[BurningFrog]

I saw someone claiming drones are the biggest military invention since the stirrup!

The US would do well to start catching up on that technology.

BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.

[floatrock]

The aircraft carrier made the battleship obsolete, and I think most war strategists acknowledge that drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot war. We haven't seen one of those sink yet, but well, Russia controls the historically strategic port of Sevastopol, and yet what's left of their Black Sea fleet has retreated to ports back behind Stormshadow range. Taiwan plans are definitely looking at cruise-missile-vs-airplane-range ratios.

So yes, drones and other unmanned munitions are game changers. I just wish the argument wasn't "increase civilian drones so we have a rich and vibrant military industrial complex ready for when we get to destroy things."

Then again, some of what the article is kinda saying is "if there's civilian applications for this, you don't need to have a military industrial complex (until you're forced to on a wartime footing, at which point you're not starting from zero)." Which is basically the strategic-importance argument that is keeping Boeing afloat these days...

[pjc50]

Russia has exactly one aircraft carrier that nearly sank of its own accord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admir...

Taiwan should be building a lot of drones if they intend to fight. However, that's not the only possibility; recent shifts in US posture may encourage the "voluntary reintegration" local political faction, including the possibility of handing over TSMC intact.

[floatrock]

It's not Russia's aircraft carriers I'm concerned about.

Russia's experience with drones vs. her guided missile cruisers has more than enough there to translate to more capable aircraft carriers.

[pjc50]

If I remember rightly, one of the successful attacks was a floating "drone" made of a small boat packed with explosives. Kind of a hybrid between the torpedo and the fireship, and quite hard to defend against at night.

China has (checks wikipedia) three operational carriers, one very modern Fujian, the obsolete former training ship Liaoning, and Shandong, which appears to be halfway between the two, the first locally built carrier. During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers. Just a whole different order of magnitude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Liaon... (interesting and varied history!)

[tw04]

> During WW2, the US fielded ... 111 aircraft carriers. Just a whole different order of magnitude.

And would have absolutely no way to reach that scale again. Or the equivalent in drone production, which is why it’s absolutely preposterous to take a hostile attitude towards our closest neighbors and trade and potentially put our geographical advantages at risk.

[jdeibele]

One of things that's a concern is the consolidation of industry into fewer and fewer bigger and bigger plants. Not only does that mean a bottleneck in one place is far worse, it also means that there's not the depth of experience available many places. There's a handful of production engineers rather than dozens. And there's not the same number of plants that can be converted from sewing machines to rifles or automobiles to tanks.

I was reading something that said militarily, the US is now in the same position that Japan was prior to WWII because we've outsourced so much of our production.

[DeathArrow]

China doesn't need lots of aircraft carriers unless the want to invade US.

What they need and they have is enough weapons to destroy any US aircraft carrier approaching their coast.

Naval power doesn't mean just aircraft carriers and China has 100x shipbuilding capacity US has.

[Neonlicht]

If China wants Taiwan back the only thing they need to do is make sure the US Navy and cargo ships can't reach the island.

[JumpCrisscross]

> drones and cruise missiles have made the aircraft carrier obsolete in a true hot war

The notion of unsinkable carriers is mostly fiction. In WWII I think almost every CV America entered the war with (but 3, Enterprise, Saratoga and Ranger) was sunk by ‘44.

[dfadsadsf]

Unlikely. Ukraine does not have scale, manufacturing base and talent for that - right now it's mostly assembling drones from Chinese parts with very little innovation on top of that. People talked about AI swarms but very little of that materialized at the front line. Larger drones require satellite connections, advanced materials, etc - Ukraine does not have that either. I expect Ukrainian expertise in war drones will stagnate and become obsolete very quickly after the war.

[clvx]

I’m just baffled how Russia switched the frontline using fiber drones. It’s genius and worrisome at the same time.

[tim333]

Ukraine has them too. They both buy the fiber tech from China.

[olyjohn]

Rule of Acquisition #34. War is good for business.

[euroderf]

And then you trace back the fibers, glistening in the sunlight... your operators had better be mobile.

[klipt]

Amazing that disposable drones can get fiber internet while residents of Silicon Valley can't!

[lawn]

> BTW, I assume that when/if the Ukraine war ends, the Ukrainian drone industry will be the best in the world.

I'd say it already is.

[palata]

Don't forget China. China is way ahead everybody else when it comes to consumer drones and producing them at scale. Like way ahead.

[lawn]

They may have the manufacturing muscles but Ukraine has been able to develop and test their drones in live combat for years. There's nothing that propels technology forward as much as deadly necessity.

[palata]

> They may have the manufacturing muscles

This sounds like it's dramatically under-estimating the Chinese engineers. If you take a drone today, like a DJI Mavic. Pretty much every single component of that drone is better than what we can do - at scale - in the West. It's not like we sent them blueprints and they mass produced the drones. Their technology is first class, arguably better than the West in the field of robotics.

[s1artibartfast]

Maybe shocked if China and even Russia didn't have the specs and designs for every Ukrainian drone.

Drone hardware in software are mature. Adoption is more matter of observing tactics and human interaction

[runsWphotons]

I will take the other side of that bet.