China drone makers must be rubbing their hands in glee. Especially given that they're either directly or indirectly supplying drones and components both sides of the war in Ukraine!
I don't think it's that tragic. This kind of 'overdroning' you can observe in Ukraine is a special event, created by the meeting of underfunded and unprepared military structures with new tech.
The next challenge is not to catch up to (by that time: obsolete) militarized commercial drones, but to develop effective countermeasures, and then, to develop drones which are still effective in that new environment of countermeasures.
I don't think innovation is the issue. As the article points out the issue is the supply chain. Russia war plane industry is more advanced than orhers but it relies on the supply of foreign semiconductors. In fact, few sanctions had been enough to almost stop their production of the most advanced planes. The same holds for Ukraine drone industry. It relies heavily on chinese suppliers.
Oh: Quoting Lenin isn't exactly clever. His alleged revolution was allegedly funded by the SED party in Germany back then. To put it simply, a pawn in global politics. He didn't say that in the quote, but as usual.
The quote is just an anecdote that has evolved over time into what it's interpreted to be today. The origin was entirely different.
And isn't that the same thing with the Bible? The texts have been rewritten and embellished countless times over more than 2,000 years. Two thousand years can create a myth
Exactly, in paraphrasing that I am encapsulating a concept which is a critique of authors text. His analaysis is excellent and valid, however it is applicable in a computer game scenario but not in a free market democracy.
Democracies lack the executive capacity for long-term industrial development. Autocracies are much better suited for this. Which is why China dominates the West...
Chinese companies get significantly reduced capital and manpower costs thanks to the government, which they use to outcompete everyone else. Since the West is defanged by the free market, nothing will be done about this unfair competition.
For assessing the competitiveness of the underfunded Chinese companies, just look up what 'tofu dregs' means.
This match is over for some time already. While it's true that autocracies allocates money faster, at long term the lack of political feedback and competing ideas/parties inevitably turns anything into a corrupted pigsty at low effectiveness.
While I am not competent enough to assess the free market impact here, I just wanted to add rearding government regulation in US. I have heard they added new rules for hobby drones recently which essentially will decrease the amount of people interested in this as s hobby. Not like US needs them, right? One can always buy enthusiasm by simple recruiting or finance programs/investment...
China cant subsidize all its industries. It has serious economic problems at this very moment. They are not unsolvable.But your thesis is just another variant of planning economy. It relies on the autocrat over a sustained periode planning smarter than the marker, always subsidizing where it gets most value for the money etc. innhente 80s everybody believed Japan would outcompete everybody, that their industrial policies were superior etc. They are not at all doing badly, but they did not becomethejuggernaut envisioned. China is bigger of course and it will be an important nation in the future. And lack of western foresight and poor politics can help. But China is not invincible due to its auticracy. Quite the opposite I would say.
The first quadcopters were designed in the U.S. I believe. My guess is the large defense contractors stifle innovation. They want everything BIG and complex. They can do it because there's no real pressure to push back. Ukraine is a different story, which is why Ukraine is probably way ahead of the U.S. in drone technology and tactics. Nothing will change until the U.S. experiences a "wake-up call", humiliation of its big tech against small drones.
Another statement of the fact that the American (as well as Western European) oligarchy, in pursuit of immediate gain, has put the defense capability of its own country at risk.
Great article. Good that you are using a clip from Ryan MacBeth, who is a drone and misinformation expert and presents his facts in a professional manner.
There must be some smart heads in the US military that understand that their whole future relies on being at the forefront of the new warfare. And if they are really smart they will be telling POTUS that they need to be much more helpful to Ukraine, and co-operate more closely, to stop themselves being left behind.
It true also the opposite. To be at the forefront of new warfare a country needs to be a leading economy, cause military tech is very costly. A country that priorituze the military sector at the expense of economic growth in the long run will fail in a catastophic way. The story of CCCP shows the point in a pretty clear way.
The US can beat China in the production game. My friend used to import Chinese Firearms into Canada. China was producing a AR-15 clone, but they stopped. They could not build them at the prices the US market was pumping them out at. So it was cheaper to buy a US made AR-15 than a Chinese one. Most of the US AR were made by smaller more agile companies. That's where you need the investment to beat DJI.
A lot of Americans want drones, mostly the smaller DJI models. Generally if it's a octorotor drone, it is for commercial use, which is a area growing rapidly. Commercial drones are eating into the bread and butter jobs of small helicopter companies. Most now offer drone services as well just to survive.
This was well before that, the Chinese stopped producing them for the Canadian market as we were getting new AR from the US for cheaper than they could sell theirs. The Philippine gun makers also became very competitive with Norinco for 1911, the Norks are decent guns but the finish leave a lot to be desired. They were not big on customer feedback. I have a Nork and a DPMS AR, sadly as you noted they are safe queens, along with my beloved M305.
Back in '08 or so I was looking at prices in Canada for various Norinco models and was jealous - prices in Canadian dollars were less than half (often 30-40 percent) of what US manufacturers were asking (in US dollars) for their pieces. Norinco M1A in Canada about 450 vs US Springfield Armory 1500. 1911a for about 300 (I paid 269 in US in '94 and was quite satisfied with the quality - same with the MAK-90) while the base 1911as in US were well over 400.
Now there are the Turks who define the base line for the budget conscious buyer (although the economy in Turkey may be helping keep their prices down).
P.S. Only problem I had with the 213 was the safety that had to be added for import. As an afterthought it wasn't very well done.
Yes the M305 (Polytech M1A) is a great rifle, I have 2, one in wood that was the 7th to be imported to Canada and one more shortened one with plastic and Garand sights. Both are awesome rifles to shoot. Their Sig clones suffer the same issues as early Sigs with the rails breaking, just sooner.
Norinco is group of arms companies. The M1A were made by Polytech. Can't recall which company made the AR. The M305's were found in a warehouse completely unmarked, apparently made to arm Filipina rebels, but the plan never went through. They marked up for import to Canada.
As someone who built a small video electronics company in the 80s* and supplied finished products to one of the major Japanese video hardware manufacturers, the current situation looks like an open goal for entrepreneurs. There's a massive database and skill-set available within Ukraine, coupled with motivation that pure profit cannot compete with: Western companies will be happt to provide the profit motive. Putting the matter of scaling aside I'm guessing that much of the hardware that's required - including motors - could be manufactured using printers. Maybe there are exotic hardware requirements but, ignorant as I am, I can't think of what they might be or where the bottlenecks are. Given the high level of Ukrainian programmers even before the invasion I'm sure that much of the critical coding has already been done. I'm also ignorant of the chip requirements but I'd guess that it's not in the "exotic" class either, assuming that the requirement is to replace existing drones.
* Just before my company was destroyed by panicking banksters I was working, as a sideline, on 3D video measurement systems. We were proposing to mount such a system on ROVs for the offshore oil industry. It was also obvious that such a system, mounted on model aircraft, had vast potential as part of a weapons system. This was in 1987/88.
I am sorry - if there is to be innovation in US drone manufacturing having the government involved will be a serious negative.
While it was the US military that envisioned and created the Global Positioning System of satelites and spent significant resources to ensure that precision coordinates could only be obtained with the military's own receivers, it was the private sector that realized that by triangulating the time siganls from several satellites would also yield precision coordinates and revolutionized surveying and navigation.
Government means bureaucracies and bureaucracies are not innovative or nimble in developing new ideas.
And all too often actually stifle innovation while throwing bucket loads of money at dead ends.
The problem is (as noted by another here) that American defense contractors tend to like big, expensive, complex systems. From what is being reported from Ukraine and elsewhere, there are relatively cheap and simpler solutions being developed and implemented there that would very likely never have been considered by that contractors here.
As to the government mindset, there was concern that China has a near monoply on the production of rare earth metals. An American company had a major deposit in Nevada that they had spent about a decade getting permitted. The cost became high enough that they shelved the project. Due to the concern with China's monopoly the DOD stepped in to subsidize the project. Rather than looking at the permitting process to see whether there was a way to streamline it in the future and look at what might be excessive requirements, the taxpayer just ended up footing the bill. A primary reason for industry outsourcing to China in the past is over regulation.
In fact a significant impediment to the goal of increasing US production of drones and their components is over regulation. Cut that and margins improve incentivizing companies to enter the field.
Lots of US innovation has been government funder. Both the space program and the internet was. And if you check the career of Musk I find him to be pretty good at getting government funds it simply isnt true that US government doesnt and cannot support innovation. Yes, it comes with some bureaucracy which the US tax pater should be glad for.. (probably not enough bureaucracy…)
There has indeed been a significant percentage of basic research that was government funded that was innovative. Although in most cases the government funding came after the concept was developed.
And all too often it is the salesmanship of the originator of the concept that decides what is funded and once funded there is a tendency of the bureaucrats in charge to keep projects going regardless of the actual success of the research.
Corporations are similar, but generally have more incentive to be selective in deciding to fund projects and to cut losses on dead ends.
More innovation actually comes from individuals and smaller firms.
Robert Goddard did much of his research with minimal government assistance - first on his own and later with some help from the Smithsonian but primarily private funding.
From today's update on Russian artillery -
"The Wild Hornets are part of the ongoing innovation. They’ve provided 1,000 interceptor drones that shot down 200 Russian reconnaissance drones that have been captured on video. Even more have been shot down that were not shown to the public, and hundreds of the interceptors have yet to be used. They are increasing communication capabilities, increasing the speed and duration of flight, and are increasing the production of night interceptors. They will soon start production of Shahed interceptors. And they have done all of this without any government funding."
I have not dealt with government in the field of R&D, rather regulatory agencies in the fields of construction and mining. However, I once spent months getting a reviewer to accept a design for armoring a drainage discharge channel that was based on research at a state university's engineering department that was already approved by state agencies in other states.
I worked for a contractor on a government project to build a GIS coordinate database for property boundaries in the Western US. It is now used as the base for nearly every GIS system in those states. As stated by one of the staff in the government team doing oversight of the project, one of the secondary(?) goals of that teams lead was to find a way to justify adding a couple of more personnel for the team to qualify him for a promotion based on the number of employees being supervised. And early completion of the project was not in hos agenda.
All too often when governments (and large corporations) are involved the goal of those in charge is not actually to successfully complete the project, but to empire build or even just to keep the spigot open.
Excellent article Ben, thank you.
China drone makers must be rubbing their hands in glee. Especially given that they're either directly or indirectly supplying drones and components both sides of the war in Ukraine!
I don't think it's that tragic. This kind of 'overdroning' you can observe in Ukraine is a special event, created by the meeting of underfunded and unprepared military structures with new tech.
The next challenge is not to catch up to (by that time: obsolete) militarized commercial drones, but to develop effective countermeasures, and then, to develop drones which are still effective in that new environment of countermeasures.
...and it's already happening.
I don't think innovation is the issue. As the article points out the issue is the supply chain. Russia war plane industry is more advanced than orhers but it relies on the supply of foreign semiconductors. In fact, few sanctions had been enough to almost stop their production of the most advanced planes. The same holds for Ukraine drone industry. It relies heavily on chinese suppliers.
"We will hang the capitalists using the rope they sell us!" Lenin
The West is incapable of this action exactly because of the free market and capital interests. The West cannot win.
As supposedly an over-zelaous believer of the communism once said during the socialism/russian dominance here:
The capitalism is at the edge of the cliff!
.... but we are one step ahead!...
Oh: Quoting Lenin isn't exactly clever. His alleged revolution was allegedly funded by the SED party in Germany back then. To put it simply, a pawn in global politics. He didn't say that in the quote, but as usual.
The quote is just an anecdote that has evolved over time into what it's interpreted to be today. The origin was entirely different.
And isn't that the same thing with the Bible? The texts have been rewritten and embellished countless times over more than 2,000 years. Two thousand years can create a myth
Exactly, in paraphrasing that I am encapsulating a concept which is a critique of authors text. His analaysis is excellent and valid, however it is applicable in a computer game scenario but not in a free market democracy.
Democracies lack the executive capacity for long-term industrial development. Autocracies are much better suited for this. Which is why China dominates the West...
Chinese companies get significantly reduced capital and manpower costs thanks to the government, which they use to outcompete everyone else. Since the West is defanged by the free market, nothing will be done about this unfair competition.
:sigh:
For assessing the competitiveness of the underfunded Chinese companies, just look up what 'tofu dregs' means.
This match is over for some time already. While it's true that autocracies allocates money faster, at long term the lack of political feedback and competing ideas/parties inevitably turns anything into a corrupted pigsty at low effectiveness.
No exception.
While I am not competent enough to assess the free market impact here, I just wanted to add rearding government regulation in US. I have heard they added new rules for hobby drones recently which essentially will decrease the amount of people interested in this as s hobby. Not like US needs them, right? One can always buy enthusiasm by simple recruiting or finance programs/investment...
China cant subsidize all its industries. It has serious economic problems at this very moment. They are not unsolvable.But your thesis is just another variant of planning economy. It relies on the autocrat over a sustained periode planning smarter than the marker, always subsidizing where it gets most value for the money etc. innhente 80s everybody believed Japan would outcompete everybody, that their industrial policies were superior etc. They are not at all doing badly, but they did not becomethejuggernaut envisioned. China is bigger of course and it will be an important nation in the future. And lack of western foresight and poor politics can help. But China is not invincible due to its auticracy. Quite the opposite I would say.
The first quadcopters were designed in the U.S. I believe. My guess is the large defense contractors stifle innovation. They want everything BIG and complex. They can do it because there's no real pressure to push back. Ukraine is a different story, which is why Ukraine is probably way ahead of the U.S. in drone technology and tactics. Nothing will change until the U.S. experiences a "wake-up call", humiliation of its big tech against small drones.
Ukraine rely on the Chinese supply chain as much, or even more, than the US, unfortunately. And it is old news:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67078089
You're absolutely right of course! I used be into DIY drones a bit. There wasn't a single part I might buy that was made in America.
Well Ukraine doesnt at the moment have many options, the point here is that the US does.
Another statement of the fact that the American (as well as Western European) oligarchy, in pursuit of immediate gain, has put the defense capability of its own country at risk.
Agreed.
Great article. Good that you are using a clip from Ryan MacBeth, who is a drone and misinformation expert and presents his facts in a professional manner.
There must be some smart heads in the US military that understand that their whole future relies on being at the forefront of the new warfare. And if they are really smart they will be telling POTUS that they need to be much more helpful to Ukraine, and co-operate more closely, to stop themselves being left behind.
It true also the opposite. To be at the forefront of new warfare a country needs to be a leading economy, cause military tech is very costly. A country that priorituze the military sector at the expense of economic growth in the long run will fail in a catastophic way. The story of CCCP shows the point in a pretty clear way.
Let's hope.
The US can beat China in the production game. My friend used to import Chinese Firearms into Canada. China was producing a AR-15 clone, but they stopped. They could not build them at the prices the US market was pumping them out at. So it was cheaper to buy a US made AR-15 than a Chinese one. Most of the US AR were made by smaller more agile companies. That's where you need the investment to beat DJI.
because that many americans wanted AR or similar rifle. How many would be a drone? And agricultural octactopter?
A lot of Americans want drones, mostly the smaller DJI models. Generally if it's a octorotor drone, it is for commercial use, which is a area growing rapidly. Commercial drones are eating into the bread and butter jobs of small helicopter companies. Most now offer drone services as well just to survive.
Canada banned all M-16/AR-15s in 2020.
And as of 2023 there was review published that gave prices for the Chinese clones at least competitive with the US versions I have seen.
Of course the gun controllers in the US got everything but shotguns produced by Norinco banned form import. So it is moot.
This was well before that, the Chinese stopped producing them for the Canadian market as we were getting new AR from the US for cheaper than they could sell theirs. The Philippine gun makers also became very competitive with Norinco for 1911, the Norks are decent guns but the finish leave a lot to be desired. They were not big on customer feedback. I have a Nork and a DPMS AR, sadly as you noted they are safe queens, along with my beloved M305.
Interesting.
Back in '08 or so I was looking at prices in Canada for various Norinco models and was jealous - prices in Canadian dollars were less than half (often 30-40 percent) of what US manufacturers were asking (in US dollars) for their pieces. Norinco M1A in Canada about 450 vs US Springfield Armory 1500. 1911a for about 300 (I paid 269 in US in '94 and was quite satisfied with the quality - same with the MAK-90) while the base 1911as in US were well over 400.
Now there are the Turks who define the base line for the budget conscious buyer (although the economy in Turkey may be helping keep their prices down).
P.S. Only problem I had with the 213 was the safety that had to be added for import. As an afterthought it wasn't very well done.
Yes the M305 (Polytech M1A) is a great rifle, I have 2, one in wood that was the 7th to be imported to Canada and one more shortened one with plastic and Garand sights. Both are awesome rifles to shoot. Their Sig clones suffer the same issues as early Sigs with the rails breaking, just sooner.
Norinco is group of arms companies. The M1A were made by Polytech. Can't recall which company made the AR. The M305's were found in a warehouse completely unmarked, apparently made to arm Filipina rebels, but the plan never went through. They marked up for import to Canada.
Thanks Ben for this informative article lets hope the US can wake up and step up
As someone who built a small video electronics company in the 80s* and supplied finished products to one of the major Japanese video hardware manufacturers, the current situation looks like an open goal for entrepreneurs. There's a massive database and skill-set available within Ukraine, coupled with motivation that pure profit cannot compete with: Western companies will be happt to provide the profit motive. Putting the matter of scaling aside I'm guessing that much of the hardware that's required - including motors - could be manufactured using printers. Maybe there are exotic hardware requirements but, ignorant as I am, I can't think of what they might be or where the bottlenecks are. Given the high level of Ukrainian programmers even before the invasion I'm sure that much of the critical coding has already been done. I'm also ignorant of the chip requirements but I'd guess that it's not in the "exotic" class either, assuming that the requirement is to replace existing drones.
* Just before my company was destroyed by panicking banksters I was working, as a sideline, on 3D video measurement systems. We were proposing to mount such a system on ROVs for the offshore oil industry. It was also obvious that such a system, mounted on model aircraft, had vast potential as part of a weapons system. This was in 1987/88.
As usual clear analysis! Well done, I hope those that need to listen!
I am sorry - if there is to be innovation in US drone manufacturing having the government involved will be a serious negative.
While it was the US military that envisioned and created the Global Positioning System of satelites and spent significant resources to ensure that precision coordinates could only be obtained with the military's own receivers, it was the private sector that realized that by triangulating the time siganls from several satellites would also yield precision coordinates and revolutionized surveying and navigation.
Government means bureaucracies and bureaucracies are not innovative or nimble in developing new ideas.
And all too often actually stifle innovation while throwing bucket loads of money at dead ends.
The problem is (as noted by another here) that American defense contractors tend to like big, expensive, complex systems. From what is being reported from Ukraine and elsewhere, there are relatively cheap and simpler solutions being developed and implemented there that would very likely never have been considered by that contractors here.
As to the government mindset, there was concern that China has a near monoply on the production of rare earth metals. An American company had a major deposit in Nevada that they had spent about a decade getting permitted. The cost became high enough that they shelved the project. Due to the concern with China's monopoly the DOD stepped in to subsidize the project. Rather than looking at the permitting process to see whether there was a way to streamline it in the future and look at what might be excessive requirements, the taxpayer just ended up footing the bill. A primary reason for industry outsourcing to China in the past is over regulation.
In fact a significant impediment to the goal of increasing US production of drones and their components is over regulation. Cut that and margins improve incentivizing companies to enter the field.
Lots of US innovation has been government funder. Both the space program and the internet was. And if you check the career of Musk I find him to be pretty good at getting government funds it simply isnt true that US government doesnt and cannot support innovation. Yes, it comes with some bureaucracy which the US tax pater should be glad for.. (probably not enough bureaucracy…)
There has indeed been a significant percentage of basic research that was government funded that was innovative. Although in most cases the government funding came after the concept was developed.
And all too often it is the salesmanship of the originator of the concept that decides what is funded and once funded there is a tendency of the bureaucrats in charge to keep projects going regardless of the actual success of the research.
Corporations are similar, but generally have more incentive to be selective in deciding to fund projects and to cut losses on dead ends.
More innovation actually comes from individuals and smaller firms.
Robert Goddard did much of his research with minimal government assistance - first on his own and later with some help from the Smithsonian but primarily private funding.
From today's update on Russian artillery -
"The Wild Hornets are part of the ongoing innovation. They’ve provided 1,000 interceptor drones that shot down 200 Russian reconnaissance drones that have been captured on video. Even more have been shot down that were not shown to the public, and hundreds of the interceptors have yet to be used. They are increasing communication capabilities, increasing the speed and duration of flight, and are increasing the production of night interceptors. They will soon start production of Shahed interceptors. And they have done all of this without any government funding."
I have not dealt with government in the field of R&D, rather regulatory agencies in the fields of construction and mining. However, I once spent months getting a reviewer to accept a design for armoring a drainage discharge channel that was based on research at a state university's engineering department that was already approved by state agencies in other states.
I worked for a contractor on a government project to build a GIS coordinate database for property boundaries in the Western US. It is now used as the base for nearly every GIS system in those states. As stated by one of the staff in the government team doing oversight of the project, one of the secondary(?) goals of that teams lead was to find a way to justify adding a couple of more personnel for the team to qualify him for a promotion based on the number of employees being supervised. And early completion of the project was not in hos agenda.
All too often when governments (and large corporations) are involved the goal of those in charge is not actually to successfully complete the project, but to empire build or even just to keep the spigot open.