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Comment by borissk | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to drone warfare China probably has the factories to make 10x more drones than the US and the rest of the Western world combined.

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That is changing though.

Vietnam and India have been eating into China's manufacturing dominance as their economy weakens and wages rises.

Vietnam doesn’t have the manpower (plus, in case of an East vs West war I’m not sure Hanoi will side with Uncle Sam), and India doesn’t have lots of things compared to the Chinese (ignoring the fact that there’s an extra ocean to navigate between any Indian coastal city and any of the two US coasts, compared to China, that is).

> in case of an East vs West war I’m not sure Hanoi will side with Uncle Sam

geopolitical situation shows that they in all probability very much will. china has been making a whole lot of enemies recently. Ten years ago it may have been different

I've seen that pov presented in some other parts recently, I think it's wishful thinking on the West's part but time will tell.

Why? Same as the US,China literally invaded Vietnam in the recent past, its not like they have ever been on especially good terms. The most likely scenario remains neutrality, but the idea of them joining China in a war seems fanciful given china constantly testing the border and their naval sovereignity.

Because the higher echelons of Vietnam power know that the Americans come and go (see Saigon), while the Chinese are there to stay. Granted, I would have thought that the same policy had been adopted by people holding power in Kiev (when it comes to Russia), and yet, here we are.

There’s also the fact that Vietnam leaders are, for all intents and putposes, communists in name and in legitimizing ideology, I wonder how would the US sell that alliance at home (“we’ve allied with the good communists to defeat the bad communists”? who knows?)

nah. US is still backing NATO, harder than ever, and standing with Korea and Taiwan.

they didn't have much motivation to keep taking casualties in a colonial war that the French drew them into. but actual treaties matter, and the US backs those.

hell, the US tried for close to 20 years in Vietnam, starting with advisors to the French in the late 1950s. and another 20 years in the AFG and Iraq. if anything they're too willing to piss away time and money on lost causes.

The capability of the AI software is also important. Not saying China can't do that, but it's a factor to consider.

Isn’t Turkey the main provider or drones to Ukraine? One thing is building drones, another is building ones that actually work in real world warfare. America obviously has the ability to make children afraid of blue skies, and have had so for decades, but it’s not actually conquered any country and kept it yet. It’s only helped perpetuate a state of eternal warfare in the countries where it was employed. Yes, yes, I know that’s not entirely fair since it’s hard to invade another country and then make them like you, but still, are the American drones sort of similar to the German WW2 ranks that while better lost to mass production of “good enough” easily maintainable swarms of allied tanks?

If you want to look to actual working solutions I think that you need to look to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to some degree to Israel. Because those are the areas where people are actually using these technologies to take, defend and hold territory. NATO is going to get those lessons while China isn’t, not really, as a lot of the strategic usage of drones isn’t exactly available for us to see.

What I’m personally the most worried about is how easy and effective these cheap drones seem to be. Like the reaper type drones are nationstate weapons. It would be rather “easy” to get your hands on some of the drone types used on Ukraine, and then how would anyone ever really be safe? If the narko cartels get these it’ll, and they will, then how on earth are South American countries supposed to fight them? Hell, how would you stop a set of radicals in the US from using these to assassinate someone like Elon Musk?

I fear it’s going to be a very cyberpunk world.

> Isn’t Turkey the main provider or drones to Ukraine?

No.

Turkey is the biggest provider of bigger UAVs, but not toy sized ones. For that China takes the lead supplying both sides.

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