Tasks Per Day – A minimalist productivity app that works
3 points by TerrenceTian 10h ago 3 comments
Ask HN: How do I start my own cybersecurity related company?
4 points by babuloseo 1d ago 4 comments
Everything We Learned About Lockheed's "QuadStar" Stinger Missile Replacement
35 jandrewrogers 43 5/28/2025, 10:43:42 PM twz.com ↗
You can see how the Anglos are still way out of the loop when it comes to the latest developments in land-warfare not-involving Middle-Eastern goat-herders, as in this guy should have known that the Russian Ka-52s were pretty decisive in stopping the 2023 Ukrainian summer counter-offensive (that, and the Russian mine-fields), so that adding helicopters at the very end, with "btw, yeah, helis are still a thing" is quite disingenuous, if not stupid.
Also, dismissing "unmanned systems" (I think he means cheap drones):
> “They’re not particularly expensive. Their impact is probably way outsized.”
is also pretty damn stupid, as both the Russians and the Ukrainians could confirm.
This isn’t a dismissal of drones at all. It’s an acknowledgement of how diverse and inexpensive drones are.
A stinger missile is ~150k USD. A grenade duct taped to a drone is ~150 USD. That’s three orders of magnitude, so you can see why a manpad isn’t an economically viable countermeasure to most drones.
Electronic warfare/directed energy usually fits the bill for the smaller drone threat profile.
The US has a few different extremely cheap anti-drone rocket systems under testing that roughly achieve cost parity per missile with a survivable drone. For example, this[0] system which allows an F-15 to carry 42 mini-missiles (+8 Sidewinders). These rocket pods have sometimes been mounted on vehicles historically, so I imagine these ones can be too.
[0] https://www.twz.com/air/f-15e-spotted-packing-big-laser-guid...
Wire-guided systems are ancient military tech. There are good reasons they were phased out decades ago.
Down a rabbit hole last night and I saw that fiber-optic drones are the new thing in battle to evade electronic (radio) warfare. They literally spool out fiber optic line and are (obviously) limited in range to the length of fiber they carry. (But this can be 10,000 feet or so?)
Sophisticated electronic warfare systems are designed to affect much more than the communications link; they have to be effective against systems where the RF link tech is designed to survive heavy EW environments (such as what the US uses). EW and countermeasures are designed to attack the onboard systems themselves, since they are intended to be effective against fully autonomous systems that are not being controlled over a network link.
This is pretty dismissive in my book, as in not acknowledging that for the last 6 to 12 months (at least) most of the casualties in Eastern Ukraine have been caused by cheap drones. The same cheap drones that have also been a game-changer when it comes to using armoured vehicles, as they're not being used all that much anymore because they're death-traps, the two armies have switched to using cheap motorbikes (the Russians) and ATVs (the Ukrainians).
> A large war in Europe is likely in the coming weeks. The current security architecture of the continent, the future of NATO, and America’s role in shaping security outcomes there are all at stake. Beyond Europe, this conflict would have profound implications for U.S. defense strategy, and may upset America’s best-laid plans to focus on the eroding military balance with China. Ukraine, whose fate hangs in the balance, may be at the center of the crisis, but Moscow has a greater goal in mind: the revision of Europe’s security order. The Russian armed forces have conducted a substantial buildup around Ukraine, with Moscow threatening unilateral military measures if it is not able to achieve its goals at the negotiating table.
I do remember them running articles like "what should NATO do if Russia invades". Which isn't a dismissal.
Of course, it would have been a really bad thing to dismiss & deride a Russian invasion that took Kiev in 4 days and ended with the partition and neutering of Ukraine with less than 1000 Russian dead. But I don't live in that reality, I live in the reality in which the Russians managed to pull of an even bigger foreign policy mistake than Iraq 2003. It's not got to the all time high of June 1941, but it's getting closer with every week that goes by.
You can't substantially armor a rotor; they are designed to survive approximately one hit by a 23mm round.
If you have the budget, still worth buying to have in the quiver, but they’re playing to the older more conservative players not selling the new hotness and they know it.
Armies that can't conduct an offense are unable to win wars. At best they are able to wait for wars to finish. Remember the nightmare of the columns in the north of ukraine in 2022 - TB2s (remember them?) ranging up and down blowing up operationally relevant assets without being hindered. If those troops had had a way of protecting themselves it's possible that they could have been resupplied and evacuated. If that had happened, or if they had been able to refuel and push south Russia might have won, it was pretty close anyway. Imagine the value of avoiding 3 years of this conflict.
I don't think that drones would play as large of a role. They're only playing such a large role because the air is contested.
Drones mean that you can do a bunch of tasks that previously needed air dominance without that dominance, or even when you are dominated - like the Houthis are showing. With drones you can surveil and strike even while your enemy kills everything that goes 20m above the ground.
If you can contest the air at the same time I would say that their role becomes greater - as the Ukrainians have showed. But drones do make air dominance less decisive, even as it remains very desirable.
EDIT: and as pointed out below, were able to break this record, depending on how one defines airspace and conflict zone.
> On 28 January 2024, an attack drone, launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an Iranian-backed Shia militia group—struck Tower 22, a U.S. military outpost in Rukban, northeast Jordan. The explosion killed three U.S. soldiers and injured 47 others.
> The incident marked the first time U.S. troops were killed by enemy fire since the start of the Gaza war. President Joe Biden condemned the attack as "despicable" and pledged retaliation at a suitable time. The U.S. began retaliatory strikes on 2 February, hitting sites in Iraq and Syria. Iran denied any involvement in the attack.
What might have made this attack different, and hopefully some indications that lessons were learned:
> The failure of air defenses to intercept the drone was a key focus of the subsequent U.S. Central Command investigation of the attack. A U.S. preliminary report found that the hostile drone attacked around the same time an American surveillance drone was returning to the base, which likely led to confusion over whether it was an enemy drone and delayed a response.
And, the reason this belongs on HN imo:
> An Analog Devices employee was arrested in December 2024, and later charged with evading U.S. export controls and facilitating indirect sales of some of the technology used in the drone, via the Iranian military.
Both Iraq in 1991 and Iran in 2024 had extensive, developed, and expensive AA setups. The USA destroyed the Iraq assets by attrition, Israel surgically removed the Iranian ones.
Russia apparently has no SEAD or DEAD capability because they didn't and haven't even attempted to remove the Ukrainian air defence network.
I think this shows one of the key requirements for future European Air Force structures. Long range strike and SEAD/DEAD are going to be fundamental for creating the conditions for military dominance in the east.
It will most probably come as a big surprise to the Anglos when they'll find out that they do not have any such dominance. Also see their surprise when they had to use their aircraft carriers against the Houthis, didn't go quite as they (the Americans) had expected.
Real war can be like that, is usually like that, i.e. it washes away in a second any previous misconceptions, it places you right in front of reality itself.
Given recent learnings I would have thought cheap & cheerful volume would be more it
>So we have a pointy nose, if you will.
Is that a reference to The Dictator?