kimbosbread

To be fair to stock buybacks, that’s basically because they are more efficient taxwise. If our society didn’t encourage financialization of everything (ie financing a toaster, or pretty much anything else), we would be in a different spot. Also, to be fair to our industry, we produce tons of stuff, but the defense industry is a giant jobs program first and foremost.

I think the Baltics and Poland and Finns and Czechs absolutely would care. But yeah, the rest of the EU is pretty pusilanimous. Alternatively, Grand Suisse! People like to forget that perhaps the most warlike people in Europe in the last millenia have only recently occupied themselves with making cuckoo clocks and crappy chocolate, but that merely masks their terrible martial nature. Sure, they disguise it with male earrings and lisps and women with mommy haircuts, but don’t be fooled! EDIT: For the record, as an isolationist leaning conservative, I think it’s critical that the EU stops outsourcing defense to the US and sacks up. Japan, SK and Taiwan certainly have a more realistic outlook.

Oh there’s definitely quite a bit of that, talking to relatives and friends in a few Western European countries. Yeah, I’m definitely in the same camp. Putin has thrown almost all his cards on the table, and is betting on Russian will. It’s a pity Ukraine doesn’t take a page out of Russia’s bio-warfare during war of survival playbook and let something loose in LDPR. Alternatively, taking out Russia’s refineries within 1000km of the border plus as much power grid infra as possible seems like a good move. Ironically, the anitvax movement pre-Wuflu was the unholy confluence of Oprah and ethnic slavs in Southern Washington State. Mmm I dunno, maybe among emasculated 3rd plus generation Americans. Recent immigrants seem to be made of different stuff. My ultranationalist Chinese acquaintances don’t understand how people don’t appreciate how good they have it, and how they can’t see through obvious bull****. Same with the African uber drivers.

I guess so, more or less. My disagreement is that happens more on the conservative side (though the present form of US conservatism is remarkably stupid). In education alone Prof Calkins has done more damage than pretty much anybody until the last few years where liberal cities effectively shut down public schools and are now wondering why there are “problems”*. Intelligent design “advocates” eat your hearts out! Obviously we all can agree cueing theory is a load of unadulterated bullsh**, but on school closures there wasn’t much evidence initially of course, and it came down to a complete lack of understanding of the tradeoffs, and willful ingorance and outright silencing of people who said maybe this is not a good idea, and maybe the lives saved from children not being in school will be outweighed by suicides and lives of crime that will result from a few years of the public school net not working. And now we are in the situation where people might need to agree with Ron DeSantis on at least one thing, which depresses me terribly. *https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/pandemic-school-learning-loss.html

You say this, but I think it’s more age skew (conservatives lean older) and in the US that the population reads at a 6th grade level or below. Lots of very smart people on all sides go with feelings unfortunately (see my rant on Lucy Calkins and our public schools) much to the detriment of the country. As much as I’d like people to use logic and reason to make decisions, I don’t think 95% of the population has the ability or capacity for this. And the 5% that do, well, they still can’t figure it out most of the time. I submit that our country is big enough and complicated enough that it’s very hard for the voter to understand what’s going on, what the consequences of a choice are, and that is no less harder for the people who produce the campaigns of elected officials, and all the decision makers. Seriously. You get people from opposite sides for beers, and they can usually relate to each other, regardless of background. But when you get to big abstract problems, and the future, it’s much harder. I really think our best answer is to go full big-C Culture on this, as the system is not getting any less complex.

From what I had heard some of the problems with JDAMs were not initializing the INS on the tarmac. With GLMRS I could imagine something similar happening. Ultimately any weapon can be countered given the requisite money and time. That’s why el-cheapo autonomous drones are so scary: How do you counter them at scale, without making a system that is so expensive you could buy a million of your own drones instead?

How precision tools sent to Russia aren’t sabotaged properly, I don’t understand. I realize the French and Austrian industry totally loves Russia, but still…

I think there’s a complementary argument one could make: Since the 90s, in the US at least we’ve seen the erosion of the middle class, between offshoring, automation and massive asset inflation. Meanwhile the US has become significantly more economically powerful, leading the charge for each major new industry (software, internet, newspace, electric cars, AI, etc.) There are a lot of people who are extremely upset (across the political spectrum) about the fact that they get to enjoy an ever smaller piece of the pie, and this exacerbates the US’ natural isolationist tendencies. Add to that the fact that the government is unable to address illegal immigration or homelessness or crime (in liberal cities, ironically), which affect the middle class and down mostly, and you have a recipe for real social problems. As for purpose, Bush + Obama destroyed “Team America” for a generation or two with Afghanistan. So that’s out, despite Ukraine and Taiwan being very worthy causes. I posit that a different purpose could be “Build the Future” and that Elon Musk, despite saying stupid things relatively frequently, needs to praised more in media, and maybe we focus attention of these efforts and how things are getting better. We have roughnecks building giant mars rockets in Texas, and meanwhile we have practical, rather nice electric cars being commonplace (at least in places where people can afford them). If someone could just drunk mail him and get him to build the 10km x 10km solar plant he’s talked about… Unfortunately, the future can take a while to arrive, and Elon cannot solve our social problems with technology. We need to build a healthier society first and promote civic engagement at the lowest level somehow (I say this as someone who is not engaged much, due to my city being a one party city like many across the country). EDIT: Social media and the news show only the best or worst things, so these obviously amplify problems. Moreover the internet in some ways functions as a “Total Perspective Vortex” where people feel insignificant and powerless in relation to the world. If people felt like they contributed more, they might be more involved.

Pity I don’t have the money to start a toy company that sells an autonomous drone swarm as a toy or something with a poverty version of the nano hornet or something similar. Maybe DJI will do that in a few years.

Or videos demoing a swarm of drones flying through the forest autonomously. Or a US ship being taken out by a drone swarm. EDIT: On second thought, that will justification for even more expensive lasers.

Speaking as someone who stopped reading the economist two decades ago as it became lame, that cover is fine. Putin benefits from freezing the conflict and “peace”, as we’ve all discussed ad nauseum.

Toyota produces enough Hiluxes and LC70s (and enough of them exist already) that someone would just have to open their checkbook. However, Europe and US are not going to subsidize Toyota. That’s why pages ago I suggested we literally send all of the luxury pickups in the US that aren’t selling to Ukraine: Subsidize US industry? Check Subsidize US workers (or NAFTA ones)? Check American trucks towing weapons and looking badass? Check I don’t think you realize how many pickup trucks exists in the US (or Latin America, or SE Asia). I bet even a medium size US city could spare a thousand plus between all the dealerships.

I’m with LLF on China, though my sources are extremely competent and nationalistic Chinese software engineers working in the US, with whom I often had lunch or dinner and argued about international politics. Interestingly enough they all held three opinions: Xi is a bad leader and the West is lucky they got him, instead of another Deng or Hu or Zemin The Belt and Road initiative is a giant waste of time and waste of money and attention that is net loss for China both economically and diplomatically The vaunted Chinese HSR infra is great in a few places, but its half of it is an economic boondoggle that will never have the usage needed to justify building and maintaining it. That said, obviously there is some pretty serious butthurt about Xi stifling the Chinese software industry, as it is a threat to his power.

One interesting thing you could do with anti drone nets in the near term is make what I can only describe as “Diamond Age, but Wish.com” (or something similar described in Seveneves): A swarm of very small drones flying orbit around you at various distances, trailing an aramid fiber with some loops in it. These drones would be battery powered with a 10 min endurance, and then would land to swap batteries (or recharge) while others take their place. You might be able to get enough density to have a chance of catching slower drones, or if it’s a shaped charge directing it in a less damaging direction. This wouldn’t work in the rain or wind though.

If Ukraine has sufficient large kamikaze drones (ie cheap cruise missiles), that means Ukraine can destroy infrastructure and other fancy targets faster than Moscow can build or repair them.

Freezing the conflict has an interesting benefit for Ukraine that we’ve touched on in the past- a bunch of traumatized demobilized soldiers trying to re-integrate with the rest of Russian society. Putin can’t just have them all killed so they don’t cause trouble because he does need young men for the next fight, and whoever succeeds him in the next 10 years will have to deal with a nasty demographic decline.

What about taking out as much Russian infrastructure as possible on the down low with drones? Power plants, trains (not the tracks, but the locomotives), water treatment plants, factories, communications infrastructure, airports etc.? Don’t invade them, but corrode them as a country? And obviously help support a Dagestani separatist movement.

“See you in November” vibes, but with a lot of extra people.

The coin size turbines I mentioned a while back have existed for 25+ years, but it’s not clear how “production ready” there are. However, RC engines weighing 400-700g that can propel a 5-10kg aircraft and consume 5-10ml of fuel per minute. Even smallish battery powered drones can do 3+ hours, if you go with a more sail-plane-ish configuration with a 3m wing. Basic thermal modules are shockingly cheap and small: https://www.flir.com/products/lepton/?vertical=microcam&segment=oem.

Drones can already do that, on gasoline engines (100kmh for 12-24h). The only limitation on range is the LOS control link. If you use satellite or go autonomous, that limitation goes away. I keep on thinking about these videos of fortification clearing, one tree line at a time. How do you break through these in a less-small-unit-action-intensive way? I assume bringing up a tanker truck and just pumping gasoline or sewage into a trenchline is not possible, and drone mounted flamethrowers or thermobaric grenades aren’t available in the quantity needed. What about tear gas?

Yeah, you’d need to basically triangulate the control signal, and then figure out roughly where it is (with 100m radius) , and then use optical/thermal to look for operators, or call in an artillery strike. EDIT: The nice thing is, once you know where they are approximately, if you have a few hours of loiter time, you can just circle and wait for them to show their heads if you don’t see them.

What is preventing the breakthrough? ISR, small drones, artillery, minefields and infantry manning fortifications. If it was possible to step 3 of these things, in order of hardest to easiest, I think a breakthrough would have a chance: FPV drone operators Artillery Trucks Locomotives (and trains in general) I submit that a single autonomous loitering munition platform is the near-term solution for all of these, and that it could be designed, tested and built at scale in a year’s time: Gas-powered, so that it can loiter for 12+ hours Thermal + optical plus some zoom Substantial onboard processing power (equivalent to a modern smartphone) Autonomous, so it goes to a designated area and hunts in that space, or along a route Similar or smaller size to Lancet Similar or lower cost wrt to Lancet Except for the “Autonomous” bullet point, one of these capabilities are anything special. Everything exists. And for the “autonomous” part, I think most of it is pretty simple image recognition tasks that could be run on an Nvidia Jetson or similar. Now that my big work project is done, I’ll see if I can toss together a poc and put it on github as demonstration for train hunting over the next few weekends.

Honestly, we need to let them into NAFTA, along with the baltic and the UK. The UK in particular is determined to hodor itself completely, and it is our duty to rebuild them into something resembling a proper nation state. The Brexit cluster**** I think can be partially mitigated by allowing them entrance into the North American empire.

Yeah that’s exactly it. We don’t need to go full Mobile Infrantry all in one go, as much as everybody wants that. “Marginal Gains”! If we can build an exoskeleton or armor that gives soldiers even 25W per hour sustained for 24h, that’ll be an enormous leap forward. And then if you have 1000W on tap for short duration, it adds another dimension to the capability. Given current technology, there’s probably a sweet spot for system weight vs boost to soldier “power” available. I don’t think there are any practical problems other than the actuator problem I’ve mentioned a few times. Molded carbon fiber is incredibly light and strong (or even aluminum if you are poor country that can do the 21st century properly), batteries have sufficient energy density, single chip computers have enough power to actuate everything safely so the person inside the armor doesn’t get drawn and quartered by accident etc.

A good amateur cyclist can do 300W sustained per hour. A properly doped up Grand Tour winning cyclist does 500W sustained. A sprinter is doing about 2000W, but over 10-20 seconds only. Tesla batteries (Panasonic laptop batteries last I checked) are 250WH per kg. If you can give a soldier for the cost of say 5kg in batteries an extra 50W for 24h, that’s actually a lot of power. EDIT: This obviously implies 100% efficiency, but even at 50% this is not an insignificant benefit.