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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

They're not that hard to make. USA will be fine. If some of the software and hardware manufacturing expertise can be built here thats great.

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>They're not that hard to make.

Yeah, with parts from China...but that's banned too.

Homegrown factories and supply chains don't just pop up overnight though. So in the near term this just means zero drones and a disorderly transition.

Intentionally triggering that only really makes sense if you think a major confrontation is imminent and chaos is an acceptable price to pay to force speed.

They're hard to develop. That is proven by the fact that DJI is by far the industry leader, and everyone else is trailing.

We're not talking about duct-taping a Go Pro to an OTS drone.

Just looking at the injection molded shell of my Mavic Mini makes me cringe when thinking about the startup cost. It's the plastic shell; not the motors, nor the circuitry, nor the optical parts...and to think you could build that in the USA is laughable. DJI releases 2-3 models every 2-3 years... if you could even find a company in the USA machining the steel molds at that frequency (i don't think it exists) how are you going to afford the bill?

We'll just let Boeing build them. They have the know-how.

Plus, if we're talking military drones vs civilian drones, they wouldn't need plastic shells. That'd just be more weight reducing distance. Then again, military industrial complex would probably try to make them stealth capable, be designed by committee from 22 nation states, be micro-USB mandated to comply with EU standards, blah blah. Yeah, you're right, we'd never be able to build them here.

Boeing's expertise will come handy when it comes to designing kamikaze drones.

I'm confused. Machining molds is not a lost or obscure technology.

A skilled machinist (and the US has many) used to be able do it in any moderately-equipped machine shop.

Is there something new and magic about modern injection molding?

I'm confused too. The parts are high quality and scream "in-house" and surely not the product of contract engineers or contract machinist work. But I don't think DJI has machinists or factories in-house? I would assume they are just the product designers but I guess it's probably some kind of unique workflow due to Shenzen.

I just anecdotally see that in the USA, the required iterative design process is too cost-prohibitive for injection molding, and likely the same for every other trade. So multiply number of trades (designer, CAD drafter, machinist, electrical engineer, software engineer, injection molder, assembler, etc.) multiplied by the number of experimental iterative processes required to build an institutional knowledgebase... it's cost-prohibited.

They don't need to be that hard to develop. It's not like you need a return to base feature. Sort of like wanting to learn how to fly a plane, but not take off and land the plane. You don't need to have the full feature set of a DJI drone to make it a weapon. You also don't need to worry about the battery life of coming back, so you've essentially doubled your distance capabilities, so maybe a stronger radio. Do you need the video return signal too? I guess that would be some decent PR footage on the nightly news propaganda stations though, so might be worth the expense??? You also don't need to be burdened with the GeoFencing features of a DJI, but would be funny to see a bunch of attack drones all hover just outside a map boundary because the target has their base listed in the GeoFence library!

So while not duct-taping a GoPro (we'd use Gaff tape anyways), they could use bailing wire with a grenade or c4 bundle to attach it.

I think you're pretty confused about what most of these drones are doing.

DJI drones aren't being used as weapons platforms in the US...

They're being used for industry (agriculture, real estate, land surveillance, fire monitoring)

No one gives a shit that it's not difficult to make a flying grenade. They care that all the features you're in here mouthing off about as "not important" are actually important.

I've worked for a drone company. It's clear you have not.

Welcome to Dunning-Kruger Club. The first rule of Dunning-Kruger Club is that you don't know you're a member of Dunning-Kruger Club.

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