Hacker News Reader

Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

As I understand it, my grandfather helped to develop a suicide drone that got to its target area at hypersonic speed in the late 1950s. For the Pentagon. It was called the Minuteman ICBM, and it entered service in 1962.

Is it possible to get a less misleading title on this article than "Pentagon Has Tested A Suicide Drone That Gets To Its Target Area At Hypersonic Speed"?

View on HN

The B in ICBM stands for ballistic. That means they are mainly bound by gravity for most of their travel. Hypersonic drones on the other hand are far more steerable. Curious droid has a great video on the difference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0t06EkZJcM

Maybe a better comparison would be an AMRAAM? They are essentially mini-drones at this point anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-120_AMRAAM

I definitely don't intend to deprecate modern precision-guided munitions. They obsolete nuclear-tipped ICBMs as thoroughly as ICBMs obsolete muzzle-loaded rifles. My complaint was strictly that the article's title, unbelievably, failed to mention any of the attributes that constitute that difference. It was like seeing a chimpanzee describe a sniper rifle as a fast rock thrower.

The word "loitering" distinguishes it pretty far from that. It's also important that, unlike ICBMs, this is positioned to be something which would be used in more than theory.

ICBMs were definitely intended to be used more than in theory in the 1950s; they likely will be if we aren't careful. Modern drones make them obsolete, of course, but some combatants are likely to have only ICBMs.

Loitering missiles date back to the 1980s, 30 or 40 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loitering_munition

We can use the title from https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/missile-defense-weapo..., which is the article this one is lifting from. I'd change the URL also, but it seems to be hard paywalled.

Awesome!

Here's the original non-paywalled one. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/sensors-electronic-wa...

This twitter thread has most of the relevant new info that was added after the first article: https://twitter.com/TheDEWLine/status/1270068190224232450

OSD budget entries: https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... (feb 2020) & https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudg... (first public appearance feb 2018)

It could be a tactical ballistic missile (MLRS/HIMARS launched) payload because the slide's 100k-200k target can't include the launch missile (ATACMS missile 800k each, cruise missiles too expensive as well). Not necessarily just a kinetic one since ISR is mentioned. Surveillance platform that's sometimes a bomb, under an unclear amount of human control? Quite a terrifying idea.

At least one similar looking drone delivery project from the 2000s with an ICBM was terminated because it couldn't be guaranteed that it wouldn't look like a nuclear launch.

This article from May 28 is also worth a glance. "SWARMS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: THE CASE FOR DECLARING ARMED AND FULLY AUTONOMOUS DRONE SWARMS AS WMD" https://mwi.usma.edu/swarms-mass-destruction-case-declaring-...

Not sure why you're fighting so hard on this w/ other replies.

How is the title misleading? The attack vehicle falls within the definition of a drone and the article is reporting on its hypersonic ability.

Sure you could claim an ICBM is a drone (I don't agree, but that doesn't seem to matter), but why try exclude this from that label?

Weird hill to die on just to include your grandfather's story.

The difference is that ballistic missiles go up and then come down on their target. The "loitering munitions" basically get delivered by a cruise missile and the fly around until triggered, at which point they basically turn from drone mode back into missiles.

So it's a one time use drone with a high speed delivery system.

It would be misleading to call an ICBM a drone.

It would be even more misleading to say an ICBM wasn't a drone, but that the "Vintage Racer" munition was a drone. As the article points out, some "drones" have better survivability than ICBMs do, but those aren't the ones the article is about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com