I have been reading a number of books about Eisenhower recently, in preparation for writing a long form post about his decision making process. One of the recurring themes throughout his presidency was the conflict between the former Supreme Commander, who quite literally ordered thousands of men into battle and their deaths, that wanted to work toward some kind of peace and de-escalation with the Soviets with regards to nuclear weapons – and the military-industrial-political complex that pushed and pushed him to fund more weapons without any restrictions on the budget or geopolitical implications. Eisenhower of course was no fool and didn’t disregard the need for weapons, but he generally tried to navigate the narrow path between defending oneself and escalating an arms race.
One of the takeaways I had from this was essentially how powerless even the president was in pushing back against the arms race, even against his own people. This of course culminated in his famous farewell speech where he coined the term MIC.
In any case, if the dynamics of these kinds of companies interest you, I cannot recommend reading about Eisenhower’s presidency enough. There was actually a situation with Taiwan that is still quite relevant to today.
And I truly hope, but unfortunately doubt, that equivalent amounts of money are being put into startups or organizations that help solve, diffuse, and de-escalate conflicts.
I’m not an expert in any way on this, but my impression from reading maybe half a dozen books involving the Soviets + living in a former Soviet-occupied country is that the USSR simply wasn’t ever going to work sociopolitically by nature of its multi-nation imperial structure. The client states were never really assimilated and didn’t want to be - and the relationship with them was hostile from the start - see the lack of help during the Warsaw Uprising, Hungarian Revolution in 1957, Prague in 1968, etc. So my impression is that the USSR would inevitably collapse and it was mostly just a matter of time.
The arms race definitely had an effect on the Soviet economy, but I don’t think it’s correct to say that was the main reason for the collapse.
It seems like a lot of reasons, many of which derived from hubris and a delusion that one can plan an entire society, and everything that follows from this mistake. Bad economy, over reliance on limited set of heavy industries, corruption, lack of agency; overall reduced economic performance and thus unable to outcompete the US economy, which was forcing the Soviets into an arms race death march.
In part, yes, but the main reason was severely mismanaged economy, specifically — super unproductive agro. They had to buy food (grain), selling oil. And then oil prices went down.
There's some theories that the US poisoned some of the crop fields in the 60s and 70s especially in the Ukraine resulting in inadequate yields, exacerbating the budgetary issues already present from space race / arms race spending.
I'm sure they have such conspirancid paranoia in north korea right now. They are expressions of unvented frustration in unreformable systems. It can not be the ruler or the ideology, and it can not be that the combination is unable to deal with a world that regularly throws you a stick for the legs if you think you have a good run.
Pests evolve and the soil becomes less fertile .Industrial Agriculture is not the same every year. it just looks loke that for a layman.
That's the type of ridiculous conspiracy theory that Communists frequently invented to excuse their own failures. The US had no capability for spreading enough poison in the USSR to significantly reduce crop yields. Like seriously, was the CIA supposed to be flying stealth crop duster airplanes over Ukraine and dropping Agent Orange everywhere? Makes no sense at all.
If his goal was peace and prosperity why did he send death squads to murder peasants and overthrow the (democratic and very successful) government of Guatemala, in order to increase profits for American companies?
The short answer is that the new government in Guatemala was perceived as being communist and therefore potentially hostile to the US, as well as being a “foothold” that could then spread communism to other Latin American countries.
Purely on a geopolitical basis I think it was a bad decision, as it had major blowback on Cuba for example (Che was actually in Guatemala at the time.) Similarly to Iran the year before - it made sense to them at the time but had major negative effects, and so ended up being a really stupid decision.
This policy of intervention was actually a deliberate strategy of Eisenhower’s though, as from his perspective these clandestine regime changes were preferable to outright war and using nuclear weapons, which is what pretty much everyone around him wanted him to do in Korea, Vietnam, and China.
Retrospectively it seems to me that the avoidance of outright war was a noble aim, but the strategy put into practice wasn’t very well thought through.
Again, that's a lot of words for "we murdered a few peasants and set the rest back into debt bondage to increase the profits for a handful of Americans". I don't see the relevance of talking about nuclear weapons either, when discussing what to do when a small Central American country sets a tax on large properties; seems like a non sequitur.
Considerations about "preventing the spread of communism" don't really have much strength when you call "communism" something which (1) is the lightest possible land reform (expropriating land which is *both* unused and above a large threshold, and paying fair compensation for it), and (2) had tremendous effects on poverty levels, child mortality, economic productivity, etc, in just a few short years.
Uh..I'm not Eisenhower and as I said twice in my comment, I think these were ultimately dumb decisions. I am summarizing a complex event based on a few books I read, and I am telling you what the decision-making rationale was (according to the books I read) from the people that made the decisions, not that I thought they were good decisions.
My mistake for thinking you actually wanted an answer and not just to argue with the messenger. Next time, go read the book yourself if you want a comprehensive answer.
No, I understand the "stated reasons", the point is they were not the real reasons. That's like saying the motivation for the 2022 Ukraine invasion was "denazification": yes it's the stated reason, no it's not the real reason.
Again - if you read about the era and understand that the US was in various proxy conflicts with the communist USSR, and understand the motivations of the people in power at the time, the stated reason of trying to curb communism is entirely logical - although again, the reason of protecting American corporate interests was a factor too, although not the main factor.
If you read the history and can make an alternative argument that cites actual evidence, I’d be glad to hear it. Otherwise you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about.
> Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected U.S. president in 1952, promising to take a harder line against communism, and his staff members John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had significant links to the United Fruit Company.
As I just said, the perceived issue was communist influence, which yes, included actions taken against American business interests by the Guatemalan government. And again, this communist / Soviet influence turned out to be mostly illusory and lead to all sorts of bad blowback afterward, ultimately being a bad decision IMO.
It turns out that history is complicated and a single line from a Wikipedia article doesn't quite sum up everything. You also need to factor in other ongoing issues around the world at the time, like the Korean War, the Eisenhower-sponsored coup in Iran the previous year, and so on. The Guatemala coup happened in context with those events, not solely because some US elites felt like helping US corporations.
I’ve been watching a lot of these war game simulations https://youtu.be/vSnbbifpiLw?si=d-ymKHwfnwdKoGOL. They have a lot of limitations to them, and they’re engineered to be entertaining first and foremost (it is YouTube), but they can be very informative too about the state of naval warfare. Some things I’ve learned from watching these:
1) Shooting down anti-ship missiles is very doable, even hypersonic and stealth missiles. A naval carrier group is pretty much invulnerable to any single weapon that exists today. However, they do have a limit to how many defensive SAMs they can carry. So firing hundreds of anti-ship missiles will overwhelm their defenses and eventually sink that $15 billion carrier with 4,000 people on board.
2) The British Navy’s upcoming strategy seems to be using large numbers of small anti-ship missiles that use AI to target critical systems of the ships they target (rather than just trying to sink the ship). This actually looks like it should be really effective since they can disable enemy ships or at least exhaust the defenders’ defenses before firing ship-killers at them.
Another thing I want to note: we really really really don’t want to go to war with China, and China doesn’t want that either. I think China would only try to take Taiwan if they knew two things: 1) they could take and hold Taiwan 2) they could exact such a heavy toll on American forces trying to defend Taiwan that the US would not want to get involved. Taking Taiwan is probably not worth it if the US fights. China needs to convince the US it’s not worth defending Taiwan. It is a form of Prisoner’s Dilemma.
> A naval carrier group is pretty much invulnerable to any single weapon that exists today.
I’m unconvinced. When I worked in the field, they were persistent rumours that modern submarines did sink aircraft carriers in actual exercises which I’m ready to believe. A diesel submarine with its motor shut-off resting on the bottom is near impossible to detect.
Not entirely comparable but see how Ukraine seemingly easily neutralised the Russian Black Sea fleet. Modern Navy are not really built for symmetrical conflicts. My personal belief is that progress in space tracking, missiles, subsea warfare and autonomous weapons have made surface ships mostly obsolete.
They have their use but open war is a modern enemy is not one of them anymore.
The diesel submarine threat is exactly why carrier strike group tactics have evolved to remain further offshore in deep water while relying on long-range stand-off weapons. SSKs are relatively slow and short ranged so it's easier to avoid them than to detect them.
A diesel on the bottom in rough terrain is an extreme threat but generally easily avoided by not going into areas shallow enough for a diesel to be on the bottom.
>When I worked in the field, they were persistent rumours that modern submarines did sink aircraft carriers in actual exercises which I’m ready to believe.
Yeah the Russia-Ukraine war is basically the Russo-Japanese war in terms of being a grim preview of what happens when industrial nations fight an all out war. I worry that whatever happens next will make WWI and WWII look like child's play even without the use of nuclear weapons.
It was 'easy' because Iran designed the attack to deplete the expensive iron dome stocks with ultra-cheap drones, not actually demolish any Israeli infrastructure.
The supersonic missiles that Iran intended to get through, got through. All else was theatre.
The point was very clearly made: iron dome can be defeated with cheap drones, leaving the path clear for the supersonic missiles to land on target. Which is precisely what happened.
It was precisely the same message delivered in Irans' response to the assassination of Soleimani.
> designed the attack to deplete the expensive iron dome stocks with ultra-cheap drones
This! As war is more and more about attrition who wins when a system costing 1000 to build + 1 per hour to maintain is saturated by another one costing 1 + .001 per hour, even if this last one causes no damage?
What got through? My understanding is there were no meaningful hits--some of the ballistic stuff wasn't intercepted but came down where it didn't matter. And you don't know if that means a miss or means they didn't fire--Israel has gotten quite good at plotting where a ballistic weapon is going to come down and deciding whether it's worth expending an interceptor on it.
The only casualties I'm aware of were from the debris of a successful intercept. It's not like a war game, when you kill something it doesn't just turn into a boom and disappear.
Irans' hypersonic ballistic missiles, for which there is no effective defense, all got through and hit their targeted positions, frighteningly close to the heart of Israels defense HQ.
The 300+ drones were there to exhaust the iron dome, which is what happened, and the hypersonic ballistic missiles were there, to demonstrate that there is no effective defense against them (because there isn't, in spite of propaganda stated otherwise). Iran made the very important point that they could launch these hypersonic missiles with impunity, but instead exercised 'restraint'. The world military communities took very specific note that these missiles are impervious to existing defense technologies, and it was not the first time Iran made this point - they also demonstrated this capability in their response to the assassination of Solemeini, placing the missiles on the berths of the people involved in the assassination...
Huh? Iron Dome wouldn't have been capable against a hypersonic anyway, there's nothing to be gained from bleeding it. They did engage the fast stuff with Arrow.
They proved they can do it and that it is defeatable. That's a big gain, especially for those who have suffered under the repression that the iron dome protects and prolongs.
Dismissive arguments such as yours allows that suffering to continue. It can be defeated, also. Do you not observe the daily murder with earnest humanity?
What do you mean? I saw the videos online. The mighty Houthi missiles ravaged the Eisenhower, leaving it barely more than a series of smoking craters born aloft for PR purposes by support crafted AI-edited out of any of the video footage US-ians are allowed to see.
That plus spamming small sea based submarine kamikaze drones will eventually penetrate.
I wonder if there will be some large scale autonomous mini torpedo or mine systems that works against small highly mobile drone ships. Similar to how the old WW2 systems shot out mines from the ship but not putting the wider carrier group at risk of blue on blue.
Edit: also +1 grim reapers YT channel. It really demonstrates the capability of Chinese anti air (on paper) and advanced long range missiles. Would be a very very scary conflict for pilots and navy sailors.
Imagine launching hundreds of these from the US or Japan and then they just camp at the bottom of the East China Sea. If tensions escalate, they can migrate towards the Taiwan Strait. And then, emerge potentially just hundreds of meters away from corvettes and landing vessels, fire off their missiles and then submerge.
I've always felt like I was missing something obvious for why there weren't submarine-launched SAMs or ASMs.
Seems like a really good way to target AWACS/tankers and valuable softer shipping, provided you have missiles with active guidance and can deploy launch pods under the sea, scoot, and then they launch when you've left the area.
Granted, much harder to do before networked unified sensors, but not nowadays.
> deploy launch pods under the sea, scoot, and then they launch when you've left the area
There are multiple dealbreaker for this: a) the launch pods need to be quite large in order to contain missiles and the surrounding infrastructure, probably including buoyancy control etc, b) submarines are veery slow so they need a long time to leave the area, c) the pods need to hang out near the surface to receive signals and to launch missiles, so they have a high risk of being detected before they can be used
It's probably more feasible to consider unmanned "disposable" submarines that can fire missiles. Still you have the problem of low speed and tricky communications though.
> the pods need to hang out near the surface to receive signals and to launch missiles, so they have a high risk of being detected before they can be used
You can now send encoded sonar pulses. With good microphones on pods, you can communicate over many many kilometers and those commands can be pretty short, no need to "real time fpv", just "target a ship currently at {X,Y}".
If you want to launch a SAM from a sub you first need to find whatever it is you want to shoot at. And if you radiate you're dead, you're limited to passive detection. And you have to stick something up to do that with--and the AWACS can see you from much farther away than you can see it.
The one thing that strikes me as a realistic threat would be to put up only a tiny antenna that can detect the radar of the AWACS. If you think it's in range you fire something like the AIM-120 on the line of bearing, radiation-seeking and then switch to it's active seeker when the target goes dark (as it almost certainly will if it thinks there's a radiation-homer out there.) They are slow, lumbering beasts that probably can't get out of acquisition range before the seeker goes active.
You still have the problem that you just left a flaming streak pointed right at you, a suicide move if you're anywhere near the fleet. It would make deploying an AWACS far from the fleet a bad idea, though. (Back with the old Harpoon wargame I found by far the best strategy was to station an AWACS a few hundred miles from the fleet in the general direction of the enemy. Russia had nothing with air-to-air weapons and the legs to engage it. It wouldn't be as effective against a competent enemy but it would still take a big bite out of maximum range by forcing the attackers to take a big detour around it.)
I also wonder how well an AWACS might be able to defend itself with it's radar. What happens to the seeker if the AWACS focuses it's radar on the missile?
Locate AWACS from ground/air/space sensors. (they're radiating like hell)
Communicate target location to sub via low-freq.
Sub transits to location. (realistically, would already need to be nearby)
Sub deploys canister. (have ICBM-dimensions to work with)
Canister hangs out just under surface, with surface communications buoy. Registers itself onto the fires network with LPI comms. ("I'm at XY cords w/ Z weapon", ACK)
Other assets then send order to fire when appropriate, w/ sufficient track. (since weapon is active, it just needs navigational track before it goes active)
Ideally, it's IR-guided, so AWACS doesn't get any lock warning.
Given SLBMs can toss a nuclear warhead at range, I expect they'd at least be able to loft several LREW / AIM-174 / AIM-260 class weapons to engagement altitude/speed. (~130,000 lbs vs 2,000 lbs)
ASMs would not be very useful. First submarines have piss poor detection capability outside of their sonar which severely limits the range at which they could launch them. Then they already have torpedoes which are effective against ships and can be guided from the range at which a submarine would be likely to want to fire.
SAMs have been considered mostly to fight against their natural enemy: the helicopters but I don’t think it has ever been actually fielded.
The issue remains the same in both case. Submarines are slow and firing is loud and basically broadcast your position to everyone.
There's exploration of integrating hypersonics with antiship strike capability on subs. But the TLDR is until PLA's massive A2D2 expansion to 1IC and beyond (1500km+), there aren't any adversaries that can prevent carrier groups from operating permissively - USN CSG airwing had standoff advantage against everyone. Hence (IMO) little reason (without consider technical stuff like extending kill chain to underwater - subs would need to get target queuing from above water sensors) to integrate SAMs/ASMs into subs, because as expensive as carriers are, subs are even more expensive per unit of fire/tube/vls. Extrapolate from Zumwalt hypersonic retrofit projections current 80 cells for TLAM (tomahawks) whittles down to ~12 CGHBs (common hypersonic glide bodies) to a SSN (~20 shots) and all of a sudden it costs 100-200m+ per shot on a 2-4B Ohio class. Extrapolate to SSNX @6-8B and cost ratio per shot gets even more ridiculous.
The state where naval carrier group is invulnerable to surface attacks is also when it's at it's weakest, since at that point is when it's CIWS's IFF is short-circuited to maximize response time. At that point your defenses are shooting down everything in close proximity to the ships, including any of your own planes/missiles you are attempting to launch. Your only option at that point is to wait out the missile wave, while your opponent is still free to maneuver around and do things like attempt to engage with cannons/torpedos.
Saving taxpayer money in meeting the Constitutional requirements to provide for the Nation's defense is a noble effort, especially seeing as the likely threats are going to be cheap and reasonably effective in a generally permissive environment, a'la Ukraine's lopsided offensive capability vs. Russian ships. Your target cost of $300K is so significantly less than current available munitions that I'm curious what you intend to use to, from what I know from my own experience (I was a very early hire on an aircraft development called the Javelin some years ago), to reduce the cost of small propulsion systems. The FJ-33 we were going to use was around $400K each at the time, and Google tells me it's still around that price. Their effort to build the cheaper FJ-22 was abandoned after we blew one up on the test stand. I don't keep up with propulsion any longer, but I'm curious what you think might replace them in the (guessing) $100K range.
There is a Czech engine called the PBS TJ-100 that I’ve seen used on some jet powered gliders. It’s about 290 lbs of thrust and retails for $75k. There is also an uprated version, the PBS TJ-150 that’s about 340 lbs. I think that would be enough for an antiship missile with a smaller warhead like they’re building.
Is there any reason not to use much cheaper piston engines? If you're going for saturation of and defenses you don't need speed that much, you only need the ability to hit the target if not shot down.
That's the basic philosophy of what people are now calling "fixed wing suicide drones." It's just a cruise missile with a propeller and a piston engine instead of a jet.
Here are the tradeoffs as I see them:
1. The piston/propeller missile is slower, so it's easier to shoot down. If you have a certain detection range, you have more time between detection and impact. The traditional AEGIS type air defense on a high end ship has three layers -- long range missiles, short range missiles, and guns. Guns are the cheapest with the most ammo, but they're short range, so with a fast missile you only have a matter of seconds to shoot it down. If there are a lot coming at you simultaneously, you need more guns to get them all. If they're moving slower, this is a lot easier.
2. Lift is proportional to the square of the airspeed, so the slower you go, the bigger the wing you need. Compare for example the LRASM (the latest U.S. anti-ship missile), to a Cessna 172. They each weigh about the same (2500 lbs), and have very roughly comparable payload and range. Since the Cessna goes about 120 knots and the LRASM goes roughly 600 knots, that's a 5x difference in speed, so the Cessna needs roughly 25x bigger wings to stay in the air. You see this with the span, the LRASM has a span of 8 feet and the Cessna is 39 feet. Obviously the chord on the Cessna is a lot bigger too. The bigger wing will give you a bigger radar cross section, so you're detected sooner. It also makes the missile cost more due to all of the structure, and it makes it hard to put it in a launch tube if the wings are supposed to fold up.
I'm sure there are a lot of creative solutions to this with flexible wings, etc, but there are good reasons to prefer a faster missile. Whether that ends up being the war winning solution though, time will tell.
Things are a lot different than 20-30 years ago in terms of tradeoffs though. Back then your guidance system with a radar, computer, radio/satellite transceiver, and inertial navigation would weigh over 100 lbs, and cost over $100k in today's dollars, so making smaller missiles made less sense. Now, you can do guidance with GPS, strapdown inertial, and optical, and there are low power and low cost radio transcievers. Instead of a radar, you can do the terminal guidance optically with a multi-teraflop GPU that costs $50.
This sounds like a major liability, GPS is an extremely brittle and vulnerable system--you'd only need one or a small handful of nuclear warheads detonated in space to knock it out completely.
lmao at equating "extremely brittle and vulnerable" with "susceptible to multiple nuclear missiles shot to geostationary orbit". thanks for the chuckle.
If you (a superpower) deploy a bunch of GPS dependent equipment, and I (another nuclear power) am fighting you--and I'm less dependent on GPS--why would I not destroy GPS immediately, given that it's not very hard?
EDIT: Destroying GPS completely with nukes lobbed into space isn't the only way to mess it up either, it's susceptible to more terrestrial electronic countermeasures as well. It's generally not a good idea to depend on GPS alone, you need other backups as well. Pilots know this It's why they fly with a paper chart and a compass as well as GPS.
EDIT: Also, if my opening move is nuking space, I don't just deny you GPS, I also deny you all your other space-based advantages. I'd guess that would be one of the very first things any nuclear adversary of the US would do, because the damage is so asymmetric.
But the piston engine design really have to be slower?
For example, some WWII fighter aircraft could be quite fast, easily comparable to the claimed top speed of Tomahawk missile that can be found on Wikipedia and since you'd have less drag I don't think you'd need a huge piston engine.
I'm guessing you'd want something like 500 kW out of 200 kg of engine, but that's similar to the claimed performance of the apparently not-quite production ready Zoche Aero-Diesel.
Looking this up, Zoche Aero-Diesel were something like 1-3 horsepower per kilogram. You can buy a jet engines for model planes today that will generate 150 HP of exhaust gas power while weighing under 4 kg, giving you something like 30-40 horsepower per kilogram. The difference is just tremendous.
Piston engines are not even that much cheaper, and the only reason they are is that we produce literally billions of them every year, so it pays to invest in tooling. High performance piston engines are more complex, have more parts, and more complex assembly than simple jet engines designs that handily outperform them.
Yes, but those engines have tremendous fuel consumption.
90 ml per minute for an engine weighing 2.4 kg. Over an hour that's 5.4 litres, 2x the weight of the engine.
But with a heat exchanger to heat the compressor air with the exhaust the situation will be changed, so I still you're right to some degree but I am not sure about cost. Competing turbine engines are much more expensive than piston engines and you can actually build pistons engines at reasonable cost.
Turbotech in France produce a small fuel efficient jet engine, but it's like 90 kW weighs 90 kg and probably costs US$50,000+.
I think there's a reason a lot drones have gone with Wankel engines.
> Over an hour that's 5.4 litres, 2x the weight of the engine.
This perspective is completely wrong, because it actually penalizes smaller, lighter engines, all else being completely equal. Imagine you take a 100 kg diesel engine that produces 200 HP, and uses 10 kg of fuel per hour, and through insane feat of engineering, you minimize it to only be 5 kg, while producing same power and using as much fuel. This makes the engine obviously better, but by your logic, it now uses 2x its weight in fuel, versus just 0.10x as before. This logic is obviously wrong.
You need to instead ask: how much fuel does each engine need to produce equivalent amount of energy? On this metric, jet engines are not significantly worse than piston engines.
> Competing turbine engines are much more expensive than piston engines and you can actually build pistons engines at reasonable cost
Yes, if you compare a slightly modified off-the-shelf automotive piston engine produced in millions, to a small batch jet engine, then yes, the former is cheaper. However, if you need your drone to be both very fast and fly very far (and these two are very important in military context), then off the shelf automotive piston engines are really not an option, and instead you need to invest in something very custom, which would destroy the per-unit cost advantage of piston over jet, and that’s ignoring benefits like smaller form factor allowing for much bigger payload (extra 100 kg available for warhead does make a difference).
Yes, and that is in fact not my perspective, I only mentioned the ratio in order to illustrate that the fuel weight is substantial.
The right condition is of course J/kg for the fuel + engine + propeller/shroud/etc. package, and also taking into account cooling drag and frontal area.
>Yes, if you compare a slightly modified off-the-shelf automotive piston engine produced in millions, to a small batch jet engine, then yes, the former is cheaper. However, if you need your drone to be both very fast and fly very far (and these two are very important in military context), then off the shelf automotive piston engines are really not an option, and instead you need to invest in something very custom, which would destroy the per-unit cost advantage of piston over jet, and that’s ignoring benefits like smaller form factor allowing for much bigger payload (extra 100 kg available for warhead does make a difference).
The problem is that jet turbines of the required efficiency and weight are actually expensive. They have high temperatures internally, and continuously, and have all these blades and bearings. I think it might be feasible to make them much more cheaply than they can be manufactured today, but a Wankel engine can be mass produced with present technology and is not incredibly bad.
We are talking about American-built products on an American-built website. I think people would happily use metric units when talking about foreign products on foreign websites, but for some inexplicable reason, these are much less often the center of the conversation.
Ramjet has a high minimum flight speed. (Although this is an issue across most missiles--ground launch versions of missiles are the air launch version with an extra rocket on back that boosts it to a suitable flight speed.)
Really the cheapest and most reliable thing would be an electric launcher that threw JDAM-like gliding bombs. Probably could get pretty good range with a strong enough launch system.
Shaheds can fly at 4000m, good luck with your Maxim. They also try to catch them far from target areas by spreading roving AA squads all over the border, somewhat impossible at sea.
Something similar could also dive from 4000m gaining quite some speed.
These are likely using smaller turbojets. Eg. the ADM-160 MALD were supposed to be using the TJ-50, all in for <30k.
Of course like most defense projects, they ended up with the "B" version which were supposed to be 120k, but ended up being >300k when said & done LOL.
Currently the Anduril 20lb suicide drone is being sold for $1M apiece LMAO
Having worked in the defense industry, in a sector directly related to missiles, I can see their argument - to rather focus on more small missiles, than one large.
But my experience was that some big reason for ballooning costs were:
- So, so many middlemen.
- "Defense" premium pricing on everything due to things needing to meet custom specs, and vendors knowing that they can charge extra because it comes out of the defense budget.
- Projects always being longer than planned. I don't think I ever worked on anything that met its deadline, and it was after that things started to get expensive.
- Extreme hierarchy, all decisions and negotiations have to traverse through the hierarchy.
- It is the polar opposite of "move fast and break things". We once had a contractor engineer fix a small superficial bug, which took him 5 mins to identify and one line of code to fix - when his manager found out, the bug fix was reversed, and added to the list of bugs. It took around 12 months before the bug was fixed again (exact same solution, of course).
Did I mentioned all the middlemen?
It's honestly like the insurance industry. Things that could have been affordable, simply aren't, because there are so many levels and layers of expenses. Everyone wants a cut.
My train of thought: if SpaceX can make payload to orbit 10 to 100x cheaper, would something similar be possible for cost reductions (and thus market share) in the apparently insanely inefficient defense industry?
Fundamentally, SpaceX chose to go with the cheapest approach that works rather than the "best" approach.
Take, for example, the engines. The Falcon rockets are kerolox (kerosene + liquid oxygen) engines. You get substantially more performance from hydrolox (liquid hydrogen + liquid oxygen) engines. The faster you want to go the more difference this makes. However, they recognized that kerolox is far, far easier to work with and that to put a kilogram in orbit on kerolox is cheaper than hydrolox, even though you need a bigger rocket to do so.
I can't find any other western rocket that's anything but hydrolox by the time it reaches orbit. But SpaceX decided that standardizing on the same engine (the upper stage of the Falcon rockets uses the same engine, different engine bell) was a better deal. It's all about mass production. They build a *lot* of Merlins so the cost per engine is a lot lower.
Starship is using the same philosophy. Metholox (liquid methane + liquid oxygen), a bit harder to handle than kerolox but still far more friendly than hydrolox. Same engines throughout. (Although they might have different bells on some of the engines. A bell meant for vacuum works better in vacuum, but at best worse in atmosphere and at worst will be destroyed. The Shuttle OMS engines had a minimum altitude requirement (actually, maximum pressure) and could not be used to help with a bad landing. Light them too low and they would crumple.)
SpaceX make/made things affordable because everything they use is cheap, and have rather focused on an iterative approach. Whereas traditional starships have used expensive materials and astronomical R&D costs, to make sure everything is _perfect_ prior to launch - SpaceX did it the other way. Use good engineering and build the best you can with the cheapest material possible, and start launching stuff ASAP to see where things fail, and then iterate. They also built on existing tech, and saved a bunch there - compared to building something entirely from the scratch, and having to commit to something very early on (even though it might not be optimal in the long run).
With defense you'll have to build stuff that works flawlessly, spend a fortune on design and testing, build products which can be stored for decades (and used decades later), buy parts and materials which meet the specs to endure all that. Economy of scale doesn't really apply to cruise missiles.
But their (Ares) thesis is that they can bring down costs by making smaller but more cruise missiles, which will yield the same force as the fewer but larger cruise missiles.
"With defense you'll have to build stuff that works flawlessly." --> I don't really get this point. In what way is the SpaceX approach different and not flawless? There's never been any more reliable rockets than SpaceX's ever?
And you seem to argue that SpaceX has the advantage of economy of scale (reminder: it's a re-usable rocket they're making) and cruise missiles are somehow less economy of scale? Can you elaborate on what you mean here? I would think that the number of missiles produced is at least a few orders of magnitude more than Falcon 9's?
When you build military equipment, you have to build them to last for decades. 40-50 years, easily. You'll develop a base model, which will then get forked to the various specs that your customers want/need. Differences could be what launch system they're made for(TEL, jets, ships, etc.), what command and control systems they're going to interface against, and numerous other things. Integration is a huge part of these deliveries.
So instead of designing and manufacturing, say 10000 cruise missiles of exact same type, you're in reality manufacturing 1000 for the US military, 500 for the UK military, 500 for the French military, etc. - with every batch going through different specs, testing phases, etc. And that's after you've won the contract, which in itself can take years to land.
Contracts can of course be cancelled if there are too many issues.
If we're going to use the SpaceX analogy - imagine if SpaceX had to first design a base model, but then fork that to say 10 difference versions because 10 different countries / agencies want to purchase their own rocket, and then spend 10 years on each to ensure that they work perfectly to spec for the 10 different spec sheets you've received.
And if it turns out that the cheap material you used to bring down production costs won't cut it, because it is expected to last 15 years instead of 40, then that's a deal-breaker.
The barrier to entry is lack of an existential threat. The USA faces no real threats to the homeland and the military budget, while large, is still affordable. So cost effectiveness and efficiency isn't a major priority. Whereas Ukraine has had to get creative with cheap drones and improvised cruise missiles in order to survive.
No one is attacking Iran. Because they have weapons to defend themselves with. This is because attackers like weak targets. They don't like attacking someone who can defend themselves.
Russia would not have attacked Ukraine if Ukraine could defend themselves.
China will not attack Taiwan if they think Taiwan can defend themselves.
But why would a country have to be "better" or "worse"? Why consider anything else besides stockpiling weapons, after all it's the key to peace, right?
> But why would a country have to be "better" or "worse"? Why consider anything else besides stockpiling weapons, after all it's the key to peace, right?
It doesn't. Realist game theory ignores issues like morality. Unfortunately this forum is primarily liberal, in both the classical sense and the international relations sense, so you are going to be heavily down voted for questioning the status quo.
I don't think they are questioning the status quo tho. They are essentially asking "why be motivated by anything at all". Inevitably, you work in support of an economy, and therefore a nation, so at some point you have to choose which.
Maybe I'm from Iran. Maybe not. Maybe I'm from a country that Iran doesn't call for the destruction of. It's hypothetical. Let's say hypothetically, I'm not committing treason, I'm just building missiles for Iran - helping to guarantee peace by stockpiling weapons! It's for peace, after all.
If you're from Iran, and support the current regime, and want peace in Iran and the status quo, then getting nuclear weapons is basically a guarantee of that.
I believe what he is saying is that if a large stockpile of weapons is the best guarantor of peace, then it shouldn't matter who has it. It's an attempt to paint the argument as absurd by showing an extreme case.
Thank you! However I do disagree with one point you've made here; I do not consider my case an "extreme" case. It's just antithetical to the US' vision. Which is kind of my point.
Iran could say the exact same thing about why they would be stockpiling weapons. And we (west) call bullshit. I'm calling bullshit on both.
There are literally zero nations currently involved in hostilities which don't want to destroy each other. You may not like it, but the USA has called for Irans' destruction a hundred times.
Its treasonous to the human race to continue to call for the destruction of sovereign nations who don't align 100% with the purposes of ones own nation...
The United States has called for an end to the theocracy, but we love the Iranian people and culture. More realistically, we probably would be happy to tolerate the theocracy if they simply normalized relations and deferred to America. America's a very easy nation to get along with. You do what we say and you will be made very rich and have peace. It's a pretty straightforwards bargain.
It seems that Iran is an exception to such US conviviality. See, the US under the Obama administration, the EU Russia, China and others signed a deal with Iran to alleviate sanctions in return for an end to Iran's nuclear program.
The Iran nuclear deal framework was a preliminary framework agreement reached in 2015 between the Islamic Republic of Iran and a group of world powers: the P5+1 (the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—plus Germany) and the European Union.
Then the US, under the Trump administration, withdrew from the deal:
The United States withdrew from the pact in 2018 and new sanctions were imposed under the policy of "maximum pressure". The sanctions applied to all countries and companies doing trade or business with Iran and cut it off from the international financial system, rendering the nuclear deal's economic provisions null.[12]
But how practical is this? If the next village over is planning on attacking your village. Is creating a weapon for defense still "treason against humanity"?
No, because Iran and America don't engage the world with the same peaceful demeanor. Again, it's objectively true that Pax Americana has brought about a heretofore unheard of level of world peace. The entire world is mostly at peace. War, where it exists, is controlled (and frankly, every war today can be ended at America's behest).
But, realistically, if you were to work for Iran's weapons program, while you wouldn't change any of the outcomes, you also wouldn't necessarily be making things worse. The US still has way more firepower and is actively working to acquire more.
The Ukraine-Russia war largely changed my opinion on this type of stuff.
War is still the ultimate leverage. A hostile nation deciding to take you out forces you to defend yourself. Russia has shown that quantity largely outweighs quality. I see two reasons for this:
1. Quantity can exhaust supplies. It’s hard to defend yourself when you’re out of ammo or people.
2. Quality is concentrated. It’s easier to destroy and be done with.
This type of tech is the future of defense and deterrence. Being able to send hundreds or thousands of smaller drones ensures at least some make it through.
And the final step is component standardization at the dimensions and interface level.build new cheap systems on the fly using automation and cheap standardized subcomponents. 3 batteries, 1gyro, 1 motor,1 cpu, 1 explosive , wrap it in shrinkwrap,firmware + mission upload and every one can buy it, every can use it, end of world, MOSAICs
Forgot the camera. Basically push a cellphone into standardized brick, not to unsimilar too industrial plc bus cards.
ps:in picture a bigdog like system built by lego of death:
Russia has a big hammer. It can unquestionably kill a target it decides to kill and Ukraine is basically powerless to prevent that.
Ukraine has pinpricks. They have to wait for the best conditions to attack and have no certainty as to whether they can kill their target or not. But the Russian ships can't be wily all the time, they have to sometimes be sitting ducks. And the only weapons Russia has that can engage those sea drones is guns.
I believe that in reality you need some of each. Quality fights quality, quantity fights quantity. Quantity does very little against big quality, but big quality does very little against quantity. You want to knock down that LORASM that your radar just picked out of terrain? You need something that can get there fast, drones won't do it.
I was thinking exactly the same. But then war came to my home in Kiev.
Problem is, no matter how deep are your philosophical thoughts on arms and peace, there are countries that just want to kill you, plain and simple.
In order to have the ability to continue being concerned on the spending on mass killing, you have to be ready to physically defend your favorite Starbucks.
Other than the US and maybe England does anyone else in the “western democracies” have any more than some high tech gizmos in short supply that military economy Russia can’t overcome with their 50’s and 60s style warfare? I didn’t agree with 95%of what Trump said but I did agree with him trying to push for NATO countries to get on the ball and remilitarize because Russia is running their economy on war and oil now and Europes seems to be in lala land
England has no real defense industry to speak of. They no longer have the ability to produce the steal needed for e.g. surface ships, they have to import it. Germany still has the ingredients for a defense industrial base, and so does France. Trump, well, he's right on this one. There's a pretty serious free-rider problem that's been festering since the Berlin wall fell.
I agree it is very sad. Not enough effort on de-escalation, negotiation and understanding. And with a stockpile of cheap weapons it will be ever easier for greedy, lazy, corrupt and cowardly policy makers to simply press a button and hope it gets them what they want. It won't though.
This is the fundamental failure of the left--the *faith* in there always being a path to avoiding conflict. This is most definitely a faith-based position, never defended by reason. It's simply always taken as a sign that the side with "more power" (by their yardstick, not always correct) failed to use it's power responsibly.
If both sides are sure of what would happen with conflict there will always be peace. Nobody's going to pick a fight they know they will lose unless losing is just as bad as not fighting in the first place (say, your opponent wishes to kill you.) However, in the real world knowledge is far from perfect and circumstances can change. War happens when the two sides have different evaluations of the expected outcome.
(And you also have cases where losing is the objective--at least a double digit percentage of police shootings are suicide by cop and plenty more are people who evaluate dying as preferable to jail. Not outright suicide but pretty close to it. De-escalation is completely useless against both of these groups.)
What forms of 'de-escalation, negotiation and understanding' do you think could have deterred Putin - whose demands included control of Ukraine's national direction and foreign policy, the removal of the democratically elected government and a crippled army?
An awful lot of gunning for war. The words inclusion are very much talked about in context of human beings but it disappears out of the window when talking about foreign policy. Perhaps inclusive foreign policy could have resulted in the avoidance of the Ukraine war? Instead everything is focused on escalation and exclusion.
> Perhaps inclusive foreign policy could have resulted in the avoidance of the Ukraine war?
Ukrainians had chosen a turn to Europe and the West before 2013. Should they have abandoned a national aspiration because it would annoy their neighbour?
> Perhaps inclusive foreign policy could have resulted in the avoidance of the Ukraine war?
Maybe but negotiations are always bound by the alternatives of which war is one and as a country it is better if the calculation looks grim when it is considered.
What is certain is that Russia didn’t hesitate to start an invasion when they felt threatened and thought they could get something from it.
I think it’s a fallacy to view it as an either/or situation. We should strive for both an efficient diplomatic service, enlightened leaders who strive for peace and are intellectually able to navigate a complex international situation, and a strong army.
Obviously it's the woman's fault her husband beat her. She clearly wasn't inclusive enough in her actions. She deserved to be rape when she wouldn't put out when her husband came home drunk.
Literally all Russia had to do was not invade Ukraine, and none of this would happen. Ukraine will never be a “threat” to Russia at any point in the foreseeable future. However, Russia is maintaining that if it exists that it will become the next super power and overrun them. Or is it more likely that Putin was scared that Russians would see a richer sister country prospering under a western economy and challenge his tyranny?
yeah, more surrender to aggressive dictatorships by 'change through trade'. right now someone is bleeding out in ukraine because you peaceniks had your way for thirty years. bloody handed well spoken monsters in a world they want to leave ...
The Ukraine war is not due to peaceniks. Had the hawks been in charge we would be in pretty much the same situation as we are now.
Up until 2014 there is nothing any reasonable hawk would have done differently with Ukraine. Even after they had their come-to-Jesus moment and cleaned up their act there's still little more we could have done. We were helping them get their military in order, what else was there to do?
I do think the peaceniks are very wrong in saying it could have been avoided by diplomacy, but that doesn't mean they caused the war.
The blatant nature of land empire of "grab all you can get ,never let go, lie through your teeth,assume everyone else is a lying land empire also " was visible even during the fall of the sovjet union in grosny , the various border raids of china into its neighbors (vietnam), and the various persian proxy wars. but the problem was that dove liberal future optimism incompetence infected a whole generation of politicians. including the "warmongery" group around bush junior . which removed one landempire containing another from the map and just ignored the other unreformables while they staged blatant psyops.
Sometimes the person you're negotiating with has already decided to expand territory, and they use your goodwill as a tactic to extract benefits from you. The only thing that works is deterrence, and then to beat them in a war if they decide to fight it.
The obvious example is WW2, where appeasement backfired. The recent example is Ukraine, where the West appeased Putin in 2008 around Georgia, in 2014 around Eastern Ukraine, and again after he invaded in 2022 by slowrolling arms and placing restrictions on Ukraine.
This appeasement mindset is a failure of cognitive empathy. You as an individual can be reasoned with. The people around you can be reasoned with. So you can't imagine someone who is a ruthless empire builder. You extend the benefit of the doubt in places it shouldn't be extended. And in turn develop this naive worldview where war is always unnecessary. But this worldview can lead to more people getting killed.
I think this is a logical consequence of miniaturization (and cost reduction) of electronic components and sensors. Signal processing algorithms (perhaps used for target tracking) can be done in software instead of custom analog electronics. I’ve been contacted by recruiters from multiple venture funded cruise missile (and related weapons systems) companies.
If that's the case, it is only a matter of time before we all can afford our own cruise missiles.
I see your point.
The way I see it there's a great advantage to having big very expensive weapons, such as only a few countries can afford them and they are so expensive and destructive that leaders aren't so quick to use them.
That acts as a deterrent to big actions, nuclear nation Vs nuclear nation in direct conflict World War scale confrontations.
As the entire post WWII Cold War era and recent post 9/11 decades have shown, however, is that big expensive weapons that destroy entire cities in a single package have done little to stop endless low level warring. Small conflicts continue none the less, the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Russian actions in Syria, the Crimean and Ukraine invasions, etc. (many many other "et cetera's").
A Chinese expansion to take Tawain would be of a similar "small" scale from the PoV of "does this warrent a nuclear response".
It would be a naval battle in many ways and the best deterrance, perhaps, is an over supply of "cheap" semi autonomous self guiding over the horizon evasive ship killer missiles.
The knowledge that any ships that engage could be rapidly removed from the board is the very thing that might see such usage not come to pass.
> If that's the case, it is only a matter of time before we all can afford our own cruise missiles.
What do we do when the Sinaloa cartel gets the capability to attack LA? They're already heavily involved in preventing the election of officials opposed to them.[1]
They have such an ability right now. They could easily get a fleet of quarter scale R/C aircraft with autonomous control ala pixhawk, load them up with explosives and fuel, and send them on a one way trip to the big city. Maybe $5-10k ea. The first attack would likely be very successful, because nobody is ready for it. Expect effectiveness to degrade over time as air defense systems and fighters are deployed.
I wouldn't expect them to do this, though, because anyone contemplating such a thing would realize the response would be immediate and decisive. Cartels are after all business organizations, and you can't do business if you're spending all your time dodging hellfire missiles.
I don't really think there's a market for personal Iron Dome products. If nothing else the interceptors are inherently seriously restricted items that simply wouldn't be legal under any conditions in a suburban environment. The high power amateur rocket community bumps into this all the time--most people are not in a position that there is any possible way for them to comply with the hazmat rules regarding their rocket motors (you do *not* want one of those lighting off in a house fire!) They buy their motors at the launch site from those who are able to comply with the hazmat rules.
I have an even hazier understanding of the hazmat rules on possession and transport of explosives. When they blow down a building around here bringing in the explosives is something of an event and not done until the last minute because they're not allowed to store them on site.
Not to mention that explosives + motor falls deep into NFA stuff if it's legal at all. Or look at Mythbusters. All the explosions on the show? Nope, permits to do most of that simply do not exist. Behind the scenes it was actually being done by the local bomb squad.
Now, Iron *Beam* is another matter. I'm not aware of any applicable rules.
I mean, all the homeowners can just shelter-in-place in their Cybertruck that's required to be parked in the drive by the HOA rules, and use it's HEPA filters, right?
I've been trying to find it for years but about 20 years ago when that guy from New Zealand was trying to build his own cruise missile for under $20k I found a DoD paper that had a line I'll paraphrase that stood out to me: 'the DIY cruise missile will become the AK-47 of the 21st century'
I agree somewhat, but I would like to point out that a huge portion of the cost of advanced weapons systems is waste intentionally baked into the processes of designing, manufacturing, and testing these systems to squeeze as much money out of governments as possible. This sort of thing has huge potential benefits for tax payers everywhere
It's good to have a moral compass that dislikes the concept of war. But we shouldn't confuse that for an effective strategy to deter violence.
In a complex world that continues to have ideological challenges, economic constraints and susceptibility to coercion by violent thugs (Putin), forgiving weapons supremacy is betrayal of our peaceful ideals, families, neighbours.
Anti-weapons as a policy to achieve peace is quite an incomplete train of thought.
I think only those who make money off of war “like it”. The rest of us who are pro military simply see it as the only way. Diplomacy will only get you so far and if you don’t have a big pile of bombs to back it up then your diplomacy is worthless against a power hungry fool like Putin. All they understand is loss of power or gaining of power, nothing else registers in the brains.
I think it's incredible how the tech industry has turned from "don't be evil" to supporting all manner of vices. On Twitter, SV VC's openly support Trump, and not just Peter Thiel. They're just corrupted and went from counter-culture to accelerating all of the old power structures.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear to the strategic planners the obvious; that peer or near peer warfare is one of industry and attrition (which it always has been).
So while we may all, and should dislike war, it is ever more important to have our defence fully prepared for modern warfare.
Honest question: does building low-cost cruise missiles use microchips or other parts produced in China?
Or, maybe in Taiwan, or any other country that would probably stop shipping parts after such a war (involving China and the US, most likely also Taiwan) breaks out? Either due to the industry being damaged, or to avoid retaliation from China?
I'm so glad to see YC fund this. US defense spending is the lowest as a percent of GDP that it's been in 50+ years. We need innovative solutions for the end of Pax Americana.
The ethical considerations depend on who you are building weapons for. A state with noble goals is better equipped to pursue those noble goals if they are well defended. A state with malign intentions is better equipped to inflict those intentions if they are well armed.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to detect who are the good guys and who are the bad guys (but sometimes it is!).
Anyway it's just a name. I'm glad we're investing here. War is horrible, but unfortunately a fact of life. I'd prefer we deter the next one, or win it when it inevitability comes.
I've only spoken to one Russian this year, and he was honestly pretty embarrassed and ashamed. I agree with you, that's probably the representation on HN too.
Which could be your choice to make, if it were just you. But it's not. It's also other people around you getting murdered - people that you have some responsibility for, if you're in a position of authority.
So if I read this correctly, nothing would make the fuckers from this company happier than if everyone could go to war with China as well. What a bunch of sick people, gunning for the destruction of humanity.
For weapons to be useful, especially complicated weapons, they need to be purchased in advance of a war. They only profit from the belief there may be a war.
So you just bury your head in the sand and let China do whatever they like in the South China Sea against much smaller nations like Taiwan, the Philippines, etc? I’m one of those people who thinks if someone is proposing a radical change they should at least own what happens when the status quo is changed. I for one think it would be a disaster if the US looked purely inwardly while China and Russia bulldoze their neighbors.
Question: how does a software developer enter this industry? For pretty much all other industries it's easy to find documentation / examples / open source software, but obviously the war industry is much more secretive. What are good resources to get an idea of the industry from a developer perspective?
Build up your experience with Java, Spring Boot, MySql, Angular, React, and AWS; and build up your LinkedIn profile with these said skills until the recruiters for government contractors start messaging you.
To get into the cool defense/offense projects, you’ve got to get an offer on a project that is classified as secret/top secret with full scope poly.
There are a ton of TS jobs out there for hire right now; unfortunately you have to find a contractor who is willing to pay the fee and sponsor you on a new clearance.
Finding someone who will sponsor you right now is difficult for some reason; but once you get one, you have a ton of leverage within the government contracting space.
1) Get a relevant education (software engineering, electrical/electronics engineering, control engineering, math and physics, etc.)
2) Apply for a job either with contractors (Raytheon, Lockheed, Boeing, etc.) or go directly to the state/military.
That's about it. You'll have to get a security clearance, but other than that it's very much a standard A4 type of job. Possibly lots of travel, though.
They should really work on homebrew cruise missiles for Ukraine. Constructing backyard pulsejet engines with nothing more than common welding and CNC machines and strapping an explosive payload to them with a mass-produced jamming-resistant guidance module.
It's a start. CCTV7 (PRC military channel) released footage of automated PLA cruise missile component gigafactory last october capable of making 1000 components a day, insinuating scale of their smart munition acquisition. Which is to say a few days of production can satuate existing US+co missile defenses in 1IC, assuming typical 1500km cruise missile range, US can literally move every land missile interception system produced and stuff every VLS cell of existing USN hulls with anti missile defense in theatre, and PLA cruise missile gigafactory going brrrt will saturate with a few weeks of production. Which is to say, they're indicating they can build so much cruise missiles, likely cheaper than ARES, that US + co simply don't have capability to preposition enough hardware to survive in attrition game. That said, doubt ARES can out compete PRC... on industrial output. Obviously an effort has to be made to increase munitions production, but I doubt ARES can do it for 10x smaller / 10x cheaper.
IMO focusing on antiship is misguided, there's plenty of advanced munitions to sink limited PLAN ships, the problem is PLA has enough land based fires to probably destroy most of US+co hardware in theatre with spares. IMO there's this misconception that destroying PLA navy will somehow stop PRC war efforts, when bulk of PLA fires is largely land based (magnitude more than naval fires), including eventually proliferating prompt conventional global strike to hit CONUS, at which point no US hardware is really save. Ultimately, PRC will gladly trade PLAN for USN... since US global security architecture breaks down without navy, and that 600x ship building advantage is going to help PRC reconstitute faster.
The actual US+co ordnance deficit is munitions for hitting PRC mainland, to take out PLA landbased fires, realistically can't cut much on size because 1IC deployment either means ships outside of PRC A2D2 range, or on land (likely limited to JP/PH) which means 1000km range just to reach PRC coast and 500-1000km more to hit interior sites. Unless you include SKR, but they're not that suicidal. Which means need something size of existing cruise missiles, if not larger. And depending on how it's deployed (i.e. on ship/airplane), the hardware has to be relatively over engineered to survive the logistics chain of being forward deployed (i.e. mechanical vibration / salt air). PRC's advantage is they can produce magnitude more munitions + with less demanding deployment + a lot more room to deploy launchers (most of mainland) vs US with limited deployment regions.
This is without mentioning modern anti air has nearly 100% interception rate on subsonic munitions. Question is going to be, can AREs make more cheaper cruise missiles than PRC can make interceptors. At which point it might be more cost effective to focus economizing higher end munitions. Remember it COSTS a lot in man power + logistics to just sustain deployment. Maybe this will be comboed with many autonomous launch platforms... but that's when you run into deployment geopolitics, i.e. JP citizens aren't going to like (or likely allow) 1000s of launchers dispersed on their roads for survivability, and you can only fit so much on Okinawa/Luzon. There's a lot of constraints to US trying to win the numbers game in both production and deployment vs PRC, but at the same time, peer power attrition warfare is a numbres game.
All that said, zero interest rate era is over. Tech needs to beg for defense money now. Expect more of this going forward, and who knows, maybe it'll disrupt defense aquisitions for the better.
This is the only comment that matters in this thread.
The US currently can only put 50 something hulls in the water, so even if they ALL somehow converge on TW, that's not enough to keep that factory busy for more than a week.
Also to contrast, equivalent Tomahawk production is down to 55 last YEAR, despite current urgency. Plus the Ike CSG just used up about 150 in that yemen excursion.
The real tragedy is all the STEM in the US can't seem to muster up the competency or fortitude to compare these basic numbers in any public facing material.
Is this the same company or related to Ares inc, the company that made the 75mm autocannon for the HSTV-L? An insane amount of engineering went into that cannon.
The cognitive dissonance here is outrageous - people whos ideas ruled the world without great disruption ever since the cold war ended, offended by the idea the bloody mess these ideas helped to built and these weapons aim to solve, is somehow not there responsibility. Own your results people! If your ideas and ideologies arm and support blood thirsty dictatorships and they do bloodthirsty dictatorship things. Thats on you! Thats what you aimed to do.
Not making the world a better place! More like making the world a better place for Nod!
I will say though your contact page on your website is broken; there's nowhere to enter information, all you can do is submit an email and phone number with no content.
Cheaper missiles can be deployed en masse with the aim of overloading defences. They don't make more expensive missiles obsolete, they're a key complementary weapon for the era of swarm warfare.
“Defense tech” should not be a capitalist for-profit venture. The incentives are all wrong. The business model is basically “milk the government for as much money as you can get, over the longest possible time period”, which is never a good business model for incentivizing efficiency or innovation. That is how American defense manufacturing got so slow and costly. It’s why America struggles to produce something as simple as cheap artillery shells at scale: simply not profitable enough. Much more profitable to sell fancy tech at $3m a pop.
If you're pro-war and support this kind of shit, you should know that every fight has two possible outcomes: you can win and you can lose. This is the same reason you don't wanna be a police officer or go to the military if you're not ready to die. After all the pain people have experienced in eastern Europe, Gaza, Middle East, it's sad to see this has been funded by YC.
It's pretty obvious it's the same "defense" system as AK-47. While it's easy to justify, it will be used, highly likely, to kill people.
No. The primary job of weapons is deterrence. If a weapon is used it's already failed in it's primary mission. Most military weapons will be built and sit somewhere until they reach the end of their shelf life.
It's very disappointing that we're at a point in time where this is important, but it is important. War is awful but ceding the western alliance, for all its flaws, to authoritarianism is far worse. Do what is right morally first, and for your business second, and good luck crossing the valley of death ;)
In soviet Russia you were completely free to express your negative opinion about the government, as long as it was the government of the United States.
As a ukrainian, this makes me want to puke. We, Ukraine, had the historical chance to become a leading world manufacturer of practical and cheap military tech.
We have the vast engineering talent. We have the institutional memory. We have the need. We have the motivation. The government would want to purchase this.
We did produce exactly zero technology.
This, guys, is what corruption does to a state. It's a cancer that paralyzes the society even in face of immediate deadly threat.
So, my best wishes for Ares Industries and I mean it from the depth of my heart. Please produce this cruise missile and I sincerely hope we will never have to use it.
Weapon production is something any country wants to build up domestically, otherwise the country wher3 the producer is situated can impose restrictions and political pressure - see the limits the US sets for use of US weapons or the German denial of Taurus deliveries, or the swiss refusal to give ammunition for air defense to ukraine
Counter point: the majority of the EU's defence material comes from abroad. EU pension funds where/are banned from investing in defence. The defence industry is tiny in the EU compared to the rest of the world.
And as a result, EU defense officials watch the US elections with dread, as they would be utterly helpless against a Russian incursion. Unfortunately, the time of the peace dividend we enjoyed is over, at least as long as authoritarian EU neighbours like Russia heavily invest in their military on a war footing
To be fair, that Swiss decision was completely reasonable. The systems they were scrapping were old, unmaintained and not produced anymore. It made no sense to invest time and resource to teach a lot of ukrainian air defenders in order to then launch a small limited amount of missiles and then scrap the system anyway.
I think by swiss ammo the parent comment refered to the 35mm ammo for the Gepard Air Defence System owned by the German Armed Forces that was produced by Rheinmetal (but in Switzerland) that had to remain in Germany.
AFAIK the Gepards are still in use in Ukraine, but Rheinmetal is now producing the ammo in Germany rather than using the former Oerlikon-Facilities in Switzerland.
If destroying Gaza was the goal, it could be done far more cheaply with dumb bombs or artillery barrages of old weapons. The use of weapons that can be substantially aimed is evidence that destroying Gaza isn’t the goal and we are expending billions of dollars to reduce casualties.
Perfect weapon for a Genocide. Always tout that there were Terrorists, but take out upto a 100 people. Perfect. Ofcourse the powers that be will have to allow it, And send those weapons in the first place.
Destroying Gaza itself is not the goal. It's destroying the people that's the goal. So that other people can occupy that land. And that is being accomplished with old, new, weapons, and with the "weapon" of withholding aid as well.
Destroying Gaza is the goal, or else Gaza wouldn't be destroyed. [0]
Your argument that it could be done 'easier' with dumb bombs or artillery callously ignores the fact that another goal in the destruction of Gaza is the all-out servicing of Israels military-industrial complex, which profits immensely with every single cruise missile/smart bomb dropped.
Plus, there's the fact that a lot of dumb bombs have, indeed, been dropped on Gaza in the last year. All of those bombs need to be replenished, and the profit in that is immense.
>expending billions of dollars to reduce casualties
This doublethink is such an incredibly cruel and wrong position to take. Have you not been paying attention to the daily mass murder that occurs, whatever the weapon of choice, of entirely innocent human beings? [1]
The biggest bully on the world stage is the United States. I'm no fan of Russia or China, but they aren't in conflict with the US. If anything, the military industrial complex that the US bolsters, is the reason for conflict around the world; the US government buys from private US companies with tax money, which it then donates to states like Apartheid Israel to commit genocide. There's no defence with the US, only death, terror and destruction.
The fact that YC is supporting this is reprehensible.
Iraq is also not that clear. Iraq was very aggressive state at that time in its region.
It was required (by UN, not US) to destroy and stop producing WMD they had (chemical weapons), AND prove that they do that. And UN Security Council resolutions (dated 1992, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2002, total 15 resolutions) clearly stated that failure to do so that may bring another war.
Instead, Saddam actively prevented UN observers to their factories and made it all look like they continue producing WMDs. He refused to cooperate with UNSCOM and UNMOVIC, and lied a lot.
And man they did it before. Iraq officially confirmed producing 8500 liters of anthrax (UN commission suspected up to 25000 liters).
In total, Iraq produced 19,000 liters of concentrated botulinum toxins, 8,500 liters of concentrated anthrax, and 2,200 liters of aflatoxin. Iraq conducted field tests of Bacillus subtilis (anthrax stimulant), botulinum toxins, and aflatoxins. Iraq also tested the delivery of biological agents by a variety of delivery systems, including rockets, bombs, and aerial dispersal. In December 1990, Iraq loaded 100 R-400 bombs with botulinum toxins, 50 bombs with anthrax, and 16 with aflatoxins; at the same time, 13 SCUD missile warheads were loaded with botulinum toxins, 10 with anthrax, and two warheads with aflatoxins. In total, 10,000 liters of concentrated botulinum toxins, 6,500 liters of concentrated anthrax, and 1,580 liters of aflatoxin were loaded into the munitions.
Iraq also produced 3,080 tons of mustard gas, 250 tons of tabun, and 812 tons of sarin. The bulk of these weapons were used in the war against Iran and gas attacks on the Kurds; the exact amounts of chemical weapons remaining are unknown. Thus, according to initial Iraqi claims, Iraq produced 240 kg of VX, according to later Iraqi claims - 3.9 tons, according to UNSCOM estimates - up to 200 tons; while Iraq denied that VX was loaded into the carriers, UNSCOM found traces of VX in the warhead fragments of Iraqi missiles. In 2004, Iraqi munitions containing binary sarin and cyclosarin were also found.
PS: I still think US was wrong invading Iraq before securing where its all stored, Saddam made a very effective provocation. And US did not conduct any "referendums" to make Iraq a US state, like Russia did in Crimea. And who knows, maybe there are still WMDs hidden somewhere in Iraq, it's a big country.
The thing is compliance was impossible because the weapons did not actually exist. Saddam's underlings were lying to him, claiming things that never happened. Our inspectors kept letting stuff slip through our fingers because it wasn't really there. Intel would tell them to look at X. We would go to X, find nothing. Whoever was in charge of X would report to Saddam that they successfully moved the stuff away from the inspectors.
We were tapping their communications and thinking we were failing when in reality there was never anything there--we had already destroyed all the real stuff. It was all a massive deception, but not aimed at us. Saddam was emboldened by apparently repeatedly giving us the finger when in reality he didn't have a hand to raise at all.
> The bulk of these weapons were used in the war against Iran and gas attacks on the Kurds
In the US-backed war against Iran, in opposition to the Iranian-aligned Kurdish militias. If you're gonna supplement a military force with their majority ethnicity, then start referring to the US war with Iraq as a US war against Arabs for consistency.
But anyway. No, the bulk was not used against Kurdish militia groups, it was used against Iranian military[0] and you also missed out a major issue in that the chemical weapons program received international support since Iraq was seen as a reliable partner against Iran. This includes US and European companies shipping precursors to Iraq. Calling it "very aggressive" when it was a completely failed country by 2002 under crippling sanctions is dishonest at best.
> we can make sure the United States is prepared to stop a conflict and save countless lives
> building something incredibly cool and want to make a positive difference in geopolitics
Someone has never used their critical thinking skills. MLK Jr said the US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. These missiles won't be used against rogue states, they'll be used to kill innocent people and children in the poorer countries that aren't behaving like the empire wants.
> These missiles won't be used against rogue states, they'll be used to kill innocent people and children in the poorer countries that aren't behaving like the empire wants.
They’re antiship missiles. Are there innocent children on missile cruisers somewhere I am unaware of?
Cruisers? These are meant for stuff like destroyers. Wimpy stuff that can't put up the defense a cruiser could.
I do agree, however, that anti-ship missiles will always be aimed at military targets. You use missiles to penetrate hostile airspace. If you don't need standoff capability you can put more boom on target cheaper with a laser guided bomb.
This is conflating different things. Most people want the US to be able to defend itself and potentially others. But almost all of the military conflicts the US has been involved in lately have had dubious value to that end.
Once you build a better weapon, you can’t control how it will be used anymore.
Yeah, that's what the mafia guys will tell you when they come round to collect their protection money. "We keep you safe". What they don't say: "... from people like us".
I agree that the cheer leading for military products strikes me as disconcerting.
But let's keep this in perspective. A cheap anti-ship missile available in large quantities has a very focused purpose in the near term: to deter China from an invasion of Taiwan. Such a prospect would be tremendously bad for the entire world, and turning Taiwan into a missile toting equivalent of a porcupine might be worth it if it prevents such a disastrous invasion.
The deaths you describe won’t be changed by these type of products.
These types of weapons are critical in actual, legitimate wars where enemies have air defense systems, large front lines, and thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops. Particularly, if air defenses are present, you have to evade them or overwhelm them. The Russia-Ukraine war has largely demonstrated the later wins out.
The American airstrikes on defenseless “assets” in foreign nations will continue to use high value, precision weapons. The strikes are generally limited in nature and unlikely to be intercepted by air defense systems.
Potentially nothing, but apartment buildings don't move, so an artillery shell at one-hundredth the cost would probably be the preferred option anyway for nations motivated toward such things.
Well, I've seen our allies use a $249,000-a-pop FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile against a solitary soldier where a $0.49 rifle shell would do [1], so I don't price matters. Especially when we're giving the stuff away.
Nothing, but they can do that already. Since residential apartments don’t often come with anti-air defenses, they’ll be guaranteed a hit with a high quality, precision missile.
These missile are about overwhelming quantities in a hostile environment. We’re basically seeing this in the Russia-Ukraine war, in two different ways:
* some missiles attacks will be a mix of high precision weapons and loads of low precision weapons. The low precision weapons eat up air defenses allowing the high precision weapons to hit their intended target.
* “cheap” drones are sent in large quantities. Many will be shot down, but enough will make it through to targets to be effective.
As anti-ship missiles, you can imagine how huge quantities could overwhelm relatively limited number of available defense assets.
You'll have to rip out the whole seeker to do that.
And even Russia isn't shooting missiles at apartments. Rather, they are shooting missiles at things they consider a military advantage to destroy (although Geneva would disagree with some of it--things like taking down the power so the people are cold isn't acceptable even if you gain advantage from it) and their guidance systems are junk.
And a lot of what Russia does looks very much like the result of a boss making impossible requests and not listening to reason. The underlings do whatever they think is as close to the request as possible, even when it's just flailing.
Aside from the fact that complete worldwide peace has yet to happen, it is also worth mentioning that this period also coincided with nuclear proliferation. If Iraq had nuclear ICBMs they would not have been invaded.
Yes? Large-scale war in Europe and the Middle East every few decades used to be the norm. The Hamas-Israel 'war' is nothing compared to those uprisings. It's like chump change. Also it can be ended tomorrow if the USA wanted it too (or Israel). There is no major threat to world peace at the given time, and it's amazing. It's caused poverty to fall drastically pretty much everywhere. All thanks to 11 aircraft carriers. Who knew peace was so easy.
"any other take is frankly disingenuous" - come on now, you're basically saying "I'm right and anyone who disagrees with me is just wrong". Not really top notch argumentation there.
Many have said that the US military adventurism and support for 3rd world despots has made the world a more dangerous place. I think there's plenty of room to debate such ideas instead of discarding such dialogue so rashly.
That's because the data is pretty much unequivocal about casualties due to war. War used to be the common state of the world in most countries.
Now? The contingent of countries between whom war is unthinkable is growing every year. Amazing. Many empires have achieved similar results regionally, but America is the first to have done so worldwide with the actual ability to enforce it. Amazing
The Bretton Woods Agreement did yield a long lasting pact among Western nations and helped to provide an effective counterbalance (and then some) to the power of the USSR and allied states. The peace dividend post-Cold War improved that situation even more. Overall I think we can agree that deaths due to war post-1944 have trended down significantly. This does not mean that the USA "forced peace" upon the world.
The USA has been involved with many conflicts and supported bloody dictators around the world, including:
- Wars with Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, and more
- Supporting corrupt regimes including such gems Pinochet, Hussein, Bin Laden, Gaddafi among MANY others
- Supported destabilizing coups and (counter) revolutions, often with significant blowback (Iran, 911, etc)
Overall the post-WWII context was better than the eras that preceded it. This occasionally came with a very high cost to (mostly) innocent people in far away lands. The US did not 'force peace' upon the world, it pursued its interests, and humanitarian outcome was little more than an afterthought. The death toll in Vietnam and Iraq alone show this rather directly.
In a democratic multiethnic society you shouldn't question the allegiances of people -- see the history of McCarthyism in the 1950s, or before that Japanese internment, and before that the anti-German sentiment.
And not that it matters, but the name Tseng uses Wade-Giles romanization which is not used in China anymore. This indicates the founder may be of Taiwanese heritage. The Pinyin romanization of that name is "Zeng".
Taiwanese or the family having emigrated from mainland China prior to the PRC adopting pinyin (which includes possibly prior to the Chinese civil war).
>In a democratic multiethnic society you shouldn't question the allegiances of people
Oh yes you should. In this case the founder's allegiance survives scrutiny, but it doesn't mean you should forgo vetting or pretend one's origin has nothing to do with his possible motivation to betray.
It's so on brand for YCombinator to look at all the problems facing the world and finding that the issue that needs fixing is that destroying hospitals in the middle east could be cheaper.
I hope everyone involved is rewarded as handsomely as Perilaus was.
They are building long range anti-ship missiles. That’s not going to help much to strike land based targets which can already be destroyed with much cheaper means anyway.
War in Ukraine showed that there was both a need and a gap in the ability to produce this type of weapon cheaply and fast enough.
Unless you somehow have a way to stop expansionist authoritarian states to wage wars on the US allies, I would personally tone down the preachy judgemental attitude towards the defence industry. But that’s me.
The production capacity is simply not there especially in the price/capacity range which would be useful for Ukraine. That’s one of the reason which motivated Russia to attack. They think they will win the war of attrition and we might be one Trump victory away from that becoming true.
> Palestinian schoolchildren instead
Your efforts are misplaced.
The issue here is the USA blind support to Israel not its weapon manufacturing capacity.
One of the takeaways I had from this was essentially how powerless even the president was in pushing back against the arms race, even against his own people. This of course culminated in his famous farewell speech where he coined the term MIC.
In any case, if the dynamics of these kinds of companies interest you, I cannot recommend reading about Eisenhower’s presidency enough. There was actually a situation with Taiwan that is still quite relevant to today.
And I truly hope, but unfortunately doubt, that equivalent amounts of money are being put into startups or organizations that help solve, diffuse, and de-escalate conflicts.