The future of air defense must be smarter, more affordable, and reusable | Hacker News Reader

The future of air defense must be smarter, more affordable, and reusable

anduril.com

80 pointsulrischa105 comments

It's hilarious that Anduril is proposing "more affordable" defense gear.

They are a prime wrapped in VC funding, and like most defense contractors, they are egregiously overpriced compared to the cost of materials.

I can see them capturing US DOD budgets, but predict that much more cost effective competitors emerge internationally.

I mean it's not like it's saas where you can expect cheaper alternatives to emerge from anywhere in the world to capture the market.

Building tech for DoD takes a lot of things (i) access to ITAR restricted tech, (ii) access to capital, (iii) and DoD actually willing to work with you, where being a domestic player helps.

There is nothing hilarious about Anduril claiming to be more affordable gear when it's actually much cheaper than the current players that supply DoD.

The issue with all peacetime weapon systems is that they necessarily have to work within the peacetime procurement system. They become optimized for capturing contracts, not capturing battlefields. Anything that's actually optimized for capturing the battlefield, in the absence of a real battlefield to capture, fails to win the contract and languishes in some bankrupt startup.

Usually the way wars go is that the first 2 years are spent in utter chaos as the belligerents realize that all their plans don't survive contact with the enemy, and then you get rapid technological development, usually from outside firms that were initially part of non-defense industries, once the belligerents actually get serious about winning the war.

The US has been at war for a long time though. Iraq, Afghanistan, Somali pirates... Ukraine and Israel are some of the proxy wars we have a hand in (how much is up for debate). While what you say is true, weapons do get tested in the field and that wins.

The weapons get tested, but there isn't the existential threat that drives people to actually change their behaviors in response to that data. If the Ukrainians jerry rig a $5k drone to work as well as a $50k missile, the US congress isn't going to cancel their contract for $50k missiles. If we were facing a peer adversary directly though, being able to get 10 times the firepower with the same resources might be a much higher priority.

Further, not everything gets tested when all you're facing are non-peer adversaries. For example the only US Navy ship currently in service that has ever sunk an enemy ship in combat is the USS Constitution, which did so more than 200 years ago.

Against adversaries whose industrial base and social structures are 200 years behind us. That gives us weapon systems that are adapted to fighting adversaries whose industrial base and social structures are 200 years behind us.

We've been very lucky (in a sense) that ambitious leaders who actually can get technologically-savvy workers to follow them generally prefer to work within the American system and fight over ad clicks, purchases, and management fees rather than physically making war. I'm not all that confident that the U.S. military would win vs. say SpaceX, Amazon, or Google. Moot point as long as it's more profitable to sell things than take things, but we would be very screwed if we fought an adversary with peer-level technology, population, and manufacturing base.

“Cost of materials” is a terrible basis for pricing and for evaluating value.

The ultimate gaming PC has maybe $20 worth of sand, plastic, and metal.

I’m not defending defense spending or contractors, just saying that a criticism of their pricing should be based on value received, not materials.

> I can see them capturing US DOD budgets, but predict that much more cost effective competitors emerge internationally.

The selling point of Anduril according to one of its founders has always been "Make billions of dollars while saving the US government tens of billions of dollars."

I don't think people really understand how much money is thrown around willy-nilly within the Department of Defense. Anduril's offering to sell drones here with individual purchase prices in the $100k-$500k range here. Compared to the alternatives used for this role it's 1-2 orders of magnitude cheaper.

Are we really going to be 500k drones to shoot down 10k ones. Seems wasteful

They're not $500k. And currently it's $4M missiles shooting down $10k ones, and you need to often shoot several of them to ensure that you down the target.

I guess it’s ok if the gdp difference between the 2 warring countries is at least at the same order of magnitude. Actually dollar numbers probably don’t matter as much as dollar/unit gdp

I'm not sure this is "more affordable" in total, it's just more affordable per projectile. It's a lot like a 5" gun on a destroyer. If you ignore the cost of the ship, it's about $1,200 per shot. A bargain compared to a Tomahawk or SM3.

The DoD will never go overseas for their most important equipment, that's what these primes are based on.

The DoD often goes overseas. Most navy ships are built in Italy (the big ones are built in the US, but most are smaller). Even when things are built internally, the DoD often looks to various allies for critical parts.

The US DoD is not buying any naval ships from Italy. In fact I'm not aware of a single ship in the US Navy that was built outside of the United States.

Splitting the difference to reach the true situation:

* The US Navy contracts for shipbuilding outside of the USofA, and

* The foreign company builds for the US Navy take place at shipyards within the USofA.

eg:

    “Austal’s Alabama-based shipyard is currently contracted on 11 different vessel programs for the US Navy and Coast Guard, and it is a source of pride seeing this vessel visiting our home. Plus, its Australian and historical heritage makes it all the more special.”

* https://www.austal.com/news/arrival-austal-built-us-naval-ve...

    The U.S. Navy said on Thursday it awarded a contract worth more than $5.5 billion to Italy's Fincantieri to build its newest class of warships, known as frigates.

    The contract is for detailed design and construction of the lead ship, with an option to buy nine more. If the navy exercised all options on the contract, delivery of the 10th ship would occur in the mid-2030s.

    The ship will be built at Fincantieri's Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, Wisconsin.

* https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-frigate-idINKBN2...

Yep exactly. The companies building the ships are often US companies that were bought and then build the ships in the US.

The two examples given are an Italian company and an Australian company that are operating from US shipyards while remaining non US owned companies.

They do operate via US registered wholly owned subsidiaries which is a matter of bookkeeping.

In both instances the US Navy has sourced knowledge and skills from non US companies and paid them to provide service via shipyards on US soil .. with oversight from existing established home soil operations eg: Austral Marine Division in Australia.

The "Italian" company is a former American company that was bought up by the Italian company, the same is true of the "Australian" company.

Heh...I know of one particular drydock that was built in China.

"Cost of materials" is small relative to the R&D costs of cutting-edge solutions with military-grade operating parameters...

And then requisite QC processes during serial manufacturing to ensure that the system will stand up to storage in some bunker for decades before being shipped across the world, abused by late teenaged soldiers as they hump it around some forlorn battlefield and, finally, maybe, used in anger.

If they don't use cost plus pricing it would probably be a win compared to the entrenched defense contractors who are using cost plus pricing.

To the folks who want to cut Anduril slack, let me just say that these cost 5-6x a Shahed. In war, like in chess, if you manage to trade crappy little pieces for rare big pieces, you win. And if you decide that your strategy is to trade expensive big pieces for crappy little ones, you usually lose. The US has avoided losing by fighting small countries against which it has an overwhelming advantage, which keeps its hot wars short. If it were to fight a long hot war against a near peer (hello, Taiwan Straits), its dumb decisions about bloatware would quickly catch up to it.

Setting aside the budgetary considerations, quality is its own quality, as Stalin never really said. That is, if you can manufacture tens of thousands of payload-bearing model airplanes for less than the price of a Tesla, then you can DDOS any air defense system in the world. Its million-dollar missiles will soon be exhausted, and your radio-controlled offensive will have won.

This was all proposed when DARPA first looked into Network Centric Warfare. It was rejected, which was a mistake.

When defending against small drones, the scaled down equivalent of a combat air patrol (CAP) would work.

That CAP can be extended over enemy positions as well, like air superiority with scaled-down aircraft.

I can imagine one side having air dominance in the large & manned air domain, while the other side has air dominance in the small & unmanned air domain.

These small jets are also a great way to keep track of enemy activity. Having a payload on it makes sense for the same reason it makes sense for a forward observer to also be a sniper.

The future of air defense is made in Ukraine or Israel. Buy their systems - both are under attack and so have reason to innovate in ways that matter. Better for other countries to focus on things that are not needed in those particular conflicts (or are needed but not as critical a priority and so they are not putting limited resources on).

I wouldn’t recommend Israel’s current system. The iron dome’s always had the obvious weakness that it is much more expensive than the rockets it intercepts, and, welp...

I was under the impression that Ukraine's air defense is just our air defense, just 20 years out of date. And I'm also under the impression that what needs defending from isn't going to look like what Russian does now, as Russia is essentially a failed state, using tech that's even older.

They are putting their minds to the problem though. It will take longer, but i'd guess in 2025 they will have a great system of their own design that is good for cheap drones. Probably still keep whatever systems they have (mostly NATO) for misstles, but for drones they want something cheap and able to take out mass attacks.

> I was under the impression that Ukraine's air defense is just our air defense, just 20 years out of date.

My impression is that Ukraine's air defence is whatever they can get their hands on (and rightly so). This (I think) includes everything from old Soviet and western systems to relatively new western systems. From the fairly-recent essay [0] by General Zaluzhnyi*:

  The number of anti-aircraft missile systems was
  significantly increased mainly due to Western-made assets, in particular, "Martlet",
  "Starstreak", "Javelin", "Piorun", "Mistral", "Stinger", "Grom" man-portable air-defence
  systems, "Gepard" self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, "Skynex" air defence gun systems,
  "Avenger", "Stormer", "Patriot", "Hawk", "IRIS-T", "NASAMS", "SAMP-T", "Crotale-NG"
  air defence systems.

> And I'm also under the impression that what needs defending from isn't going to look like what Russian does now, as Russia is essentially a failed state, using tech that's even older.

Whether or not Russia is a failed state is a very different matter than the current state of Russia's missile/artrillery/drone stockpiles. As I understand it, what Russia does now is not hugely different from what Ukraine does now as far as air attack is concerned (cruise/ballistic missiles, drones, artillery, bombs, etc.), though there are of course differences in the details and the amount of ammunition available, and these change over time. I don't have a non-paywalled link to back this up, here are some (approximate) quotes from a recent episode of a podcast conversation between three defense analyists who seem to be pro-Ukrainian, but mostly not at the expense of accurate analysis [1]:

  The Russians do things at scale pretty well. Right, so they're slow to adapt, but when
  they get hit once or twice in the face, they do adapt. And then they do things at scale
  pretty quickly.

  ... when we talk about drones, you know FPV, Ukraine was the first to really adapt and
  experiment with FPVs, last winter, maybe last fall. They did this before the Russians
  did this in any numbers, but ... a lot of production is still on a unit-by-unit basis,
  individual guys building stuff in apartments. The Russians waited, but now they are
  producing them at scale, and so now on multiple parts of the front line the Russians have
  a quantitative advantage in FPVs. And so basically when we talk about the Russian military,
  they're slow to adapt, but when they do adapt, they then produce things in large numbers,
  pretty quickly, and they become more resilient than some people imagine.

  There is a danger of wishcasting. There is a danger, and this has been present from the
  start, even before this war, of these stereotypes about the Russians, and maybe some
  stereotypes too about the Ukrainians, ... and it's not actually beneficial to the
  Ukrainians to have this ... 'Russians are clownshoes' narrative out there.

  Defense establishments do not do nuance. They understand that the adversary is either
  twelve feet tall or four feet tall, but they are not good at ... understanding that
  forces evolve over time, the relative balance between them, the militaries change. You
  don't have the same forces fighting in 2023 that you had in 2022, or fighting in the same
  way.

* Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

[0] https://infographics.economist.com/2023/ExternalContent/ZALU...

[1] https://warontherocks.com/episode/therussiacontingency/30005...

Discussion earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353

This is about the new release of Anduril's new Roadrunner drone that has multiple uses.

Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-01/anduril-r...

Video of a demonstration strike against a drone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9ITeP4fUA

One way I could personally see this being used is pre-launching a bunch of the drones in an area to orbit and wait for incoming drones, or launch several of them per target. Only one is needed to actually destroy the target. Once the targets are destroyed they can return and land, refuel, and then launch again to try and target additional incoming objects.

I can also see it having uses outside of attacking targets as the payload is generic and can be mounted with cameras or sensors instead of an explosive for mid-range target photography (the range is unspecified but just assuming based on size and speed) or as non-military use for surveilance of nearby areas for forest fires or weather investigation.

More efficient to have the drones launch from the ground rather then loiter.

Eliminates the need for the vtol too which is just a lot of extra effort to get right.

This is sort of like the segway, the loitering/vtol tech is more for marketing: https://maddox.xmission.com/segsuck2.jpg

And cheap? I saw carbon fiber on that thing. The article says an Iranian drone might cost 10,000 right after it says that one of these things costs over 100k.

It's def better than a patriot but still stupidly expensive.

I've seen some three wheeled segway-like devices. They compromise stability, because the third wheel lifts if one wheel goes over an object that is taller than the other. Similarly, they end up leaning backward or foreward over slanted terrain and are easier to tip.

IMO, other two wheeled scooters were more practical, but the segway combined their benefits with the ability to be handsfree.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al9ITeP4fUA

I see, another Wunderwaffen coming from the West, they never learn.

I've also Ctrl+F-ed for Lancet on both this thread and on the dupe thread posted earlier, nothing, so, yeah, people here are living in a different reality when it comes to modern drone warfare. This [1] information posted by an Ukrainian guy now actually fighting a war drone is a lot, a lot more interesting and on point than whatever this SV money-grabbing vehicle is up to.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/178npo...

What does Lancet have to do with this?

Cheap thing that works in the here and now and which this other thing presented here, which I gather is an order of magnitude more expensive (if not more), is supposed to be taking down (among many other things).

I’m saying that the West hasn’t learned the lesson of price control when it comes to the war of attrition, they’re still going with the “with this wundervaffe the war will be won by us in two weeks max, so no need to look at the prices”. Ukraine is paying for that wrong way of looking at things just now, because at some point the money does run out.

This is exactly price control though? It reduces the cost of maintaining the defense.

This is good stuff. I wonder if there's going to be some startup that's like "M795-compatible shells but mass-produced rather than constrained by one factory in Stranton". I suppose the DOD contacts must have been through Peter Thiel. Very cool stuff.

So the Occulus guy, after selling his soul to Zuckerberg, pivoted into making weapons?

Got fired for his alt-right affiliation, apparently: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/facebook-reportedly-... (unsure if it was a defamation / cancel-culture campaign against him, tbh)

After he got fired by Zuckerberg you mean, after the media lied about and dragged his name through the mud.

He's recently called that company his "life's work"

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1729781270572413123

> Palmer you’re above seeming paranoid about reporters all the time

> > I am not, I promise you!

> > Getting fired from your own life-work company after egregiously false reporting from hateful journalists really changes your perspective.

Ye well honestly I feel he was crushed. The "no need for Facebook login" and things. I don't think I had realized exactly how bad for humanity Google, Facebook et alii was in 2015, so I shouldn't be to judgemental about working for Facebook at the time.

i hope you were only a teenager in 2015 to feel this way. if not, i guess better late than never! welcome to the club

Weapons are a good thing, in the hands of our liberal democracy. Any leg up we can get on the evil regimes of Iran, China, and Russia, along with the rest of their pathetic "axis" (self named), is a good thing.

i take it there was a /s missing here?

what? are you not aware of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, supplied by China and North Korea? (Ukraine JUST blew up a supply railway between China and Russia today) And Iran supported Hamas distracting that war effort?

Before act 3, there was act 1 & act 2. These conflicts were at least decades in the making, if not over a century. Best option is to seek peace & seriously understand & respect the terms of the "enemy". Better than perpetual conflict that only seems to benefit the Billionaire class. Trade > war

The "terms" of the enemy are an abrogation of sovereignty to Russia to create its "russian world". Russia wants to have its own dedicated sphere of influence and feels that the world owes that to it. You don't placate a bully by giving them exactly what they want after they punch you in the face. They'll just come back for more later with new greater demands.

Tons of European countries have all sorts of historical claims all over the territory in Europe, including Russia. They've fought over the territory for centuries. Then they decided after Europe was basically destroyed in war that they don't want to repeat that, other than Russia who still maintained its imperialistic thinking. We're in the last dying gasps of that. The worst thing to do would be to encourage it by giving them what they want.

Is this why Niger kicked out imperialist France & many people in Africa are carrying pictures of Putin as a liberator? My question to you is, if you think Russia has imperial ambitions, why is the West making it attractive to the global south to turn to Russia...by acting like imperialists?

It's all well & good to make someone else the boogie man. However, if you act like the boogie man, don't be surprised if you get called out...even if you double down on your claim that someone else is the boogie man.

I live in America so my interests are intertwined with America's long-term success. I don't benefit from delusions of grandeur practiced by an increasingly greedy, ruthless, & incompetent managerial class in the West. I don't care who you call the boogie man...you cannot escape responsibility for your actions.

Russia's trying to take over a country in imperial conquest, by their own words, and you call America not the imperialist? Lol? Russia doesn't have "imperalist ambitions". They're, right now, trying to expand their own territory by taking over other countries.

The "global south" is not trying to buddy up with Russia. That's 20th century thinking. Russia's propaganda arm is strong however so there are a couple countries, especially in Africa, that have been rather well tricked by Russia. They still think Russia is the USSR and not a 21st century imperialist power.

> I live in America

The people who state this after the stuff you stated, aren't actually who they say they are.

> Russia's trying to take over a country in imperial conquest, by their own words, > They're, right now, trying to expand their own territory by taking over other countries.

Citation please. Neocon/neolib accusations dont count...original sources only. From what it looks like, Russia is protecting Russian speaking people from a group of Nazis which performed a coup against a democraticly elected government in 2014. This cohort which the US arms violently oppressed these Russian speaking people over the last decade. It's not like the Ukranian people are benefiting from the conflict either. There have been opportunities for a peace treaty but were rejected at the behest of western interests.

I would rather there be a peace treaty, but as this war drags on, the terms will become tougher & more wealth will flow from the US people to the billionaire managerial class...and more lives will be lost. Classic imperial indifference to the people...

> and you call America not the imperialist?

I was born & raised in Hawaii. The kingdom of Hawaii from was illegally stolen from the soverign Kingdom of Hawaii led by Queen Liliuokalani in a coup backed by US business interests & enforced by the US Marines. The US military has bases & have defiled sacred land with bombings & pollution. The native Americans, South American countries, African countries, Middle Eastern countries, European countries, & Asian countries have felt the wrath of US imperialism. Yes, the US has practiced imperialism for over a century.

> The "global south" is not trying to buddy up with Russia

Many in the global south see Russia as a liberator from the dominant & abusive hegemon that pax Americana has become. Theres no permanent alliances, only permanent interests. So if you want America & western nations to have more influence than Russia or China, start acting in ways that benefit these other countries & their people. Coercision will only get you so far. If there are better alternatives to coercision, the better alternatives will be taken. Your cohort can't even bring happiness to the people in America. The thing we dont need is looking abroad for monsters to slay.

> The people who state this after the stuff you stated, aren't actually who they say they are.

Ok buddy. You sound like you drank some funky imperial kool aid. My name is in my handle. You can look me up if you want. We can do much better than what is happening right now. You implying I'm not who I say I am is you denying the fact that people don't agree with the insanity that you peddle & will exercise their free speech to say so. I have heard the same tired imperialist, racist, divisive arguments that come from your camp & it just does not make any sense other than to support world domination for the billionaire managerial class. No thank you. Hard pass. The blood, sweat, tears, & innovations of our ancestors are squandered by the ruthlessness, arrogance, corruption, & incompetence of the self-serving "leadership" of the billionaire managerial class.

Your cohort would be better to focus on making the lives of the people in America & the world better through peaceful means...promoting the freedom, liberty, & prosperity of all. The propaganda & doubling down on lies is not working anymore. Censorship or tech will not change what has already been seen. The genie is already out of the bottle. Your cohort is better of repenting for multitude of sins because the mark has been missed.

What? You’re not seriously saying to make peace with the Russians who invaded Ukraine?

Its a US proxy war pushed by the empire.

Its about geopolitical power like most other wars in history.

So yeah no. Don’t be a war fan, it’s rich people playing you.

Better than transferring what remaining wealth I have to the billionaire managerial class who spews out untruthful propaganda that makes my life worse. They also happen to demonize Russians.

Look, the Russians are humans just like us. They have their interests just like we do. The Russians have given the West many warnings to not spread Nato, to not arm Nazi extremists in Ukraine, & to not persecute the Russian speaking Ukrainians. However, the West backed the Maidan Coup to topple the Ukranian democracy in 2014, armed Nazi extremists who carried out atrocities against civilians, & kept on spreading Nato in spite of Russia's soverign interests.

Are you truly surprised that Putin acted how he did? Are you also surprised that a bear attacks after you poke at it? Let's be real here...If you really care about the Ukranian people, you would support peace...because the Ukranians have pregnant women, old men, & teenagers forced into service fighting on the front lines at this point. Their entire county has been decimated.

NATO has expanded by 2 countries, one right against the Russian border. If there was any truth to that being the actual cause of hostilities, wouldn't that have made some kind of impact?

Also: what bear, the one where ATACMS from 1996 destroy 12 helicopters at a time, flagships get sunk by a country without a Navy and submarines get hit when they're at drydocks? "Meat assaults of convicts" doesn't scream powerful bear...

Lots of Russian disinformation here - for example, Russia is supposed to be some bear we can't poke, but "the West" is so powerful they can cause popular uprisings in Ukraine (Maidan)? If that were the case, shouldn't Russia just give up, it's clear they have no hope against "the West" - they should sue for peace. Or...maybe Viktor Yanukovych was really a criminal and the people despised him?

Ukraine was invaded; the Ruble is down 25%. Yandex (and most programmers/scientists) left - that's the equivalent of Google noping out of the country. What kind of empire needs to steal toilets and washing machines? If it was a bear, it's definitely taking a shit in the woods - because there's no toilets.

Again, take what you've said literally - let's say Ukraine really did have pregnant women, old men, and teenagers on the front line... and Ukraine is still holding them off?...how weak is this bear? Apparently pregnant women are all you need to hold off "the bear"? Must be a cub...

For very little money and none of our lives lost we can finally dismantle the Russian state, which as noted above is not only not much of a bear, but launched a criminal invasion of a neighboring country.

Vietnam in the 60’s, South America in the 1970s and 80s, Iraq in the 90s, Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s .. would all like a word. Liberal democracies have looked much less liberal away from home. I’m not saying the “other guys” are better or the same, but the capacity to kill people at lower cost and less risk doesn’t seem like a net win for humanity if it lowers the bar for anyone.

The world is constantly changing. Vietnam is starting to look to the US for defense against China. Not too hard because the past is still remembered, but they are seeing the US as their best option for the concerns they have today.

I imagine little laser equipped bots that zoom up and down rows of crops on little rails, blasting caterpillars and other pests. When a military target shows up, they point at the sky instead. Sure, atmospheric abberation means that you can't hit easily hit a plane with a single beam, but I expect the situation changes when you've got millions of beams to command.

Of course this fails if you're the occupying force, rather than the defender, but maybe that's for the best.

just cover your plane in mirrors so the lasers are sent back to where they originated. boom! it's the high tech version of "I'm rubber your glue". that just means we need to research how to make radar absorption materials reflective in laser wavelengths.

Radiation weapons don't have to radiate visible light - we could pick any practical wavelength

who said visible light?

You said "laser wavelengths". Any wavelength can be a "laser wavelength" if we understand a laser to be a beam weapon.

right, but laser wavelength does not mean visible wavelength. that's why i specifically didn't use visible in the comment. microwave weapons don't have the same meaning as laser. pew pew. nobody has ever said "friggin' microwave" as they point their pinky to corner of their mouth.

not sure why you feel the need to get to whatever pedantic level you're trying to go when the conversation was clearly talking about lasers. we can redirect lasers with mirrors. covering a military plane in mirrors to deflect lasers is clearly something in jest. but sure, let's turn it into a pedantic conversation.

> covering a military plane in mirrors to deflect lasers is clearly something in jest

Are you sure?

0. Stealthy ‘Son Of Ares’ Jet Seen Covered In Mirrors During Mysterious Test Flights https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34225/stealthy-son-of-...

1. F-35 And F-117 Spotted Flying With Mysterious Mirror-Like Skin https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43938/f-35-and-f-117-s...

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38483353 (215 comments)

Off topic question about the site vs linked content, but is there a defined description for the style used so that the last sentence in a graph is double spaced like this? The markup does not have any tags to spread them out. I'm at a loss for how it's even done, let alone why one would want it this way.

This looks to me like the effect of a non-technical user using a CMS and hitting "enter" twice in the edit box after each paragraph. There's no "style" being used - it's probably a purely human enforced convention.

(there are tags, there are <br>'s between each paragraph inside the <p>)

but those <br>s are in between the graphs, and they line up with the layout. the last line of the graph does not have those breaks.

i just looked at the site on a different browser, and the anomaly i'm seeing in FF does not appear in the Safari. in Safari, it just has double spaced graphs. in FF, the last line in each graph is also separated by a double space.

in 2023, and we still can't have consistent layouts across browsers. FML

It's some kind of rendering issue difference between Firefox and Safari/Chrome. Safari/Chrome don't have the extra newline there.

USAF vet defense blogger Mike Black getting into a dogfight with Palmer Luckey himself:

https://twitter.com/mikeblack114/status/1730453326817276026

Laser defense against swarms of cheap missiles and drones, reserving expensive kinetic interceptors for the larger, more expensive incomers. Today's leaders in this are the US, Israel, and maybe one or two large East Asian powers.

Some comments mention making the attacking missile laser proof by covering it with mirrors,adding stealth, etc.. The thing is, these measures all greatly increase the cost of the missile, making it worthy of a kinetic interceptor.

The war of attrition involves bleeding out the empire with cost differentials. The MIC needs to provide more value for its weapons or the imperial outposts will become cost & geopolitically prohibitive.

The US has lost much stature among the global south. As the so called "adversaries" understand how to effectively drain imperial status & resources. The exceptionalism position does not help in light of regularly bombing civilians & making the world a more dangerous place by flooding weapons into conflicts.

And the quality of life of the people in the US & Europe is falling...fast.

Spending will be the same or more but they want more bang for the buck.

have they cleared this with the tolkien estate?

Probably have the same law firm as Palantir. Just take the accent off and its all good.

(Automated) AA guns have been around for a while with low cost per intercept - no need for missiles.

Edit: looks like Gepard ammunition is actually surprisingly expensive based on some contracts in the press, but still...

AA guns have the following issues:

1. Everything you shoot into the air must come down.

2. Active radar is a loud target and stationary targets are difficult to relocate quickly.

3. Automated AA have a larger footprint and are more obvious installations.

Considering the customer who this was designed for was US Special Operations Command, it makes sense that small, light, pinpoint, and easily relocatable were priorities.

AA need not be stationary and the footprint is small (see a Gepard, and there were smaller AA systems, I believe).

Anything that has a successful intercept has stuff falling down. For unsuccessful, only laser etc. have nothing falling down.

Edit: the link doesn't specifically talk about niche special forces, but rather broader air defense.

I don't really think that's remotely comparable. The Roadrunner is around the size of a person and can launch unsupported from the ground (i.e. sit it upright and press a button on a tablet).

The roadrunner nest installations are marginally larger, containing just enough space for a fuel tank (to refuel unsuccessful or cancelled intercept attempts) and power to keep them operating.

So in the space that you can fit a Gepard, you can fit lets say 20 roadrunner nests. You can take those in a truck, drive around and scatter them around the site with some camouflaging. If you are only expecting occasional missile/rocket attacks, you can build a net for intercepts that is far wider than you can realistically with stationary or even mobile AA guns.

But the real value of it for the customer (special operations) is that you can realistically have 2-4 people carry one in a box by hand or in the back of a jeep and in a matter of minutes, set it up, and shoot down an aircraft (or any other moving target).

All great points and I'll add one - the operator will be far away from the weapons, so even if they are sighted and targeted you minimize human casualties and it won't give up the teams' position.

I get the special operations need. However, 20 roadrunners is 20 successful intercepts at best - if you want to go down cost curves you need really cheap intercepts.

I think there are different cost curves though.

If you are expecting mass swarms of drones, rockets, and/or missiles, then traditional AA installations make more sense.

But if you are expecting only intermittent intercepts then the cost per intercept is probably going to be lower with something like the what Anduril is offering as cursory searches suggest the Roadrunner is going to be priced around 100k-300k per unit. And this fits in nicely with their far cheaper Anvil-M interceptors (low speed, quadcopter interceptors) where anvil would take the ultra cheap drones while Roadrunner takes the high altitude or jet/rocket powered targets.

1. Gepards are big and not suitable for special operations roles. You can't throw one in a truck and haul it through rough terrain.

2. The Roadrunner system doesn't "fall down", it's designed to land if the intercept is unsuccessful.

3. Roadrunner is designed to be "cheap", compact and re-usable, as much as possible.

A large part of the Gepard weight/size is armor, not the AA, but yes, not man portable by any means (edit: the gun assembly is still many tons, I'd guess).

The linked text talks about defense against cheap drones and cost curves - not about niche special operation air defense.

If you have to defend an installation against a hundred cheap drones a week or so, not sure roadrunner is that cost efficient.

On 2), yes, but only if the intercept fails kind of completely.

@RandomLensman - would be very interested to speak with you. I work with some folks in Ukraine to support defensive tech. chris at ukrainedefensefund dot org

AA must be stationary. Even if you can move it you cannot. If your country is at war we know small drones can cheaply reach pretty far in. That means you need AA covering every place anywhere near the front. If you move the AA you risk enemy spies finding out what place is not covered and attacking there. Maybe you can move from my backyard to my neighbor's backyard, but that is about all you can realistically do.

> 1. Everything you shoot into the air must come down.

This is why they use self destructing ammunition. It's part of what gives some systems the "Firehose" look because every round is a tracer.

See CRAM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_rocket,_artillery,_and...

C-RAM uses the 20mm HEIT-SD (high-explosive incendiary tracer, self-destruct) ammunition, originally developed for the M163 Vulcan air defense system. These rounds explode on impact with the target, or on tracer burnout, thereby greatly reducing the risk of collateral damage from rounds that fail to hit their target.

Gepard has a range of 6km vs buk range of 50km or s-300 range of 120km. You would need a lot of them and they also don't have enough range to cover offensives.

Gepard has ~6 km maximum combat range. Guns are inherently short range weapons compared to missiles.

Ah, the radar range is 15km, but the firing range is 6km. Fixed my earlier comment.

Yes, but the cheap drone stuff moves slowly and you could potentially even airdrop AA to litter the landscape.

> you could even airdrop AA to litter the landscape.

Sounds like a good way to equip the enemy. Have you considered that you might be outside your lane here?

I have but then I quickly remembered I worked on and with such weapon systems, beginning during the Cold War.

What was your MOS?

Also, you’re talking about conventional forces tactics which don’t really apply to this submission much.

The linked article is far broader than special operations.

Sorry, not US, so no MOS. My impression was that the US took a somewhat different route to air defense than the Europeans back then (and not just in terms of continental air defense).

I don't think we need to accuse each other of "ignorance" anymore, but rather we have had different experiences and a different read on the linked text.

AA guns can only hit relatively low altitude targets. Gepard for example is limited to altitudes of 3 kilometers (~10,000 ft). Good for local defense against attack helicopters and fixed wing close air support, but no where near cruising altitude for modern jet aircraft.

I don't think they're cheap per installation though due to radar, are they?

Before they were falling out of fashion, there were relatively "cheap" versions produced in larger numbers (like 400+ Gepards for Germany, for example, no idea how many of the 35mm guns were made), if I recall correctly, also, you don't need thousands of AA guns to protect an object. The current skyranger 30 system is $5+M I think, but I don't think you need necessarily luxury systems to defend against rather simple drones (and it has low production numbers, I believe).

Put a turret on a vehicle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_anti-aircraft_w...

Also the state of the art for this kind of thing is the phalanx I believe. They have it installed on carriers.

https://www.armyrecognition.com/united_states_us_army_artill...

It can definitely go on vehicles.

I would say China can easily bypass this tech with hyper sonic missiles and even just launching 10 missiles at one carrier at the same time can probably fuck it up.

Just even getting one missile with a system such as this is a miracle. Anduril is far away from having the know how of building any system to the level of the phalanx.

There's a minimum size of vehicle you can mount a gun on. The mount needs to absorb the recoil without breaking or getting pushed around too much.

The Swiss have been experimenting with recoilless chain-guns to try and reduce that footprint. Which might be interesting, but recoilless weapons are extremely unpleasant to be near due to the backblast. It still might make sense to mount such a weapon on a remote automated station, and stick it on the roof of any available truck or APC/IFV.

The hype around hypersonic missiles is overcooked. Ballistic missiles are faster. The hypersonic's advantage is supposed to be its manoeuvrability, expecting an heavy anti-ship missile to be more agile than an interceptor is just silly.

And It'd take way more than 10 missiles to overwhelm a carrier groups air defence. The combat system on an American destroyer can track "100+" targets. The carrier group has several destroyers.

In order to overwhelm the systems, you'd be getting close to the point of exhausting their interceptors. So why even bother with the fancy missiles?

The link I put there has a phalanx mounted on a vehicle.

So it's doable and that fact is orthogonal to your reasoning. There are tons of AA vehicles that hold missiles and tons that have guns as well. These are real and they already exist.

>The combat system on an American destroyer can track "100+" targets. The carrier group has several destroyers.

Uncharitable response. Obviously tracking targets is easy. Knocking out 100 incoming targets that are simultaneously converging on the same position is a different story. What do these ships have 100 phalanxes or does that thing have to turn and shoot to pick things off one by one. Let's be real. I've seen these things even hitting one missile takes a bit. 10 missiles can overwhelm one carrier, they need a fleet of destroyers to make it work and in that case 10 would still be a high risk scenario.

Heck bump it to 20 and they can pick off the destroyers one by one with salvos of 20 cheap china made hypersonics.

Look it's not about whether it's faster than an ballistic. You just need something cheap and efficient to take out a carrier. That's all I'm saying here.

The carrier model is obsolete, it's easy to destroy. It's basically a painted target. Anduril is going in the right direction here but the company is nowhere near china. Anduril is trying to operate technologically from the same perspective as china. Speed and hacking everything together for cheap is the mantra and compared to china and they are building things that are lower quality for a higher price and taking longer to it.

You need radar to detect incoming things anyway, and radar can be re-used.

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