell their products in the same way the other contractors do, though. Specifically, you have to flash a badge to even get in the door.

Civilians, if they have the resources, should be able to procure these systems and vehicles if they so choose.

I'd much rather protect my property perimeter with one of their Lattice systems than with the hodgepodge array of Ubiquiti cameras and PIR sensors I use now.

I'd love to play with an ALTIUS out in the desert, even if I'm limited to civilian munitions.

But they won't even talk to you unless you are a Pig, a Fed, or a Glowie.

nikolay• 2 years ago

I like Anduril, but it seems that their stuff is overcomplicated and expensive compared to what we see on the battlefield in Ukraine where hundreds of drones are downed daily.

An unmanned fighter jet is a whole different ball game for them.

ajmurmann3• 2 years ago

AFAIK Anduril capabilities go quite a bit further. From their marketing materials I understand that devices are networked sensor data is shared. All drones sees what any given drone sees and so do soldiers on the ground and the commanders. IMO this can be a massive advantage over the slow, fairly dumb drones in use in Ukraine.

That said, I agree, we also need lots of cheap drones.

mrguyorama4• 2 years ago

From their marketing materials I understand that devices are networked sensor data is shared.

This hasn't been innovative in a military context since at least Desert Storm.

Actually a shared battlespace run by computers managing contacts and sharing the data with tens of platforms including sending specific intercept data to specific in air interceptors and relaying data those interceptors get back to the rest of the fleet and managing tasking for tens of different surface combatants to intelligently and efficiently task hundreds of incoming threats was rolled out to American fleets in the 1960s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Tactical_Data_System

some_random3• 2 years ago

It's the difference between peacetime preparation and wartime expediency. If the Ukrainians were able to spend the time and money to move the drone supply chain home, improve sensors, implement electronic warfare workarounds, etc they absolutely would. But right now there are Ukrainians losing hands disassembling conventional warheads to mount on FPV drones because they are needed right now on the front in the fight for the nation.

Animats• 2 years ago

It's impressive how much hardware they've been able to develop.

Their "Fury", which they acquired from Blue Force, is "a single engine business jet with no cabin." It was originally intended as a target drone, something for fighter pilots to practice against. Anduril repurposed it as an autonomous weapons system.

They do mean autonomous. Their slogan is "Autonomy for Every Mission".

We're seeing the future of warfare in Ukraine. The grunts are pinned down by drones and artillery, while the mobile forces are unmanned. Zipping around in helicopters is over, once the opposition has anything that can shoot them down. The expensive fighters are more agile and survivable, but they are few.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2022/03/30/a-drone-w...

ethbr113• 2 years ago

future of warfare

Color me skeptical. It feels like what we're seeing now is a local optimum: new systems (drones) designed to asymmetrically win ($) against legacy systems (mechanized vehicles) designed for very different goals.

We'll see what things look like once the post-drone evolution cycle has turned on the armored side.

That said, I do think the Marines are right, in that distributed agility/logistics from temporary and frequently relocated basing is going to be the new normal.

Russia doesn't have particularly advanced long range fires and Ukrainian inventory is limited.

But conflict against China or the US would be dominated by cruise or ballistic missile strikes against any concentrated, persistent target.

epolanski• 2 years ago

As always war is a rock paper scissor.

As we have seen, the russians have been very good at electronic warfare and have increased their capabilities in fighting and jamming drones from sensible distance.

This doesn't change what a mess "modern" war is when both sides have relatively good equipment and none can claim air superiority: symmetrical war of attrition.

threeseed• 2 years ago

Ukraine is constantly inventing new techniques that are re-thinking what drones can do.

Recently they have been using them to drop spikes to slow vehicles which are then hit by a second set of drones.

At some point soon these drones will have specialised capabilities and will go out in swarms to autonomously figure out how to take down objects.

solatic• 2 years ago

We'll see what things look like once the post-drone evolution cycle has turned on the armored side

I'm not convinced this is feasible in the short term; drone warfare is predicated on launching not just cheap drones but many of them. The new armor isn't steel or iron to survive the blast, but to shoot down attacking drones before they can explode. Most current defenses are ground-based missile batteries that can't really be directly protected by armor. Long-term, the most promising options are laser-based batteries, which today have insufficient power sources to stuff into mobile armored platforms.

kevin_thibedeau• 2 years ago

They're using drones as killbots against individual infantrymen, actively chasing them down rather than taking a lucky grenade drop. That changes everything about force deployment on the ground.

drawnwren• 2 years ago

This isn't really correct. Blue Force had already repurposed it as an autonomous weapons system and it was originally developed as a sparring partner for fighter jets (it was far more capable than just being a target).

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/unmanned-flying-te...

RandomLensman• 2 years ago

The idea that everything would be small and with little momentum to overcome doesn't strike me as stable situation - someone might just start to throw (large) rocks from space, for example.

dgroshev9• 2 years ago

I don't think we as laypeople should even attempt to draw conclusions from Ukrainian battlefields ourselves, seeing how strong the survivorship bias is.

Take FPV drones. In [1] Michael Kofman estimates (based on talking to a number of frontline units) that on average <10% of FPV drone strikes on armour are successful. The success being a mission kill, not a spectacular turret toss we see on twitter/reddit/telegram. Every strike requires a large support team, strikes can't be massed (because of radio interference and EW), the efficiency is dropping over time because of cheap adaptations (EW, nets/cages, smoke), and the drones aren't that cheap and much less suppressive than 155mm shells. A layperson relying on stuff on social networks would have no way of knowing this, and think of FPV drones as this incredibly effective weapon making tanks (and helicopters) obsolete.

Or TB2s. Remember how they were the future of warfare after their success in Nagorno-Karabakh and the first few weeks in Ukraine? Few months later TB2s completely disappeared from the media, and I don't think many people are aware of how useless they became.

More generally, I think we're seeing a repeat of the century old debate over torpedo boats. People saw how torpedo boats were much cheaper than battleships and thought "hey we can have many of those boats, it'll be cheaper and more lethal". Turns out that range, coordination, sensing, targeting, and logistics are so difficult a smaller number of more capable platforms in well trained hands is both more effective and efficient.

In that analogy, those CCA drones are [torpedo boat] destroyers, not torpedo boats. A small number of somewhat cheaper, but still expensive platforms dependent on the exquisite core of the fleet (battleships, carriers, F-35s, or AH-64s) that doesn't go anywhere.

[1] https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/mike-kofman-and-rob-lee-on...

v8xi• 2 years ago

One of the advancements against EW is having on-device mapping systems (this goes back to the Tomahawk in the 70s) so that the projectile can adjust its flight in the absence of GPS. This is what one of the real advances of AI promises to be - a vehicle that can identify and change targets fully autonomously. Will especially apply to unmanned underwater vehicles which (as far as I know) haven't been deployed but will surely change the dynamic on the seas

nyolfen4• 2 years ago

quadcopter manufacturing has been dramatically increasing over the last year to the order of 10k+/mo on both sides with no sign of slowing down (i believe it's actually much higher than this but can't find the source i saw a few weeks ago); your argument seems to butt up against this reality

dragonwriter2• 2 years ago

More generally, I think we're seeing a repeat of the century old debate over torpedo boats. People saw how torpedo boats were much cheaper than battleships and thought "hey we can have many of those boats, it'll be cheaper and more lethal".

And that was mostly right; that's why fast attack craft, the modern evolution of torpedo boats, are still a thing, while battleships have been relegated to the graveyard of history.

constantcrying2• 2 years ago

A 10% success chance seems incredibly effective. I would have estimated the chances quite a bit lower. Tanks are million dollar devices, which are expensive to replace and require significant training. If they can be effectively attacked by infantry without putting themselves in significant danger, that drastically lowers the value of a tank.

RF_Savage• 2 years ago

Ain't basic fpv drones around half the price of a 155mm HE shell?

nonameiguess• 2 years ago

Just remember that, unless your goal is just to kill everyone and scorch the earth, the aim of warfare is to occupy and control territory, which at some point necessitates humans to do the occupation. Nobody is yet trying to create permanent wastelands inhabited only by robots. It may become increasingly dangerous, but whether it's helicopters or some other means of transportation, you have to get humans into the land you're trying to take.

There are limits to autonomy as well. Presumably they mean these things can find targets and maneuver in real time without continual human intervention, but they still have human operators and someone has to give them a target. My brother-in-law works for Anduril, as a forward-deployed trainer of the drone operators. There are very much plenty of humans involved here. They can't just ship you a pallet of machines that you turn on and then they go fight a war for you.

Also remember that exactly what you're describing (all the grunts are pinned down by artillery and can't move) is exactly what happened in WWI. That didn't mean it was the future of war. Offensive forces adapted. Heavy armor, airborne troop insertion, long-range counter-battery. Having the upper hand in an arms race is never enduring. The other side always adapts.

mezentius• 2 years ago

> Nobody is yet trying to create permanent wastelands inhabited only by robots.

On the contrary-- I think that capability would be enthusiastically adopted by a state like Ukraine, which is fighting an asymmetric defensive war against a larger aggressor with logistical advantages. Keep in mind that a "permanent wasteland" as a buffer was in fact the status quo in parts of the east prior to the Russian invasion in 2022, except the wasteland was maintained by human beings at a high political and economic cost. Today, both Russia and Ukraine create permanent wastelands in the form of extensive minefields, passing those costs on to posterity.

The autonomous No Man's Land--a relatively low-cost deployment of a buffer zone along a state border, in which nothing human may move and live--is likely to be the future of warfare in a world increasingly defined by ethnic conflicts, unchecked inter-state rivalries, and migratory pressures.

pookha• 2 years ago

You don't have a historical or realistic understanding of warfare. The aim of warfare has always -- and will always be -- to break your enemy's will to fight. Sometimes that involves capturing and holding territory, but those are just "implementation details". In WW2 nuclear weapons were dropped on civilians and there was never any desire by the guys dropping those bombs to occupy territory.

thexumaker• 2 years ago

Drones have changed warfare at a local tactical level. But your drones and smaller autonomous systems aren't helping if you have overwhelming firepower superiority, ie in Gaza drones haven't inflicted too much damage if you can just drop a couple thousand JDAMS and level out a territory.

SkyPuncher• 2 years ago

Gaza is urban warfare. Most of the drone videos are tanks being attacked in open roads or fields.

MR4D• 2 years ago

I highly, highly , highly recommend you read about the 2002 Millennium Challenge - essentially a war game exercise (and a huge one at that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

fennecbutt3• 2 years ago

When you think about it, this is one area that Russia can't really compete in as well as western countries. Autonomous weapons will be the decider on any future battlefield minus nuclear weapons.

But that's always been the pain of nukes "let me do what I want or I'll nuke you" has become a catch phrase.

If China invaded Taiwan tomorrow and said "if you stop us we will use nuclear weapons"...like what can you say to that? It's very easy to bet against mutually assured destruction because that takes two parties and both have to accept said destruction...I don't think many Western countries would go "Okay fine, you do what you gotta do and we'll send some right back to you"...I think we'd probably just let China take Taiwan.

The only thing that would trigger a western nuclear response would be if we couldn't evacuate semi technology and assets out before invasion, I think US for sure would definitely lay hands on the big red button if that was in play.

RecycledEle3• 2 years ago

Zipping around in helicopters is over, once the opposition has anything that can shoot them down.

If that were true, foot soldiers would have been done once the enemy had anything to kill them. And the enemy had the ability to kill foot soldiers from the earliest days of warfare.

Everything in the battlefield in vulnerable. Everything.

Being vulnerable does not make something obsolete.

What makes something obsolete is when that thing is no longer the best way to accomplish any mission.

pupileater• 2 years ago

What's with defense and militech companies using Tolkien nomenclature as branding?

rhaps0dy2• 2 years ago

I think it's a feature of followers of Peter Thiel Thought (and, in this case, Peter Thiel was one of the early investors).

season2episode3• 2 years ago

The name Anduril means “Flame of the West”, which sounds cool as hell. But it feels a little icky to me given the ideological proclivities of Palmer Luckey and Thiel.

ein0p2• 2 years ago

I find it remarkable how the readers of this site are at the same time “worried about LLMs”, and totally enthusiastic towards what will inevitably become a no-human-in-the-loop Skynet. Sure, we’ll all get smashed with drones if we stop paying taxes or otherwise disobey, but at least our LLMs won’t accidentally praise Hitler or something.

brunoqc• 2 years ago

We are on a venture capital website. Don't be surprised that when people read an article about killer drones, they just salivate at the sweet pentagon money.

Aeolun5• 2 years ago

If we don’t end up needing it: enjoy the sweet pentagon money. If we do end up needing it: enjoy the adoration of the people _and_ the money. Win-win.

ajmurmann3• 2 years ago

IMO with defense the prisoner dilemma is out in full force. Ideally nobody would build autonomous weapon platforms like this. I'm under the impression though that out opponents are already working on these as well. Building these ourselves turns the situation from a lose/lose (we lose because our enemy has these weapons and we don't or we lose because the weapons kill us) to a potential win/lose (we win or avoid way because we have solid weapons or we may lose because the weapons turn against us)

some_random3• 2 years ago

I think it's entirely coherent for someone to be worried about losing their place in the world but not worried about autonomous jet fighters.

Symmetry• 2 years ago

Any rogue AI, if it proves to be a danger, will still need to maintain its servers somehow. So to be a danger it either needs to get humans to do what it wants, in which case it can bomb things just as well with manned fighters, or develop its own robots and manufacturing, in which case it can build its own fighters.

We ought to worry that these will let General Ripper go rogue more easily or an adversary hack them, but I don't think this moves the needle at all one whether advanced AIs could be dangerous.

nurbl• 2 years ago

If the movie "the Cube" has taught us anything (and I guess it hasn't) it is that it's possible work on something without knowing what it's actually for. With some misdirection, an AI could probably run in a data center that is on paper doing something completely different. Do most people maintaining cloud servers today even know what they are running?

nbzso8• 2 years ago

The problem you have, dear Americans is called MIC. Just quoting one of your presidents: >“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So many wars for profit. History knows best that there is no free lunch. But I suppose consuming propaganda without a critical thinking and effort for facts is good for the business. By the way Zala Aero is the current leader in this space. That's why Ukrainian counteroffensive was a failure.

wavefunction• 2 years ago

What a smug greasy post. I can't tell if you're in favor of MIC or not, what a failure on your part.

1oooqooq2• 2 years ago

zala aero

I'm not following the war but thanks to your comment just read about them.

They are a subunit of Kalashnikov and the latest drone uses PET bottles for fuel tank and a plywood fuselage and a banal model airplane engine found at hobby shops.

It's almost like some 90s game designer is writing the plot for this.

nbzso8• 2 years ago

Yep, you can check a thousand videos of those bottles with AI burning tanks, BMP’s, m777, etc. Or you can continue living in the Hollywood Metaverse.

My country is part of NATO. Nobody asked us. No referendum. No voting. Nothing. The political class is filling their pockets with money, while propaganda is beyond the level of USSR and Nazi Germany.

Some of us have military service behind our backs. Some of us lived under a communist dictatorship, and we know the smell of leftist bullshit.

Live in your tech bubble, but know that East Europeans see clearly who is the reason for this bloodbath. And when the time comes, we will not die for your corporations as Ukrainians.:)

llamaimperative5• 2 years ago

Russia getting its ass kicked by 40 year old American equipment is the strongest argument I've yet seen for the military-industrial complex :)

nbzso8• 2 years ago

With shovels and washing machine chips I see:) Please open any map and see. Easy way: Check Weeb Union channel. But please, be seated.

paganel• 2 years ago

Let these Westerners drive directly into a ditch, they deserve it. It's like they've learned nothing from the current war in Ukraine. Some people are even mentioning dog-fights, like this is a freaking Top Gun movie or some such (there's no dog-fight against a S-300, I can tell them that).

The best thing that they could do would be to "import" a few dozen Ukrainian drone operators and engineers, people who have actively and directly fought against a near-peer US adversary, and let them design whatever they think will win the next war. But that won't make the current ghouls in the US the buttloads of money they are betting on, so that will never happen.

inemesitaffia2• 2 years ago

The locals can always bring them in to consult.

Weapons and bases aren't just about winning conflicts, they are about jobs (see Perun)

dralley4• 2 years ago

The counteroffensive failed because of mines, mines, mines and more mines and a woefully insufficient quantity of demining equipment.

Yet, even that "failure" (I do agree that it failed) was still more successful than Russia's post-summer-2022 offensives.

bandrami4• 2 years ago

I wonder how much the Tolkien estate is getting from them and Palantir

Aeolun5• 2 years ago

They’re hardly trademarked are they?

bandrami4• 2 years ago

As original names they're under copyright in the US and UK, and in the UK the estate also retains right of publicity.

seydor• 2 years ago

"The war was aborted after a DMCA takedown request"

p0w3n3d2• 2 years ago

  I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

api• 2 years ago

Einstein was referring to the hydrogen bomb of course.

If high tech superpowers went at each other full bore with H bombs we’d probably be LARPing Mad Max, but so far that hasn’t happened and seems unlikely. All leaders in all these powers know that any such exchange would be mutual and thus suicidal (MAD) so the only way it happens is if you get someone truly insane in power.

What has happened since the bomb was developed and what’s likely to continue are skirmishes and proxy wars. Drones are the modern weapon of such conflicts with Ukraine and the Israel-Iran skirmish being heavily drone based.

This is ugly because it’s often not the soldiers of the superpower puppet masters dying but those of puppet states, and drones allow more technological powers to beat up on less technological people like it’s a video game.

If nukes are used in conflict in this century it will probably be just a few in one of these conflicts, followed by an overwhelming condemnation.

But the silver lining is that since the bomb was developed the overall per capita number of humans dying in war globally has fallen dramatically. As long as we continue to avoid huge scale conflict this number will probably stay low. Without the bomb it’s likely that a WWII style conflict between the US and USSR would have erupted and killed many millions more.

Some argue based on this that the bomb was a peacekeeping invention. So far that’s been true but we will see how the future goes.

jpgvm2• 2 years ago

It's been going on much longer in places like Yemen. Obama was the first to recognise that by switching to drones you basically don't have to face any domestic political opposition to combat.

p0w3n3d2• 2 years ago

Autonomous drones going full berserk are not really far from H bomb. Of course each one is much less than a bomb, but firepower can be much larger in total

Aeolun5• 2 years ago

sticks and stones

Sticks and drones?

dralley4• 2 years ago

(NSFW) https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1bd9vtz/russ...

Garvi• 2 years ago

It's hard to believe, but the times of "If I won't do it, someone else will." are back and it seems people forgot the lesson. It is my honest opinion that anyone who works on such weapons is a monster.

3 years ago this topic would be full of people protesting this. Pointing out the inhumanity, the potential for abuse, the hypocrisy, the dangers of desensitizing war. Censorship changed the game entirely.

merman2• 2 years ago

let’s all be diplomats instead. That will save our allies!

ajmurmann3• 2 years ago

Let's also focus on telling our allies to always restrain themselves when fighting their enemies.

mistercheph• 2 years ago

C'mon, man!

galangalalgol• 2 years ago

That is indeed a horrible excuse for any action. But having been here for well over 3 years I think there has always been a diversity of opinions on such things. This is very far from an echo chamber, which is a good thing! I just hope ycombinator never tries to monetize that diversity of thought the way /. did by feeding in tangentially techincal topics they knew would be controversial. Not everyone here thinks pacifism is a good idea, not everyone here thinks the MIC is just a jobs program, not everyone here is even on the human's side in the Butlerian jihad. I'm glad they post because I am never completely sure of any of my views and they may have good arguments. And if we talk to each other it moderates the polarization.

some_random3• 2 years ago

It wasn't censorship, it was the Invasion of Ukraine that woke up most of your fellow pacifists. They saw civilians being butchered in a pointless, egotistical invasion of a peaceful country. They saw protests in Russia being brutally and quickly crushed. So they realized that there are in fact threats in the world that aren't going to be defeated through self sacrifice and empathetic dialogue and instead needs to be subdued with firepower.

gcanyon• 2 years ago

I'm hearing that dogfighting is a thing of the past because weapons systems operate at large distances anymore. Drones should do (at least?) three things well: dog fight, since they can make decisions in an instant and tolerate higher g-forces than a human can; prevent a human death if they get shot down; and be smaller/lighter/carry more/have greater range because they're not designed around carrying a pilot.

Any ideas on what the driving factors are for this?

whamlastxmas• 2 years ago

I think the amount of space and weight a human and their required hardware need is pretty low on a jet. However the aerodynamics probably benefit a lot from not needing a high up bulbous cockpit with really good visibility

jaysonelliot• 2 years ago

One important distinction, though - lethal drones should not be making decisions.

michaelt• 2 years ago

Arguably you're right.

But the makers of lethal autonomous drones would probably claim their product is really more like a cruise missile or fire-and-forget missile, where there's only a human in the loop at the moment of launch and things are autonomous thereafter.

nyolfen4• 2 years ago

this consensus will last until the first actor defects

daedrdev2• 2 years ago

Say some human decides have the drone attack a target, and the drone takes care of the entire fight itself

ethbr113• 2 years ago

Dog fighting requires much more situational awareness from a sensor perspective. One reason the recent VISTA demonstration had the adversary feed its own position via data link to the autonomously flown plane.

Magazine depth and endurance/range seem to be the initial goals.

Wohlf• 2 years ago

Unmanned fighters are a force multiplier, a single F-35 can coordinate its own squadron of drones (loyal wingman program). More ordnance, more coverage, more capabilities, more flexiblility, and less risk for lower relative costs.

Balgair2• 2 years ago

I hate to be the downer here, but we said the exact same thing with the F4. And then the F4 got hosed over Vietnam. So we went back to having a gun onboard.

Things are appreciably different this time, yes. But how different, and how that will shake out in the fog of war, the friction [0], is another thing to be seen.

All I guess I'm saying is that caution is warranted before we declare the dog fight dead, again.

[0] Clausewitz, drink!

hollerith• 2 years ago

The VTOL and the Navy versions of the F-35 lack a gun.

Aeolun5• 2 years ago

Wait how are these representative of a 5th gen fighter if they have a max speed below mach 1?

nradov4• 2 years ago

Efficient supersonic capability is only one minor aspect of 5th generation fighters, and not even particularly useful for most missions. It's less important than low observability, data links, and sensor fusion.

bearjaws• 2 years ago

TIL there is a LOTR themed company that is making weapons, neat.

qarl13• 2 years ago

It's closely related to Palantir.

Both are by right wing Silicon Valley libertarians sucking on the government teat.

adampk2• 2 years ago

In your view, does any company that does business with government organizations count as sucking on the government teat?

drngdds• 2 years ago

libertarians

Palmer Luckey got kicked out of Meta for funding Trump ads, I don't think you can classify him as a libertarian lol

(though there are many other self-described libertarians who are even more right-wing-authoritarian, so maybe nitpicking isn't worthwhile)

sandworm1018• 2 years ago

They are pilotless. Ok. That is one job that has been removed from the equation, but take a look at any airforce base. Not everyone is a pilot. The vast majority of personnel are not pilots. These things will still need the engine techs, the avionics people, the ground crew, fuel people, air traffic controllers, all the way down to the guy driving the mule. The net change in manning between an "autonomous" drone and an oldschool drone driven by a pilot in a trailer will be minimal.

And many old fighter jets retire as target drones, going on to fly unmanned for perhaps decades. New purpose-build designs might have lower operating costs but their purchase price will always be higher than slapping radio controls onto already-purchased jets.

iamthirsty• 2 years ago

The net change in manning between an "autonomous" drone and an oldschool drone driven by a pilot in a trailer is minimal.

Well the whole point is not to reduce headcount totally but reduce the amount of people put directly in harms way, for example a pilot flying in a direct combat scenario.

sandworm1018• 2 years ago

An "unmanned" drone still has a pilot. That pilot is on the ground, flying the drone remotely. An "autonomous" drone is one that has no pilot anywhere. In neither case is anyone in harm's way.

chasd002• 2 years ago

downing a drone doesn't require the kind of response that killing a pilot does. It's easier to deescalate from a bunch of drones being shot down vs coffins coming home to families.

jessriedel3• 2 years ago

Why do you think anyone else thinks that eliminating the job is the valuable thing bere? I have always heard the benefits to be things like less risk to life (vs piloted), quicker reaction (vs piloted and remote), can’t be jammed (vs remote). Literally never heard anyone mentioned salary saved ever, and indeed everyone expects it to be more expensive.

sandworm1018• 2 years ago

> never heard anyone mentioned salary saved ever

When it comes to fighter pilots, salary is irrelevant. The few pennies paid in salary is absolutely nothing compared to the millions of dollars a year it takes to train and maintain an active combat pilot. Those costs are at the center of nearly every discussion re military drone tech. An autonomous pilot, a computer program, doesn't need check rides. It doesn't need to re-qual its AAR ticket every month. And it doesn't retire or get promoted out after five years.

nradov4• 2 years ago

A lot of the support staff on those airbases exist to support training flights by human pilots (both in the cockpit and remote). If training flight hours can be cut then that will tremendously reduce ground personnel requirements. The autonomous flight software only has to be "trained" once; new copies don't have to spend years in the pilot training pipeline.

(I am aware that current autonomous piloting technology is very limited and can only accomplish a small subset of Air Force missions.)

Havoc• 2 years ago

Unfortunately it’s also the coolest job of those you lost that got killed

daedrdev2• 2 years ago

The point is the maneuvers can be much more extreme because the done doesn't need to prevent a bag of meat from rupturing due to high g forces.

nradov4• 2 years ago

I don't know why people keep bringing that up. It's hardly relevant. Extreme maneuvers at high G forces are mostly only useful in very limited circumstances for evading a missile in the terminal phase of an engagement. In the real world it's far less important than low observability, data links, sensor fusion, EW, decoys, fuel fraction, and stand-off range.

Building an airframe strong enough to handle G forces beyond what a human can endure also comes at the price of greater weight and reduced range. It's not worth the trade-off.

0x4572• 2 years ago

I'd say it's a huge change. Yes, it still needs all the same support personnel, or maybe even more. However, those drones that are controlled from a container suffer huge latency that make them useless for most air combat.

Those aren't meant to fly high and send missiles at weddings on the ground, those are maneuverable wingmen for F-35s.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

The introduction of autonomous flying killer robots reduces human species longevity estimates by ~50%, at least.

gnatman2• 2 years ago

I guess autonomous platforms are exciting to defense procurement and war planners because they can use them much more aggressively in theatre without risking expensive pilots. It's hard not to think of the recent reporting on the "Lavender" AI targeting system and how these two ideas combined will lead to more indiscriminate killing of civilians. What's the calculus for human American pilot lives to collateral civilian lives? 5:1 or 40:1?

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

Collateral damage should be at historic lows with an ai army. Fly a swarm like birds over a city, identify your target, and you can selectively eliminate that target with a single bullet from the drone.

Sure beats filling the sky with bombers and flattening a city overnight as was done in wwii.

littlestymaar• 2 years ago

The problem is how you define your “target”. In Israeli Lavender program it seems they are killing people for belonging to the same Whatsapp group as someone identified as a terrorist. And that's because Israel has a long time policy of “punishing” family members of “terrorists” (the term includes both legit terrorists but also people who are just political opponents).

bugglebeetle• 2 years ago

It’s the height of irony to respond to this comment with some techno-utopian BS, when the parent is describing how AI is actually being used, right now, to inflict mass casualties on a civilian population. At what point to people abandon their Panglossian hypotheticals and stare reality in its face?

lossolo• 2 years ago

Read this https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

It's not as simple as you say and it doesn't work currently as you say.

adhamsalama• 2 years ago

Israel did flatten Gaza. They don't care about killing innocent civilians.

darknavi• 2 years ago

If you haven't read Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez, it's quite good (especially the audio book) and is related to unmanned killing drones. Near future sci-fi.

gonzo41• 2 years ago

Shouldn't they be just trying to get the unit cost of a cruise missile down to like 100K. Seems a lot more effective TBH.

acjohnson552• 2 years ago

Reading the comments here is giving me the disturbing realization that the war in Ukraine is extremely valuable to the US because the US gets to collect immense amounts of data to inform perspectives on how modern technology is revolutionizing warfare with minimal risk to American troops. And that's with technology in the hands of an extremely motivated ally against one of our top rivals. This opportunity doesn't come very often, and I can imagine there are a lot of parties interested in it persisting at least until the value in the observational data starts to tail off. Along with other concerns, this may be a reason to parcel out exactly what tech gets given to Ukraine at which times.

kornhole5• 2 years ago

I have been watching the warfare via several Telegram channels and observe how important drone warfare now is. I watched 5 $10M Abrams tanks destroyed by $500 FPV drones. Close combat on troops is also conducted with drones with remarkable precision. We don't know how much of the targeting and execution by Russia is automated verses manual, but many experts in this field agree that Russia's technical capability is at parity and sometimes exceeds NATO's such as hypersonic missiles.

exhilaration• 2 years ago

I thought Russia's hypersonic missiles were a failure, with the Ukrainians shooting them down with 30 year old Patriot missiles? There were a lot of articles about it last year, here's one:

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2023/09/what-ukraines-...

jjk166• 2 years ago

It's worth considering that while the equipment in use in the ukraine conflict is obviously relevant, the nature of the conflict is radically different from what the US would face. Ukraine is literally on Russia's doorstep, allowing Russia to send its units in and pull them back for repairs with relatively limited logistical strain. This allows it to use massive numbers of cold war surplus assets that would not be viable anywhere else on earth. Ukraine started the war with an extremely small air force and has received only very limited support in that regard, meaning it has spent the entire war without air control. This both limits Ukraine's capacity to use tactics which rely on air support and gives Russia the ability to operate its air forces in relative safety. US doctrine is completely based around air superiority. Ukraine had an extremely limited standing army and military industrial capacity prior to the war, and has relied heavily on non-professional troops who volunteered or were conscripted after the war started and received only moderate training, and it is dependent on foriegn support for advanced arms and munitions. The US has both the strongest standing army and the most advanced military industrial complex in human history. The issues Ukraine is struggling with now - pushing into areas Russian troops have spent months fortifying while having to conserve artillery shells, holding off an unending trickle of 60 year old soviet tanks, and having to jerry-rig long range drones to attack targets in Russia - are challenges that simply wouldn't exist if the US were fighting a war. If our goal was really to get useful data that would be applicable to US conflicts, we'd be giving the Ukrainians the means to fight the way we fight.

kornhole5• 2 years ago

I agree Ukraine never had a chance against the far superior Russian military. The reason the US and NATO did not officially send ground troops, although many of their people are on the ground, is that it would trigger full war between NATO and Russia which would go thermonuclear. If that ever happened, Russia's larger and more advanced nuclear arsenal (ballistic missiles) would give it an advantage. Their large land mass, twice that of the US, would give them a better survival chance after the fallout.

Balgair2• 2 years ago

It was always going to be a terrible tragedy with Ukraine. Vlad committed something much worse than a crime, he committed a mistake (to paraphrase Talleyrand).

NATO+ countries aren't fighting him, they are using Ukraine as a proxy, while Vlad is fighting with his own army. NATO has been waiting nearly 80 years to attack Russia directly. They very motivated to make sure that Vlad continues making errors. As such, the longer this war takes, the better for NATO. And, unfortunately, the worse for Ukraine.

I think data collection is for sure one aspect, but I think Russian casualties is the largest motivator

sangnoir• 2 years ago

And, unfortunately, the worse for Ukraine

In what way would having the whole of Ukraine annexed like Crimea be better for Ukraine?

attentive• 2 years ago

I have an impression that no modern technology is tested there but rather supplied with ready to be decommissioned 50 year old antics.

gantron5• 2 years ago

You're mostly correct that the older tech is the bulk of what's been sent, but there have been lots of batches of newer tech that the US has delivered. [0]

These newer companies (Anduril, Skydio, etc.) do it for a few reasons. Some are obvious: they get paid and their systems have a chance at influencing real-world events that the leadership & rank-and-file employees might care about personally.

But from a pure product development perspective, fielding these systems is a valuable test opportunity. You've built a great drone but you're not sure how it'll perform in a GPS-denied environment with S-band radio completely unusable? Russian Electronic Warfare teams are happy to curate that environment for you.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2024-01-08...

shrimp_emoji• 2 years ago

Did you get the disturbing realization that Russia gets data on the materiel too?

acjohnson552• 2 years ago

Of course they are, but to me at least, it seems like their cost-benefit is very different from the US. I don't think the war is worth it to them just to learn more about warfare.

bmitc2• 2 years ago

How does a company like Anduril come out of nowhere to scale so fast, get so much money, and so many contracts in a very entrenched field of government defense contracts? Yes, they're bringing modern industry experience to these things, but I don't see that as enough to break through all the barriers that are there. How have they done it?

mingus88• 2 years ago

Andruil is a bunch of ex-Palantir folk.

AndrewKemendo2• 2 years ago

Go find any GUR operator in Ukraine and ask them what they think of Anduril

Their proprietary controller doesn’t work with TAK or qgc and they keep everything closed with no interop with the actual FPV or other systems in use daily

Unusable in actual war

erhserhdfd• 2 years ago

That's fascinating. Where would you direct someone that is interesting in learning more about these items? Any good sources or websites to read?

AndrewKemendo2• 2 years ago

Build a product they want to use and they will find you

yurikoif• 2 years ago

I think that is skydio not anduril? Or if you could provide source about gur complaining against anduril really appreciate it

whateveracct2• 2 years ago

Anduril is a Haskell shop fwiw

boshalfoshal• 2 years ago

Maybe in certain parts it is. Last time I spoke with them they were transferring some of their on-robot stacks from C++ to Rust.

whateveracct2• 2 years ago

Yeah it's not the whole company but they do recruit Haskellers often for an electronic warfare team.

taneq• 2 years ago

Man, Anduril must be spending a fortune on advertising right now. They've been on top of HN a few times recently and I've seen a bunch of advertorials about them popping up on FB.

barfbagginus• 2 years ago

Here's a fun thought.

You might disagree with the SJW fork attack on nix. But if you also disagree with the idea of Haskell powered death drones blowing up innocent little baby humans, then you might have incentive to support - or at least loudly ignore - the forking / sabotage / leftist troll op.

Me, I will take an Even More aggressive track: I honestly hope this turmoil leads to a better version of the nix syntax. Perhaps something much cleaner: A YAML based syntax that eliminates curly braces and the need for many nix functions.

Yes, I'm being a little evil >:]

Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets

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