9 ms·

Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border pro

Is Anduril really that good? I am trying to figure out what is the potential of Anduril is. Their first phase product was in observability towers for border protection, then they made drone-ramming drones and now unmanned fighter jets. I am genuinely curious. I was in the whole retail investor space since early 2010s which saw the EV hype. Workhorse was supposed to supply vans for federal postal vans, Nikola had that GM deal going on etc. Hanging around retail investor space helped made me be very skeptical about the idea of enterprise led innovation. Contract like this in my opinion requires seasoned engineering managers who have survived decades of bureaucracy but never forgot the essence of no-BS engineering. I believe SpaceX was able to bring some of these people in before they had a functional rocket. Where does Anduril stands with their management and innovation?

yinser 2y ago
[flagged]
torginus 2y ago
The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development. And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. Imagine that there isn't a single engineer today at Boeing who has gone through a clean sheet fighter aircraft development cycle throughout his career. Boeing and LM, 2 of the biggest manufacturers of aircraft, have spotty reputations. I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space.
- dralley 2y ago
  There's definitely more than one problem with defense procurement, one of the biggest problems is simply having straightforward, acheivable goals in the first place and not fucking with them halfway through the process. And honestly at this point the Air Force is handling this much better than the other branches. Despite all the delays and cost overruns on the F-22 and F-35 projects, at least we ended up with really fantastic and capable platforms. The B-21 is also basically on time and budget, which is nice. Compare that to the Navy's LCS program, a massively expensive clusterfuck with very few redeeming qualities. The Army is somewhere in the middle.
  - 7thaccount 2y ago
    The LCS situation is embarrassing. What is the navy working on now? Replacements to the Arleigh Burke destroyers?
    - relaxing 2y ago
      Depends on what you mean by “working.” DDG-1000 is still kicking around trying to figure out what to do with itself. DDG(X) is in a requirements development phase. FFG-62 is actually getting built. There are various autonomous surface and sub efforts that may turn into something.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        They're also upgrading some Arleigh Burkes (and everything bigger that will stay in service) with SEWIP Block III (EW).
    - iraqmtpizza 2y ago
      The new hotness is the Constellation-class frigate which chose a mature design to keep costs down. That was until feature creep completely consumed it in record time: "At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News." https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-delivery-delayed-3-years-says-navy https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-deliv...
      - 7thaccount 2y ago
        Every single time.
  - mesofile 2y ago
    "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy." — Kelly Johnson Shocking that this quote still rings true a half-century later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly_Johnson's_14_Rules_of_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly...
- anyfactor 2y ago
  Thank you very much. I feel like engineering innovation has been concentrated on technology and not in defense engineering at all. Immigrants have helped a lot in building the tech sector's innovation in the last half of the century. But the defense industry often requires naturalized citizens to work on these projects. I think there is a difference between immigrants coming to North America to work and eventually settling down, and offshoring work outside of North America. Immigrants cannot work in the defense sector while private companies are more than glad to have them work on their projects. The challenge is that the current framework for innovation may not qualify for the defense industry. In the pre-Cold War era, the concept of American innovation was largely fueled by industrialization and academic participation in government sectors. Post-2000s, I feel like American innovation is rooted in the idea of diversity and America's ability to bring talent from across the world and concentrate it in major cities. My thesis is that the US wants one or two American companies with monopolistic nature to build their future defense sector.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    Innovation has not been in defense engineering lately because the US has lost A LOT of public trust when it comes to the defense industry in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is not the country, nor do they have the reputation in front of the public that led to the Manhattan project, where the greatest minds would willingly work on defense projects, not just willingly but eagerly. The breakthroughs are also less than they used to be. We have the nuke. We have reached space. We've hit the peaks. Everything else is just automatic turrets and AI to choose who to kill. I remember being in college. I went to a top CS school (perhaps the top CS school), and it was often considered a black mark if you went to work for a defense company (even Palantir). It was also a different time, when we had our pick of companies to work at, not like today. But that sentiment is hard to shake off. I'm not convinced it is not still large in academia and the CS world today
    - bigbacaloa 2y ago
      [dead]
    - 2y ago
- rapsey 2y ago
  > I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space. The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    After you retire from politics or government it's much easier to be a highly paid board member of one company than a badly paid member of five companies.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    That seems misleading. The DOD was the reason inasmuch as the budget to pay contractors was slashed, and the alternative was letting the smaller companies go out of business and losing the knowledge and manufacturing capabilities altogether.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Post-USSR, the DoD literally met with defense companies and told them that (a) there was going to be less money so (b) they needed to consolidate to survive. It was pretty explicit. That said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Everyone forgets that system complexity increases generation by generation: an F-35 is not an F-111 is not an F-86 is not a P-51. The unconsolidated, smaller defense companies of yore likely couldn't have managed a project of F-35 A+B+C complexity.
      - relaxing 2y ago
        That’s what I’m saying. But without the added nuance it sounds like the DoD wanted a duopoly of companies capable of building a 5G fighter.
    - gantron 2y ago
      It's actually exactly correct. That comment is referring to 1993's "last supper" in which the SECDEF gathered the defense CEOs at the time and literally did tell them to consolidate/merge. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-a-1993-pentagon-dinner-reshaped-the-defense-industry https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-...
- willcipriano 2y ago
  You know how you hear a lot of complaints about private prisons? How it creates perverse incentives that result in more people being imprisoned? We have a private war apparatus. We have been at war for 30 years without even a clear objective.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The objective is the same for every superpower in the world: to try and establish military hegemony and retain it for as long as possible.
    - willcipriano 2y ago
      I'd believe that if we won the wars instead of losing them all. This is just looting.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        South Korea's doing pretty well. Germany's in one piece. The Balkans aren't on fire. Granted, the Middle East is still its perpetual religious/sectarian/ethnic clusterfuck...
        willcipriano 2y ago
        How's America though?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Still democratic and #1/#2 in the world, by most measures. Was there something specific you were looking for?
        willcipriano 2y ago
        We pay a european level of taxes (and rising) in order to receive a "safety net" thinner than Cuba, mostly so we can drop bombs on brown people and shadowy "communists"/"terrorists"/"freedom haters"/"yellow cake enjoyers"/"nazis that arent Ukrainian". What's the metric for that?
- greedo 2y ago
  Your timeframe is a bit off. Piston powered aircraft were not in use in the US military 30 years ago. 30 years ago was 1994. We had B2 bombers, and the F22 was in full development. Also Boeing was developing the F-32 (which lost out to the F-35) in the mid 90's, so it's conceivable that an engineer on that program might still be around in some role.
  - thejohnconway 2y ago
    I think you misunderstood, 30 years from piston powered to jets that are still being flown today. The F15 was introduced 27 years after the end of WW2, where all the fighters of consequence were piston powered.
  - defrost 2y ago
    As a minor point of no real consequence the Cessna T-41 Mescalero has been in service in the US airforce and army from 1964 until today, and I've been told the Diamond DA20 Katana is in indirect service via a through a civilian contract that screens prospective pilots. Weird nitpick, I know. There's also a slew of drones that may or may not use efficient small piston engines or rotary varients which may or may not count as piston. On the data aquisition side I'm willing to bet there's still a place in the US military for low, slow, ground hugging piston engine craft that run radiometrics or EM mapping.
    - NegativeLatency 2y ago
      There’s also stuff like the super tucano where it’s got a sorta warbird vibe but with a turbo prop (not technically a piston engine plane but performs a similar role to older types that did have piston engines) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      SOCOM allegedly uses : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris_OA-1K_Sky_Warden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris_OA-1K_Sky_Warden It looks like someone is abusing a small prop plane that's normally used for crop dustin and just duct taping some cheap weapons to it. Because that's exactly what it is
ycombinete 2y ago
This FT long piece on Palmer Lucky, and Anduril has some good context: https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2071 https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2...
- qarl 2y ago
  WHOAH. Is this article really equating Palmer Lucky to Oppenheimer?
  - beastman82 2y ago
    I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. I think people are blinded by his political activity.
    - qarl 2y ago
      > I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. Having interacted with Luckey in a number of unpleasant ways, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
      - putridmetal 2y ago
        Don't tease me with that cliffhanger. Throw me some breadcrumbs. Do tell.
      - beastman82 2y ago
        So you disagree his achievements are impressive? That's my only assertion. And if so, you are saying his achievements are nullified by his behavior?
        mrguyorama 2y ago
        What achievements? Is productizing something we figured out in the 90s (you can do VR with a headset using some form of magnetic tracking) really comparable to splitting the goddamned atom? The dude's a hacker, not a god.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
I worked there. Think: budget defense contractor and you'll be really accurate. Their whole thing is to move fast and produce shit that breaks often and a lot. Pretty unreliable overall. Their major success is marketing and B2G (business to government) and funding. Ultimately it is these three things that will make them successful. You iterate on crap long enough (which defense contracts tend to allow) eventually there's a good chance it will get good. I would say anduril can't hold a candle to any chinese company in the same space. That being said Chinese companies can't yet hold a candle to the old US defense contractors. The hype for anduril is through the roof though. Many people in the company and outside have drunk the koolaid and will vehemently deny what I'm saying here. to sum it up: When I was there, there was a story of this general who suddenly (off schedule) told anduril to test their drone ramming system to see if it worked. The startled field operator turned it on, and the entire thing fucking failed. And Anduril STILL won the billion dollar contract. Oh yeah this is supposed to be "classified" but I could give a flying shit. Very flagrant misuse of government secrecy protocols to hide incompetency. It's probably better now, but I'm positive Even to this day, if you launch 8 cheap ass drones simultaneously at their defense system you WILL overwhelm it.
- possiblelion 2y ago
  Interesting perspective. Coming from the perspective of a non-US defence executive, I will have to say that failing demos are quite normal in defence applications. It happens, and you still win contracts, because the end client sees the value prop and trusts you to sort out the issues. Still nerve wrecking though.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Not to mention an unscheduled demo. How often do software engineers have a reliably working local state of a repository that they could just start up and demo whenever someone walks by their desk?
    - ninetyninenine 2y ago
      Makes sense. The Chinese government will never launch an unscheduled attack. It’s always on my calendar.
surfingdino 2y ago
It doesn't have to be good. What matters is that near peer adversaries see these developments and spend some of their resources on trying on R&D efforts to match ours. An arms race is a non-kinetic way to weaken your enemies before hostilities start. Unfortunately, AK-47s are cheap to produce at scale and our enemies have millions of people to give them to, so regardless of the fancy toys, the military still needs ammo, mines, grenades, rockets, bombs, and napalm to disable enemy soldiers at scale.
pantsforbirds 2y ago
I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products. They haven't made a habit of winning big research contracts, blowing past the budget, and then blowing past the original per-unit manufacturing price estimates. It's probably much easier to make a deal with a company that is able to meet pricing and delivery dates
- wbl 2y ago
  You've forgotten blow past the previous state of the art in those contracts. That's part of why overruns happen is the goals tend to be ambitious.
- caeril 2y ago
  > I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products. They still sell their products in the same way the other contractors do, though. Specifically, you have to flash a badge to even get in the door. Civilians, if they have the resources, should be able to procure these systems and vehicles if they so choose. I'd much rather protect my property perimeter with one of their Lattice systems than with the hodgepodge array of Ubiquiti cameras and PIR sensors I use now. I'd love to play with an ALTIUS out in the desert, even if I'm limited to civilian munitions. But they won't even talk to you unless you are a Pig, a Fed, or a Glowie.

yinser 2y ago

[flagged]

torginus 2y ago

The problem in the US defense industry is, that since the end of the cold war, defense companies have consolidated into just 5 huge conglomerates and the lack of competition wasn't great for the pace of innovation, affordability or timely development. And the Cold War ended more than three decades ago, about the time we went from piston aircraft to the teen series jets making up the bulk of US inventory even today. Imagine that there isn't a single engineer today at Boeing who has gone through a clean sheet fighter aircraft development cycle throughout his career. Boeing and LM, 2 of the biggest manufacturers of aircraft, have spotty reputations. I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space.

dralley 2y ago
There's definitely more than one problem with defense procurement, one of the biggest problems is simply having straightforward, acheivable goals in the first place and not fucking with them halfway through the process. And honestly at this point the Air Force is handling this much better than the other branches. Despite all the delays and cost overruns on the F-22 and F-35 projects, at least we ended up with really fantastic and capable platforms. The B-21 is also basically on time and budget, which is nice. Compare that to the Navy's LCS program, a massively expensive clusterfuck with very few redeeming qualities. The Army is somewhere in the middle.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  The LCS situation is embarrassing. What is the navy working on now? Replacements to the Arleigh Burke destroyers?
  - relaxing 2y ago
    Depends on what you mean by “working.” DDG-1000 is still kicking around trying to figure out what to do with itself. DDG(X) is in a requirements development phase. FFG-62 is actually getting built. There are various autonomous surface and sub efforts that may turn into something.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      They're also upgrading some Arleigh Burkes (and everything bigger that will stay in service) with SEWIP Block III (EW).
  - iraqmtpizza 2y ago
    The new hotness is the Constellation-class frigate which chose a mature design to keep costs down. That was until feature creep completely consumed it in record time: "At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News." https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-delivery-delayed-3-years-says-navy https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-deliv...
    - 7thaccount 2y ago
      Every single time.
- mesofile 2y ago
  "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy." — Kelly Johnson Shocking that this quote still rings true a half-century later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly_Johnson's_14_Rules_of_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly...
anyfactor 2y ago
Thank you very much. I feel like engineering innovation has been concentrated on technology and not in defense engineering at all. Immigrants have helped a lot in building the tech sector's innovation in the last half of the century. But the defense industry often requires naturalized citizens to work on these projects. I think there is a difference between immigrants coming to North America to work and eventually settling down, and offshoring work outside of North America. Immigrants cannot work in the defense sector while private companies are more than glad to have them work on their projects. The challenge is that the current framework for innovation may not qualify for the defense industry. In the pre-Cold War era, the concept of American innovation was largely fueled by industrialization and academic participation in government sectors. Post-2000s, I feel like American innovation is rooted in the idea of diversity and America's ability to bring talent from across the world and concentrate it in major cities. My thesis is that the US wants one or two American companies with monopolistic nature to build their future defense sector.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Innovation has not been in defense engineering lately because the US has lost A LOT of public trust when it comes to the defense industry in the wake of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The US is not the country, nor do they have the reputation in front of the public that led to the Manhattan project, where the greatest minds would willingly work on defense projects, not just willingly but eagerly. The breakthroughs are also less than they used to be. We have the nuke. We have reached space. We've hit the peaks. Everything else is just automatic turrets and AI to choose who to kill. I remember being in college. I went to a top CS school (perhaps the top CS school), and it was often considered a black mark if you went to work for a defense company (even Palantir). It was also a different time, when we had our pick of companies to work at, not like today. But that sentiment is hard to shake off. I'm not convinced it is not still large in academia and the CS world today
  - bigbacaloa 2y ago
    [dead]
  - 2y ago
rapsey 2y ago
> I'm pretty sure the US gov. is absolutely eager to create more competition of the space. The DOD actually is the reason the defense companies consolidated. They literally told them to do it. I think they explained it in the Acquired episode on Lockheed Martin from a year ago.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  After you retire from politics or government it's much easier to be a highly paid board member of one company than a badly paid member of five companies.
- relaxing 2y ago
  That seems misleading. The DOD was the reason inasmuch as the budget to pay contractors was slashed, and the alternative was letting the smaller companies go out of business and losing the knowledge and manufacturing capabilities altogether.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Post-USSR, the DoD literally met with defense companies and told them that (a) there was going to be less money so (b) they needed to consolidate to survive. It was pretty explicit. That said, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Everyone forgets that system complexity increases generation by generation: an F-35 is not an F-111 is not an F-86 is not a P-51. The unconsolidated, smaller defense companies of yore likely couldn't have managed a project of F-35 A+B+C complexity.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      That’s what I’m saying. But without the added nuance it sounds like the DoD wanted a duopoly of companies capable of building a 5G fighter.
  - gantron 2y ago
    It's actually exactly correct. That comment is referring to 1993's "last supper" in which the SECDEF gathered the defense CEOs at the time and literally did tell them to consolidate/merge. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-a-1993-pentagon-dinner-reshaped-the-defense-industry https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/03/01/the-last-supper-how-...
willcipriano 2y ago
You know how you hear a lot of complaints about private prisons? How it creates perverse incentives that result in more people being imprisoned? We have a private war apparatus. We have been at war for 30 years without even a clear objective.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The objective is the same for every superpower in the world: to try and establish military hegemony and retain it for as long as possible.
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    I'd believe that if we won the wars instead of losing them all. This is just looting.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      South Korea's doing pretty well. Germany's in one piece. The Balkans aren't on fire. Granted, the Middle East is still its perpetual religious/sectarian/ethnic clusterfuck...
      - willcipriano 2y ago
        How's America though?
        ethbr1 2y ago
        Still democratic and #1/#2 in the world, by most measures. Was there something specific you were looking for?
        willcipriano 2y ago
        We pay a european level of taxes (and rising) in order to receive a "safety net" thinner than Cuba, mostly so we can drop bombs on brown people and shadowy "communists"/"terrorists"/"freedom haters"/"yellow cake enjoyers"/"nazis that arent Ukrainian". What's the metric for that?
greedo 2y ago
Your timeframe is a bit off. Piston powered aircraft were not in use in the US military 30 years ago. 30 years ago was 1994. We had B2 bombers, and the F22 was in full development. Also Boeing was developing the F-32 (which lost out to the F-35) in the mid 90's, so it's conceivable that an engineer on that program might still be around in some role.
- thejohnconway 2y ago
  I think you misunderstood, 30 years from piston powered to jets that are still being flown today. The F15 was introduced 27 years after the end of WW2, where all the fighters of consequence were piston powered.
- defrost 2y ago
  As a minor point of no real consequence the Cessna T-41 Mescalero has been in service in the US airforce and army from 1964 until today, and I've been told the Diamond DA20 Katana is in indirect service via a through a civilian contract that screens prospective pilots. Weird nitpick, I know. There's also a slew of drones that may or may not use efficient small piston engines or rotary varients which may or may not count as piston. On the data aquisition side I'm willing to bet there's still a place in the US military for low, slow, ground hugging piston engine craft that run radiometrics or EM mapping.
  - NegativeLatency 2y ago
    There’s also stuff like the super tucano where it’s got a sorta warbird vibe but with a turbo prop (not technically a piston engine plane but performs a similar role to older types that did have piston engines) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    SOCOM allegedly uses : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris_OA-1K_Sky_Warden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L3Harris_OA-1K_Sky_Warden It looks like someone is abusing a small prop plane that's normally used for crop dustin and just duct taping some cheap weapons to it. Because that's exactly what it is

ycombinete 2y ago

This FT long piece on Palmer Lucky, and Anduril has some good context: https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2071 https://www.ft.com/content/ce6f96f8-6ab8-4089-b7db-f99db22c2...

qarl 2y ago
WHOAH. Is this article really equating Palmer Lucky to Oppenheimer?
- beastman82 2y ago
  I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. I think people are blinded by his political activity.
  - qarl 2y ago
    > I don't know about equal but Luckey has achieved some pretty impressive things by age 31. Having interacted with Luckey in a number of unpleasant ways, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
    - putridmetal 2y ago
      Don't tease me with that cliffhanger. Throw me some breadcrumbs. Do tell.
    - beastman82 2y ago
      So you disagree his achievements are impressive? That's my only assertion. And if so, you are saying his achievements are nullified by his behavior?
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        What achievements? Is productizing something we figured out in the 90s (you can do VR with a headset using some form of magnetic tracking) really comparable to splitting the goddamned atom? The dude's a hacker, not a god.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

I worked there. Think: budget defense contractor and you'll be really accurate. Their whole thing is to move fast and produce shit that breaks often and a lot. Pretty unreliable overall. Their major success is marketing and B2G (business to government) and funding. Ultimately it is these three things that will make them successful. You iterate on crap long enough (which defense contracts tend to allow) eventually there's a good chance it will get good. I would say anduril can't hold a candle to any chinese company in the same space. That being said Chinese companies can't yet hold a candle to the old US defense contractors. The hype for anduril is through the roof though. Many people in the company and outside have drunk the koolaid and will vehemently deny what I'm saying here. to sum it up: When I was there, there was a story of this general who suddenly (off schedule) told anduril to test their drone ramming system to see if it worked. The startled field operator turned it on, and the entire thing fucking failed. And Anduril STILL won the billion dollar contract. Oh yeah this is supposed to be "classified" but I could give a flying shit. Very flagrant misuse of government secrecy protocols to hide incompetency. It's probably better now, but I'm positive Even to this day, if you launch 8 cheap ass drones simultaneously at their defense system you WILL overwhelm it.

possiblelion 2y ago
Interesting perspective. Coming from the perspective of a non-US defence executive, I will have to say that failing demos are quite normal in defence applications. It happens, and you still win contracts, because the end client sees the value prop and trusts you to sort out the issues. Still nerve wrecking though.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Not to mention an unscheduled demo. How often do software engineers have a reliably working local state of a repository that they could just start up and demo whenever someone walks by their desk?
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    Makes sense. The Chinese government will never launch an unscheduled attack. It’s always on my calendar.

surfingdino 2y ago

It doesn't have to be good. What matters is that near peer adversaries see these developments and spend some of their resources on trying on R&D efforts to match ours. An arms race is a non-kinetic way to weaken your enemies before hostilities start. Unfortunately, AK-47s are cheap to produce at scale and our enemies have millions of people to give them to, so regardless of the fancy toys, the military still needs ammo, mines, grenades, rockets, bombs, and napalm to disable enemy soldiers at scale.

pantsforbirds 2y ago

I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products. They haven't made a habit of winning big research contracts, blowing past the budget, and then blowing past the original per-unit manufacturing price estimates. It's probably much easier to make a deal with a company that is able to meet pricing and delivery dates

wbl 2y ago
You've forgotten blow past the previous state of the art in those contracts. That's part of why overruns happen is the goals tend to be ambitious.
caeril 2y ago
> I think their biggest differentiator is the way they sell their products. They still sell their products in the same way the other contractors do, though. Specifically, you have to flash a badge to even get in the door. Civilians, if they have the resources, should be able to procure these systems and vehicles if they so choose. I'd much rather protect my property perimeter with one of their Lattice systems than with the hodgepodge array of Ubiquiti cameras and PIR sensors I use now. I'd love to play with an ALTIUS out in the desert, even if I'm limited to civilian munitions. But they won't even talk to you unless you are a Pig, a Fed, or a Glowie.