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Comment by greenhearth | Hacker News Reader

200 submarine drones a year? Will these be dumped in the desert with the unused tanks and planes too? What a nightmare.

Submarines aren't exactly disposable plastic bags or straws; I don't expect they'll be mothballed that quickly, and there are doubtless secondary uses for them in research and undersea exploration. (Including industrial "exploration" for mineral and gas deposits.) The kind of fast material production you call a nightmare gives rise to all sorts of positive possibilities.

Besides, there aren't that many unused tanks and planes in the West right now. We're in the midst -- and perhaps even just the beginning -- of a military purchasing frenzy, especially in Europe.

Maybe you can contact these guys for tanks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Army_Depot.

What positive possibilities are you talking about? I only see some version of an arms race, which is undoubtedly a human nightmare

That's not a junkyard. It's a depot and logistical hub for tanks that are presently considered "in service."

America has a lot of tanks in service, and the desert's not a bad place to store them. Where else would you put them?

As for positive possibilities: Undersea exploration, development, resource extraction, etc. Some still dream of an expansive human future.

Sealab 2021 for real when? It's the perfect training for space colonization, and we gotta get off this rock for our survival eventually. (Especially by the time bioweapons start getting loose accidentally.)

Hello? These are missile drones, made by a comically grotesque "Tony Stark" goofball who yells at people about Dungeons and Dragons while his shit is used for global supremacy. Is everyone completely stupid?

These things go quite quickly in a contingency, nobody thought they would run out of Soviet MT-LB of all things yet here we are:

https://x.com/Jonpy99/status/1811839479172464929/photo/1

Now that we allow nuclear states to act with impunity, expect lots and lots more money going into stored hunks of metal

Why not dumped in the ocean to watch over fiber cables and other infrastructure?

Please post a source of the “unused tanks and planes” dumped in the desert.

I don't understand why OP made that comment (it doesn't seem like a big deal) but the US military has a bunch of boneyards for every branch. They are more like "neatly parked until salvage wants them" rather than dumped.

Eg the Sierra Army Depot

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Lassen_County,_C...

Davis-Monthan AFB

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photograp...

Yeah, that’s my point. It’s not like they’re dumped onto the side of the yard, when they get decommissioned they end up going into these or parts can come out of them.

People make these comments then have no problem swapping their car out every 4-5 years and it’s like what do you think happens with those eventually?

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