China builds fast to trigger drone race with America

The Sunday Times ^ | 15 September 2013 | Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent

[Cringing Negativism Network]

You’re welcome.

I have to say however, there is a disappointing level of enthusiasm on this board, toward bringing back American jobs.

It is either we have gotten people so used to seeing American jobs sold out and moved offshore.

Or else, pretty much only the sellers of jobs are left here.

I don’t know which but I am to tell the truth a bit disappointed, by the lack of support for American jobs, on this board.

[cynwoody]

I anticipate a lot of basement projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UAVs

[SunkenCiv]

American jobs will come back, then go away again, then come back again, it’s one of the “problems” of free markets. I have to say there’s a disappointing level of enthusiasm for free markets on this board. Right now the problem is the Chinese financing of US federal deficits; the Chinese buy that with some of the money they obtain through their trade surplus with us. In order to maintain that trade surplus, they have to keep the yuan more or less stable against the US dollar, and one of the things they need to do for that is to buy US debt.

We’ve got a couple of decades of historically low lending rates, and very little capital formation; much of the lending done by banks is consumer lending for unsecured loans (credit cards, mostly) and mortgages or home equity loans. Much of that credit is used to buy Chinese-made goods.

When there were industrial jobs, they weren’t underpaid; labor unions helped destroy that, whatever good they may have accomplished. Now the left has been on a rant about the environment for forty years or so, and whatever good may have been accomplished was eclipsed by working against US employment in highly paid low skill jobs like coal mining and metals processing. That pollution didn’t vanish, it merely moved to places like China, along with the jobs.

Personally, I never wanted to work in a factory, but the paper-shuffling jobs I’ve held haven’t contributed to productivity — that’s often the case — and production and productivity leads to more employment, not less.

[cynwoody]

A single F-22 Raptor costs about $150 million. If the production costs of cheap, mass-produced drones could be kept under $50,000 each, you could buy THREE THOUSAND drones for the price of one F-22.

Keeping it simple, each drone could carry a common, 250 pound bomb. It would also need some shielding to protect its electronics, and some other things, but there would be no practical way to stop such an armada short of a nuclear detonation.

Will the future see a mission of thousands of $50k smart drones, each with its own detailed target list, overseen by a handful of people in a bunker watching computer screens?

What's needed is a vehicle with the smarts of an X-47B but with a less ambitious, and therefore much cheaper, airframe. The cost of smarts continues to fall with every new smartphone and driverless car. However, airplanes remain expensive.

You don't fly the X-47B. You give it a flight plan. It can carry up to 4500 lbs of ordnance and has a range of 2100 nm. An X-47C model is planned to have a 10,000 lb payload.

But it's not cheap. The X-47 program cost stands at $813m. I'm not able to find a unit cost estimate. As an example, the Predator unit cost is around $4m (program cost $2.38b), so I would expect the X-47's to be considerably higher.

The US military-industrial complex is not known for controlling cost and keeping things simple. Who knows how much a Lexus would cost if it were built by Northrop Grumman under contract to the Pentagon? What nation is most likely to innovate disruptively in this field?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

That is more typical than not. For example, the Soviet Union had two separate economies, a crappy one for civilian products, and a much better one for military products.

The real dilemma for China is that it has stolen so much technology, that it has missed the process in which it was developed. This means that when they do develop their own stuff, it stinks. This problem has already shown up in several of their novel military technologies.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

As far as which nation, I figure any belligerent power with the technology to mass produce cars can do it. The only trick needed is once you have a design, to keep production secret. Using such an armada in a sneak attack would be devastating, likely defeating their hated enemy in a week.

[tacticalogic]

As far as which nation, I figure any belligerent power with the technology to mass produce cars can do it. The only trick needed is once you have a design, to keep production secret. Using such an armada in a sneak attack would be devastating, likely defeating their hated enemy in a week.

I'd imagine building them cheaply is going to mean they're going to have limited speed and range. That means you have to launch and retrieve them fairly close to the intended target, without making yourself a target in the process. I'd also expect they wouldn't have any armor and limited if any defensive capability, so you don't need high tech fighters to shoot them down.

[Sirius Lee]

I don't know what the answer is, but I am convinced that that isn't it.

For a nation to survive it must have the active capability to feed, clothe, and shelter its inhabitants at the very minimum. Next in importance is the ability to provide for an educated populous and the common defense. In modern times that means high tech and manufacturing. For that you need engineers and German class mechanics. The more manufacturing you have in-country the bigger the talent pool you have pursuing these disciplines. The big fish in a big pond will always be bigger than the one in the little pond.

If you are a globalist who doesn't mind living under a global feudal system then the present destruction of America shouldn't bother you, but if you do value what is left of these last vestiges of our Free Constitutional Republic then you'll be the biggest and loudest "Buy American" proponent there is.

It's okay to be a chauvinist for your own country.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

With that many units, they are single use, no retrieval. Much like buzz bombs, except far more accurate.

[shove_it]

What really bothers me about this offshore sourcing is why don’t the American companies that put their labels on these inferior Chinese products send them back if they don’t meet their quality standards? The only answer is they must be complicit with the Chinese Communist criminal companies in dumping junk on us.

As Sunken Civ says the jobs will come back when American consumers get sufficiently fed up with the Chinese junk being the only choice available, demand for quality products will once again be produced here.

[cynwoody]

With that many units, they are single use, no retrieval. Much like buzz bombs, except far more accurate.

A single-use drone is basically a cruise missile.

The Tomahawk has a unit cost of between $569k and $1.45m, carries a 1000 lb warhead, and has a range 1550 miles. The total program cost is $11.2b. About 6000 have been produced, and 2000 used. A new, improved version is planned, which carry a 2000 lb warhead and be more resistant to air defense. It will cost $3m.

[familyop]

There’s a lack of enthusiasm from most Americans, because the political/regulator class controls the politicians with its incomes from recirculating debt and government-linked business. They’ve rolled over politics, business and academia like a steamroller of treason, blaming their moronic political puppets all the way. There are too many state and local regulations (e.g., zoning) against new, small manufacturing starts on American soil, because they don’t want any American competition. It’s effectively against the law to work and produce something useful.

They’re not going to “bring it back.” This is the dump-on-your-neighbor economy, and it’s going to crash. If you want useful things in the future, start learning to forge, machine or otherwise make something yourself as a hobby for now.

[tacticalogic]

With that many units, they are single use, no retrieval. Much like buzz bombs, except far more accurate.

They're still going to be slow and relatively defensless. Also the original premise talked about being able to build 3,000 drones for the price of a Raptor. I think that becomes something of an apples and oranges comparison once you start taking about the drones being single use. Those 3,000 drones will need to inflict the same amount of damage as the Raptor would in it's operational lifetime to break even on the cost.

[familyop]

Military hardware manufacturing in China is extremely low in cost compared to the costs of paying contractors in the U.S.A., and Chinese engineering technology was obtained in U.S. universities by PLA students and from American-”based” manufacturing companies (with plants on Chinese soil) for several decades. The Chinese military buildup was supported by U.S. business, politics (both parties) and academia. For now, though, our approved, certified, licensed folks are busy helping with the Iranian nuclear buildup (see recent Syria-Russia debacle).

All of that and more is going to get another big no-vote. Meanwhile, we’re heading for the mother of all general defaults, and no one is deluded as to what kind of folks are responsible (not talking about their pocket politicians here).

[Hulka]

“I can see the future from a long way away, here. It is not the high tech drones that will matter most, but the bargain basement low tech drones - flying armadas of them”

Like, say hobby-shop RV aircraft. . .they are RPVs.

[Hulka]

“The US military-industrial complex is not known for controlling cost and keeping things simple.”

Actually. . .”The US congress is not known for controlling cost and keeping things simple.”

Fixed it.

Defense contractors are under a microscope when it comes to pricing. They even have DCMA reps in the plants and can audit the books anytime they want to.

“Who knows how much a Lexus would cost if it were built by Northrop Grumman under contract to the Pentagon?”

A heck of a lot cheaper than you might think. . provided congress gets out of the way. Congress meddles with acquisition rates and numbers and all heck breaks loose.

It is cost-per-unit that drives this issue, and when you program a cost you include all the R&D and tooling necessary to build the product. Imagine the cost of a Lexus if congress meddled with production quantities and constantly messed with funding for contracted quantities and for long-lead items. (Unstable funding equals risk and risk equals increased cost).

So, the better question to ask is; “Who knows how much a Lexus would cost if it was messed with by congress during its R&D and production phase?”

Acquisition has problems but the problem lies more with congress and budgeting than anywhere else.