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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty incredible how just by coincidence the recommendation exactly matches what would be most profitable for contracting firms, have the least amount oversight from the public on how the tax dollars are used and is also the best strategy for avoiding the politically costly ordeal of hurting children of people who vote in American elections.

Just a remarkable coincidence

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Saddam had the fourth largest land army in the world with some seriously experienced commanders and veteran troops, dwarfed only by china, russia, and vietnam, and we wholly defeated them in 42 days because we could launch missiles from ships in the persian gulf instead of deploying traditional armies and tanks to the front lines. This sort of development isn't new, it's how modern warfare has been fought for 40 years and will continue to be fought.

Why can't US do the same with North Korea, Iran?

US seems to pick fights (Afghanistan, Iraq, vietnam etc) where they know the other side does not have nuclear deterrence.

Well that is exactly why. Could you imagine the fallout of NK or Iran using nuclear weapons on an invading US allied force? It would unleash a clusterfuck of untold effects worldwide and probably a lot of death. There is a reason why they haven't been used in any conflict since WWII despite all this chaos in this world, they are a powder keg.

In the case of desert storm, The US along with 34 other countries were coming to aid of Kuwait which Iraq invaded and annexed over an oil spat.

Probably because not many consider the end result as a success.

They might have lost the war but guess who gets the cavity search before boarding the plane to visit grandma. Guess who is freer after enjoys more privacy after the war relatively to before the war.

The war no longer ends at the battlefield.

To have a nice old school nationalistic wars you have no choice but to have a civil war first to weed out people that aspire anything else than nationalistic pride first.

It's a common trope to take this kind of attitude, but this dynamic is not some kind of nefarious kickback scheme. It is the natural result of the Revolution in Military Affairs concept and the political impossibility of developing these technologies in-house.

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

Think tanks exist to rationalize unpalatable policies to the american public in plausible ways like that. Salaried teams spend all day inventing cover stories - that's why they exist as institutions.

We're told there's some elaborate other system at play yet they never make a decision or recommendation which goes against the margins and stock prices of the corporations funding the think tanks. Instead, if there's multiple options they always seem to conclude that the most profitable is the best.

Until this impeccably consistent 1000 batting average is broken we can be forgiven for suspecting it's all just manufactured nonsense.

> Think tanks exist to rationalize unpalatable policies to the american public in plausible ways like that. Salaried teams spend all day inventing cover stories - that's why they exist as institutions.

I could describe the EFF in these terms. People don't want to be inconvenienced. The EFF makes inconvenience in pursuit of privacy palatable. This is profitable for the technology sector from which--surprise!--the EFF's support originates.

This model doesn't work because knowledgeable people have a vested interest in what they know. Sometimes this presents a conflict of interest. But often it's just experts converging. (Other times, you're missing most of the debate.)

> Until this impeccably consistent 1000 batting average

America produces lots of think-tank literature. I'd be surprised if more than one in five hundred proposals see light of day.

But aren’t drones way cheaper than pretty much anything else?

Not the ones the military uses. They are more expensive then their planes with humans in them.

An MQ-9 Reaper costs no-where near what a modern Gen 4++/ Gen 5 fighter costs (F-15X, F/A-18F, F-22, F-35) does, neither in unit flyaway cost, nor in cost per flying hour.

What about the RQ-4A or the MQ-4C? Cherry picking is a two player game.

If you can show a faithful effort that leads to a cost reduction then I'll rescind my claim. I'm totally open to learning however I'm also pretty suspicious of grifters passing off stories as information. The material reality has to match.

Fair enough, those two airframes are inexplicably expensive. Some discussions hint at satellite-grade sensors as a factor.[1] But they are also <= 25% of the UAV inventory, much as F-22's aren't the bulk of our fighter force. So to avoid cherry picking, we could average across the entire airframe category (so all single-or-two seat fixed wing fighters vs all MALE UAVs). I haven't crunched those numbers but I think the point would stand in that case: manned costs => unmanned, considering the large number of $50-100MM jets in service that drag up the average. That said, I would caveat the conclusion by pointing out that use cases and mission sets are significantly different. If we were building UAVs with the same capabilities as an F-35....it would probably cost as much as an F-35 too.

[1]https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2016/09/uav-triton-costs.h...

Yes there's complex reasons behind these things. My point is, and it's rather crude, that if everything always points in one direction, the complex reasons can be replaced with far simpler, less flattering ones.

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