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The US Air Force wants $5.8 billion to build 1,000 AI-driven unmanned combat aircraft, possibly more, as part of its next generation air dominance initiative (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The US Air Force wants $5.8 billion to build 1,000 AI-driven unmanned combat aircraft, possibly more, as part of its next generation air dominance initiative::The unmanned aircraft are ideal for suicide missions, the Air Force says. Human rights advocates call the autonomous lethal weapons "slaughterbots."

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

6 million dollars apiece is cheap?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The F35 costs about 80 million and they sell like hotcakes. Yes, 6 million is cheap.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh okay. I didn't realize that. Wow.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Every bolt and river has to have its entire history accounted for in case it fails

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

F35A is now down to about $70 million/piece now, which further demonstrates the point of costs coming down with mass production I think.

It originally was more like $150 million.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's almost unbelievably cheap for a combat aircraft - over five times cheaper than an MQ-9 Reaper drone, which costs 32 million. (And Reapers aren't capable of air-to-air combat, although they have other capabilities that these drones will probably lack.) Manned fighters cost even more. An F-35 is 80 million, and it's a relatively low-priced jet. An F-22 costs about twice as much. Even a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile is 400 thousand.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

It’s more like 2.5 billion for R&D and then 2.5 billion to create the factory that builds them and the first thousand units. The per unit cost is initially high and then comes down once all the front end work is done.

And as with many programs, the R&D phase may lead to a brand new use-case for drones or an entirely different purpose for one of the drone prototypes. So there can be unknown benefits too.