McChuck: TL;DR: Only take medicine when you’re sick.
Alex J.: If those drones had a TV feed (as opposed to film cameras) they would’ve been useful for visually identifying BVR targets for F-14s as often required by ROE. Per McChuck: MGM-157 EFOGM AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) There was a laser guided Zuni rocket that got cancelled as well.
McChuck: In 1986, I saw a 60 Minutes episode about an anti-tank missile guided by a television camera. It had a five mile range, and could also shoot down helicopters. Problem was, the Army didn’t ask for it, it wasn’t made by the big defense contractors, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. It was made by two Soldiers in their off time, using spare parts that were readily available. Congress ordered the Army to adopt it, but they slow rolled acquisitions for the next 20 years and...
Bruce: This is all expensive stuff. The drones that work keep getting cheaper and smaller, like the ones Hamas used on Israeli border guards- a model airplane built around a grenade. The DoD should have tens of millions of these by now. Why don’t they? The British Navy held off building ironclad warships until the US Civil War ironclads let the cat out of the bag. This was rational and in British interest. The British Navy had a lot of wooden ships ruling the waves, all doomed against ironclads....
David Foster: Financial benefit probably depends largely on route. If there are a lot of steep hill to go up & down, regenerative braking will have a good payback. Same thing if a lot of start-stop driving.
Bomag: Read a blurb about the opposition in Afghanistan buying weapons from the Taliban. Seems to be a thing forever in that country. I’m also reminded of fur trappers and such selling guns to the Indians in the Old West. Guy’s gotta eat. Could include the corrupt Ukrainian officials who played both sides early in the war, or just the Russian side, in case things went as expected.
Bomag: I’ll echo McChuck. They may be saving 36% of usual diesel fuel costs, but how much was the electricity? Plus all the externalities.
VXXC: “If you kill your enemies, they win.” Absolutely. That’s how the Germans beat the Russians in WW2, and how we lost to the Japanese. It’s also why the South won the Civil War [now I have your attention !]. “This will inflame your ____ to____” As it happens, we the fighting caste are stepping away, so y’all can show us how it’s done. Perhaps you can make a good death, but I doubt it. All you wanted ‘was to be left alone?” Right? Congratulations, you...
Lucklucky: It is enough to ask how much testosterone levels Napoleon decreased.
Bob Sykes: I cannot imagine a more wantonly reckless policy. On balance, Kissinger was a monster and a war criminal. Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide were consequences of his so-called policies. And we haven’t learned. The American people suffer under the most violent corrupt government in the world. Our law agencies routinely murder people: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Ashli Babbit, and most likely JFK and RFK.
Lu An Li: Intimidation. To dissuade the Soviets from attacking China, so it is said.
McChuck: The article fails to mention the weight and price of the system. It does mention that the battery pack takes 10.5 hours to fully charge. What’s the cost of the electricity, and how will the payment system work? Where will the extra supply come from, since we’re dismantling generation capacity? Who is going to install the charging stations, and where will they be? How much weight can the trailer still carry, after adding in the batteries and motors? How explosive are these batteries?...
Southerner: He would be proud to see the left-wing meltdown his death has occasioned. Jerk he may have been but he left the planet a better place than he found it.
Bob Sykes: Now that is a really good idea, assuming the costs of the trailer are offset by the increased fuel efficiency. Moreover, the fact that the trailer is self-propelled in yard operations looks to be a major improvement in yard operations. Now, if we get some Huawei/5G/AI optimization, like China has, we might get some big cost reductions.
Jim: It would be extremely easy for the United States to eradicate the population of Afghanistan. USAID could then be repurposed to the task of causing the births of as many white children as possible in Kabul et al. The high-tech, “soft” approach would be to use the Federal Reserve’s bottomless well of freshly printed dollars to induce Afghani women to carry American IVF babies to term. It’s important to understand that the NGO Global Complex isn’t IVF’ing the world...
Ceck: “If you kill your enemies, they win.” If Israelis kill a lower-class Arab youth, the Arab poverty pimps and religious fanatics get more political support from lower-class Arabs in general. Similarly, if a US troop shoots an Afghan goat-herder, Afghans collectively hate the US a little bit more, and the anti-US Afghan leaders get more political support. “War is about…(c) sending your domestic adversaries to go die doing it for you.” A relatively poor and fanatical community can send its lower-class...
Jim: War is about (a) manufacturing unholy quantities of bullets, bombs, shells, and missiles, (b) blowing up as much of your foreign adversaries’ shit as quickly and efficiently as possible, and (c) sending your domestic adversaries to go die doing it for you. Alternatively, “If you kill your enemies, they win.”
VXXC: The idea that WW2 was a foregone conclusion is very popular now with the hindsight of a history of peace, meaning that if you’ve never known war and look back smugly — you have the hindsight of the ass, meaning the civilian. This wouldn’t be worth mentioning except the relatively low-cost victory of the Cold War has conditioned people to believe — in the finest spirit of Marxist conditioning about “history” and “inevitable” and “invisible hands” —...
Natureboi: Why is it a success story? What strategic objective has it accomplished which could not have been achieved by pre-existing or less resource intensive means? When someone says that an investment is “successful”, this is a claim about opportunity cost. Why doesn’t anyone ever measure military “successes” based on opportunity cost? Blowing up the target is not a success if you could have achieved an equally valuable strategic goal without blowing it up.