US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers

I worked on the control systems for Predators and Reapers back in the mid and late 00s, and the inefficiencies around process were enormous. Safety is extremely important, so you expect some slowness as a result, but it got pretty extreme. I remember one time having to do 6 weeks of testing around a one-line code change because a "helpful" dev fixed a small bug that had no practical impact. Yet because it changed the release build hash, we had to go through a full acceptance test. As you can imagine that incentivized only fixing important bugs, and even those we had to consider whether it was worth it or not. As a result there were a hole pile of bugs that we (and customers) ended up just living with.

On a separate note, I'm curious as to whether AI is making an inroads in that space. I would imagine very minimal, if at all, but very curious.

There are ~350,000,000 of us. When I read we spent $1B, I think about how I'm responsible for $3 of that. It doesn't matter considering the ~$117,550 of the national debt I'm responsible for. It palls compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for.

What boggles my mind is that I make coffee at home because I'm frugal. I guess it is good the government and DoD are seeking cheaper alternatives also.

My favorite interview question: If I gave you a swarm of autonomous drones, what would you do with them?

There is a group in South Florida who stand watch over turtle nests on the beach to ensure the hatchlings make it to the ocean instead of instinctively moving towards the street lamps or the bright hotels. I would use drones to hover over the nests to detect if the turtles hatch so people don't have to stand there.

What would you do?

> The Defense Innovation Unit notice called for drones capable of carrying many different sensor and weapons payloads up to 2,800 pounds and flying with a combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles—or 8,000 nautical miles on a one-way strike mission—while executing the same missions that the MQ-9A Reaper drone currently performs for the US military

I feel like they might be taking the wrong lesson from this. The Reaper costs $30-50 million precisely because its mission profile is to deliver 3,500 pounds of payload over 1,000 nautical mile radius.

The cheap Iranian and Ukrainian drones these are increasingly competing with are only delivering 50-100kg of payload - which is plenty to blow shit up, and doesn't require a big, expensive, reusable airframe.

I’m no military expert by any means but US appears to be obsessed with destroying some super important target to win, like they did with killing Iran leaders only to find out that new leader replace the perished.

The same with the other stuff, they have super important radar and super important ships that need to be defended and a failure creates irreplaceable loses. Iran on the other hand, just like with their super important leaders lost all its “super weapons” like destroyers and the drone ships and yet again brought USA to its knees.

Maybe USA has more fundamental problems, not just drones. Maybe the problem is the obsession of wonderweapons for destroying wondertargets.

It is fascinating that there are so many movies revolving around the US president, as if he has some ability that no one has and you can’t simply elect a new one if the enemy gets him.

Maybe the desire for concentration of power and seeing everything through that lens is the issue?

The defense industry has spent the last 40+ years grooming the DoD into thinking it costs $30mil/unit to produce missiles and drones. They should have rejected any of the bids, but being fueled by massively excessive taxes in the USA, they don't have to answer to any sort of efficiency or profitability.

These things should cost less than a Toyota Camry.

Ok, all the negatives aside, focused on silver linings. I am musing how it's good that the US is finding this out now, and not in a really big conflict on it's own home territory in which it cannot get out of (ie an invasion).

Yes, the world seeing her weakness could increase the chances of someone trying (or wanting to). But I think this will help spur on a defense startup and spending spree.

Makes sense, drone technology has come an insane distance since these were developed.

Probably the biggest learning from the Ukraine war alone is the effectiveness of cheap drones. It was suspected for years but hadn't been put to the test yet.

Will be quite interesting what the end evolution of this will be.

I think high direct movability (like droping a few meters or shifting left/right) might be the next bigger thing for these. Easy enough to add, will make it even harder for air defence missiles catching them.

Besides, the air defence missiles are a lot more expensive than what a drone does.

And in Russia you saw another huge issue: How to shoot down a drone in your city without missing it and destroying something else?

How much payload do you need anyway? Like imagine oil refinery: how much kilo of c4 do you need? I don't think that much.

Or imagine a formation of drones with small payloads and starting to crash in one house wall like into putins palace or the white house.

The Defense Innovation Unit was founded in 2015 and is full of SV interest groups:

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

They could obviously have foreseen the current failures in 2015. It is irrelevant, since the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Generals who routinely give theatrical performances for the cameras want the big toys for their districts.

The goal in Iran is also not to win but to keep the Gulf monarchies, the EU, Japan and China down by means of a low intensity forever war.

> It envisions delivery of “20 mission-ready aircraft” by 2031.

Hmm, I'm not sure they fully address the problem if that is what is being proposed. The world will be an entirely different place by 2031 and 20 drones is .... meaningless? Surely they should be talking in the thousands or tens of thousands.

I imagine it's cheaper not to support Israeli aggression or to fuck with Iran over oil. Lessons we should have learned in 1973 and 1953.

In a metaphorical sense, Ukraine is the scrappy 'startup' aka highly maneuverable speed boat that can turn on a dime, and the US Department of Defence is a cargo ship that takes years to execute a single turn. The drone playbook is out there, plain for all to see but there are too many entrenched stakeholder interests and incentives for the US to emulate the Ukraine drone playbook. You think the US would establish underground 3D printing drone factories? That would be an insult to its military industrial complex, and a tarnish on its sterling prestige, n'est ce pas?

While I am critical of Ukraine being in talks to join the EU (which IMHO it shouldn't), I am quite happy that we in EU kind of have built good relationships with Ukraine - military drone construction knowledge and expierience will become a key technology field, as cooperations between Ukraine and Europe after the war (however that will look like) will probably strengthen europes defense capabilities.

Anduril will fix it

Another novel approach to saving money: stop fighting Israel's wars

Drones killing drones in the sky. Each side is just burning piles of money until one runs out. Imagine if that could be put towards something useful.

there's a better way for 100% savings

just completely exit like Afghanistan

and remember all this military hardware eventually ends up in the hands of police departments domestically, next decade is going to be wild

$21 TRILLION spent on militarization 2001-2021

* https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...

imagine how much by 2031, at least double

ps. they are still executing fishermen without trial off Venezuela at a million dollars a pop

I know a few people who could have used some of that $1 Billion. I mean what is Musk and Altman going to do when they need to be bailed out?

It's disappointing how often the public gives a silent thumbs up on military spend. Okay I'll grant most US citizens would have preferred Trump hadn't gotten into this war.

But most talk is about the $$ cost of this war, how little Trump has to show for it, and price of gasoline & groceries.

Instead (for US citizens), the talk should be about what else could have benefitted from those $$, and now isn't because it'll be used to re-stock weaponry. Think healthcare, infrastructure, education, research, etc etc.

That's the real cost of wars like this.

Drones are only one piece of the puzzle. Once again ars is on the wrong side.

US should be split up so it can't do any more damage to the world. Americans can't be trusted with putting that much power in the hands of a few people anyway.

In his 1961 farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of establishing the military-industrial complex [1]. We are seeing the fruits of that now that despite an annual budget over $1T the US has been militarily defeated by Iran (and Afghanistan). We build $13B aircraft carriers that don't work [2].

Defense contracting is nothing more than a wealth transfer from the government to the wealthy. This is what unfettered cost plus contracts looks like. We ridicule the Russian military for their insane levels of corruption (eg paying for tanks that never get built and the generals pocketing the money) but really the same thing has happened here. The things get built but they don't work and the entire industry is built around hiring former Pentagon people who specialize in procurement.

It doesn't have to be this way. Some of the US military's past equipment was legendary. The M1 rifle and M4/M16 family were cheap, reliable and effective. The Jeep was legendary for its reliability. The original M1 Abrams tank is widely considered the best tank the military ever built. If you listen to anyone in the military they'll tell you the vehicles are constantly broken down, hard to repair, expensive to maintain and outright dangerous.

Every dollar spent on the military is a dollar not spent on roads, schools, bridges, hospitals and trains, things that would actually benefit people. We're bankrupting ourselves to enrich the shareholders of Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Corp and General Dynamics for what exactly?

And the proposed "defense" budget for 2027 is $1.5T, a roughly 50% increase.

This is also why I laugh whenever anyone pushes the idea that China is the Big Bad [tm], for two reasons. First, they don't have to be. We just want their to be a scary enemy to justify all this. Second, if they were, they would destroy us because it would ultimately come down to military industrial capability and we would lose. Orders of magnitude lose.

[1]: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...

[2]: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2026/04/the-ford-class-is-not-th...

Our country is a joke