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Can you use metric system like every single professional? Alternatively switch to eggs and giraffe necks as a unit of measure, makes more sense than imperial at least.
I completely understand what everyone is saying too. The USA can absolutely cripple or irradiate an entire conventional military in such a time frame. But our issue is that China is huge and is growing by the day. What if our massive arsenal isn't sufficient this time? This is why this is so important to get this right.
@@marrqi7wini54 this is such a non issue it's hilarious. The fact you think there would be any fighting capacity left after expending everything is peak fear mongering. Every command and control centre, decision maker, officer, surface ship, airbase, ammo bunker that was known about would be wiped off the earth. The opening salvo of desert storm was 30 years ago and it annihilated the war fighting capability of the supposed 3rd largest army in the world at the time. Using literally every modern munition available would make that look like amateur hour. This is ignoring the fact that nukes would get employed way before all the ammo gets used.
@@AvocadoAfficionado You're beyond delusional. The only thing I can conclude from your post is that you're a troll. The United States has not engaged in anything resembling a peer conflict since Korea and we all know how that ended. Also, nukes aren't happening.
As a fan of Tolkien, I know he'd probably hate Anduril being used by a defense company. But as a fan of the West, the "Flame of the West" is just so badass.
His story was about a reluctant alliance coming together in the face of growing tyranny that threatened civilisation. He saw it in his lifetime. He would approve of those who stood up again for things worth fighting for.
The biggest advantage I would argue for this is a long range, cheap strike option for all the sub 1000t ships that most of the US adversaries seem to really like.
Seems that Russia moved their Black Sea Fleet to another Port outside range of Harpoon & Sea Drones...seems like 5-10 of these in Ukraines Hands could sure make a mess.
Definitely a huge asset in that regard. In a more general sense a huge advantage is the combination of versatility, cheap cost, rapidly increased production.
Yeah, genuinely impressive stuff here. And it's nice to see some new start-up companies getting into the defense industry, to shake things up. The old dinosaurs have been under-performing and over-charging for far too many decades now.
@@fakecubed It's not all the fault of Raytheon & Lockheed. The military is it's own worse enemy, they put requirements out that basically break the laws of physics and then change the requirements hundreds of times. After the debacle with trying to stuff vast amounts of new untested tech onto the LCS ships, congress ordered the navy to go buy some existing off-the-shelf ships. The navy has now spent 10 years and billions of dollars piling on requirements to the off-the-shelf procurement and they haven't even finalised the design for the new constellation class which is now a totally different ship to the one they were ordered to buy.
@@xvy333 Sshhhh Americans and our Globalist Gods like me dont like it when you speak the truth about our utterly corrupt, overly complex and hyped armed forces. We work in the USA to let them grift our money for endless war.
Ah cack! Stop your hyperexcitability,. It's just self promoting BS. Anyone can do it. The big boys just had no incentive to go low cost...because they each have a monopoly. In the space arena, SpaceX showed them otherwise. We can do better than Anduril but they are so full of themselves that they did not even respond to our letters. Too bad for them. NEXT!!!
The biggest sign that Anduril is truly innovative is that they made a cel shaded anime adjacent style commercial for their missiles. Every other defense company contracts from "industry proven" animation outfits are forever stuck in 2005. Look at any MIC product video and you can't unsee it.
@@leifkirchoff no it's bad marketing. who will buy this shit? youtubers? people watching that ad? it will be the governments. they don't appreciate or even like these kind of advertisements. the product is very interesting and very promising. while it lacks many capabilities the cheap cost and simple production is just amazing and game changer and adds a new capability.
@@riskinhos Then the question for the company is how cheaply can these ads be made if nobody will appreciate them. If this style will set them back less then that is the obvious choice.
He wouldn't like it, but I still prefer that American companies draw from Western canon to name their stuff than the alternative. Western culture needs to be protected and preserved.
Anduril CEO & founder Palmer Luckey became a self-made billionaire at age 22 when he sold his Oculus AR/VR company to Facebook for $2.3 billion in 2014. He was fired by Zuckerberg in 2017 when it was revealed that he supported Donald Trump. Although Zuckerberg & Facebook repeatedly denied that Luckey’s firing was politically motivated during a congressional hearing, Luckey would later end up winning his case against Facebook for $100 million in a California court. Facebook was found guilty of violating California law by punishing an employee for his political activities. Instead of retiring early, Palmer Luckey founded Anduril less than 4 months after his firing from Facebook in June of 2017.
You don't think it's suspicious he goes from FACEBOOK to weapons manufacturer.... Perhaps they are up to other things at Facebook or maybe Facebook is the weapon.
@@blakebrown534not irrelevant at all, but you’ve made it obvious (in typical liberal fashion) that you rather censor stuff that isn’t convenient to your narrative lol. Stick your head in the sand. 👍 I think it’s fascinating to hear where this guy (and company) came from, and how they’re already a big player in the defense industry seemingly overnight. People with that kind of resilience (especially combined with a forward-thinking mentality - ie Elon for example) have a history of disrupting industries and massively driving down cost while increasing competition. I mean Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX all cut the previous costs in their respective industries by HALF overnight.
Big Anduril fan, here. I've followed Palmer Luckey for some years now and the energy and innovation he's bringing to the defense of freedom is refreshing. Kudos for brining us this update on their doings, Alex!
"Defence of freedom"..? The U.S. has been manipulating both sides of every war since the 70's. Right now they're supplying weapons to 1 nation at war & 1 engaged in colonial genocide, getting all that valuble real-time data they can
@@chupacabra304 I checked on the Anduril website and it doesn't appear to be publicly traded. Since Palmer Luckey walked away from Facebook (now Meta) with a lot of cash Anduril might be "closely held" or privately funded in this phase. Luckey may choose to take it public once it's better established, but many investors wait because of all the regulatory rules that public companies have to follow. I hope that helps.
The Chair Force has been rolling ballistic missile surrogates out the back of C-17s for many years. They use these surrogates for testing BMD weapons like SM-3, THAAD, etc. Easier than ground launch. There was a proposal some years ago to launch ICBMs from big transport aircraft, so it wasn't such a big stretch to extend the idea to cruise missiles.
PLA Mighty Dragon: "Our stealthy* profile will make our (American) enemies think twice about coming near our territory*!" *(If you take our claims at face value) USAF Rapid Dragon: "I just got kicked off a cargo plane. So anyways I started shooting..."
@@doujinflip What if China destroy GPS system above Asia? What is the different between 1 missile getting lost and 1000 missiles getting lost in Pacific? The whole idea of stealth bomber or supersonic bomber is their mssiles won't get lost easily without satellite guidance if they are dropped near the targets.
@@joelau2383satellites move, and theres thousands of them, one gets destroyed, another satellite’s orbit will pick up the empty space, also, china hasn’t demonstrated the ability to take down satellites, only the United States has. Furthermore, GPS can simply be substituted with radar and radio data from say an AWACS or similar.
This manufacturing choke point has been something I was concerned about. The American military needs to be able to scale quickly and shrink just as quickly with doing massive damage to industry and employments.
That just doesn't happen with the complexity of weapons systems today. Industries produce or perish. Even with the simpler systems of WWII, American production did not peak until less than a year before the war was over. Without having the production capacity in advance, it could take half a decade to be fully ramped up.
From New Zealand, the US Department of Defence has made overtures to both the NZ and Australian Governments to establish precision weapons manufacturing in both countries. The geographic location of both countries make them suitable to supply a war in the Pacific region.
@@wisenber They need to advance the manufacturing tech in Tandem. If we can build a vending machine that manufactures missiles at will then building more and better vending machines could scale the manufacturing exponentially.
The Anuril's 500's 100lb warhead would be very useful against the Chinese navy. Their ships on average are half the tonnage of their US counterparts. The Ukraine conflict has taught us we need not a high/low mix but more like a high/guerrilla mix. We need to stop assuming we'd have pristine bases for our fighters. That we'd have unmolested manufacturing with endless resources, that if we can master the logistics, that's most the battle. We need fighters that can land on highways, missiles that can be assembled in a garage, vehicles with shared components designed for streamlined repair and return to service.
Those assumptions went out the window a very long time ago. The US is flying F-35s off highways in Finland, the Marines just finished refurbishing an old WWII era airstrip on Peleliu and the Air Force is rebuilding their old base on Tinian after lengthening the runway and adding ramps at the commercial airport on Tinian.
You might want to look at the displacement and armament of the Type 054C, 054D and Type 055 guided missile destroyers. Your tonnage assumption is a wee bit out of date. Also look at the size of their Type 054 frigates. The PLAN is not a brown water navy any more.
Agreed, why even need airlines missiles when you know the target of the ships is Taiwan. May as well have large numbers of land launched missiles and also land launched sea drones.
@@davidsuzukiispolpot At the recent Shangri La Forum the Indopacom commander mentioned that in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan his job was to "turn the Taiwan Straits into an unmanned hellscape for a month using classified capabilities". That, he said would buy him "time for everything else". I have a hunch the US has a plan and the means to implement it.
I've been following Anduril for a while and I love their work. I recommend anybody to read their white paper titled "Rebuild the Arsenal". It provides a pretty neat look into their plans for the future.
Crazy how a guy can go from making VR headsets with oculus and go into selling that in working on making military weapons for the us and its allies the guy has a Amazing Story and I don't know how a lot more people don't know about his company cuz his systems are really high tech
@@brianv1988 The tech industry folks really disrupted every other industry, from music distribution to driving folks to the airport, even space travel. And the guys who created it all don't care about anything except getting their 30% off the top, and will use whatever crazy algorithm they need to to squeeze out every last bit of efficiency. Only a matter of time before they got into the MIC and started putting the old dinosaurs to shame.
@@melgross not really he has multiple contracts with the US Military they're even field testing some of the newer stuff and already has different systems active in the US military there are other countries like Canada France Germany Australia Sweden Norway and a couple other big countries that have already some of their systems and Tech that he has manufactured an engineered buy this company. this is not a new company it's been around for a little while it's just not as well known as the bigger companies like Lockheed and Northrop or Boeing this company has done a lot of work with AI and they even have their own system already active in use with a couple countries for Air Base defense and counter drone systems both kinetic and jamming systems and sum of the system that he was talking about on this video has been in different stages of testing for a while and have proven the capability works in training so it's not just hype
It's crazy how missiles are quickly iterating and becoming even more important than the vehicles that carry them. Autonomous weapons might be the most important future frontier.
@TheWildcard4542000 tell us you know nothing about current DoD research, development and contracting without telling us you know *nothing* about it. The biggest challenges that are faced right now are cost bloat and red tape, not the nonsense you're going on about. Try to learn from something other than memes. You'll actually learn something.
@@p1zd3clethality needs a strong place in every echelon from the fire team to the Pentagon. Pushing for mentally ill people filling the ranks and show horning women into roles where EVERYONE knows they lack the physical prowess to do the job is going to cost lives. It sounds like you're trying to convey you know something about contracting. Maybe you knocked out that GFEBS online course. But what do you know of doctrine or war fighting?
Anduril is another example of a private company like SpaceX taking advantage of an opportunity and filling a desperate need that has been lacking for a long time. Good for them. The OEM weapons manufacturers need to take note. If they are successful, Anderil will do to the defence manufacturing industry as what SpaceX is doing to the space industry and Tesla is doing to legacy automakers. I pray they succeed. Thanks Alex for your content and bringing this info.
I said similar at ---- Ah cack! Stop your hyperexcitability,. It's just self promoting BS. Anyone can do it. The big boys just had no incentive to go low cost...because they each have a monopoly. In the space arena, SpaceX showed them otherwise. We can do better than Anduril but they are so full of themselves that they did not even respond to our letters. Too bad for them. NEXT!!!
Yep. Finally throwing off the comfortable status quo and innovating once again. It's always been one of our nation's finest strengths and it's been neglected for too long.
Cost Plus contracts so beloved by the government micromanagers have caused the legacy industry to become too fat & comfortable. Hopefully these new weapons can break the spell.
Anduril actually calls itself a SOFTWARE company & Lattice is their core product. Their motto is Autonomy for Every Mission Type through Affordable Mass.
@@Justanotherconsumer I mean just living in the same country as someone who (rightfully) disagrees with Israeli war crimes gets u labeled as a human shield. Example, calling children maimed by Israel's terrorist attack on pagers and radios "human shields"
We need new defence companies like this to rise up. The consolidation starting back in the early 90's looks like a huge mistake now. From 51 companies down to 5. Not enough competition
Most infuriating was that it was so obvious & predictable. A grad school colleague of mine wrote a very persuasive paper on the topic in 1994. Wish I still had a copy of it, because I bet most of his worst-case scenarios have been realized.
Do you know the reason for the consolidation? The whole reason their was consolidation is because after the down fall of the Soviet Union, the government understood that they couldn’t support all these small companies. Their just wasn’t any need for all these defense companies competing for the little amounts of contracts. So, instead of a bunch of them going out of business and losing their expertise. It was just better to consolidate and save the engineering minds.
I love how press releases always sound like they are talking about vacuum cleaners or something and not the most sophisticated implements of war that mankind has ever produced.
So glad to hear Alex describe cruise missiles "like suicide drones". I've long had a beef with folks calling Shaheds "drones". They're prop-driven cruise missiles. So many things with different control and mission profiles get called drones that the work is quite nearly meaningless now. Something doesn't need to even be flying anymore to be called a drone. It would be nice if we could gradually start cleaning up the lexicon so we had words that accurately described what weapon systems do.
Look up the Interstate Aircraft TDR. It was a TV controlled twin propeller engined suicide drone produced in the latter part of WWII. Some 200 were expended against the Japanese and they were successful. There was an operator in a TBF Avenger watching the TV image from the drone and guiding it to its target. The drone could carry a bomb or a torpedo. Most just carried a bomb and crashed into their targets. There was a jet powered follow on being designed but the war ended and that project was cancelled. Interstate stopped making airplanes (It also made a small high wing trainer called the Kadet that morphed over time into the Arctic Tern bushplane) and went into the vacuum cleaner business making Compact and Tristar brand vacuums. They later started a defense electronics firm that still exists as a division of L3/Harris (major contractor on the Navy's ballistic missile submarine program) and manufactured fuselages for the A-1 Skyraider as a subcontractor to Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo.
@@Triple_J.1 You're gonna need to look up bee biology. Drones mate with the queen. They are not worker bees. They're also not autonomous. If there's anything bee colonies aren't, it's autonomous.
Quantity has a unique quality all its own. The US needs to have munitions in reserve adequate to supply two war theaters for at least six months or enough time to bring production up to levels that would support two war theaters continuously.
42 years ago, during the Falklands War, an argentine fired exocet hit Hms Sheffield a type 42 destroyer. The missile war head never exploded, it entered the hull above the waterline then plowed down towards the keel breaching several decks. The rocket fuel burn killing 20 or so sailors. This is forty years ago tech, so I'm assuming better weapons today.
The Sheffield had major design flaws that prevented the crew from stopping the spread of the fires. Cable runs and openings for pipes through superstructure bulkheads were not sealed so flames could run from compartment to compartment. The ship had a single fire main that was punctured and no means to isolate the damage. You don't see that on US Navy ships which have multiple fire mains. The Type 42s didn't have sound powered phones like all US Navy ships have. They lost comms when the ship lost power and the batteries on their walkie talkies died. With sound powered phones as long as the cable is there you can talk, even through flooded compartments. I asked a Royal Navy officer about their lack of sound powered phones during a visit with them (I was a US Navy officer) and their lieutenant exclaimed "that's like Jutland!". Yeah, but they work even when your ship is burning and flooding. The nail in the coffin was that none of their portable dewatering pumps worked. Pumps from four other ships nearby didn't work either. This was a navy sailing into war and they didn't test and do maintenance on a critical damage control apparatus, their fire fighting and dewatering pumps. Btw, the Type 42s were all steel. No aluminum anywhere. I have stuck a magnet to her superstructure and interior of HMS Southampton to satisfy myself of this fact. By comparison USS Stark, which was very much aluminum from the main deck upwards, was struck by two identical Exocet missiles one of which did indeed detonate as designed while the other was a dud but the rocket motor did burn for a while after impact contributing to additional fire and damage. Nevertheless the crew of Stark put the fires out and the ship sailed home under her own power. The US Navy does damage control better than any navy in the world. I'll also mention that INS Hanit, a roughly 1500 ton corvette ate a Chinese C802 fired at it by Hezbollah in 2006. The ship suffered damage to its flight deck and hanger but was repaired and back at sea within three weeks. Getting hit by a missile doesn't guarantee the ship is lost. Sheffield was unfortunately a damage control cock up of the first order.
It was impressive for what it was. The blast was around 1 kiloton worth of power in comparison to the ones detonated in WW2, which were about 15 kilotons. In comparison to modern systems, it was about .0001 percent yield of today’s smaller weapons.
I’ve been following Anduril since attending a 2022 presentation they did in Atlanta (it was the Altius munition they presented). Beyond intriguing .. and their development pace is insane. Great work as always Alex Hollings
Absolutely we need multiple factories building cruise missiles, artillery shells and bombs. Also Landmine production should be ramped up. The US should be able to build 1000 low cost cruise missiles a month along with 150,000 shells a month. Anything less is not preparing adequately. Even that should be able to be ramped up at war time to double or triple. Should be stockpiling massive amounts of material now. Also we need to create explosive manufacturing plants and manufacture Cl20 instead of TNT as it is much more potent per pound.
That would be ideal except that companies like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, BAE, etc. claim the data package and software for their systems are proprietary. They won't sell them to anybody, even the government. A lot of aircraft and weapons cannot be maintained by government depots because the manufactures refuse to share their data. And they have battalions of aggressive litigators who will drop lawsuits if the government tried to claim rights to the data for the aircraft and weapons the American taxpayer buys. There is an awareness of the need to claw back data rights and do more in house to get away from monopolist defense contractors but this will take time.
JDAM already has this sort of very simple assembly, with high degrees of modularity. It makes sense to extend that methodology to cruise missiles. But one disadvantage of this method of that you're offloading much of the complexity to the suppliers, so you also need to make sure they are setting up shop in the same modular scalable way. Otherwise you'll have plenty of scale, but not enough parts to put together.
The electronics would be the part to worry about. Maybe the explosive bits as well. Machining and stamping metal parts are things this country mastered mass production of long ago.
There is nothing stopping rapid dragon from being used with glide bomb systems as on many different types of aircraft. Even helicopters could be used with it as well for land warfare.
It’s not so much sinking the ship physically. It’s getting to the ship. My last tour was as an FCC on an arleigh Burke destroyer. The carrier we escorted was the safest place on the planet. Besides its own fire control systems-Phalanx, NSSMS- we all protected it as well. Slaved radar systems well out around the curve of the earth. All working together with all other ships. Our ship alone multiple FC radar systems, gun systems and missile systems BGM-109 being my specialty at that time. A naval carrier group is a war starter/ender all by itself. Sinking the key ship is like throwing a dart through multiple ceiling fans into a drinking straw. Quite possible but not probable
A lot of folks don't realize how devastating a single American carrier group really is. Mostly because we've rarely ever shown what they can do and the few times we have, it's been more or less hushed up by those who witnessed it. And we float 13 of these groups. Simultaneously, if needed. We'd know days in advance if China wanted to get froggy. They'd have several such groups on their doorstep right around the time that they kicked the hornet's nest. There'd be nothing left of them within 24 hours.
@@OneBiasedOpinion Sounds like someone who knows nothing about what they're talking about. No you do not have 13 carriers, you have 11, and I know you're referring to the ones under construction/outfitting, but those are just going to enter service at the same time the older Nimitz are being decommissioned. Either way, the US hasn't even deployed more than three carriers in decades and if you think any of those can be surged quickly then you need to read up more. A US CSG is devastating to 3rd world countries, not to China. Dumbasses like you are so disillusioned by beating up 3rd world countries you think China is the same. "Right off their doorstep", if you want to sink your entire fleet quite easily, then by all means, go ahead. Wouldn't even be within 600 miles of China's coast and can still be hit. Either way, all those 13 carriers and bases in that region combined would *still* be less airpower than China can bring in that region from the mainland alone and it grows rapidly every year. Cope
this is why we need to invest into completely automated production facility's that can produce at war time levels at all times but scale down when we dont need that many pieces of equipment with a flip of the switch.
In ww2 The German Battlecruiser Graffe Spee was attacked with shells that were about "artilary sized" and was scuttled because it couldn't return to base. Brilliant Post!
I started getting ads on TH-cam for Anduril last week and I had no idea what they were. I thought it was a video game at first. I was even more puzzled when I fou`d out they were a legit missile manufacturer.
Anduril has a shot at being the 2nd big new aerospace military contractor. After SpaceX, which despite the relationships, I doubt will get renamed to a Tolkien reference.
Hi Alex, I've been watching your shows for about 9 months now and find the very informative and to the point. Thanks for all your hard work. PAUL from England.
Simple, easy, and quickly produced. Finally there’s someone in the pentagon with a few brain cells. I’ve often advocated the navy having around 25-50 small and simple escort carriers like we had in ww2. The vertical takeoff and landing ability of the F-35B would be perfect for the smaller escort carriers without the need for a complex catapult system. The escort carriers could be used for closer combat with the enemy because if you have 25-50 of them it wouldn’t be a devastating blow if we lose a few of them. In contrast if we lose one of our big super carriers it’s a serious loss.
The problem with small carriers is that a 50% smaller carrier isnt 50%worse nor 50 %cheaper Its much worse The hulls are cheap The engines arent The planes arent Radars arent
To be fair, using Russia’s navy as any type of point of comparison is a bit unfair. Russia and navy are antonyms. The Moskva was sunk as much due to standard Russian incompetence then anything else
Rapid Dragon reminds me of the missile pods deployed from warships in David Weber's "Honorverse", including the use of various missiles with varying roles, including active jamming/EW. Anduril may not be making the same sort of uber-missiles Lockheed and others are, but they are making the sort of complimentary missiles that will both allow those more expensive missiles to better carry out their missions, while taking advantage of the mix to allow the better utilization of less expensive weapons as well. A lot of information, but very positive.
The point Adm Zim made about the effect of a ASM not being by blast alone is a good one. As a Brit HMS Sheffield was lost to an Exocet in 1982 by an Argentine Exocet and the warhead never actually went off. The rocket motor and kinetic energy was enough to disable her and kill many of her crew.
Always take the marketing points with a bucket of salt. My guess is that all they have done is outsourced most of the sub-components. Rocket motor with 75 individual parts requiring 15 different tools and 10 hours of assembly time? Just buy it as a completed unit and now it's one part that requires two tools and half an hour to install. It's easy to claim the ability to ramp up production quickly when you can train just about anyone to bolt things together and plug things in but what about the sub-contractors? Can they ramp up production as fast?
@@benahaus True for off the shelf stuff but this would be more like 8 suppliers each providing a single specialized component. Any one of them goes down and you can't make your finished product.
This was the best video on what Anduril is doing that I have seen! Great job explaining the uses for each Barracuda variant. I have to believe Anduril will develop a variant with a 1000lb or 2000lb payload at some point in the future. Would be great if you do a show on the arsenal-1 factory idea. Anduril is going to do to the defense industry what SpaceX did to the rocket industry! Hopefully DOD doesn't string them along and mess them up!
The mass-production equivalent of a Ford Model T. Our ability to rapidly mobilize production is just as much of a deterrent as the weapons we create. Take notice world: we still know how to make our defence better, faster and more cost-effective than you can!
Then you're just delusional. That industrial base is gone. You think China, the greatest industrial power in human history is concerned about your "production"? LOL
One thing I don’t understand is why are weapon stockpiles are ever allowed to become so low in the first place? IDK a ton about how things work regarding it but I always assumed we at least had two stockpiles 1 for emergency wartime use and another for use when we’re supplying other nations with the means to defend themselves.
The problem is munitions are perishable and require a ton of maintenance depending on their complexity. And disposal of expired stuff is extremely difficult. There is a ton of expense and logistics needed to just maintain an existing stock
The Neptune cruise missile had 330 lbs warheads? So that means that 1 SLAM-ER cruise missile which has an 800 lb warhead could have taken that ship down.
Anduril CEO & founder Palmer Luckey runs with the same herd as Peter Thiel, Alex Karp of (helped find UBL so Team 6 can pay him a visit) Palantir, & Elon Musk of SpaceX & Starlink.
Carefull with that sort of glazing. Few years ago people were saying that kind of stuff about Elon and look how that turned out. Also CEOs are usually just the salesmen and "idea guys" (if even that) not the actual geniuses behind the things they sell.
@@_-_sinexus_-_usually more sales than sense. Often they have one of the original ideas that helped the company get started if they’re the founder, but as Jobs proved even that is optional if you’re good enough at the sales pitch (and covering up the contributions of others).
@@_-_sinexus_-_ Per Bill Gates "You can feel whatever you want about Elon's behavior but there is no one in our time who has done more to push the bounds of science and innovation than he has."
They don't make much tbh, they're combined profits is less than that of many individual top US tech companies. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, all individually outcompete the entire defense industry. Northrop Grummand, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc. are all stable companies which are able to reliably profit each quarter, but the profit margins are incredibly low and they are basically slow steady and reliable profit levels, especially when comparing the actual magnitude of expenses and upkeep they have. No other companies behave like defense companies do, they have such a narrow profit margin relative to the expenditures that everything has to be carefully calculated and no innovative risk taking is afforded, if the military wants something new they commission contracts and pay for the R&D to develop a prototype, and then the favorites are chosen to be produced at volume as the military need and occasionally a bit extra for export to friendly nations. People aught to realize that the defense industry is the most corruption free and clean cut industry within the United States, we should focus on the tech and pharmaceutical companies, Monsanto, etc.
@@gagepoynor7997 Oh no no no. Several of the biggest defense conglomerates achieve three figure returns on investment. They are highly profitable. You should spend some time reading their SEC filings. The factors that determine pay for those in the C-Suite are primarily stock price and cash flow. Those two items are about 80-85% of the weight that determines their pay. Customer satisfaction is 1%. Yes. Do some reading or find NAVAIR's Industry Insight series of studies of the big defense firms. Everyone wants their defense program to be on time and on budget, but that doesn't enhance cash flow or stock price. What does enhance stock price and cash flow are being late and over budget. The market richly rewards these firms for being late and over budget, so their executives who get paid mainly on their performance enhancing cash flow and stock price are maybe not experts on weapons but they are double damn good at being late and over budget. And they are cagey sneaky about it. Win the bid, behave for a year or two so the program becomes established and painful to just cancel, they start slipping and over running. The war fighter needs the stuff yesterday. Do you cancel or find a way to work with them? They know they have you over a barrel. You get in production, complete a few years thinking your prices have stabilized then out of nowhere the contractor was 40% more on the next lot. 40%. No justification. So you say no and negotiations drag into the next year and you lose a whole year of production. This is real life. The companies are playing hardball so having up and comers like Anduril is a big deal.
I was a Radarman/OS on a couple of missile destroyers back in the early 70's and also worked in ECM so I was "tactically" aware of our Naval capacities compared to the Soviet Unions capabilities. The Soviets back then had anti ship missiles that were pretty impressive and I felt we should have had some kind of anti shipping missiles on our destroyers. The Harpoons came out a few years after I got out of the Navy in 1975.
Raytheon has been ripping off the American tax payer for years. I hope anduril becomes a major player with government officials willing to use common sense and not being bought by lobbying by the old guard.
The Naval Strike Missile is also being used by the US Navy. It’s made by Norway. It has a 260 lb Titanium cased penetrating blast and controlled fragmentation warhead. It has a range of 160 miles and travels to its target skimming the sea at Mach 0.93. It can be used against maritime targets ships or subs on the surface or land attack. It can hit moving or stationary targets. And our FA-18’s all can carry the SLAM-ER cruise missile. It has a 170 mile range and was made for land targets but can be used against any moving or fixed target. It is the most accurate missile the US Navy had. CEP of 1 meter or 3 feet roughly. It Carrie’s a big warhead too. 800 pounds. It can sink pretty much anything. 2 or 3 could sink an aircraft carrier.
Raytheon is making NSMs in Tuscon AZ for the US Navy. Neither NSM or SLAM-ER offer sufficient stand off range to engage Chinese DDGs. Their SAMs have ranges approaching 400 km. NSM and SLAM-ER would be useful against lower value targets however, but I don't think SLAM-ER is going to do well against moving targets. It is basically an old IR Maverick seeker with a data link back to the F/A-18.
Love it. If they can deliver, then we finally have our WWII production overmatch piece. Honestly, this makes me a lot more comfortable with whichever direction any of the geopolitical issues end up going.
If the Air Force has been testing these bad boys for years am pretty sure they have been building them just as long, inventory problem solved!!! WOW!!!!!
Anduril barracuda due to being less complex to manufacture could also start being produced by our allies like Canada Japan Philippines Australia and Poland and other western allies. This could bolster their defenses and assist us in having more resources to draw from in a shooting war
I think you left out the important info, how much is this missile? And why not test that hyperscale production in Ukraine even on the 100 version? Seems all marketing speak until proven
It is sad to see these American advancements while Ukraine does not even get the decommissioned weapons they used to. Even if it was always minuscule numbers when compared to the effects Ukrainians were able to make with it.
I totally agree with your anti-ship warfare comments! I mean, I have always said… Is there really such thing as a good explosion/fire on a ship? Especially considering they are carrying such combustible materials (fuel, ammunition, etc.). Not to mention when hit in the right place the electronic aspects of the ship are quite vulnerable. 💥🚢💥
It is so true with people changing the pitch or tone of their voice because they're making a video. Just use your normal talking voice. I almost get slight anxiety when watching these videos cause it feels like he's yelling the whole time
@@philmccracken2012 yeah lol it sounds so stupid and fake that i stopped watching after a couple of minutes. it also seems difficult to me to talk like that.
Davis/Monthan has a whole bunch of "Bomber" aircraft capable of deploying "Rapid Dragon" systems. It always has come down to who can spend the most money. Where smart weapons once ruled the battlefield, swarming or even faux swarming seems like a page out of an old book. Great video, Alex, thank you.
It does sound too good to be true, but considering how slow, lazy, and corrupt the big players in the defense industry have gotten since the Cold War ended, it probably is true that they could have been doing this all along, and it just took a new start-up to come along and make them look bad.
The neatest part about the Barracuda-500 is that it's short enough to fit inside the F-35's weapon's bay, it's the same length as the JSM. And the AARGM-ER and JSOW are both a bit longer, like 2 to 3 inches. As for diameter, it's an inch or two more than the GBU-53, but much less than GBU-31 at 25 inches or even GBU-38 which is 14 inches. So potentially it could fulfill the MACE requirement of a 500 lb bomb with at least a 75 lb warhead that has the range of the JASSM-ER, and 4 should fit internally within the F-35.
Go to ground.news/Sandboxx to stay fully informed on military developments around the world. Subscribe through my link right now for 40% off their Vantage Plan, which is what I use everyday.
5:45 I'll just put it in terms we can all understand...they just PWND their competition
Fuck sake use the superior metric system!
look at that thumb placement at 28:56
Another banger video.
Can you use metric system like every single professional? Alternatively switch to eggs and giraffe necks as a unit of measure, makes more sense than imperial at least.
*_YOU’RE ALEX HOLLINGS!_*
AND THIS..... IS AIR POWERRRRR
HE'S ALEX HOLLINGS!
I’m hauling ass & He’s Hollings Alex!
I kinda wish I was as cool as
ALEX HOLLININGS!
@@slugface322 We have to be realistic about these things, especially WISH POWER!
"the US would run out of precision guided munitions in the first week"
I'd hate to be on the recieving end of that.
I was just thinking that ,the damage it would cause massive 👍
Yeah… I’ve seen what they did in 1 day for FUN
I completely understand what everyone is saying too. The USA can absolutely cripple or irradiate an entire conventional military in such a time frame. But our issue is that China is huge and is growing by the day. What if our massive arsenal isn't sufficient this time? This is why this is so important to get this right.
@@marrqi7wini54 this is such a non issue it's hilarious. The fact you think there would be any fighting capacity left after expending everything is peak fear mongering.
Every command and control centre, decision maker, officer, surface ship, airbase, ammo bunker that was known about would be wiped off the earth.
The opening salvo of desert storm was 30 years ago and it annihilated the war fighting capability of the supposed 3rd largest army in the world at the time. Using literally every modern munition available would make that look like amateur hour.
This is ignoring the fact that nukes would get employed way before all the ammo gets used.
@@AvocadoAfficionado You're beyond delusional. The only thing I can conclude from your post is that you're a troll.
The United States has not engaged in anything resembling a peer conflict since Korea and we all know how that ended.
Also, nukes aren't happening.
As a fan of Tolkien, I know he'd probably hate Anduril being used by a defense company. But as a fan of the West, the "Flame of the West" is just so badass.
He got to hate things freely because he was protected, he'll get over it. (From heaven)
His story was about a reluctant alliance coming together in the face of growing tyranny that threatened civilisation. He saw it in his lifetime. He would approve of those who stood up again for things worth fighting for.
Considering his equating Sauron and the orcs with Nazis, he might not judge the name use too harshly...
@@willadeefriesland5107 He definitely did not do that. Don't mistake applicability with allegory.
@@willadeefriesland5107it’s a common misconception that LOTR is an allegory for WW2. It’s not.
The biggest advantage I would argue for this is a long range, cheap strike option for all the sub 1000t ships that most of the US adversaries seem to really like.
That’s a massive use case for the US, one of the most important capabilities they need to have on hand.
Slava TSMC 🇹🇼 Heroyam TAIWANese 🦾
Seems that Russia moved their Black Sea Fleet to another Port outside range of Harpoon & Sea Drones...seems like 5-10 of these in Ukraines Hands could sure make a mess.
Definitely a huge asset in that regard. In a more general sense a huge advantage is the combination of versatility, cheap cost, rapidly increased production.
oh absolutely agree. I'm picturing F-15 EX's loaded down with these things.
Good Job Anduril, American ingenuity when you need it most.
🇺🇲💪🇺🇲💪🇺🇲💪🇺🇲
Yeah, genuinely impressive stuff here. And it's nice to see some new start-up companies getting into the defense industry, to shake things up. The old dinosaurs have been under-performing and over-charging for far too many decades now.
Well, looks like the Ukrainians have already produced a jet drone about the same size. It’s named after a pastry Russians can’t pronounce.
@@fakecubed It's not all the fault of Raytheon & Lockheed.
The military is it's own worse enemy, they put requirements out that basically break the laws of physics and then change the requirements hundreds of times.
After the debacle with trying to stuff vast amounts of new untested tech onto the LCS ships, congress ordered the navy to go buy some existing off-the-shelf ships.
The navy has now spent 10 years and billions of dollars piling on requirements to the off-the-shelf procurement and they haven't even finalised the design for the new constellation class which is now a totally different ship to the one they were ordered to buy.
No, not at all. This is a company full of vindictive tech bros that are great at building slick demos. Where is the innovation?
Simply the best, most factual, American military channel out there. Thanks, Sandboxx. We appreciate your passion and effort!
But Western game changers went horribly wrong in Ukraine 😮
@@xvy333 Sshhhh Americans and our Globalist Gods like me dont like it when you speak the truth about our utterly corrupt, overly complex and hyped armed forces. We work in the USA to let them grift our money for endless war.
Amen!
Pfft, it's 95% enthusiastic hype, with 5% vaguely reality check at the very end.
Ah cack! Stop your hyperexcitability,. It's just self promoting BS. Anyone can do it. The big boys just had no incentive to go low cost...because they each have a monopoly. In the space arena, SpaceX showed them otherwise.
We can do better than Anduril but they are so full of themselves that they did not even respond to our letters. Too bad for them. NEXT!!!
The biggest sign that Anduril is truly innovative is that they made a cel shaded anime adjacent style commercial for their missiles.
Every other defense company contracts from "industry proven" animation outfits are forever stuck in 2005. Look at any MIC product video and you can't unsee it.
Bro that shop looks like the back of the MOC or Avenger in GTA 5🤣🤣 hot dayum🔥🔥
Additionally, the company name, Anduril, is named after the sword of Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. Cheers from Seattle!
So good marketing rather than good tech?
@@leifkirchoff no it's bad marketing. who will buy this shit? youtubers? people watching that ad? it will be the governments. they don't appreciate or even like these kind of advertisements. the product is very interesting and very promising. while it lacks many capabilities the cheap cost and simple production is just amazing and game changer and adds a new capability.
@@riskinhos Then the question for the company is how cheaply can these ads be made if nobody will appreciate them. If this style will set them back less then that is the obvious choice.
The sword reforged from the shards of Narsil, Anduril, Flame of the West
I don't know if I like them and Palantir lifting names from Tolkien. It kinda changes the taste of the original.
@@johnathanclayton2887, I wouldn't being known as the Mouth of Sauron ♥️♥️.
I can't deal with all that gingivitis, tho.
Came here to say this. Bravo
@@johnathanclayton2887 same. Pretty sure Tolkien wouldnt want to be assosiated with weapons manufacturing as well, based on what I know about him.
He wouldn't like it, but I still prefer that American companies draw from Western canon to name their stuff than the alternative. Western culture needs to be protected and preserved.
Anduril CEO & founder Palmer Luckey became a self-made billionaire at age 22 when he sold his Oculus AR/VR company to Facebook for $2.3 billion in 2014. He was fired by Zuckerberg in 2017 when it was revealed that he supported Donald Trump. Although Zuckerberg & Facebook repeatedly denied that Luckey’s firing was politically motivated during a congressional hearing, Luckey would later end up winning his case against Facebook for $100 million in a California court. Facebook was found guilty of violating California law by punishing an employee for his political activities. Instead of retiring early, Palmer Luckey founded Anduril less than 4 months after his firing from Facebook in June of 2017.
Trump is a domestic enemy.
You don't think it's suspicious he goes from FACEBOOK to weapons manufacturer.... Perhaps they are up to other things at Facebook or maybe Facebook is the weapon.
Thanks for the completely irrelevant information
@@blakebrown534not irrelevant at all, but you’ve made it obvious (in typical liberal fashion) that you rather censor stuff that isn’t convenient to your narrative lol. Stick your head in the sand. 👍
I think it’s fascinating to hear where this guy (and company) came from, and how they’re already a big player in the defense industry seemingly overnight.
People with that kind of resilience (especially combined with a forward-thinking mentality - ie Elon for example) have a history of disrupting industries and massively driving down cost while increasing competition. I mean Tesla, Starlink, and SpaceX all cut the previous costs in their respective industries by HALF overnight.
@@blakebrown534 It wasn't irrelevant enough to stop you from commenting 😉
Big Anduril fan, here. I've followed Palmer Luckey for some years now and the energy and innovation he's bringing to the defense of freedom is refreshing. Kudos for brining us this update on their doings, Alex!
"Defence of freedom"..?
The U.S. has been manipulating both sides of every war since the 70's.
Right now they're supplying weapons to 1 nation at war & 1 engaged in colonial genocide,
getting all that valuble real-time data they can
@@truthseeker9454 same, dudes legendary. The type to do something only cause someone said it wasn't possible 💛🔥
Is it a public company able to invest in stocks? I can’t find it in the Stash app
@@chupacabra304 I checked on the Anduril website and it doesn't appear to be publicly traded. Since Palmer Luckey walked away from Facebook (now Meta) with a lot of cash Anduril might be "closely held" or privately funded in this phase.
Luckey may choose to take it public once it's better established, but many investors wait because of all the regulatory rules that public companies have to follow. I hope that helps.
@@Rvbcaboose714 You said it! I read how he developed the Oculus Rift and it was mad scientist stuff. 🤓
That's the kind of guy I want on my team!
Rapid Dragon is insane. Such a simple, but effective idea
Long haul truckin’ is what keeps the B-52 in service. Why maintain those when more flexible platforms can fill that role and also do other things?
The Chair Force has been rolling ballistic missile surrogates out the back of C-17s for many years. They use these surrogates for testing BMD weapons like SM-3, THAAD, etc. Easier than ground launch. There was a proposal some years ago to launch ICBMs from big transport aircraft, so it wasn't such a big stretch to extend the idea to cruise missiles.
PLA Mighty Dragon: "Our stealthy* profile will make our (American) enemies think twice about coming near our territory*!"
*(If you take our claims at face value)
USAF Rapid Dragon: "I just got kicked off a cargo plane. So anyways I started shooting..."
@@doujinflip What if China destroy GPS system above Asia? What is the different between 1 missile getting lost and 1000 missiles getting lost in Pacific? The whole idea of stealth bomber or supersonic bomber is their mssiles won't get lost easily without satellite guidance if they are dropped near the targets.
@@joelau2383satellites move, and theres thousands of them, one gets destroyed, another satellite’s orbit will pick up the empty space, also, china hasn’t demonstrated the ability to take down satellites, only the United States has.
Furthermore, GPS can simply be substituted with radar and radio data from say an AWACS or similar.
This manufacturing choke point has been something I was concerned about. The American military needs to be able to scale quickly and shrink just as quickly with doing massive damage to industry and employments.
🎯
That just doesn't happen with the complexity of weapons systems today.
Industries produce or perish.
Even with the simpler systems of WWII, American production did not peak until less than a year before the war was over. Without having the production capacity in advance, it could take half a decade to be fully ramped up.
From New Zealand, the US Department of Defence has made overtures to both the NZ and Australian Governments to establish precision weapons manufacturing in both countries.
The geographic location of both countries make them suitable to supply a war in the Pacific region.
@@mitseraffej5812 Makes sense
@@wisenber They need to advance the manufacturing tech in Tandem. If we can build a vending machine that manufactures missiles at will then building more and better vending machines could scale the manufacturing exponentially.
The Anuril's 500's 100lb warhead would be very useful against the Chinese navy. Their ships on average are half the tonnage of their US counterparts.
The Ukraine conflict has taught us we need not a high/low mix but more like a high/guerrilla mix. We need to stop assuming we'd have pristine bases for our fighters. That we'd have unmolested manufacturing with endless resources, that if we can master the logistics, that's most the battle. We need fighters that can land on highways, missiles that can be assembled in a garage, vehicles with shared components designed for streamlined repair and return to service.
Those assumptions went out the window a very long time ago. The US is flying F-35s off highways in Finland, the Marines just finished refurbishing an old WWII era airstrip on Peleliu and the Air Force is rebuilding their old base on Tinian after lengthening the runway and adding ramps at the commercial airport on Tinian.
Interesting. So can I back apply that to the war on terra? We needed 🐐 fucking 🐪 riding cave dwellers in pajamas ?
You might want to look at the displacement and armament of the Type 054C, 054D and Type 055 guided missile destroyers. Your tonnage assumption is a wee bit out of date. Also look at the size of their Type 054 frigates. The PLAN is not a brown water navy any more.
Agreed, why even need airlines missiles when you know the target of the ships is Taiwan. May as well have large numbers of land launched missiles and also land launched sea drones.
@@davidsuzukiispolpot At the recent Shangri La Forum the Indopacom commander mentioned that in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan his job was to "turn the Taiwan Straits into an unmanned hellscape for a month using classified capabilities". That, he said would buy him "time for everything else". I have a hunch the US has a plan and the means to implement it.
I've been following Anduril for a while and I love their work. I recommend anybody to read their white paper titled "Rebuild the Arsenal". It provides a pretty neat look into their plans for the future.
Crazy how a guy can go from making VR headsets with oculus and go into selling that in working on making military weapons for the us and its allies the guy has a Amazing Story and I don't know how a lot more people don't know about his company cuz his systems are really high tech
@@brianv1988 The tech industry folks really disrupted every other industry, from music distribution to driving folks to the airport, even space travel. And the guys who created it all don't care about anything except getting their 30% off the top, and will use whatever crazy algorithm they need to to squeeze out every last bit of efficiency. Only a matter of time before they got into the MIC and started putting the old dinosaurs to shame.
It’s nice, but so far, it’s mostly hype.
@@melgross not really he has multiple contracts with the US Military they're even field testing some of the newer stuff and already has different systems active in the US military there are other countries like Canada France Germany Australia Sweden Norway and a couple other big countries that have already some of their systems and Tech that he has manufactured an engineered buy this company. this is not a new company it's been around for a little while it's just not as well known as the bigger companies like Lockheed and Northrop or Boeing this company has done a lot of work with AI and they even have their own system already active in use with a couple countries for Air Base defense and counter drone systems both kinetic and jamming systems and sum of the system that he was talking about on this video has been in different stages of testing for a while and have proven the capability works in training so it's not just hype
@@brianv1988 I hope so as I usually see testing from new devices and I’ve seen nothing on this one so far.
It's crazy how missiles are quickly iterating and becoming even more important than the vehicles that carry them. Autonomous weapons might be the most important future frontier.
Unfortunately our military is more concerned with DEI and Social Justice initiatives... we're screwed.
@@TheWildcard4542000 Man sees a single ad promoting gay soldiers and instantly concludes that the entire US military is collapsing
@TheWildcard4542000 tell us you know nothing about current DoD research, development and contracting without telling us you know *nothing* about it.
The biggest challenges that are faced right now are cost bloat and red tape, not the nonsense you're going on about.
Try to learn from something other than memes. You'll actually learn something.
It's more than a single ad. Are you even in the military? @@Generic_Noob
@@p1zd3clethality needs a strong place in every echelon from the fire team to the Pentagon. Pushing for mentally ill people filling the ranks and show horning women into roles where EVERYONE knows they lack the physical prowess to do the job is going to cost lives. It sounds like you're trying to convey you know something about contracting. Maybe you knocked out that GFEBS online course. But what do you know of doctrine or war fighting?
Anduril is another example of a private company like SpaceX taking advantage of an opportunity and filling a desperate need that has been lacking for a long time. Good for them. The OEM weapons manufacturers need to take note. If they are successful, Anderil will do to the defence manufacturing industry as what SpaceX is doing to the space industry and Tesla is doing to legacy automakers. I pray they succeed. Thanks Alex for your content and bringing this info.
I said similar at ---- Ah cack! Stop your hyperexcitability,. It's just self promoting BS. Anyone can do it. The big boys just had no incentive to go low cost...because they each have a monopoly. In the space arena, SpaceX showed them otherwise.
We can do better than Anduril but they are so full of themselves that they did not even respond to our letters. Too bad for them. NEXT!!!
Yep. Finally throwing off the comfortable status quo and innovating once again. It's always been one of our nation's finest strengths and it's been neglected for too long.
Cost Plus contracts so beloved by the government micromanagers have caused the legacy industry to become too fat & comfortable. Hopefully these new weapons can break the spell.
A 110lb missile with a 98 mile range and 35 lb warhead is astounding when it’s travelling at 575 mph.
And could be used by literally any platform. Even the 250 line could be used by everything
The Chinese can do the same thing. They will build thousands of missiles to match the USA.
Hah.
@@jonjames7328 But China can match the USA missile for missile
120 minute loitering time no less that’s ridiculous
Anduril actually calls itself a SOFTWARE company & Lattice is their core product. Their motto is Autonomy for Every Mission Type through Affordable Mass.
Same as Tesla
The Henry Ford of cruise missile production. Nice.
Hands down one of the absolute top channels on youtube, keep the good work up!
Disclaimer: You probably shouldn't assemble cruise missiles in your garage.
The possibility that you could though means that the IDF considers your house a purely military target.
If it comes to war with China, everything is on the table.
Garage built cruise missiles are what the founders meant with the second amendment
Building them in your neighbours garage is safer.
@@Justanotherconsumer I mean just living in the same country as someone who (rightfully) disagrees with Israeli war crimes gets u labeled as a human shield.
Example, calling children maimed by Israel's terrorist attack on pagers and radios "human shields"
Good opportunity to license these out under the AUKUS Pillar 2 arrangements and start production and stockpiling in Australia.
Taiwan already signed a contract with Anduril
Oooooo Barracuda!
Yeah but Palmer Lucky is kinda shady
@@acmelkaI think you mean he’s an evil little ****
@@acmelka Why do you say that?
@@acmelkanot. He’s a Magic Man.
@@truthseeker9454same reason Elon is “problematic”?
We need new defence companies like this to rise up. The consolidation starting back in the early 90's looks like a huge mistake now. From 51 companies down to 5. Not enough competition
Most infuriating was that it was so obvious & predictable. A grad school colleague of mine wrote a very persuasive paper on the topic in 1994. Wish I still had a copy of it, because I bet most of his worst-case scenarios have been realized.
The peace dividend of the 1990s has been a disaster for the American defense industry.
Do you know the reason for the consolidation? The whole reason their was consolidation is because after the down fall of the Soviet Union, the government understood that they couldn’t support all these small companies. Their just wasn’t any need for all these defense companies competing for the little amounts of contracts. So, instead of a bunch of them going out of business and losing their expertise. It was just better to consolidate and save the engineering minds.
@jamarplunkett3283 yes. I'm saying we shouldn't have cut defense spending so much and preserved more of our defense base
@@royalwins2030 Based!
Excellent as usual. How are your eyes doing? I recall you had surgery a while back. Hope all is well. You're irreplaceable.
Same question here!
I love how press releases always sound like they are talking about vacuum cleaners or something and not the most sophisticated implements of war that mankind has ever produced.
as seen on t.v
So glad to hear Alex describe cruise missiles "like suicide drones". I've long had a beef with folks calling Shaheds "drones". They're prop-driven cruise missiles. So many things with different control and mission profiles get called drones that the work is quite nearly meaningless now. Something doesn't need to even be flying anymore to be called a drone. It would be nice if we could gradually start cleaning up the lexicon so we had words that accurately described what weapon systems do.
But “drones” are 21st century and “cruise missiles” sound like tech your grandpa would use.
It’s all about marketing.
Look up the Interstate Aircraft TDR. It was a TV controlled twin propeller engined suicide drone produced in the latter part of WWII. Some 200 were expended against the Japanese and they were successful. There was an operator in a TBF Avenger watching the TV image from the drone and guiding it to its target. The drone could carry a bomb or a torpedo. Most just carried a bomb and crashed into their targets. There was a jet powered follow on being designed but the war ended and that project was cancelled. Interstate stopped making airplanes (It also made a small high wing trainer called the Kadet that morphed over time into the Arctic Tern bushplane) and went into the vacuum cleaner business making Compact and Tristar brand vacuums. They later started a defense electronics firm that still exists as a division of L3/Harris (major contractor on the Navy's ballistic missile submarine program) and manufactured fuselages for the A-1 Skyraider as a subcontractor to Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo.
"Drone" is a worker bee.
If it flies and goes about its work autonomously from the hive, it is a drone.
@@Triple_J.1 You're gonna need to look up bee biology. Drones mate with the queen. They are not worker bees. They're also not autonomous. If there's anything bee colonies aren't, it's autonomous.
Thank you for making my Friday, brother. Any updates you do on the Rapid Dragon program are a welcome to my inbox, Alex.
Anduril needs to hook up with Hadrian, which is developing automated factories.
They just got 14 billion to build a robotic manufacturing plant called Arsenal, so I’m pretty sure they already have!
Yay, more Skynet sooner. Maybe we should have autonomous robots just fight our wars... oh, wait, we are.
Or Firestorm lab
Quantity has a unique quality all its own. The US needs to have munitions in reserve adequate to supply two war theaters for at least six months or enough time to bring production up to levels that would support two war theaters continuously.
That would require 10x to over 100x of current stocks 😮
@@jackdbur Yes that is what they need.
Despite their problems Americans have always been able to find a way around obstacles. Thank God for the free World! 👍
42 years ago, during the Falklands War, an argentine fired exocet hit Hms Sheffield a type 42 destroyer. The missile war head never exploded, it entered the hull above the waterline then plowed down towards the keel breaching several decks. The rocket fuel burn killing 20 or so sailors. This is forty years ago tech, so I'm assuming better weapons today.
The Sheffield had major design flaws that prevented the crew from stopping the spread of the fires. Cable runs and openings for pipes through superstructure bulkheads were not sealed so flames could run from compartment to compartment. The ship had a single fire main that was punctured and no means to isolate the damage. You don't see that on US Navy ships which have multiple fire mains. The Type 42s didn't have sound powered phones like all US Navy ships have. They lost comms when the ship lost power and the batteries on their walkie talkies died. With sound powered phones as long as the cable is there you can talk, even through flooded compartments. I asked a Royal Navy officer about their lack of sound powered phones during a visit with them (I was a US Navy officer) and their lieutenant exclaimed "that's like Jutland!". Yeah, but they work even when your ship is burning and flooding. The nail in the coffin was that none of their portable dewatering pumps worked. Pumps from four other ships nearby didn't work either. This was a navy sailing into war and they didn't test and do maintenance on a critical damage control apparatus, their fire fighting and dewatering pumps. Btw, the Type 42s were all steel. No aluminum anywhere. I have stuck a magnet to her superstructure and interior of HMS Southampton to satisfy myself of this fact.
By comparison USS Stark, which was very much aluminum from the main deck upwards, was struck by two identical Exocet missiles one of which did indeed detonate as designed while the other was a dud but the rocket motor did burn for a while after impact contributing to additional fire and damage. Nevertheless the crew of Stark put the fires out and the ship sailed home under her own power. The US Navy does damage control better than any navy in the world. I'll also mention that INS Hanit, a roughly 1500 ton corvette ate a Chinese C802 fired at it by Hezbollah in 2006. The ship suffered damage to its flight deck and hanger but was repaired and back at sea within three weeks. Getting hit by a missile doesn't guarantee the ship is lost. Sheffield was unfortunately a damage control cock up of the first order.
Bro, you're so close to being able to write above a middle school level.
And by that you mean most media that's out there@@slappy8941
@@slappy8941 Please point us to your brilliant essay collection, O great one.
The blast wave traveling across the ground when that depot went up was pretty impressive, except for those experiencing it.
Oh, I am sure it made an impression on those folks who were on site. 🙂
They were impressed as well. In pressed into the ground.
Videos of the explosion showed a mushroom cloud that resembled a nuclear weapon, it was really something.
It was impressive for what it was. The blast was around 1 kiloton worth of power in comparison to the ones detonated in WW2, which were about 15 kilotons. In comparison to modern systems, it was about .0001 percent yield of today’s smaller weapons.
@@dreb222how many MOABs was it?
I grew up on a C-5 base. Wonder how many of those rapid dragon palates a C-5 could handle :D Those things are monsters.
@@LordPhoton-rl4ot do you want to drop the entire supply of precision munitions in 1 or 2 sorties?
If that solves the problem then why not?
Sadly none due to how the C-5 loads cargo.
Great research and video
I’ve been following Anduril since attending a 2022 presentation they did in Atlanta (it was the Altius munition they presented). Beyond intriguing .. and their development pace is insane. Great work as always Alex Hollings
We used to have dual-sourcing of Tomahawks to ensure supply. Now we need quadruple souring of next generation weapons.
Absolutely we need multiple factories building cruise missiles, artillery shells and bombs. Also Landmine production should be ramped up. The US should be able to build 1000 low cost cruise missiles a month along with 150,000 shells a month. Anything less is not preparing adequately. Even that should be able to be ramped up at war time to double or triple. Should be stockpiling massive amounts of material now. Also we need to create explosive manufacturing plants and manufacture Cl20 instead of TNT as it is much more potent per pound.
That would be ideal except that companies like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, BAE, etc. claim the data package and software for their systems are proprietary. They won't sell them to anybody, even the government. A lot of aircraft and weapons cannot be maintained by government depots because the manufactures refuse to share their data. And they have battalions of aggressive litigators who will drop lawsuits if the government tried to claim rights to the data for the aircraft and weapons the American taxpayer buys. There is an awareness of the need to claw back data rights and do more in house to get away from monopolist defense contractors but this will take time.
First the JASAM,
Then the LRASM,
And the culmination will be the ORGASM
Orbital Re-entry Guided Anti-ship Missile? Got it. How many do you need?
Or WARGASM.
JDAM already has this sort of very simple assembly, with high degrees of modularity. It makes sense to extend that methodology to cruise missiles. But one disadvantage of this method of that you're offloading much of the complexity to the suppliers, so you also need to make sure they are setting up shop in the same modular scalable way. Otherwise you'll have plenty of scale, but not enough parts to put together.
The electronics would be the part to worry about. Maybe the explosive bits as well. Machining and stamping metal parts are things this country mastered mass production of long ago.
Pretty sure Anduril is already planning that sort of factory design, I believe they've discussed it either in videos or in some article.
@@zibbitybibbitybop yeah but that's only their factory. All the shops that make the components also need to be able to scale.
They are going full vertical integration no need for suppliers b
@@WilliamMacLeod-en3pm you can't utilize off the shelf components and do vertical integration, those are literally the opposite.
There is nothing stopping rapid dragon from being used with glide bomb systems as on many different types of aircraft. Even helicopters could be used with it as well for land warfare.
It’s not so much sinking the ship physically. It’s getting to the ship. My last tour was as an FCC on an arleigh Burke destroyer. The carrier we escorted was the safest place on the planet. Besides its own fire control systems-Phalanx, NSSMS- we all protected it as well. Slaved radar systems well out around the curve of the earth. All working together with all other ships. Our ship alone multiple FC radar systems, gun systems and missile systems BGM-109 being my specialty at that time. A naval carrier group is a war starter/ender all by itself. Sinking the key ship is like throwing a dart through multiple ceiling fans into a drinking straw. Quite possible but not probable
A lot of folks don't realize how devastating a single American carrier group really is. Mostly because we've rarely ever shown what they can do and the few times we have, it's been more or less hushed up by those who witnessed it.
And we float 13 of these groups. Simultaneously, if needed. We'd know days in advance if China wanted to get froggy. They'd have several such groups on their doorstep right around the time that they kicked the hornet's nest. There'd be nothing left of them within 24 hours.
@@OneBiasedOpinionthat’s what I was trying to say. I agree 💯
@@OneBiasedOpinion Sounds like someone who knows nothing about what they're talking about. No you do not have 13 carriers, you have 11, and I know you're referring to the ones under construction/outfitting, but those are just going to enter service at the same time the older Nimitz are being decommissioned. Either way, the US hasn't even deployed more than three carriers in decades and if you think any of those can be surged quickly then you need to read up more. A US CSG is devastating to 3rd world countries, not to China. Dumbasses like you are so disillusioned by beating up 3rd world countries you think China is the same. "Right off their doorstep", if you want to sink your entire fleet quite easily, then by all means, go ahead. Wouldn't even be within 600 miles of China's coast and can still be hit.
Either way, all those 13 carriers and bases in that region combined would *still* be less airpower than China can bring in that region from the mainland alone and it grows rapidly every year. Cope
How are you gonna defend from torpedoes tho
@ ever heard of SONAR?
this is why we need to invest into completely automated production facility's that can produce at war time levels at all times but scale down when we dont need that many pieces of equipment with a flip of the switch.
In ww2 The German Battlecruiser Graffe Spee was attacked with shells that were about "artilary sized" and was scuttled because it couldn't return to base. Brilliant Post!
They hit the fuel oil filtration system, which cut the available fuel from a few days/weeks of sailing to a mere few hours.
one of the best from you ALEX! Congrats
I started getting ads on TH-cam for Anduril last week and I had no idea what they were. I thought it was a video game at first. I was even more puzzled when I fou`d out they were a legit missile manufacturer.
20 years ago the B-2 bomber could hit EIGHTY separate targets in one pass with JDAMs.
Please talk about the Pye Wackett missile.
It was made to protect the XB-70 Valkyrie
Worth more than $14 Billion and Anduril is still a privately owned company...
They have learned from the errors of others. Never go public if you want to achieve business goals.
Anduril has a shot at being the 2nd big new aerospace military contractor. After SpaceX, which despite the relationships, I doubt will get renamed to a Tolkien reference.
Don't forget Kratos.
@@philsalvatore3902 And Palantir.
Hi Alex, I've been watching your shows for about 9 months now and find the very informative and to the point.
Thanks for all your hard work.
PAUL from England.
The barracuda launch trailer really went hard
100lbs is plenty of explosive to damage anything. Even if it doesnt sink the ship, it already greatly diminishes its capabilities.
Every time I hear "Barracuda" Heart's guitar riff plays in my head :p
Simple, easy, and quickly produced. Finally there’s someone in the pentagon with a few brain cells. I’ve often advocated the navy having around 25-50 small and simple escort carriers like we had in ww2. The vertical takeoff and landing ability of the F-35B would be perfect for the smaller escort carriers without the need for a complex catapult system. The escort carriers could be used for closer combat with the enemy because if you have 25-50 of them it wouldn’t be a devastating blow if we lose a few of them. In contrast if we lose one of our big super carriers it’s a serious loss.
If we only had the shipbuilding capacity to do it
The problem with small carriers is that a 50% smaller carrier isnt 50%worse nor 50 %cheaper
Its much worse
The hulls are cheap
The engines arent
The planes arent
Radars arent
Awesome to see how far your channel has come dude, congrats and keep it up!
If Anduril's weapons are as slick as thier animation, i think were in good hands
If his sword could shoot cruise missiles, why did Aragorn even bother with going to Gondor? Did the Elves deny him their airspace?
Fellbeasts' unparalleled ISR capability and soft-kill countermeasures are not often discussed in military literature
Eagles wouldn't allow it
Could someone explain this post to me pl
Eagles failed to achieve early uncontested air superiority over Nazgul.
@@tinmandallas7600the conmpany is called “Anduril”, the same sword used by Aragorn in Lord of the Rings.😂😂
Outstanding! A sound, professional grade presentation. For those trying to stay in the loop - required!!!
Thanks Alex for your channel!!! 👍🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸😉
Lockheed Martin will really be pissed off if US Army starts replacing their Hellfire missiles with a cheaper ang longer range Barracuda 100 missiles.
I have no idea why anyone's buying the hellfire given the brimstone exists.
Also gotta love its longrange cousin the Spear.
Got’ta love competition!
Good job Alex. Thank you Anduril
Nice report. Data is presented in a way to give a good overview without disclosing too much. Thanks.
To be fair, using Russia’s navy as any type of point of comparison is a bit unfair. Russia and navy are antonyms. The Moskva was sunk as much due to standard Russian incompetence then anything else
From 1905 to today the more things change the more they stay the same
Rapid Dragon reminds me of the missile pods deployed from warships in David Weber's "Honorverse", including the use of various missiles with varying roles, including active jamming/EW.
Anduril may not be making the same sort of uber-missiles Lockheed and others are, but they are making the sort of complimentary missiles that will both allow those more expensive missiles to better carry out their missions, while taking advantage of the mix to allow the better utilization of less expensive weapons as well.
A lot of information, but very positive.
If you blind command and control tower of the ship first, it can't fight back and is a sitting duck then for further missiles aimed at the hull.
"Kinetic Diplomacy" - gotta love that phrase!
The point Adm Zim made about the effect of a ASM not being by blast alone is a good one. As a Brit HMS Sheffield was lost to an Exocet in 1982 by an Argentine Exocet and the warhead never actually went off. The rocket motor and kinetic energy was enough to disable her and kill many of her crew.
Always take the marketing points with a bucket of salt. My guess is that all they have done is outsourced most of the sub-components.
Rocket motor with 75 individual parts requiring 15 different tools and 10 hours of assembly time? Just buy it as a completed unit and now it's one part that requires two tools and half an hour to install.
It's easy to claim the ability to ramp up production quickly when you can train just about anyone to bolt things together and plug things in but what about the sub-contractors? Can they ramp up production as fast?
Distributed supply chain is less efficient but more reliable than a one-stop shop.
31:00 "...more than the Chinese's money can buy" ? More like OUR MONEY, I mean those lawn chairs, toaster ovens and all.
"Defense Industrial Sector"? LoL, is that newspeak for Military Industrial Complex?
One of the best segments to date! Punchline is really more about the needed "revolution" in the DIS (MIC) than any one weapon suite.
@@benahaus True for off the shelf stuff but this would be more like 8 suppliers each providing a single specialized component. Any one of them goes down and you can't make your finished product.
This was the best video on what Anduril is doing that I have seen! Great job explaining the uses for each Barracuda variant. I have to believe Anduril will develop a variant with a 1000lb or 2000lb payload at some point in the future. Would be great if you do a show on the arsenal-1 factory idea. Anduril is going to do to the defense industry what SpaceX did to the rocket industry! Hopefully DOD doesn't string them along and mess them up!
The mass-production equivalent of a Ford Model T. Our ability to rapidly mobilize production is just as much of a deterrent as the weapons we create. Take notice world: we still know how to make our defence better, faster and more cost-effective than you can!
Then you're just delusional. That industrial base is gone. You think China, the greatest industrial power in human history is concerned about your "production"? LOL
Great work Alex!
Anduril is an amazing name for an American defense company - the “Flame of the West” reforged.
One thing I don’t understand is why are weapon stockpiles are ever allowed to become so low in the first place? IDK a ton about how things work regarding it but I always assumed we at least had two stockpiles 1 for emergency wartime use and another for use when we’re supplying other nations with the means to defend themselves.
The problem is munitions are perishable and require a ton of maintenance depending on their complexity. And disposal of expired stuff is extremely difficult. There is a ton of expense and logistics needed to just maintain an existing stock
The Neptune cruise missile had 330 lbs warheads? So that means that 1 SLAM-ER cruise missile which has an 800 lb warhead could have taken that ship down.
I wish there are more channels like yours with also non military content. You are excellent …that’s how you make content. Good job.
Anduril CEO & founder Palmer Luckey runs with the same herd as Peter Thiel, Alex Karp of (helped find UBL so Team 6 can pay him a visit) Palantir, & Elon Musk of SpaceX & Starlink.
My passion in life is Fighter Jets; but I never get enough of these AI Drone Swarm type weapon systems. LOVE IT!!!!
Anduril CEO Lucky Palmer is the real-world Tony Stark
Carefull with that sort of glazing. Few years ago people were saying that kind of stuff about Elon and look how that turned out.
Also CEOs are usually just the salesmen and "idea guys" (if even that) not the actual geniuses behind the things they sell.
@@_-_sinexus_-_usually more sales than sense.
Often they have one of the original ideas that helped the company get started if they’re the founder, but as Jobs proved even that is optional if you’re good enough at the sales pitch (and covering up the contributions of others).
@@_-_sinexus_-_ Palmer made the Oculus in his garage. He’s an engineer. Elon Musk is not.
@@_-_sinexus_-_ Per Bill Gates "You can feel whatever you want about Elon's behavior but there is no one in our time who has done more to push the bounds of science and innovation than he has."
Yet another example of perfection from Alex, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SACRIFICE AND THIS CHANNEL !!!
Sounds like they simplified assembly, but has that really been a bottleneck? I thought the actual manufacturing of components was the concern.
Its time for the military industrial complex to pay back some of the extra padding they've been getting for decades.
Unlikely.
It’d bankrupt states that are dependent on Uncle Sam’s stimulus money.
They don't make much tbh, they're combined profits is less than that of many individual top US tech companies. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, all individually outcompete the entire defense industry. Northrop Grummand, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc. are all stable companies which are able to reliably profit each quarter, but the profit margins are incredibly low and they are basically slow steady and reliable profit levels, especially when comparing the actual magnitude of expenses and upkeep they have. No other companies behave like defense companies do, they have such a narrow profit margin relative to the expenditures that everything has to be carefully calculated and no innovative risk taking is afforded, if the military wants something new they commission contracts and pay for the R&D to develop a prototype, and then the favorites are chosen to be produced at volume as the military need and occasionally a bit extra for export to friendly nations. People aught to realize that the defense industry is the most corruption free and clean cut industry within the United States, we should focus on the tech and pharmaceutical companies, Monsanto, etc.
MIC wags the tail.
@@gagepoynor7997 Oh no no no. Several of the biggest defense conglomerates achieve three figure returns on investment. They are highly profitable. You should spend some time reading their SEC filings. The factors that determine pay for those in the C-Suite are primarily stock price and cash flow. Those two items are about 80-85% of the weight that determines their pay. Customer satisfaction is 1%. Yes. Do some reading or find NAVAIR's Industry Insight series of studies of the big defense firms.
Everyone wants their defense program to be on time and on budget, but that doesn't enhance cash flow or stock price. What does enhance stock price and cash flow are being late and over budget. The market richly rewards these firms for being late and over budget, so their executives who get paid mainly on their performance enhancing cash flow and stock price are maybe not experts on weapons but they are double damn good at being late and over budget. And they are cagey sneaky about it. Win the bid, behave for a year or two so the program becomes established and painful to just cancel, they start slipping and over running. The war fighter needs the stuff yesterday. Do you cancel or find a way to work with them? They know they have you over a barrel. You get in production, complete a few years thinking your prices have stabilized then out of nowhere the contractor was 40% more on the next lot. 40%. No justification. So you say no and negotiations drag into the next year and you lose a whole year of production. This is real life. The companies are playing hardball so having up and comers like Anduril is a big deal.
@@gagepoynor7997 Bro, for someone who likes to write so much, you sure do hate paragraphs. 😂😂😂 And it's "their", not "they're".
I was a Radarman/OS on a couple of missile destroyers back in the early 70's and also worked in ECM so I was "tactically" aware of our Naval capacities compared to the Soviet Unions capabilities. The Soviets back then had anti ship missiles that were pretty impressive and I felt we should have had some kind of anti shipping missiles on our destroyers. The Harpoons came out a few years after I got out of the Navy in 1975.
Raytheon has been ripping off the American tax payer for years. I hope anduril becomes a major player with government officials willing to use common sense and not being bought by lobbying by the old guard.
The Naval Strike Missile is also being used by the US Navy. It’s made by Norway. It has a 260 lb Titanium cased penetrating blast and controlled fragmentation warhead. It has a range of 160 miles and travels to its target skimming the sea at Mach 0.93. It can be used against maritime targets ships or subs on the surface or land attack. It can hit moving or stationary targets. And our FA-18’s all can carry the SLAM-ER cruise missile. It has a 170 mile range and was made for land targets but can be used against any moving or fixed target. It is the most accurate missile the US Navy had. CEP of 1 meter or 3 feet roughly. It Carrie’s a big warhead too. 800 pounds. It can sink pretty much anything. 2 or 3 could sink an aircraft carrier.
Raytheon is making NSMs in Tuscon AZ for the US Navy. Neither NSM or SLAM-ER offer sufficient stand off range to engage Chinese DDGs. Their SAMs have ranges approaching 400 km. NSM and SLAM-ER would be useful against lower value targets however, but I don't think SLAM-ER is going to do well against moving targets. It is basically an old IR Maverick seeker with a data link back to the F/A-18.
I wonder if you can put the rail system in rapid dragon like a magazine for a ship
Ever hear of VLS, Vertical Launch System? Already there. Been there for decades.
Love it. If they can deliver, then we finally have our WWII production overmatch piece. Honestly, this makes me a lot more comfortable with whichever direction any of the geopolitical issues end up going.
If the Air Force has been testing these bad boys for years am pretty sure they have been building them just as long, inventory problem solved!!! WOW!!!!!
Anduril barracuda due to being less complex to manufacture could also start being produced by our allies like Canada Japan Philippines Australia and Poland and other western allies. This could bolster their defenses and assist us in having more resources to draw from in a shooting war
I think you left out the important info, how much is this missile? And why not test that hyperscale production in Ukraine even on the 100 version? Seems all marketing speak until proven
Anduril is one of my dream companies to work for.
If Commander Zim were ordered to, say, hold territory in the South China Sea, would the Chinese call him… Invader Zim?
Alex Dave Australia here thanks very much for this detailed video. It’s just awesome.
It is sad to see these American advancements while Ukraine does not even get the decommissioned weapons they used to. Even if it was always minuscule numbers when compared to the effects Ukrainians were able to make with it.
I totally agree with your anti-ship warfare comments! I mean, I have always said… Is there really such thing as a good explosion/fire on a ship? Especially considering they are carrying such combustible materials (fuel, ammunition, etc.). Not to mention when hit in the right place the electronic aspects of the ship are quite vulnerable. 💥🚢💥
Have to say, seeing the Anduril in front of an F-14 warms my heart.
Must have been at a museum. Or maybe it was an F-15.
@@bertg.6056 now you're going to make me rewatch it and look again. LoL
Anduril does seem to be building new manufacturing by my house here in Southern California
why do people who produce videos always have to do something strange with their voices?
It is so true with people changing the pitch or tone of their voice because they're making a video. Just use your normal talking voice. I almost get slight anxiety when watching these videos cause it feels like he's yelling the whole time
@@philmccracken2012 yeah lol it sounds so stupid and fake that i stopped watching after a couple of minutes. it also seems difficult to me to talk like that.
Davis/Monthan has a whole bunch of "Bomber" aircraft capable of deploying "Rapid Dragon" systems. It always has come down to who can spend the most money. Where smart weapons once ruled the battlefield, swarming or even faux swarming seems like a page out of an old book. Great video, Alex, thank you.
Doesn’t this all sound a little too good to be true? If this is legit then the USAF should start this right away!
Thinkin the same thing
It does sound too good to be true, but considering how slow, lazy, and corrupt the big players in the defense industry have gotten since the Cold War ended, it probably is true that they could have been doing this all along, and it just took a new start-up to come along and make them look bad.
The neatest part about the Barracuda-500 is that it's short enough to fit inside the F-35's weapon's bay, it's the same length as the JSM. And the AARGM-ER and JSOW are both a bit longer, like 2 to 3 inches. As for diameter, it's an inch or two more than the GBU-53, but much less than GBU-31 at 25 inches or even GBU-38 which is 14 inches.
So potentially it could fulfill the MACE requirement of a 500 lb bomb with at least a 75 lb warhead that has the range of the JASSM-ER, and 4 should fit internally within the F-35.