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2trill2spill

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Full Stack programmer and ML Researcher, works at Jaguar Land rover.

https://github.com/hbowden

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There is a similar problem with drone pilots -- it took Ukraine and Russia years to scale up and get to the current level of skill. However, training drone controllers is cheaper because the aircraft cost nothing.

Unlikely that pilots would work for drones in a fight with China over the pacific, the jamming and electronic warfare environment would make remote piloting nearly impossible, which is why CCA efforts are looking at onboard AI piloted aircraft. Even in Ukraine the EW environment is so harsh that FPV drones have resorted to using physical fiber optic cable connections so the drones cant be jammed out of the sky.

Any sort of drone that has the range, speed(shaheds only go ~180 km/h), and survivability to last in or near Chinese airspace is going to be expensive and complicated.

The pacific theater is a way different combat environment then Ukraine. The ranges involved and china's IADS is just a whole different beast. The cheap drones that we have been seeing in Ukraine and Iran are just not as useful in a war against china. Cheap drones don't have the range or survivability to penetrate china's airspace or hit moving targets(most go to fixed gps coordinates), this is a job for stand off munitions and manned stealth aircraft. There's no current UAV or CCA that exists that has the capabilities needed to replace manned aircraft for the majority of missions that would need to be flown. Wargaming shows that the b21 and f47 as well as stand off munitions are the workhorses. Although something like a Barracuda-500 seems very interesting but again its like 10x the cost of the drones being used in the Ukraine theater and its production lines are just now being set up.

It says right in the article ~200 a year. The base scenario in recent war games, the US lost 270 aircraft total, of which 206 were USAF. Japan lost 112, Taiwan's air force effectively ceased to exist. Across iterations, Air Force losses ranged from 168 to 372(mostly on the ground)in a fight with China over Taiwan. Those are substantial losses but assuming all the losses were f35(they were not) even at current non wartime production rates the United States could replace that in a few years time.

Also the war games showed that when LRASM supplies were depleted, the f35 became the primary anti ship and strike asset as it was one of the few aircraft that could fulfill the role and survive.

"At over eighty million dollars per airframe, with Lockheed Martin delivering fewer than two hundred aircraft per year across all variants and all customers worldwide, there is no surge capacity waiting to be activated and no precedent for accelerating a program of this complexity on wartime timelines. When one side can produce weapons by the hundreds and thousands — missiles, loitering munitions, and one-way attack drones — while the other relies on small numbers of exquisite platforms, the advantage shifts toward the side with scale."

The article gets this wrong as well, the f35 can be built at scale, no other fighter aircraft is produced in such high numbers, its also significantly cheaper on a per airframe basis vs Gen 4 aircraft and its more advanced. This article is nonsense and the author doesn't know what they are talking about.

I assume in this case they already had a bunch of firewall rules for PF and switching from OpenBSD -> FreeBSD is a much easier lift then going to linux because both the BSDs are using PF, although IIRC there are some differences between both implementations.

Umm each plane cost way less than 1.7 Billion. A F35A can be purchased for around $80 million. The 1.7 trillion figure is the cost of research & development, purchasing about 1700 aircraft, and sustaining them for 57 years. So that includes fuel, spare parts, upgrades, pilots, etc, for almost 60 years.

For a military, non WW2 plane, 1000 aircraft is a lot. The US government plans on buying around ~1700 F35 and US allies have orders for another ~1000 F35. Overtime I would expect the number of orders for f35 to keep going up.

I love my 2017 Ford Focus RS! It has a touch screen but besides for that there's no lane assist, automatic breaking, or any other driver assists. I also love that it is a manual, however some people may not like that. Also they only made it from 2016 - 2018 and used ones are expensive. But check it out if you want a modern, fast, manual car with minimal digital none sense.

Did you read the article? Not everyone wants to go back to how things were before? Simple things like not having people stand on top of me in line. There was a year of no social pressure to do anything and it was nice. No need to feel like you needed to socialize because everyone else is. That's what this article was about.

I read the article, but I will admit it doesn't really "make sense" to me. If I don't like something I don't do it or I try and change it, so it becomes something that doesn't bother me. If you don't want to be involved in certain social settings then don't go. I don't get why "Society" needs to change because some people prefer not to be around people. Its perfectly fine that you prefer less social interaction but many people are the complete opposite and that's also okay.

There could be interesting thoughts about social interaction changing and people are yet again arguing about covid restrictions.

Why would or should social interactions change? I temporarily changed my behavior to help limit the spread of covid. But now that vaccines are doing there thing, I'm going back to my old activities.

Proximity to nature? Sacramento is near the Tahoe area as well as the rest of the Sierra Nevada range. Proximity to nature is one area where Sacramento resoundingly beats the Bay area. However I agree with the rest of your examples.

I have a belief that human ingenuity will be able to generate truly clean power.

There's no such thing as truly clean power. Even renewables have huge environmental consequences. Hydro floods huge areas of land[1]. Renewables and batteries require huge sums of metals to be mined[2]. Solar and wind also take up huge sums of land that could otherwise be left alone. Everything has trades offs, there's no reason nuclear cant be one more tool in the tool shed.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/canada-site-c-...

[2] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/electric-vehicles-drive-up-...

I think your missing the point of the above poster. Why get rid of nuclear power until its replaced with some other non carbon polluting source? It just raises the amount of co2 going into the atmosphere. If all renewable energy grids work, great. But don't replace nuclear with fossil fuels, like California, Vermont and many others have done.

So pointing out that EVs can't go all the same places as ICE cars is picking a fight? Also EVs take longer to charge, cost a lot more, haver fewer places to charge, charging stations are incompatible between some brands, and EV cars don't last as long. If EVs are going to replace ICE cars they need to be equal or better, not worse. And finally the fact that you suggest to post an itinerary so I can figure out how to get somewhere by EV is a huge red flag. In an ICE vehicle I don't need to plan out my trip, I just drive and fill up when I need.

What EV gets 400 miles on a charge? And all I'm talking about is driving for a couple hours, rock climbing until its dark and driving back. For many of the places I like to go an EV is unpractical or not even an option.

I'm assuming the charging infrastructure, and electric vehicles in general around 2030 - 2035 to be way better and not suffer from these issues I mentioned above. I just think right now EVs are unpractical for people who don't live in their own house and people who travel long distances or into very remote areas.

In the deep creeks there's nothing, no RV parks or anything for that matter, but that is a pretty extreme location to get to. But every other place I've been to in western Utah for climbing, hiking, camping is also quite remote, not as extreme as the Deep creeks, but they all involve driving down horrendous 4x4 roads with no services let alone charging for miles. Here's some of the climbing areas I'm talking about[1]. Although most areas are not written down as that is the local tradition.

[1] https://www.mountainproject.com/area/112409907/west-desert