
DARPA Wants Millions to Design an Unmanned 'Flying Gun' Under Its New Gunslinger - ycnews
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32252/darpa-wants-millions-to-design-an-unmanned-flying-gun-under-its-new-gunslinger-program
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mapmap
_Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern
brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each
serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with
a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes
that could have housed more than 8,000 people... This is not a way of life at
all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity
hanging from a cross of iron._

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

~~~
crisdux
I always have a problem with this quote because I personally acknowledge a bit
of the keynesian argument regarding military spending, that much of it is
returned back into the economy and is put to the productive uses listed in
that quote.(I'm not saying that's a good reason to raise it)

Also, if you are going to mention the opportunity cost of defense spending,
then I think we should also carefully assess the opportunity cost of not
securing the world with american power and returning to a world without a
dominant unipolar power, as a multipolar world seems much more prone to
conflict.

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AnthonyMouse
John Maynard Keynes made his case at the heart of the Great Depression. At
that time it was true -- it was a period of deflation and high unemployment,
so what money people had they were hoarding because they expected its value to
increase. People were willing to work but no one would pay to hire them.

Having the government hire people to dig holes and fill them back in, in that
specific context, was better than them being unemployed. Doing useless work
wasn't productive, but neither was being unemployed, so that's a wash.
Meanwhile having money in their pockets meant they had money to spend, and
then they paid other people to do things that actually were useful. A net gain
against the status quo.

But even then it was a false dichotomy, and now it's even worse. The false
dichotomy is that the options are to do nothing or to pay people to do
something useless. There is a third option -- pay them to something useful.
That's better than either of the other two.

Today it's even worse, because unemployment is very low. People already have
jobs. They're already getting paid, and most of the work they're doing is
already productive. In that context make-work jobs don't just not help, they
actively reduce productivity, because people get paid either way and you're
just changing what kind of work they do. If they would have been doing
productive work and you convert them to digging holes and filling them back
in, you're making things worse, not better.

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viklove
It's frustrating to me that we would rather pay people to dig holes and refill
them than just provide a UBI so they can spend more time actually enjoying
their lives.

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NikolaeVarius
The assumption you make is that people extract more value from their lives
from receiving "free" money than "earning" it from doing "useless" work,

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The assumption you make is that people extract more value from their lives
> from receiving "free" money than "earning" it from doing "useless" work

But of course they do, because if they didn't then they could just take the
"free" money and still volunteer to do the useless work. Maybe some people
like digging holes and filling them back in -- it's good exercise.

But anybody who can think of anything more productive to do with their time is
then given the option to choose that instead.

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imtringued
>But of course they do, because if they didn't then they could just take the
"free" money and still volunteer to do the useless work. Maybe some people
like digging holes and filling them back in -- it's good exercise.

This is happening in practice. There are lots of popular jobs where people
will put up with anything to get the job. Game developers routinely have
"crunch time" but they don't quit as a result. Some even think it's a bonus
because they get to spend more time at their dream job.

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jacquesm
There are some youtube videos of people that have built their own drone
mounted handguns:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI--
wFfipvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI--wFfipvA)

There was another one of a rifle shooting at balloons from a drone, but I
can't find the video for that.

Not quite a 'missile' but the basics seem to be relatively straightforward and
within the budget of hobbyists, the DARPA program is mostly about scaling it
up and dealing with the recoil and mechanical and thermal stresses associated
with mobile launch platforms. Drones are severely weight constrained so
getting this to a level where it is combat ready is harder than it might seem.
I'm personally not sad about that, I think that any 'remote kill' capability
comes with its own special set of problems and that we are very far from being
ready to handle that responsibly, witness the current assassination programs.

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neltnerb
Not to knock on hobbyists doing cool projects, but to me "missile" means "at
least supersonic if not hypersonic".

I guess the article is light on details there, but I get the impression that
this is intended to be a way to send a very fast (and so hard to shoot down)
missile at a target with the ability to fire multiple smaller missiles or
simply to fire bullets at enemy aircraft from a vastly closer range where it's
onboard sensor suite will be far more effective against enemy aircraft
countermeasures.

Or simply to provide much more active countermeasures against AA sites
shooting the missile down.

Something incredibly fast that uses a computer to rapidly analyze and respond
to sensor data to respond with a variety of lethal options sounds terrifying
and I don't especially want it to exist. But I can see the appeal of having a
new missile that stands a much better chance of striking a target to make
actual global adversaries think thrice.

The new cold war... yet we still have citizens without food security or health
care... priorities I guess.

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starpilot
Missile usually just means guided. The tomahawk cruise missile is subsonic,
among others.

~~~
jacquesm
Missile usually just means something shot at something else. It doesn't need
its own propulsion and it does not need its own guidance system. A stone from
a slingshot counts as a missile by the normal definition.

~~~
starpilot
I'm aware of the etymology. Mitto, mittere. In modern ordnance context,
missile = guided, rocket = unguided. Even though both use rocket motors (and
here they usually say motor rather than engine).

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globuous
Balistic missiles aren't really guided. They're closer to the slingshot
approach.

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Aenyn
But they are guided though, how else would the different warheads be able to
have different targets when they are all launched in the same missile.

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_iyig
'Flying gun' reminds me of TIKAD, a drone-mounted assault rifle developed at
Duke University. Israel is buying/has bought them for 'anti-terrorist
operations':

[https://www.armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_mil...](https://www.armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_military_technology_uk/israel_tikad_armed_drone_with_assault_rifle_to_perform_anti-
terrorist_operations.html)

~~~
starpilot
Made by Duke Robotics in Florida, no affiliation to Duke University. Mostly
staffed by Israelis:
[https://dukeroboticsys.com/team/](https://dukeroboticsys.com/team/)

~~~
_iyig
Thank you for the correction! Apparently I’ve been confused on this for years.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Duke University brought a trademark lawsuit.

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clSTophEjUdRanu
I know this is still a weapon but it's surprising the lengths we go to in
order to minimize civilian suffering.

I just got finished watching The World at War series. During WWII there was
routinely air raids that would kill 20,000+ people. Tokyo firebombing killed
100,000+

War is still bad but I'm glad I don't have to live thru that.

~~~
AWildC182
I don't think it's quite so altruistic. Militaries are systematically moving
to smaller, more precise munitions across the board. If they're smaller and
smarter you need A)fewer of them for a given mission and B)can carry more of
them, therefore being able to complete more missions, on any given launch
platform. A B-29 can carry max 20,000lbs of ordinance but with no precision so
at most it can kill one factory or depot. Hypothetically, the same aircraft
carrying a max load of GBU-53/B StormBreaker small diameter smart bombs would
be able to destroy a hundred factories and installations in one flight.

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AndrewKemendo
Minimizing casualties is typically the first priority in any combat
engagement.

People like to point at very publicised situations where things went horribly
wrong or there were major breakdowns in good order that led to those
considerations being ignored. However if you dig deeper there will typically
be major investigations (which is BTW how these Incidents come out usually)
and severe punishments, not to mention all the follow on effects for the rest
of the force like increased training in Laws of armed conflict etc...

~~~
Someone
The cynic/realist would say its not minimizing casualties but minimizing
negative effects of casualties.

That nowadays is necessary to win a war because society doesn’t accept as much
suffering from both own and enemy forces and civilians as it used to. The USA
got out of Vietnam because of lack of home support and decreased morale of its
soldiers
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Collapsing_U.S._mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Collapsing_U.S._morale)),
not because of the enemy’s strength.

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jessriedel
Just for a sense of scale, this is $12M of the DOD's $70B R&D research budget,
of which DARPA Is $3.5B.

~~~
danieltrembath
This stood out to me also. $13million is a tiny sum in military research.
Seems like a pretty limited research project.

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hindsightbias
A 30mm a-10 round weighs like .75kg. Would seem we could make CAS anti-
personnel drones for less weight and longer range.

Of course you’d still need armor piercing, or maybe not if you could make a
drone that would foam engine intakes or optics.

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walshemj
1 why are not the army involved as well as 2/3s of the roles are army related

2 Why an expendable missile and not a reusable gun armed drone in a loyal
wingman role or a parasite drone that can be launched from a mother ship or
from a truck / avf back in the 50's they had the McDonnell XF-85 Goblin
parasite fighter

You could have a disposable sprint motor to get into into position quickly

Finally what calibre, type of round and capacity are required

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chiefalchemist
How about we harden our infrastructure first? You can't use this against
hackers taking down your power grid. This won't stop misinformation campaigns
on social media.

In the 20th century DARPA might be right. But two decades into the 21st
century? It sounds pointless.

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jswizzy
DARPA is hardening our infrastructure. They just did a bunch of anti drone
experiments in San Diego it was in the news. There were even some UFO articles
written about it.

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blakesterz
I remember at some point seeing an interview with someone that was involved
with the design of the A-10 Warthog and he described it as something like a
gun wrapped in an airplane. Unsurprisingly this site mentions attempts to
replace the A-10 Warthogs big gun.

~~~
caycep
this smells like an attempt to update the CAS concept; kind of like an AC-130
that's more survivable or expendable with less risk to a live pilot.

That being said, I'd have expected them to make something like a Reaper with
guns instead of AGMs. I'm just not sure why they are describing it as a
"missile with guns" vs a "drone with guns"

~~~
crocodiletears
Given the rough form factor they describe (I think a hellfire when I read it),
I'd expect they're looking to be able to quickly deploy multiple of these
things to do targeted killing or automated area denial in firefights w/o
having to risk a pilot or a whole plane.

Like a swarm of mini warthogs firing 5.56 or 7.62.

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kryogen1c
What if this was flying tubes of

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler_%26_Koch_G11)

loaded with

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangible_bullet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangible_bullet)

Idk much about the field, but it seems close to as-light-as-possible.

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mfer
Didn't they make a Marvel movie about this titled Captain America Winter
Soldier?

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henvic
How long until people realize that their beloved politicians are warmongers
and tax evaders helps people by avoiding money being diverted from society to
be wasted by the evil military-industrial complex creating war and destruction
or, at least to parasites working on different levels of the state?

Despite what the state apparatus sell people, most taxation money doesn't come
back as services for society, but goes to the pocket of parasites or end up
being used in the destruction of society.

[http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html](http://bastiat.org/en/petition.html)

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empath75
Imagine a few thousand of these under the control of alphastar.

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taneq
Sounds great, do you think we could get the system online by August 4th?

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heyflyguy
I feel like DARPA doesn't have enough money.

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adam
They got a slight budget increase in the 2020 budget to $3.56B.

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OrgNet
Reminds me of the slaughterbots:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw)

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brokenmachine
The future is scary.

