Ares Industries – Building low-cost cruise missiles
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
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.
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.
Pests evolve and the soil becomes less fertile .Industrial Agriculture is not the same every year. it just looks loke that for a layman.
Honest question
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yup, it was all about keeping those commies out.
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.
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.
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.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navy-freaked-out-how-...
This one was pretty widely reported (from 2005)
The War Nerd stated it clearly: https://exiledonline.com/the-war-nerd-this-is-how-the-carrie...
https://open.substack.com/pub/noahpinion/p/why-so-many-of-us...
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.
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?
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.
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...
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iranian_strikes_against_I...
I like your patriotic spirit, but the U.S. Navy doesn't seem to agree.
The Eisenhower retreated at the slightest hint of Houthi missiles.
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.
Would be much more efficient to just detect the ship from the bottom and then go explode under it. Torpedos do much more damage than missiles.
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.
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.
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}".
I'd think you could do some variation on attaching a long fiber optic filament to a fishing bob that has just enough electronics.
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?
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)
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.
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.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-if-a...
OTOH it would be so much easier now to develop a celestial navigation system that works optically than it was back in the 1950s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
" inertial navigation would weigh over 100 lbs, "
Nice comment but please use the internationally and scientificly common units next time.
Somehow some HN readers from America ignore these startups. Instead they insist on outdated units. Oh boy, there are dedicated Reddit subs for you.
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.
Something similar could also dive from 4000m gaining quite some speed.
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
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?
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.)
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.
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?
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.
I think Boeing have "upgraded" their approach ...
The incentives are better aligned to reduce development costs, since Anduril does not earn until products are rolled out.
Maybe this will lead to a cheaper / more efficient defence industry?
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Best guarantor of peace is their large stockpile of weapons too.
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.
You are an individual and can only do one thing at a time. You can choose what you do with coin flips if you want, but I try to judge things.
> Why consider anything else besides stockpiling weapons, after all it's the key to peace, right?
It is necessary, but not sufficient. Other things are also necessary.
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.
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.
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...
Cite?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/bolton-iran-p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
here's a fun one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7s5pT3Rris - "McCain Sings "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"
also check out the proxy wars being fought in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen between the US and Iran in lieu of all-out ground war.
i was going to start adding links from Trump's presidency but there's just so many...
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework
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]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
Total nonsense. The USA's criminal sanctions regime has only hurt the Iranian people, not its theocracy.
If you think that beating women for not wearing a hat is something good then yes.
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.
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.
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:
https://github.com/PicassoCT/MOSAIC/blob/master/luaui/images...
pss no reason to not build cruise missile like systems from the same lego.
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.
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.
Well ... they have a new 'super commuting" CEO if that helps
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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]
[1] https://apnews.com/article/mexico-drug-cartels-violence-elec...
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 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.
Be right back, quickly buying up some realestate...
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.
In this world, we do. The sad thing for me is whom it is used on and whom it is not.
1. We stick with the current wasteful and expensive models and have less money for everything else the government does.
2. We don't buy cruise missiles at all and Putin and friends gleefully march across eastern Europe/whatever land they believe is theirs.
So while we may all, and should dislike war, it is ever more important to have our defence fully prepared for modern warfare.
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?
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.
So please please please produce those cruise missiles and make the tech available to us.
Well, that's a healthy reaction. I can respect that.
Hopefully you won't let the anti-defence industry voices get you down
An efficient and effective defence industry is vital to protect democracy.
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.
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.
Source: I worked two years in the industry.
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.
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.
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.
Yes Ukraine changed thinking on cost of munitions but trading an expensive missile for a ship is still a good trade.
Cheaper would be better sure but it’s not as compelling as presented
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.
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.
And there are consequences coming. Or maybe not, because Ukrainians did a great job.
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.
The fact that YC is supporting this is reprehensible.
... Korea, Vietnam, Iraq etc.
Vietnam was a mess, but the US wasn't trying to conquer North Vietnam - just to defend South Vietnam. Again, not US aggression.
Iraq I will give you.
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.
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_attacks_against...
> 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.
They’re antiship missiles. Are there innocent children on missile cruisers somewhere I am unaware of?
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.
If you don’t and are safe, you live under one of a very few other umbrellas.
It’s easy to be stridently principled under the protection of the people you’re criticizing.
Once you build a better weapon, you can’t control how it will be used anymore.
If you oppose a potent military you’re either an irrelevant minority or soon to be a victim of those who endorse one.
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.
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.
[1] /r/CombatFootage
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.
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.
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".
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.
I hope everyone involved is rewarded as handsomely as Perilaus was.
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.