The US military procurement is the opposite of this.
One reason procurement is slow is to avoid fraud.* Ukrainse hasn’t managed to eliminate that. Perhaps there is a balance, when you’re under fire at least.
* in the US, procurement fraud looks quite different (e.g. having anpart for your weapon made in every congressional district, a tactic developed for the B-1)
The problem humanity has long had is that war is profitable for the parasites in society.
We should simply make all costs of war, including compensatory damages for innocent victims payable by the richest ~5% through taxation of their income and seizure of their wealth. They want war… make them at least pay for what they ordered.
History has shown that countries at war become about an order of magnitude better at producing weapons than countries in peacetime.
not really, the corruption is quite rampant in both warring armies and especially in drone manufacturers (look up national anti-corruption invesrigation into FirePoint as an example)
war and all matters adjacent are just the perfect ground for breeding corruption as there is too much entropy and handwaving opportunity at the same time
Tanks are relatively easy to spin on production of. No nation ever started building a battleship in the time of war that then saw service in that war. Battleships commissioned during war had been started during peacetime or they were scrapped during the war because they didn't fit into the time or they were started under high holds, but they couldn't be finished in time. aircraft carriers are likely to be the same place going forward - you have to make them beforehand.
Things like artillery shells, which need to have the ability to quickly spin up production, but that's relatively easy to do. Which is why we're so low on production. The one thing that's lacking is the willpower to actually spin up production because as we quickly discover you could do it but that means all the things that your people are doing instead can't be done.
I think the issue is that you need different types of weapons for defence during peacetime and wartime (or when attacking).
For example, Stinger missiles are great for defending against the first wave of a drone attack or occasional rocket - they're effective and quick to use, but its immensely costly to maintain an arsenal of them that would last a year of sustained attack or even the production capability to replace used missiles. When you're under sustained attack it might be better to deploy more troops with lots of (previously warehoused) anti-aircraft cannon that can fill the sky with bullets for a few dollars to bring down drones and rockets and use your Stingers for those that get through.
Sure. How?
Do you have any pointers to a good write-up of this?
Why is that fraud? That seems more like congresspeople having something to offer each other, to build up relationships and interdependence. What we have now is that our 2 parties don’t care about each other and don’t need each other, so there’s no reason for them to work together.
Now be careful not to go too far. I wand a few experts in the B1 scattered around the country - I don't want someone to be able to bomb one office/factory and we lose all ability to modify/build the B1. However there needs to be a balance.
Better would be if two districts produced B1 parts, and then a different produces tank, and then still another is doing ... That is every district should have something, but no one project is everywhere.
When the dust settles I think the precurment system will be seen as detrimental. Military power structures need to be boring such that it doesn't eat it self.
I would hope we someday learn to stop polluting our world in the pursuit of killing each other.
Both topics are very relevant to the current conflicts of eastern Europe and the middle east. Perhaps I took away the wrong message but I don't think Perun would propose to stockpile interceptor missiles any time soon.
Jungle warfare school was recently... reopened in Panama to the point that a conventional unit (one of the 10th mtn units) is there training. If that is where conventional units are training right now... that's a signal.
SpaceX does the whole rocket launch thing for a fraction of the cost of the space shuttle. GPS is not that complicated any more and all the processing power required fits in a chip the size of a cellphone.
But those things cost 2.5M a piece?
this has nothing to do with manufacturing capacity, and everything to do with the wildest,most out of control, corrupt, total conversion to a rabid , industrial cleptocracy.
a case to study is the comisoning of the latest british aircraft carrier, they did get it built, launched, and as stated commisoned, but as no one greased the huge ,wildly expensive, propellor shaft, it siezed , the d o t s dont connect, and every single last person in the whole fucking mess,instictivly knows that to actualy touch or be associated with grease, is a career ending move, and now a year later they still cant figure out what happened, but whewwee, it turned out good, as they can all pass the shilling,' nope cant show up, sorry, but realy we cant make it to your war,we have contracts to fill, ta!'
There will be a judgement call made, a balance struck. Some amount of business, not enough to invest in catching contaminants or keep workers off food stamps, but enough to fund lobbying and other efforts to maintain that comfortable permanence.
Whether and how we pollute is a political choice. That we want to is a problem unrelated to defense.
The only way you can protect a society is by being strong enough to intimidate the people in the world who would otherwise look at you and go "I want, I take." Wars are a great evil, but being prepared to fight one is a necessary evil.
Calling it the "Department of War", maintaining a fleet of over a dozen aircraft carriers, and having over a hundred overseas bases? Your goal is to invade, not to defend. You are the reason everyone else is forced to spend a fortune on maintaining a defensive military.
Part of this is the sheer expense of hardening everything. If you're trying to protect a single airplane, putting it in a hardened hanger is a lot cheaper than trying to get enough interceptors in place that you're going to protect it for sure. However, if you protect that one airplane, they'll just attack the one next to it and they'll get reasonable effects onto that. Or if you protect the whole airport, fine, they will just go attack something else.
The defense equation is not about the cost of the interceptor versus the cost of the missile. The equation is the cost of whatever the missile is going to hit versus the cost of the interceptor. Thus, although interceptors are very expensive, they tend to be cost effective anyway when you consider that they can protect a lot of different unhardened things.
Arguably USA does have this choice, by virtue of sitting across the ocean.
We did this during the Cold War where the things being defended were entire cities. Obviously an interceptor that costs a few million dollars is worth orders of magnitude less than an entire city. But if they cost more than an ICBM then the enemy can just out-build you and they don’t work.
I think the political fight around SDI/Star Wars gave people the impression that shooting down ICBMs was just not technologically possible, or it was but evil politicians decided that having guns to each other’s heads was preferable to defense. Fact is, there were technologically viable interceptors in the 1970s. The US deployed a system for about six months to defend missile fields in the northwest. The Soviets deployed one defending Moscow that still exists to this day. The British made it their mission to ensure one of their submarines could overwhelm those defenses and ensure the destruction of Moscow and they succeeded. The British! The US didn’t even have to do anything special.
SDI/Star Wars wasn’t about figuring out how to shoot down ICBMs. That was already figured out. It was (ironically, given the costs) about figuring out how to do it cheaply so that it could actually stop a peer enemy willing to outbuild your defenses.
The US has defenses today that can take down Chinese or Russian nuclear missiles. There are only a few dozen interceptors, while those nations have hundreds of missiles. The interceptors cost a lot less than a city, so isn’t it worth building more? No, because they cost more than the enemy’s missiles, so if we add more, they can add more too, and always be able to overwhelm them. Hence the system exists to defend against rogue launches or rogue states, not an all-out attack.
Strange, I keep hearing from experts that attacking is 10x as costly as defending.
Yes, and this has been known for a long time, since at least the 1950s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-exchange_ratio
The problem is that a new generation of policy makers comes along every 30 years or so and thinks they know better than the people who came before them.
And, the lesson that the USA never seems to learn is that just having air superiority doesn't win a war.
There seems to be this belief since Desert Storm that the US military is this invincible fighting force that's an easy button for any kind of geopolitical problem, when it's an institution with capabilities and limitations that need to be taken into account, and that has to be integrated with all the other levers of national power. We're seeing now how much the most powerful military can spin its wheels and sputter when you don't have a proper strategy or a proper logistical plan behind what you're asking of it.
There also seems to be a belief both in government and the general public that warfighting is "just bombing things." Which does not help.
US is doing a slow kill since the current regime in US wants to bring to a conclusion certain matters and it is running against a clock. The main goal is to get the Arabs to make peace with Israel and sign that "Abraham's Accord". Weakening EU and also putting the fear of 'Chaos' in the Chinese who are, assuredly, dependent on a functioning geopolitical order, even if 'unfair' or 'unjust', as long as it works, and it hums, since China needs that to survive.
So right now, Russia is getting all the benefits (which is why Putin gaslighted the Iranians the other day congratulating them for their stand against the USA) and US is busy busy establishing the American Hemisphere, so basically for US, if shit is breaking, that is a feature not a bug.
Yes, I know. Some "professor" and some "ex" something are saying IRI is winning. And "US has never won a war since WW2". Yet the chronic 'loser' US is somehow the superpower hegemon. Not bad for a country that hasn't won a single war for 6+ decades. Hmm.
Also, consider VSL (value of a statistical life) which is around 5-10 million in most of developed world.
The US sees itself as a "policeman" not a "gangster", they are out to save the world, not conquer it.
And yet, the line between the two is very blurry. Kuwait was justified, Iraq contrived. Afghanistan meaningless. Iran is a solution looking for a problem (nooo they can't have nuclear weapons, but who trashed JPOA?)
The 20th century was no better. The righteous of WW2 allows any excess, Vietnam being a poster child.
For the US to change they first need to accept they are the bad guy. And that's a very difficult thing to accept. The shiny uniform for example is what the good guy wears.
But in the end the gangster and police can be hard to tell apart.
Plus low volume production volums and long times needed to manufacture it.
Could it be cheaper? Yeah I'm sure. But the US Gov is willing to pay for em so why drop the price?
That’s not to say that it should cost 2.5 million, but Ukraine doesn’t need storability and durability because I think they pretty much get driven from the factory to the launch site in a matter of days.
[1] https://ipdefenseforum.com/2026/01/taiwan-looks-to-partner-w...
The funny thing is that this was designed in USA based on what was learned by reverse-engineering one of the models of Iranian Shahed drones.
That was certainly the smart thing to do, but it contrasts with the very frequent opinions expressed on many US forums, which disparage some other countries, mainly China, because supposedly they copy other technologies, instead of being "independent innovators like USA".
Fortunately for USA, they still have engineers who understand that the most efficient strategy is to first copy whatever others do better than you, and then improve on it. There are no such things as "independent innovations", any successful innovation is applied over a countless number of previous innovations discovered by others.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2025/regi...
You could still jam this but you need to overcome 20+dB of additional gain in the transmission. If the party you are jamming has anti-radiation missiles, you are forced to make yourself an extremely hot and unambiguous target to participate in jamming at these power levels.
There is a strong feeling on HN that because Trump is President, Musk holds zero responsibility.
This way the illuminati remain pure, when Trump eventually dies.
You end up with a _just as good_ device that will fail way more times than before (1:100 or more instead of 1:100000) but is way cheaper and way easier to procure. When it fails just launch another.
I wouldn't specifically do this to the tomahawk as it's used in missions where accuracy is critical in order to avoid collateral damage. But otherwise I'm a strong proponent of applying "new space" logic to military gear.
Excellent point! In Ben Rich's Skunkwork book he touches on this a bit towards the end of the book.
For attritable systems this becomes an even bigger importance. Like for example, do you really need to have a 1000 or MTBF rated jet engine when the expected life of a one way UAV is a few hours?
However, you can't compare them to long-range cruise missiles that are north of $1 million. The payload is much bigger and you just can't leverage cheap commercial engines.
What we ultimately want is effect on target.
Electromagnetic radiation is a lot cheaper to generate and transmit across space than a 450kg warhead. The only obvious exception being if that warhead is the W80 variant.
It has been the best, second to none for a long time. If you want the best castle, you buy it from the United States. Other countries may also sell castle technology... though as Norway noted it doesn't have to buy the best (and most expensive) from the United States, it just has to buy something better than Russia's. ( https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/norway-se... )
... And then with the conflicts in Ukraine and to a lesser extent Iran the world has realized that while we've had the best castles for a long time, they're big, expensive, expensive to maintain (and its own hasn't been maintained well) and has the possibility of a switch on the drawbridge that will let it down when the US wants in...
While Ukraine and Russia have rolled up to the battlefield with a cheap cannon that is demonstrating that expensive castles aren't all they're cracked up to be.
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Yes, you can probably build a cheaper Tomahawk missile today. However, can someone else build a cheaper drone that is even better for the battlefield theaters of the next several decades?
This is now shifting as the Chinese can technologically keep up and asymmetric warfare means smaller nation states can overwhelm with "just good enough" to make the economic calculations different.
I heard the US produced knockoffs of the Iranian ~$10-50k drone and produces it for ~$35K and its a modular and an upgradable platform (ie. not just a dumb copy). If you ask me, that ability to not only produce castles but also 'cheap cannons' as per your analogy when needed for cheaper and then improve on top of it is a pretty darn good skill.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_Uncrewed_Combat_Attac...
The Barracuda would be really really useful a lot (probably most) of targets and missions, but we can't pretend like there's no tradeoff in performance and additional limitations. Very roughly a Tomahawk has twice the range, and 7 times the payload.
no?
cost-per-launch is about equal, it's just that falcon made it to the desired launch cadence to spread cost-per-month around, while shuttle did not
why do you think falcon program is closing as starlink launches are switching to starship?
This is going after the production and distribution of the drugs for the Mexican cartels, but doing so from outside of Mexico.
I agree, this isn't the cheapest way to develop. I just don't think I'd call it "fraud".
For minerals, we've sent mercenaries (Erik Prince) to help protect mineral extraction and transport out of places like the DRC (Congo).
We'll probably get some gold out of Venezuela.
The US had expensive systems because INS and accuracy is expensive without GPS.
GPS will be denied in any future war environment. That's why we stopped work on things like the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb. It was useless in Ukraine due to GPS denial.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/order-limit-starshield-...
That Starshield was remotely limited is not in dispute, only whether it was just Elon's doing, or at Trump's behest.
Peace requires policing, a credible deterrent to abuse. On the world's stage, there's no actual hegemon for the planet. You gotta choose who will police by mere "I'm stronger than you". I think the US is the most acceptable police, at least it's an elected democracy with individual freedom at its core.
At the end of the day, a government is whoever is strong enough to prevent the other one from governing: provide protection and services to your people in exchange for being the boss. Roaming bands overthrow each other, still visible in Afghanistan and Syria, and dictate who's effectively Government on a given day in a given area. Who applies the laws, who provides justice, who keeps you safe. Scale that up to modern nations and we look at it as if it was the natural order of things: just stick to you backyard and all will be good. But no, it was never like that and even less so these days: the world is shrinking rapidly.
Can't have peace without deterrence against bad actors. And deterrence doesn't stop only on your turf.
Although thinking about how many humans a kill machine is worth is one hell of an idea to ponder
WILL BE is key here.
Yet the chronic 'loser' US is somehow the superpower hegemon
And the USA is even losing its hegemony with the Iran war that's causing global pain without global consensus that it was neccessary, but the real loser in the USA is the American taxpayer who gives up domestic social benefits to fund these wars.
Trump was clueless that Iran is 3X to 5X the size of Iraq in whatever dimension you want to measure. Trump did as Trump does and blathered his way to defeat by being totally unprepared. He demonstrated that it is possible for the superpower hegemon to screw things up that badly.
The solution also is not complicated but it's difficult for someone like Trump to accept: unilaterally de-escalate. Then we would have all the money the missile factories would ever need to restock.
The problem is continuously maintaining, and upgrading that sort of capacity when you don't have an active war that requires it.
It's a very different model to traditional exquisite weapons. It makes no sense to actually buy and store the drones as they quickly become obsolete. But someone needs to pay for the capacity to be maintained/upgraded. Dual-use can help, but only partially
The first Iowa-class battleships were laid down in 1940 (so after WW2 started but before the US entered the war), and did see active service in the war. The British had two classes of battlecruisers that were laid down in WW1 that saw service in WW1, although they commissioned after the Battle of Jutland, which was essentially the only major naval action of WW1. It's debatable if you want to lump battlecruisers in with battleships, but considering that the main long-lead item of battleships are their guns and battlecruisers are essentially battleship guns on a cruiser, I think it's fair to do that here.
Aircraft carriers are not battleships, but I do think it is worth noting that except for Essex herself, all of the Essex carriers were laid down after the US entry in WW2 and these were the ships that formed the US assault in the Pacific in WW2.
The U.S. had a vested interest in keeping the Philippines safe, as that was a major source of rubber and several citrus fruits used for everything from hygiene systems to car tires. More importantly the Philippines were a place for the U.S. to exert influence over southeast Asia, as previously they had been a U.S. territory between 1898 and 1934.
On the U.S. side the Great Depression was still completely in motion (it's one of the reasons why the U.S. agreed to grant the Philippines independence), and manufacturing had taken a major slump after 1937. The 1933 halt of reparations payments from the Weimar Republic once Hitler was pronounced Chancellor, 1935 automotive industry contraction, 1934 and 1936 dustbowl famine, and contraction of ship building and oceanliner travel in 1936 following changes to immigration policy meant that many factories were laying unused. American companies were actually trying to make manufacturing sales pitches to Nazi Germany starting in 1936 because they were fooled into believing Nazi Germany's economy was actually going to escape the Great Depression first. With over half the country out of work and every one out of three factories sitting unused, it was easy enough to hire enough people and fill enough factories to have the workforce and workspace required.
And more importantly, the tools back then were more universal and the parts were designed to be worked by those tools. A hydraulic press, bandsaw, and lathe were already within the factory most likely, and they were all that was needed to machine many parts. There weren't complex specialized dies or 8dof placement arms that could only make one specific thing. The SBD Dauntlesses were so quickly produced because you just needed an engine shipped in from Wright, a roller press, lathe, and a rivet gun for the most part. Meanwhile you look at what is necessary to create an F-35B, and there's such a complexity creep that it requires several different manufactories that are in different corners of the country and cannot be placed near eachother for logistical and environmental safety reasons.
It's basically how Ukraine is doing it, with the EU and the US providing high-end systems while they have hundreds of small companies building drones. Russia also repurposed existing warehouses and factories to pump out hundreds of cheap drones per week relatively quickly.
But the elephant in the room is that they both rely heavily on China for batteries and electronic components, which the US obviously won't choose to do.
Once you can no longer achieve mutual deterrence (perhaps because you are a nation who has a streak/role of engaging in interventionist wars of choice, or maybe you are planning for the case when deterrence fails, and you are now under attack), you have to decide how to protect your assets, if even in a limited way.
An airbase which gets overwhelmed and lost after 5 days of bombardment is an airbase that hopefully was able to contribute 5 days of value to your effort. It's true that the costs will not always work out in your favor.
That is way oversimplified. There are many more factors. Few countries are peer adversaries in the fist place. When your economy is larger you can sustain losses. Interceptors can be scaled up (if they work)...
Also even if interceptors don't work perfectly, they can be good enough. Russia is spending a lot more on drones now that the original Shaheds - Ukraine's interceptors for the first generation is working near perfect and they have the economic advantage over Russia's attempt to overwhelm air defenses. (resulting in higher costs missiles, which Ukraine cannot intercept - but even there Ukraine is working on interceptors because they have no other option - the missiles are coming either way and will do even more economic damage than the cost of an interceptor.
But a few dozen launches removes pretenses like “limited strikes”, which may allow for easier on-ramps. Missile defense can ensure the first step is a full step.
I wish I were such a useful idiot that I could just imagine-away incentives in a system so I could more easily create imaginary solutions :(
And on the other end of the spectrum you've got "my company makes .001% of widgets that do X but we make 50% of widgets that do X at -200deg F so we'll have our lobbyists wine and dine the brass until that number starts showing up in the technical standards forcing anyone who's submitting an RFP to use our product".
And of course the latter always tries to pretend like it's the former. It's not an easy problem. Sometimes concerns are valid. Sometimes they're bullshit. Usually the peddlers of bullshit believe their own bullshit.
The famous $600 hammer was a special non-sparking metal for use in an explosive environment. The famous expensive toilet seat was for use on the space shuttle (space station?). Both of these examples got a lot of press 30+ years ago, and it was years before the rest of the story got out.
For the reliability/storability parts though, the electronics are probably the least of the issues. You've got a jet engine in there that needs fuel, oil, and has a number of high speed moving parts. Having something like that sit for years in a ship and work with high reliability is not so simple.
You can't police a multipolar world - you can when you're the sole superpower in a unipolar word where "policing" can be a euphemism.
I think there is now a general or at least generational attitude shift about world policeman type stuff vs smash, grab and bully in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Blood#The_Blood_Telegra...
The "policeman" narrative has always been propaganda.
The job of the hegemon is to maintain the status quo, proper order. Hegemony, the maritime order, global currency (US dollar), and forever war are inseparable. The cliché "if you want peace, prepare for war." Some low-level, mostly contained, amount of violence is the price for a larger "peace".
Post WWII, the USA did not engage in total war or seek unconditional surrender. Because breaking the equilibrium wrecks hegemony. As demonstrated by GWB's ill-advised conquest of Iraq, which (IMHO) was the deflection point for Pax Americana.
The notion of just war and world cop is mythmaking, rationalization. So the citizens will keep subsidizing the hegemony. (h/t Niall Ferguson) Any notions of justice, human rights, and whatnot were savvy marketing, born of (PR) competition with other hegemons.
As bad as Pax American hegemony has been for all participants, I'm certain we'll look back with nostalgia. In that "What has Rome ever done for us?!" sort of way. The ~70 years of (relative) peace was kind of incredible.
The emerging multi-polar world (and poly-crisis) is more chaotic, violent, and terrible. And will prove ever more so over time.
Somewhere in the next decades, the US has switched to being the finely crafted military equipment.
My armchair historian says that the technology innovations are done during peacetime while treaties limit the size of the forces. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F... ) while the inventions happen during the war itself. This in turn means that much of the technology innovation is focused on fighting the last war.
With the Pax Americana ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana ) and various policies (could the military industrial complex have survived the Last Supper? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Supper_(defense_industry) ... and how has that contributed to current budgets and projects?) the United States has produced cutting edge military equipment. We've certainly left that period.
Defenders have a big advantage because they can choose a good position and hide. Often this means they can catch attackers by surprise, and so eliminate the entire attack.
Defenders have time to fortify their position - even if the attacker knows where they are, the attacker needs to run up to a fortified position to take it.
Defenders often know where others are and plan overlapping lanes of fire. If someone is attacking you, the next position will be firing at your attackers (and do the same for you).
Attackers are moving and so have a harder time identifying who is friend vs foe. Defenders know what is supposed to be there - if they see something unexpected they know it is the enemy.
That said the difference is a rule of thumb - but not a law of any sort. Well trained attackers with a good plan can greatly reduce the ratio. Defenders who don't take advantage of all their advantages also lower the ratio.
defensive missiles need to very fast and more maneuverable than attacking missiles, or the attacking missiles simply fly around them.
the fastest-accelerating vehicle ever built was a nuclear missile for intercepting nuclear missiles. they gave up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
Infantry troops still operate in 3D as they can/will direct mortars, air assets, etc.
In general, what you laid out is a bit of an apples and oranges comparison. An infantry platoon applies fire and maneuver using all of its elements to "close with and destroy" a smaller element.
You emplace your weapons squad which has machine guns and other large weapons (e.g., mortars) that will keep your enemy's heads down. This allows your maneuver elements (i.e., assault squads) to maneuver to the enemy force.
In the case of missile defense, you have a limited set of complex and expensive bullets, and your enemy has cheap bullets. If you want to defend yourself, you're attempting to hit your opposition's bullets with your own bullets.
With humans the math is reversed, being the defender is an advantage. Defenses can be setup pre-emptively and cheaply. Taking out a swarm of 20 Shahed drones is difficult and takes several missile batteries. Taking out a swarm of 20 infantrymen attacking a dug in position is light work for a matching force.
b) A human defender can hunker down in a safe space and shoot at attackers. The attackers need to move and are more vulnerable
Harder to shoot an incoming bullet than it is to fire that bullet in the first place.
An example is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Shangani where 5 guns defeated a force of 7000.
However when both sides had the same capabilities, attack became very costly.
The point is, depending on the type of drone, the sheer cost of fighting them off is prohibitive with current interceptor tech (ie anti air missles). In fairness they were designed to attack targets 10x their cost, and take years to build.
For the USA specifically, they have a bunch of bases within range of cheap drones. This means that you need radar/sensor controlled chain guns, or moveable nets to defend cheaply. Its almost time for barrage baloons.
They have a miniature Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, and a rotary coded aperture, and a singular or just handful of gas-cooled IR detector devices. Either the aperture, or more commonly the entire telescope, is on a spindle and rotates at high RPM. So imagine one of those palm sized super long focal length camera lens is put onto a disassembled hard drive and the entire thing spinning at the disk drive speed. On models after AIM-9B, either the front group, or again the entire thing, is on a quick responding 2-axis gimbal.
A dot of heat source within view of the seeker, interfering with spinning coded aperture, will create a characteristic pulses and/or beats. The pattern can be half-open half-close disc, an asterisk/sunburst pattern, or a half covered asterisk. And the spindle can be strategically angled, or it can be perfectly straight. Anyhow, the way IR source is interrupted gives the seeker theta and alpha angles by the intervals of the blocker part of aperture passing over it, or the delay between the start of new rotation to the IR spike getting through and whatnot.
(I think this mechanism is where the hallmark Sidewinder grrrrr -> wheeeEeEeEEEEE growl comes from but I don't know...)
A separate flare sensor with filters to mask engine exhaust and focusing on flare spectrum is added, and it is wired to activate a mechanical aperture to limit the view as well as tracking disable signal to the seeker so that the missile flies towards last known direction as long as a flare is in the field of view of the seeker; the field of view is limited to a very narrow cone in the first place, and that is why seekers are built on the Schmidt-Cassegrain system, and extremely rapid tracking allows the seeker to work despite tiny FOV.
And, you know, in this day and age, it could be just a camera. And they in fact use cameras since AIM-9X and on(9X3? 9X4?).
And my point is, the US already uses the GP's suggested strategy of maintaining bare minimum military spending at uneconomical price to be spent on maintaining emergency ramp-up capability, combined with regularly repeated and easily won wars in Central Asia, as well as strict controls of advanced military technologies such as what I described above to slow catch-ups by other players than the US, except it is all out of control, now crippling the US and the Western world itself.
Slap an ESP32CAM on the head of a rocket with a pair of SG90 servos and it'll serve perfectly as a $49 superior substitute to a Stinger guidance block(exaggerating but shouldn't be more than 1.5 digits off). Military technologies and controls on technological proliferation completely missed that, and Stingers are still dumping current on Peltier coolers and spinning those mirror drive systems, genuinely costing thousands to make before bonuses and capped to peacetime rates.
I'm not from the US and I don't identify as an American so maybe I really shouldn't be saying this and I might recall this later in the way some retired American military officials pointing out basic corrective actions to be taken in after the Putin's massive blunder in the Ukrainian invasion - but I think that is the problem that the US military industrial complex is facing, what tech billionaire right wingers were making clumpy half-baked A for effort attempts to fix, and partly why they support what is effectively the destruction of the USA. I think.
That's probably this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolleron
We in the public don't have a complete list of missiles from various nations and their tones, but it's well known that American Sidewinder systems use an iconic growling dog[1] tone. Stinger is more sine like[2], and many others appear to be sine like too, and newer systems like 9X and later are clearly just digital and software based even by public descriptions of it.
What I'm suspecting is that, the early gen Sidewinder growl might have been just the raw sensor output piped into the headset, because the operating principle of those seeker units somewhat corresponds to the sounds, down to the high boresight angle warning tone which isn't hard to imagine a kid playing with a benchtop example and accidentally implementing it by damaging some cable.
I think the chatter about corruption in Ukraine is partly a function of the fact that it's democratizing. People don't really talk much about corruption in corrupt countries, not as much as they do in less corrupt countries. Everybody knows it's there; it's a given. But without transparency and a steady flow of concrete data and admitted examples, there's not much to talk about. You just assume such-and-such was a corrupt deal. Only when a country is capable of combating corruption do you see robust, public debates about it, as you see in Ukraine.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/06/world/europe/ukraine-war-...
given that both warring parties are in top-10 military spending in the world with more or less peer budgets dedicated to the war, peer stats on basically every war aspect like casualties, recruiting rates etc I fail to see the exact mechanism of why the corruption rates should be different
1. If Zelensky was corrupt, he could've easily sold out the country to either Putin or Trump, both were ready to make him a billionaire and let him keep power if he gave in to their demands. If high level generals were corrupt, Ukraine would have already lost.
2. The proof is in the pudding (battlefield results). The fact that the Ukrainian army has held back the Russian army for almost 5 years now (longer than the Soviet war with Nazi Germany in WW2) against incredible odds means that whatever they are doing is WORKING. And in 2026 the UA army is doing better than ever: has gained territory instead of losing it, and is now striking deep into the heart of Russia with impunity. A corrupt army could NEVER achieve what Ukraine has achieved.
3. The Ukrainian army has never had a high-level whistleblower defection like Prygozhin/Wagner who exposed the corruption in the Russian army.
Any kind of emergency is an opportunity for graft.
P.S. Two separate enquiries found that this was fine because the corrupt scheme was fairly operated according to its corrupt terms of reference. They didn't consider whether the scheme was corrupt per se.
I don't know how people can have such a romantic view. Like read some fictional books on the matter. All quiet on the Western front or Catch 22.
Back cutting and corruption goes rampant and the worst kind of people profiteer while losers are slaughtered.
1. If Zelensky was corrupt, he could've easily sold out the country to either Putin or Trump, both were ready to make him a billionaire and let him keep power if he gave in to their demands. If high level generals were corrupt, Ukraine would have already lost.
2. The proof is in the pudding (battlefield results). The fact that the Ukrainian army has held back the Russian army for almost 5 years now (longer than the Soviet war with Nazi Germany in WW2) against incredible odds means that whatever they are doing is WORKING. And in 2026 the UA army is doing better than ever: has gained territory instead of losing it, and is now striking deep into the heart of Russia with impunity. A corrupt army could NEVER achieve what Ukraine has achieved.
3. The Ukrainian army has never had a high-level whistleblower defection like Prygozhin/Wagner who exposed the corruption in the Russian army.
It's almost always the case that you'll expend more than one interceptor per incoming missile as interception is probabilistic. In general, you can estimate the number of missiles you'll need to achieve a certain probability of interception with the following formula: 1 - (1.0 - sspk)^n, where sspk is the single shot probability of kill (i.e., successful interception with a single interceptor) and n is the number of interceptors.
Shameless plug here, but I wrote up a post about this problem: https://smu160.github.io/posts/missile-defense-is-np-complet...
The key point is how they see themselves. The average American sees the US as "the good guys". This is not a self-image lightly over-turned. Regardless of how the rest of the world views them.
Or just reflects American views of what cops are for; thumping minorities.
I've read that the hammer was an accounting artifact (#1-3 below). In other words, someone decided not to piece out what each bit of a contract cost, they simply took the whole contract value, and divided by the number of items. So the hammer was expensive, but the custom designed engine was _cheap_.
The toilet seat was actually a panel of a plane that _included_ a toilet seat thing (technical terms here, #4 below). It evidently got press because "A Missouri toilet seat maker" thought that "toilet lavatory cover" meant "standard domestic toilet seat", and felt he could undercut Lockheed. When he got told no, he contacted his senator, and...
1. https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the... 2. https://www.ashlime.com/insights/2019/3/4/the-fallacy-of-the... 3. https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-story-behind-the... 4. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/AT+LAST+THE+TRUTH+IS+TOLD%3A+...
There's no historical reason for it like fomenting revolution, waging a war of choice that killed a double digit percentage of the population, extrajudicial assassinations, or any other shenanigans like that, right? The US hasn't been actively waging economic war against these countries for the better part of a century have they? These countries just have it in for the US, and no choices were made that led to that?
Anyway the part that makes the us unique is pretending to be ethical, which makes a farce of the entire concept of ethics. Admitting the entire concept of america is based on justification via violence would be a massive step forward
Great Britain at the height of her power was insistent that they were "Civilizing" people they oppressed, and Rome did much the same.
Shahed type drones are killed with APKWS missiles. A single fighter jet can carry ~40 of these missiles and the unit cost is similar to a Shahed. APKWS has evolved a lot during its 15 years in use and the new generations are expected to come in around ~$10k each, cheaper than the drones they are designed to destroy. You can put an APKWS on many different things. The US annual production rate is 35,000 but that could be increased several-fold if needed (it is based on a missile of which the US produces 200,000 per year). The Europeans are working on their own version of this.
These have been used in the Middle East for a long time. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and Israel all have orders for 10,000+ APKWS missiles each, so clearly they are effective.
The unit cost has been tipping toward the defender but the systems are not widely distributed yet. More effective defenses require more expensive drones e.g. you can't build an effective anti-ship missile (a type of jet-powered drone) for less than a couple million dollars because anything cheaper has too low of a probability of success.
That said: how many APKWS missiles does it take to eliminate a full wave of Shaheds? If the answer is not 1:1 shot to kill ratio (it isn't), the match still works out in favor of the drones. If a single drone gets through it works out massively. If my defense platform is an F-15 or F-35 for cheap missiles, I also have to eat the cost and readiness loss of operating that jet ($30k per hour). We see this exact math in incidents like the Prince Sulatan Air Base attack which was defended by patriots, and where several planes were damaged or destroyed on the ground.
Its also worth pointing out that Patriots are reportedly getting used to defend against Shaheds in the gulf and Ukraine, especially the newer generations that are faster and higher flying.
Sure the US needs to prevent that sort of attack, but one way to prevent it is to avoid the situation in the first place. I don't need to worry about Iran or North Korea nuking me because I live in a country that hasn't had a war of choice with either of them. The price of installing the Shah is still being paid in the need to defend from Iranian retaliation.
1. US+Israel economies have a 100:1 size advantage over Iran's economy.
2. Israel is a very small area to defend, dramatically reducing the cost of anti-ballistic missile defence required. As little as 4 missile defence launch sites may cover the entire country.
Perun's video on the cost effectiveness of missile defence vs. attack is more focussed towards the economics of defence of an expansive country or region such as the United States, Saudi Arabia or the gulf region generally, where many missile defence sites would be required. Israel is a bit of an exception due to the small area needing to be defended.
Another minus specifically for Iran in the Iran/US+Israel war is being forced to build underground factories at much greater expense than an above-ground factory for Israeli interceptor missiles. I don't think analysts have been considering this long term cost in their cost comparison ratios. However, for both Iran and Israel--they're importing a lot of the components and materials from overseas anyway.
If your interceptors are good eventually the enemy is going to give up on that attack mode. - you have more incentive to defend than they do to conduct useless attacks.
Ukraine's interceptors for cheap drones are drones that are even cheaper and so advantage defender.
This is likely a a flattened curve after you enter ballistic missile territory.
You are wrong to assume that everyone in that 5% want war.
And what about the soldiers or operations folks that actually carry out the war?
We could do a better job punishing soldiers for war crimes. But responsibility for the war itself rests with the President, congress, and the ones with power over them (which is supposed to be the entire population, but the top 1% do have an incredibly outsized influence in US politics. Not that I think it's healthy to codify that)
I am pretty sure you can quit if you think your employer is doing bad stuff.
There would be no war pretty soon.
Something similar has been suggested for starting nuclear war: if things are bad enough that you are willing to doom whole populations of mostly-innocents to their death, you shouldn't have any trouble directly killing one more.
You could make it even more symbolic by doing it as seppuku instead: if you have failed badly enough as a politician that politics isn't even an option anymore and many soldiers have to pay the ultimate price to make up for your failure, then you should be the first one to do so.
Needing to use a draft is a bad sign - the more of your soldiers are volunteers the better quality you'll get out of that.
The trouble usually is, that the 95% has a huge portion willing to sacrifice anyone else in the same society they live on for peanuts dropped to them by the 5%! : / (see the Trump effect as a light example) Parasites are everywhere, being rich or poor, they suck out the blood of fellow people.
The share of ignorants (does not move a muscle in any direction) are even bigger than the peanut lovers so a healthy society is a fairytale. The economically stronger eat up the weak still.
For a facility that Ukraine has decided would cause $10m in economic damage if hit by a Russian drone, how much should Ukraine spend on interception for that site to not make it worth Russia's expense to target it? Let's assume a Russian drone is $100k (current estimate in news for Geran-5 jet-powered drones). But Ukraine can build their Bars interceptor drone for half the cost at just $50k (low estimate from public rumours/reports). It wouldn't be worth Russia's expense to send more than 100 drones in a salvo at this target. For Ukraine, they should defend the site with $5m worth of Bars interceptor drones, assuming a very favourable 100% success rate (actual reported success rates are reported by media to be just 30%). Russia has now made every $10m facility in Ukraine cost $15m (+50% increase).
The defender is essentially forced to find a 10:1 or better cost advantage for their interceptors vs. incoming drones. This is hard to do when an interceptor and attack drone are substantially the same except for larger fuselage (cheap), larger fuel tank (cheap) and larger engine (possibly cheaper than making a small engine).
And perhaps that is the reason Russia and Ukraine are largely focussed on attack rather than defence in the hope of being first to cripple the other's economy and supply chain for munitions.
You cannot "just quit" the military as an employer.
Ignoring those orders means jail.
That's a luxury position, which unfortunately not every country is in.