Starlink uses phased arrays pointed at the ground but lasers between satellites. So it wouldn’t be impossible to spin one around and have it bounce traffic to earth through the swarm pointing down.
But these satellites are very close to earth compared to the moon. It wouldn’t only save 0.3% transmit power vs just sending right to the surface. It’s very unlikely the consumer antennas could manage hitting an earth satellite from the moon.
I don't know that there was a lot wrong with Earth under the Expanse though.
The problems there were kind of organic: they just didn't need that many people, but they did have UBI, but even if you wanted to better yourself and were exceptional at your job... You could still be 50,001 in the queue of the 50,000 they needed.
Earth in the expanse desperately needed places to expand too and send people, but the solar system just wasn't that habitable.
Okay but why does this matter? They're your ISP they also have your address, credit card number and a technician has been in your home and also supplied the router in the common case.
The theoretical vague problem here is being used to defend a status quo which has led to complete centralization of Internet traffic because of the difficulty of P2P connectivity due to NAT.
It's because router defaults have been bad for a long time and NAT accidentally made them better.
I finally have IPv6 at home but I am being very cautious about enabling it because I don't really know what the implications are, and I do not trust the defaults.
If they're small - like quadcopter size - then how did you get them in range of a ship more then 10 miles off shore?
If they're large, like back of a pickup sized (which is roughly a Shahed[1] - link for scale) then how did you transport and move them without being noticed and interdicted?
For comparison one of Russia's largest drone attacks on Ukraine, and thus in the world, happened recently and included about 1000 Shaheds over a distributed area.
You're talking about flying a 1000 of something into exactly one target which has CIWS designed to track and kill supersonic missiles at close range (and is likely in a flotilla with data linked fire control).
You might get lucky I guess but I absolutely wouldn't bet on it.
They're also using their USVs as drone motherships.
> If they're large, like back of a pickup sized (which is roughly a Shahed - link for scale) then how did you transport and move them without being noticed and interdicted?
The Taliban moved pickup-sized loads around just fine.
> You're talking about flying a 1000 of something into exactly one target which has CIWS designed to track and kill supersonic missiles at close range (and is likely in a flotilla with data linked fire control).
Here's one failing to shoot a single Shahed in Baghdad down.
Fair, it's not an aircraft carrier. But you can turn any container vessel into a cheap rough equivalent. Take the coastline, then maybe 30 km inland and see what installations you could reach. Pearl Harbor on a shoestring budget is a realistic threat now.
Keeping the strait of Hormuz open would be one of those functions, wouldn't it? Oh, wait...
Seriously, your question is borderline trolling, you know exactly which functions of a carrier group are and are not matched by drones flown from containers. The point is, in case it wasn't clear, that you can do a ton of destruction without necessarily opening yourself up to a counter attack, precisely the kind of advantage that parties that put carrier groups in distance places to project power tend to be looking for. The ability to destroy lots of stuff in a relatively short time without losing a lot of personnel or exposing yourself.
And that capability is now to a large extent available to states that before would not have been able to do meaningful damage to coastal cities and coastal infrastructure (think refineries and large scale shipping ports). And you can't even be sure that whoever operates the vessel is in on it.
It's not going to help you to stop China from invading Taiwan if they decide to. But it could put a very large dent in the economic capability of any country or bloc that came under a concerted attack. Also note that 'drone' is a pretty wide label that crosses over into what previously was territory reserved for cruise missiles and ICBMs for air power and on the water there are many developments as well.
So if you have to hide your carrier group at stand-off distance for fear of seeing it sunk then it is not all that different from that container full of drones. You can destroy stuff, and that's about it. And long term that just makes more enemies, it doesn't really solve anything.
> Keeping the strait of Hormuz open would be one of those functions, wouldn't it? Oh, wait...
Gottem! Not really though. I don't think anyone would claim a carrier group should be able to hold an adversary's coastal waters. Empty them from beyond visual range? Yes. Camp out in them? No.
That said, if and when Mango decides to land troops in Iran, the fleet will be an irreplaceable piece of that operation. That is global force projection.
> Seriously, your question is borderline trolling, you know exactly which functions of a carrier group are and are not matched by drones flown from containers.
I mean but it helps in coming to an understanding if you articulate them. Acknowledging them will suffice!
> The point is, in case it wasn't clear, that you can do a ton of destruction without necessarily opening yourself up to a counter attack
Agreed!
> So if you have to hide your carrier group at stand-off distance for fear of seeing it sunk then it is not all that different from that container full of drones. You can destroy stuff, and that's about it.
This is just making the very common categorization error here: you're equating low performance drones, implied to be about DJI sized, with the performance of an F-35.
Now you're about to say "but I meant drones with better capability!" And they do exist: and they're no longer that cheap, nor compact because it turns out a drone with roughly the performance of an F-35 will need an airframe, engine and sensor suite...roughly as expensive as an F-35. And suddenly this is no longer a platform you can just crash into things. Nor will you be ordering them by the thousand. Nor do they fit in a cargo container.
I've seen the range of drones that is available and they are very impressive, the variety is precisely what makes them so powerful: you can adapt mix and match to whatever mission profile you have in mind and there most likely will be something that you can use unmodified. And if the task requires it modifications can be done on very short notice.
An F-35 is of course going to absolutely outclass any drone. But a hundred million (roughly) spent on drones is going to do more damage than that F-35 and is going to be more versatile.
The second that F-35 lands it is going to be at risk from a (low cost) drone attack. And some aicraft aren't even safe in the sky anymore:
Mix and match how? Your entire one-way arsenal is sitting in cargo containers off the coast of an enemy nation by definition within drone range.
At this point you've built a very slow, very short ranged undefended arsenal ship.
Your proposal is to put a large supply of systems closer to enemy forces and the you're implying that somehow this wouldn't be vulnerable to being attacked while landed?
Which is notably not going to be launching a drone the size of a even a Shahed, nor anything close to the same range.
It also cannot detect nor engage incoming air threats, like essentially every single in service submarine on the planet due to the whole "being underwater" thing.
You don't even need to say "lasers" : that's the future. CIWS is already a thing today and Ukrainians have downed Shaheds with ground fire from small arms.
There's a plethora of various low cost systems being developed for some defence, but the assumption I always see on HN and elsewhere is that for some reason cheap offensive drones will just never have a countermeasure...which isn't how any of this works (exhibit A: massed infantry assaults can sometimes work against emplaced machine guns, but in general the machine gun was the end of that tactic).
There is absolutely no reason that the current disruption drones are causing should lead to some sustained power imbalance: if you don't have the big laser today that's one thing, but if tomorrow you're scoring 100% intercept rates against the same threat then how cheap it is doesn't matter anymore. And there's no particular reason to think that won't be the case (if a cheap drone can be on the offensive, you'd have to present a very good case why the interceptor cannot be built in similar quantities at which point you're back to high end systems deciding the day).
You just need a radar controlled anti aircraft gun. Most militaries phased these out as they had been considered obsolete (dosn't help against e.g. modern fighter jets).
100% interception … drone interception is NP complete dude, there’s nothing you can do against 1000 drones like that, and they’ll get cheaper, faster, smaller, bigger, more manoeuvrable. So 10Million bucks to down an aircraft carrier. With 0 casualties to your side.
Sure, my point is just that lasers you can get the cost per 'kill' to literally a few $. So even the 'cheap drones are cheaper then other interceptor' argument doesn't work.
It doesn't really eat you though: HF is so small that the problem is it just traverses straight through the skin into your blood and causes fluoridosis.
There's been more then a few metallurgy lab deaths because someone spilled a substantial amount of HF on themselves and didn't realize it.
When asking for moral progress rather then technological progress, it's not an inverse.
People can build technology, or I can build technology, but we generally all get it. Its distribution requires nothing of me or others psychologically.
You can't just build and distribute morality, and adopting it is a massive personal change.
You can build and distribute morality. It's called politics. Or religion. Or culture. Or marketing. Or propaganda. Or education.
There's so many ways in which morality is distributed.
There are also many things that stand in the way of adopting technology. Cost. Personal preference. Moral preference. Availability. Lack of awareness. Lack of specialized skill.
The two are not very different at all in how they diffuse through society.
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