A Crazy Expensive U.S. Drone Just Disappeared over Strait of Hormuz(www.forbes.com)

27 pointsby Teever9 hours ago6 comments

Jtsummers7 hours ago
> The Navy’s P-8 Poseidon aircraft is its premier asset for anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. Made by Boeing, the Poseidon is also 737-sized, with a flight crew of two plus a team of seven to manage the sensors and other mission equipment on ten-hour flights. [emphasis added]
That bit I emphasized made me chuckle. The P-8 Poseidon is 737-sized because it's derived from the 737. This is not unusual for US military aircraft. Boeing already has the ability to build 737s, modifying one to meet particular mission needs is much cheaper than doing a total redesign and custom build (it will still be heavily modified, of course).
- verdverm6 hours ago
  Coming in at a cool ~$190M each in a recent budget
  - Jtsummers5 hours ago
    The mods certainly aren't cheap, and it's still closer to a one-off production. But better to have a large chunk of it "off the shelf" than a totally custom aircraft.
Snoozus5 hours ago
This calculation is a bit naive, you should at least take into account the capabilities and crew training and operation cost. That's before you start thinking about the cost of crew rescue missions. It seems to fly way higher than the poseidon, so I guess it covers more ground as well.
tomasphan7 hours ago
Better a drone be shot down than a crewed P-8 no?
- verdverm6 hours ago
  I don't think we know if it was shot down or crashed from malfunction
PearlRiver7 hours ago
When America lost in Vietnam it was at least an honorable defeat: both the USSR and the PRC invested vast quantities of materiel and military advisors into the war. For decades. It was fought with stuff that was designed for WW3.
- esperent7 hours ago
  There was nothing honorable about the US war in Vietnam, from any side. You can make all kinds of arguments for and against the necessity of it. But honor? Bullshit historical revisionism.
  - verdverm6 hours ago
    I think they mean at least the US lost to a worthy adversary, but I also think they underestimate the relative advantages each side has in this war. Perhaps Iran is not as weakly positioned as traditional measures of military strength suggest. Their are unique circumstances from geography and a paradigm shift from drone economics.
    __patchbit__5 hours ago
    Wars of choice are about getting paid enormous amounts to the owners of The Economist. The latest iteration has $5 billion installations wiped out by $7 thousand drone shots over weeks.
    esperent3 hours ago
    "Worthy adversary" is also a bullshit phrase that tries to make war sounds like a football game or something like that.
    There's no "worthiness", no "honor" in war. There's just dumb young men being sent to kill, rape, and die by evil old men.
    The only exception is if you're fighting purely in defense of your country. But that's not what any of these so called "honorable, worthy" opponents were doing.
    verdverm2 hours ago
    a better phrasing would have been "peer" or "near peer" adversary
KennyBlanken5 hours ago
Guess we can add that to the billion dollars worth of missile defense radar we lost in one afternoon...two units out of twenty.
Both pale in comparison to the amount of precision-guided weaponry that was burned through blowing up fishing boats and attacking oil tankers, and then bombing Iran.
It was estimated that in the first day alone the US burned through half its stock of some precision munitions.
The supply chain for those is years long.
If you were China, what would you be thinking right about now? Say, a vacation in Taiwan?
There's jack shit the US could do about it.
- _blk5 hours ago
  But to be fair, don't forget to compare that as a fraction of the Somali Minnesota fraud..
aaron6958 hours ago
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