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Posted on 05/20/2025 3:39:00 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Palmer Luckey's Anduril just gave the world an inside glimpse of its new project for the US Air Force — an uncrewed fighter jet that teams up with piloted aircraft.
The military startup was featured on Sunday in a CBS 60 Minutes segment, during which a few clips showed Anduril's Fury drone being assembled in a hangar or warehouse.
It's not the first time the drone was shown to the public — the Air Force unveiled a test representative model on May 1. But the TV segment reveals a few more details about the drone's make.
In one clip, two engineers are seen fixing a wing on the Fury, the defense startup's offering for the Air Force's collaborative combat aircraft program.
That speaks to the aircraft's modular design. Anduril says the Fury, like many of its other products, is built so that its parts can be easily swapped out and customized.
...
"These fly out ahead of manned fighters, and they're able to find the enemy first, able to engage the enemy well before a manned fighter has to be seen or is in range," Brian Schimpf, Anduril's CEO, told CBS.
Such a mission is part of the Air Force's vision for its advanced fighter jets to fight alongside drones that act as "loyal wingmen," or for the drones to be used in missions on their own.
It's expected to be a key feature of the F-47, the sixth-generation stealth fighter developed by Boeing. But the Air Force has also said it hopes to integrate the program with F-35 Lightning IIs and F-22 Raptors.
Air Force leadership has said its priority is making the drones affordable and easy to manufacture, as it hopes to bring mass to the skies since its fleet has shrunk in favor of more advanced aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
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Now that the Neocons have determined that it’s time for WW3, we see 60 Minutes doing their VERY FIRST pro-military story.
Somebody, possibly C.S. Lewis, said that we need men to fight wars to constrain leaders. Without men to fight those wars, there is no restraint.
Even wholesale slaughter of men isn’t much restraint throughout history, is it?But I get your point.
John Bolton was leading the Neoconista Choir in the Battle Hymn of the Junta in the background of the 60 Minutes segment… (s/)
I will say, I have been a proponent of the “Loyal Wingman” concept from the moment I heard about it some years back. If we are going to have a military, we should have a powerful and competitive one, and this is part of that.
The F-35 has taken a great deal of heat (justly deserved in many cases) but it is the ability to communicate and datalink via the ostensibly modular software packages that is extraordinarily powerful. The F-35 is the result of a terribly flawed military acquisition process, the kind that gave us the F-111 back in the late 1960’s...even though the F-111 did eventually become a valuable asset in a wholly different role than the one it was designed for. But that is no way to procure and produce an aircraft for our military.
I have never fully appreciated the concept of autonomous combat drones (with a few exceptions) but a drone being controlled locally by a human with eyes and sensors on an issue is certainly more attractive to me.
Of course, AI will likely make my reservations moot at some point, though I cannot say when.
I’d be happy enough if we went back to only having a war after Congress declared one.
As it is now, we have kinetic actions, police actions, nation-building, etc. Wars under different names. It’s all too casual.
I cheated and read the end of the book. It doesn’t end well for most of mankind.
Seen this in a movie. The end did not turn out well for the US.
AI this and AI that. Everything that claims to be AI, isn’t. No sapience, no sentience, no AI.
The only wars the Founders knew were localized in time and place (although the Seven Years War was global in scope) and -especially- limited in objectives.
They would have never conceived of total war as it was fought in the 20th century, and that those wars would bequeath to the US a huge and permanent standing military answering to the President sufficiently equipped to conduct sustained military operations all over the world without needing to ask Congress immediately for additional funds.
The Anduril CEO and subject of the interview, Palmer Lucky, is the brother-in-law of Matt Gaetz, FYI.
Wow. I did not know that.
Palmer Lucky’s wife Nicole is the daughter of a friend of mine. I went to their house in Newport for lunch with her one time while she was visiting from out of state. Palmer was very gracious and friendly.
For awhile now aircraft could be built that exceeded what a human could tolerate so having human pilots has been a limiting factor in some contexts.
I wish men would collectively force all the “leaders” to fight each other, no substitutions. All the big men and women leaders Thunderdoming it out. I think we’d have less wars and/or a lot shorter less death filled wars.
Yes, that’s been the dream from the beginning of mankind.
We all suffer so much from the power-mad, power-hungry tyrants who have zero regard for the people they annihilate (on their side or the opposing side).
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