Ukraine technological flexibility reflects their organizational incentives. Front line users are in communication with the manufacturers; those same front line users choose the weapon (and vendor) they want, so feedback is rapid and since word gets around, good equipment is quickly adopted and becomes popular until something better replaces it.
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)
I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have a Lowe level of constant military spending and have the ability and reputation to be able to quickly spin up and scale military production, so that you don't need to maintain as much military spending 24/7
Matters of life and death, when there is (as you describe) direct contact between those whose lives are on the line and the industry, tend to prevent some of the usual corruption, I would think.
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
Surely, knowing what the requirements are, we can build a cheaper Tomahawk missile these days, right?
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.
It's not just the cost of a GPS chip, it's the custom turbofan engine, the other guidance system components, active radar (in some units) and a guarantee that you can keep the unit in a tube for years and ensure that it's gonna work when you need it.
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?
What seems to be happening is that Ukraine, which has a rocket industry from the Soviet era, is building such missiles, and, through a quiet deal with Taiwan, the electronics is provided.[1] This is not a secret but nobody talks about numbers.
Would building something reliant on GPS be the right way to go? We've seen how easy it is to make it not very reliable. Musk has also shown that StarLink/Shield reliability are at the mercy of how he feels that day. Internal navigation still seems the most reliable for Tomahawks
One of the difficulties that I've heard described is that the United States is the world's best producer of castle technology and has been for the last two centuries.
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.
---
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?
>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?
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.
Reading up on some of these systems is wild. For example THAAD munitions are wildly expensive, but also a ballistic projectile that physically knocks hypersonic missiles out of the air in flight 200km away. Ultimately $13 million seems reasonable to save a few city blocks in a major city. It just doesn't make sense to use against small arms like disposable drones.
It seems like the better strategy is to not be worth bombing to begin with. It can be extremely expensive to act like israel on the global stage and I strongly recommend we don't do that any more than we already are. Americans are pretty notorious at encouraging and being unwilling to avoid blowback and avoiding all sense, and this seems trivially avoidable by not using our military to perpetrate evil. For the eighth fucking decade in a row.
You'll get downvoted for this because the US believes it is in the right.
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.
Even in the past, US was more of a gangster supporting its gang rather than a fair hearted policeman. Its support to Pakistan during Bangladesh (East Pakistan) genocide is well known.
Ukraine, for whatever reason, was denied access to the DARPA innovation pipeline early on. Thus, they had to make their own to survive. Now, not only is there something moving much faster, than that flow of innovation but also there’s a hunch of adversaries, who have picked up on it. That’s what you get for the lack of strategic thinking. Your decisions are not terminal, your moves are not the finishing ones. Others get to make theirs as well. And you might not at all like where these moves will take you.
Isn't the strategy to nearshore production, and recent moves in South America were potentially done to reduce Chinese/Iranian/Russian influence in those regions?
it's an interesting question. we kind of already are.
guns and cars kill a lot of americans. we've equipped so many americans with so many guns, they are doing a great job at killing each other in peacetime, it will be a slaughterhouse at wartime.
anduril's arsenal of weapons are more likely to be used against americans than anyone else. and for that matter, our imagined adversaries - the chinese and russian governments have killed way more chinese and russian people than any of their foreign adversaries. germans have killed lots of germans.
there are powerful VCs in my community, members of Y Combinator, who sincerely believe we should deploy advanced surveillance technologies - they're true believers of the article's broader, very soviet material product system, very IG Farben way of looking at things - despite talking on podcasts about their own families being slaughtered not by petty criminals or foreign adversaries but by their own countrymen, en masse.
americans have killed a lot of americans. not in some facetious sense either.
the best defense is strong representative politics and democratic institutions. the DoD's most powerful weapons are journalists, low interest rates, global shipping and a merciful immigration policy.
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)
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
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?
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?
[1] https://ipdefenseforum.com/2026/01/taiwan-looks-to-partner-w...
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.
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.
---
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?
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...
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.
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...
guns and cars kill a lot of americans. we've equipped so many americans with so many guns, they are doing a great job at killing each other in peacetime, it will be a slaughterhouse at wartime.
anduril's arsenal of weapons are more likely to be used against americans than anyone else. and for that matter, our imagined adversaries - the chinese and russian governments have killed way more chinese and russian people than any of their foreign adversaries. germans have killed lots of germans.
there are powerful VCs in my community, members of Y Combinator, who sincerely believe we should deploy advanced surveillance technologies - they're true believers of the article's broader, very soviet material product system, very IG Farben way of looking at things - despite talking on podcasts about their own families being slaughtered not by petty criminals or foreign adversaries but by their own countrymen, en masse.
americans have killed a lot of americans. not in some facetious sense either.
the best defense is strong representative politics and democratic institutions. the DoD's most powerful weapons are journalists, low interest rates, global shipping and a merciful immigration policy.