Silicon Valley getting back to its roots: the Y Combinator cruise missile
Silicon Valley getting back to its roots: the Y Combinator cruise missile
We're building a $3M missile for $300k.
At Ares, we would never* wish for a war to occur.
*intonation inferred by me, an intellectual
Yeah, it would be a real shame if a war started in which our ...product... would be commissioned en masse. Why, we wouldn't be able to make enough cash to dry our tears from all the sadness!
But by helping to rebuild our defense industrial base, we can make sure the United States is prepared to stop a conflict and save countless lives.
bro just one more war bro, bro I swear just one more war and it'll save countless lives bro
At Ares, we would never wish for a war to occur.
that sentence sent me. you literally named the company ares bro
there's no way on gods' green earth they go that far as two, maybe even five dudes in a shed. they want to grift on DoD research grant, or maybe hype this bs up and sell startup that's all
they're not even looking for a microwave engineer and that thing needs both comms and an entire ass radar in guidance section for it to work. they're not even half serious. they're just at the beginning of a very long journey between asking "hey why is this shit so expensive" and getting the answer the hard way
You don't understand, let me reason it from first principles. The Olympics are good for world peace, everybody comes together, we have some fun races some nations win some lose, we all go home happy and pretend it was our nation that won in spirit. Ergo races are good. Therefore an arms race is also good. It will save countless of lives, they are like the Olympics, Ares was the god of peace really (I asked chatgpt).
Dogshit writing as well, “we would never wish for a war to occur”, read that sentence back in a mirror to me
War is the greatest human tragedy, but defence is indispensable. With our commitment to rebuilding the United States’ defensive industrial base, we at Ares aim to ensure this country is prepared to halt any conflict rapidly, and save countless live.
This world is a joke and we're just watching the punchline.
I kind of wonder if this whole movement of rationalists believing they can "just" make things better than people already in the field comes from the contracting sense that being rich and having an expensive educational background may in fact be less important than having background experience and situational context in the future, two things they loath?
Somehow, the same guy will lecture you for an hour about Chesterton's Fence when it comes to "traditional values."
We are looking for extremely talented aerospace engineers to help bring our prototypes to fruition. If you know any aerodynamics, propulsion, or GNC engineers who are interested in building something incredibly cool and want to make a positive difference in geopolitics, please send them our way!
interested in building something incredibly cool and want to make a positive difference in geopolitics
That is certainly one way of putting it, jesus fucking christ.
it's also "hey can you make our missile work for us"
you know, they're idea guys
they're also gonna need somebody that knows hydrocodes and microwave engineer and someone who knows imagers and comms and and and
and invariably, at some point, a lawyer
10x smaller doesn't mean 10x cheaper when things you're cutting corners on are warhead and rocket engine that is cheapest components per gram that also make the entire thing work. just to begin, 3M price per pop is the price that saudis paid for 650 SLAM-ER AShMs, along with training and limited tech support, and foreign sales are always fleecing customers like this. for domestic customer, price is half million apiece
In addition, huge missiles aren’t needed to take out the smaller corvettes and frigates that make up the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
citation needed
Harpoon AShM warhead is something like 200kg, and for a very good reason. sinking ships is much harder than destroying land vehicles, and they want to sink something with 20kg warhead? that's a bit spicier than heavy ATGMs like Stugna-P. if that thing is enough to one-hit a ship then so is 127mm naval artillery shell (what they're going to war against, jetskis?). for comparison, it took something like 5 drone boat hits (200kg warhead each) to sink sergey kotov, 1400-ish ton patrol boat in black sea fleet. they want to sink similar sized targets with 20kg warhead missiles, i doubt crew would even notice in some cases
that immediately means they have to compete with a naval gun at ranges less than 40km, and they will lose. also such small ship probably isn't that much of a threat at distance
with anything big enough to get notice of airforce there's quicksink, that is JDAM kit modified to dive under ship in question and break its keel. with one-ton warhead it costs something like 120k, and it's already tested and will be ready much faster than whatever they're cooking. they're simply noticed that chinese navy is stocking up anti-ship missiles and want to get on the hype train. or maybe they're copying ukrainians? neptune has 150kg warhead and various drone boats carry even bigger load (200-850kg and maybe more than that)
and this is before going into the actual reason why american weapons are so expensive. this is: auditing every subcontractor to keep paper trail for every component and to make sure that it's not manufactured by the most probable adversary; personnel has to have access to classified information; then there's hardening against many things that can happen in the battlefield, including being handled by marines; and keeping things up to spec which includes detailed quality control. none of these things are hallmark of hype-based sv startups
10x smaller doesn’t mean 10x cheaper when things you’re cutting corners on are warhead and rocket engine that is cheapest components per gram that also make the entire thing work.
Wait, what else is there in a missile though? I'm obviously a complete ignorant in this space but in my head a missile is the thing that goes boom (warhead), the thing that goes vroom (engine), electronics, and the packaging. I'm assuming the packaging is also not the main cost here since "smaller doesn't mean cheaper", sooo, what, are the electronics that expensive?
@V0ldek You missed maintenance and logistics. Military gear is typically amortized over a 30 year period, so a £3M missile might actually cost something like £0.3M to build then a bit under £100K per year to keep in working order (new batteries and motors, regular inspections and refurb, cost of the leak-proof warehouse it's stored in, etc).
it gets expensive because things that modern ashm has to do can get pretty complex. it can go like this: lauch from tube, pop wings open, start jet engine, get to cruise speed and maintain altitude 2m above water. then get to area guided by gps, but you can't just rely on gps only. then get up, start scanning what's forward with its own radar, when target is found dive to it. or fire up additional terminal rocket engine to get to mach 2 or whatever to make intercept harder (that's what one chinese missile does). or launch 7 or so, get them all to communicate, one flies high above and uses its own radar to find targets and guide the rest of missiles. that one up is visible to radars (above radar horizon) so it can get shot down, but that's no problem because if that happens another missile gets up and does the same thing (that's a soviet ashm, can't remember which one). or missile can stay down and communicate with friendly AWACS or nearby F-35 or something to guide it. there are more options
explosive is something like 20$/kg, rocket propellant (if used) would be somewhere in the same ballpark. it's cruise missile so another big cost will be small jet engine, electronics are a bulk of the cost, yeah. electronics are also what is responsible for bunch of new capabilities. new seekers? TERCOM (not on sea but yknow), maybe datalink? camera to feed image back to operator? good inertial guidance can get pricey. harden it all against jamming and EMP, keep all pieces non-chinese and assembled in usa, keep paper trail and things get expensive. and it all needs software too, and software has to be kept classified, so all devs have to have clearance
for 155mm artillery shell something like third of the cost is fuze, with second most expensive component being casing (30kg-ish piece of steel rather precisely machined on lathe and heat treated in specific way)
javelin atgm is like quarter million dollars, and the only thing it has is IR seeker + inertial guidance. it also doesn't keep actual software onboard until launched
I just love how the writing style is rationalist with one weird trick
This comment inspired me to wonder if they wanted to implement AI into it as well. And of course, if you look at their ycombinator company page (their actual site is shit and has no info on it just 2 different contact forms), and of course "I have experience in operational excellence, business development, compliance, and deep understanding of AI, NLP". (Unrelated, I know it is a different term here, but off is the NLP abbreviation badly chosen, it always reminds me of Neuro-linguistic programming).
this is so brazenly obvious grift that it took me a re-read to notice
not enough people are planning for this
The Palladium guys are shilling.
that said throwing SM-6 at threat until it disintegrates is not sustainable approach. but they're not providing alternative that works
China does have a great number of civilian ships that are basically fishing boats ready to turn into supply craft and 1shot landing vessels.
But the use case for a missile like this is basically filled completely by the gun that they still slap on every warship, or a WW2 style strafing run by anything on a carrier
@dgerard This has powerful We're Going To Form A DAO To Buy The Jodorowsky Book energy tbh
To me this looks like it's already been out-innovated by the USAF:
https://newatlas.com/military/quicksink-modular-strap-on-kit-smart-bomb/
Range of 40nm, other glide bombs have longer range.
40 nanometers is a terrible range!
it's what you get when you don't involve private sector innovation!
Part of me suspects there's plenty of those kinda kits out there. The appeal's pretty obvious - just pop the fucker onto any random dumb ordnance you've got laying about, and boom, instant smart bomb.
Just what the world needs - disruption in the tactical nuke delivery space!
new headcanon: sam openai wanted to make fusion power plant for chatgpt happen because DoE wouldn't let him anywhere close to uranium
@dgerard makes sense coming from the ultra right-wing ycombiNazi crew.
@dgerard oh, wow, this is extremely stupid and ignorant of reality even by y combinator standards. :D
They're probably looking at Ukraine manufacturing cheaper weapons and getting FOMO. But instead of actually learning how Ukraine is innovating these guys are just " let's do the same things but cheaper". Truly innovation that only an MBA can think of.