Do drones just appear out of thin air? Or are they made in factories, which as far as I know are "high value fixed civilian infrastructure" - which is vulnerable to attack?

If drones become a big enough problem for countries like the US, then drone factories in China will be bombed, I have no doubt about that.

The author is quite misguided if he thinks wars can only be fought defensively and never offensively.

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SkyeCA 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> If drones become a big enough problem for countries like the US, then drone factories in China will be bombed

Bombing China would be an insane course of action to take for virtually any reason.

That aside consider this: You currently have the power to buy a handful of the shelf parts and assemble your own deadly drone at home. You don't need very specialized parts to do this. Bombing drone factories would do nothing to stop the use of drones.

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carlosjobim 5 hours ago | parent [-]

And making drones and drone parts for massive assaults on stationary targets in the US is not an insane course of action?

For proxy wars, super powers won't bomb each other. But if one of them is attacked by weapons from another, then they will.

> You don't need very specialized parts to do this.

So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes? Then why weren't they widely used in the first world war?

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SkyeCA 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes?

I'll understand if you aren't a hardware person, but I think you severely overestimate how complex a drone needs to be if you only intend for it to be single use (which is apparently all the rage in modern war).

You don't even need drone specific parts, the parts you need are used in all kinds of other applications...many are even in your home right now whether you know it or not.

To destroy the supply of these generic parts you would have to destroy...basically everything.

> Then why weren't they widely used in the first world war?

This statement alone makes me not take your argument seriously. You aren't arguing in good faith.

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XorNot 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No they're exactly right: drones need cheap, powerful parts which have only become possible due to highly concentrated mass production in places like China. You aren't fabbing up integrated machine learning SOCs in a shed in Ukraine, and the cheapness of the parts depends on large unfettered supply chains. They're not "with some skill, you can build a lathe and then machine a pipe gun" simple.

In a direct conflict, no one is going to sit back and be destroyed by drone swarms: they'll bomb the industrial districts.

In war, the enemy gets a say in your plans: Iran can't beat the US directly, but it can hit energy infrastructure around the Gulf which is politically untenable for the US.

But it works the other way too: if your enemies plan is "you won't bomb the big industrial facilities so we'll just win" then you break out the fancy expensive missiles and bomb the industrial facilities. Or the power plants.

	▲	SkyeCA 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You aren't fabbing up integrated machine learning SOCs All the basic sensors you need for flight exist in the literal billions of Android phones produced in the last 15 years. I'm trying to be evasive about how you'd build such a thing because I don't want a visit over a comment online, but if you understand aerodynamics you can make almost anything fly. I think the disconnect here is people reading "drone" and thinking something super high tech and precise, whereas I'm thinking of the minimum thing viable thing to create chaos/fear for you enemy.

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maxglute 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> is not an insane course of action?

No? Flat out arming proxies is literally the point of overt proxy warfare. Sometimes one tries to to be deniable and source other weapons, but other times it's just, enjoy quagmire, cry about it. It's like suggesting PRC going to start blowing up Lockheed plants if they ever lose anything to US munitions.

	▲	carlosjobim 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, if mainland China is successfully invaded by a country being supplied with American military equipment and having their fixed infrastructure destroyed - like described in the article - you can be dead sure that they will try to destroy American military plants. None of the super power countries will ever accept defeat in their homeland and being conquered without using all means possible to hinder it. That's why the USA has strong opinions on how the Ukraine uses long range weapons in the war with Russia.

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malfist 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A lot of the Ukrainian drones are produced in small buildings like homes and buisness, not massive centralized factories.

Hard to take out your enemy's production capability if A) you can't find it and B) it's highly distributed.

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carlosjobim 7 hours ago | parent [-]

They're assembled in small buildings, but at least some of the components require sophisticated factories. There are with all certainty weapons in orbit right now, locked on to these crucial factories, ready to fire if needed.

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Legend2440 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In orbit? Probably not. No country has operational satellites designed to attack ground targets. They would need to launch missiles or send drones.

In a total war you absolutely do target factories and industry. But this is easier said than done; they tend to be deep inside enemy territory. And drones are made out of commonplace consumer electronics parts, which could be made in thousands of factories around the world.

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carlosjobim 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> No country has operational satellites designed to attack ground targets.

Why are you so sure of that? It would be very surprising if at least the United States and Russia didn't have orbital weapons. They've been in sending large stuff to space for decades.

Of course they wouldn't have told you or anybody else who isn't supposed to know.

> In a total war you absolutely do target factories and industry.

And that's what you would do - or threaten to do - long before you start replacing your roads with tunnels as the author is suggesting.

	▲	krisoft 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> It would be very surprising if at least the United States and Russia didn't have orbital weapons. They've been in sending large stuff to space for decades. Depends on what you mean by “orbital weapons”. I assume you are not thinking of the sidearms of astronauts, or anti-satelite satelites. If you are thinking about nukes pre-positioned in space then the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans the stationing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in outer space. And this is not just paper prohibition. The reality of space based nukes is that the time between deorbiting and touch-down is so short that nuclear armed states would treat their launch (the time when they are placed into orbit) as an attack and launch in retaliation against the launching country. Basically if you try to sneak them into orbit and the enemy finds out about them you will be anihilated. This is just simple MAD doctrine. So the strategic balance which is preventing you from launching your ground based warheads is the same which is preventing you from launching your future space based warheads into orbit. > Of course they wouldn't have told you or anybody else who isn't supposed to know. I wouldn’t assume that you or me would learn about it. But it is almost given that the peer nations would figure it out. They spend considerable resources trying to figure out if you are doing this. And then they get MAD and your country is no more.
	▲	psychoslave 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No idea how actually efficient that would be even in theory. I guess it's not technical technicaly impossible, but would it really bring any benefit compared to launching possibly many more cheaper transcontinental rockets from earth were maintenance and control is definitely easier.

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gpm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The sophisticated factories they need are basically just for chips. And the problem with chips is that civilian life is just as dependent on them as military armaments.

The rest of the drone is all stuff that can be fabricated in small batches in a garage... of course bigs factories are more efficient at fabricating just about anything so to the extent that's possible it's done, but bombing all the big factories won't stop it.

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dragonelite 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You think the US will unleash nuclear holocaust of the human race for some drone parts?

The US will do none of that shit because they wont be able to do it. Given the US is struggling against Iran, couldn't outproduce Russia on the battlefield yet they want to force down China which is an order of magnitude bigger than Russia.

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esseph 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> struggling against Iran

Idk what to tell you, but any target that seems to get marked in Iran blows the fuck up.

> couldn't outproduce Russia on the battlefield

??? What does this even mean?

It's not like the US is in a wartime economy.

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krisoft 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Idk what to tell you, but any target that seems to get marked in Iran blows the fuck up.

I’m sure that is true. And yet, the oil is not flowing. We keep “winning” like this for a few more weeks/months and we lose. Not because we sudenly stop “blowing targets the fuck up”, but because we cripple our economies.

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jonnybgood 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The flowing of oil is not of primary importance to the US in this conflict. The oil was already flowing. So I think we can reasonably rule that out as an objective.

	▲	krisoft 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The flowing of oil is not of primary importance to the US in this conflict. You think so? Then why did the US make it the condition of cease fire? Why did the US even agree to a cease fire? It is not like Iran is hurting the US mainland kinetically. > The oil was already flowing. So I think we can reasonably rule that out as an objective. Sometimes you have a thing and you don’t appreciate how important it is for you until you don’t have it anymore.

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esseph an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I’m sure that is true. And yet, the oil is not flowing.

The comment was alluding to impotent tactical prowess, which is... silly, to say the least.

> Not because we sudenly stop “blowing targets the fuck up”, but because we cripple our economies.

This whole thing is extremely stupid, yes.