This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Reported as AAQC.
Yeah I wonder how much of their stock of interceptors they've already burned through. The Gulf states are said to have intercepted 521 ballistic missiles out of 538 with an accuracy rate of 97% in the first four days of war; the unsaid part is that they're usually using 2 or more interceptors per missile in order to achieve that rate. That's 1042 interceptors burned through on the very generous low end, or 260.5 per day. The current rate of production of PAC-3 is 600 per year, and THAAD is even more anaemic - at 96 per year (though Lockheed has stated it wants to step it up to 400, it's unclear if it can). In other words, in the first four days they've consumed a year and a half's worth of interceptor production, it's likely the Gulf's stockpiles are running down fast. During the previous 12-day war the US burned through a quarter of its THAAD supply, and that was a relatively short war; interceptors are an extremely scarce resource.
Then again, Iranian missile facilities are also being bombed which limits its ability to wage a war of attrition, so it's going to be interesting to see which side wins the numbers game in the end. You better cross your fingers and hope Iran runs out before you do.
Can anyone explain why we live in a world in which we can scale any electronics but the military ones? Seems like no one including Russia can build missiles at scale any more. I am not specialist, but there is nothing in a rocket - tube, sensors array, cpu, explosive and propellant. Nothing of which is that complicated or with right design should require special labor or equipment.
Because you're literally hitting a bullet with a bullet (PAC-3 and THAAD are both hit-to-kill) and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase can move at speeds of Mach 8-16? The extraordinary precision required to achieve interception is a pretty big technical feat that requires a lot of cost and time and stress-testing, including some very powerful avionics and computers that need to be not only small but deal with the conditions of being in a missile flying at Mach 8 and still working.
It's also the reason why defence is ultimately a losing game and why attrition is so effective.
You are explaining me why it will be hard to R&D. Not why once you developed it you can only produce 600 and not 600000 per year.
Because, for the above reasons, it's super costly and the US can't commit infinite money to building and maintaining these. Also, you need to test every very complex component rigorously; quality control is not optional when the alternative is a missile taking out crucial infrastructure or killing hundreds/thousands. A single component failing rounds of testing can sometimes lead to production being halted out of QC concerns.
If we produced more the cost per unit will fall dramatically. If we produced more we wouldn't care that much about quality because we could afford to shoot more of them. If we decided that patriot is the only air defense system we will need - and our allies too - once again we should have produced more interceptors - so once again we get into the economy of scale.
This is what the US is currently trying to do but it's easier said than done, since there are many supply chain bottlenecks; you would need to scale production not only of the interceptors but also of their component parts like solid rocket motors and guidance seekers, which are quite underproduced. You'd need to significantly expand the base of skilled personnel and factory capacity across the supply chain, not only at Lockheed Martin but also at BAE Systems, Boeing, Northrop, L3Harris and virtually anyone else involved, and many of these industries are hyperconsolidated as fuck. Many microelectronics, minerals and rare earths used in these interceptors are inherently limited in supply and also heavily leans on foreign sources, particularly China, which is a gigantic dependency of the US. And even then there's a limit to cost reduction through economies of scale.
Also, having quality uncertainties in something as critical as interceptors is a horrible idea even if you can manufacture a lot of them; having a somewhat accurate idea of your capabilities is crucial to war strategy.
If you need skilled workforce for manufacturing you fucked up royally during the design phase. Same for other stuff. And I keep hearing about those mythic rare earths and military and yet no one explains why they are needed in such quantities that to be a bottleneck compared to the obscene amounts we already throw away with the disposable vapes. And the biggest producer of semiconductors on earth will bend over backwards to allow us to produce more of those needed for interceptors if we just promise them to sell them some at any price.
And this is why any competent design is based on the assumption that everything will break and not work when you need it most, this is why stuff needs to be able to be produced at scale, with untrained personnel, sometimes under terrible conditions. Not treating any such system as a artisanal wunderwaffen.
With modern computers, cad cam, electronics - we should be able to design faster, iterate way faster, and produce more and cheaper. And that is obviously not true, at least until the war hits home - both Ukraine and Russia seems to be able to wage full scale next gen war with what could roughly be describes as US military toilet paper budget.
You can't build modern high tech equipment (which interceptors definitely are) with 70s low skilled manufacturing methods. The failure rates would approach 100%.
You can do this. The inherent tradeoff is that you're going to be stuck with Vietnam war era designs. If you want things to be buildable with only a hammer and screwdriver, you're going to be limited to things that can be built with such crude tools and no skills.
Consider this: Any high reliability electronics using BGA or QFN parts need x-ray inspection to filter out boards with short circuits caused by uneven solder flow. A shitload of components are only available in BGA or QFN packages and many are fundamentally impossible to build in any other packages (simply too many pins). That means you need highly skilled labor to build them or beyond state of the art automation which is only viable at massive cost which in turn means massive production amounts. The same goes for modern passive components that can be literally the size of small sand grains. And that's just one small part of the entire supply chain.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link