On Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 3:40 PM, Frank Znidarsic <[email protected]> wrote:
http://www.aol.com/article/2016/04/10/us-military-christens-self-driving-sea-hunter-warship/21340920/ Unrelated to the point about automation, the strange looking boat reminded me of a recent trip I took into Oklahoma, right next to me. I was driving there a week or so ago and drove past a US military convoy on their way to somewhere, probably an army base. The trucks (as we call them) looked a bit like this: http://allnewspipeline.com/images/277.png It occurred to me that these vehicles are probably bespoke, and require specialized knowledge to fix and maintain and require specialized parts. I wonder how much money military contractors spend on setting up a parallel line of vehicles that are not mass produced at the same levels as those available to consumers, and how much this duplication of effort costs. This would apply not only to vehicles for transport such as this, but to smaller things like drones. It seems to me that contractors should be instructed to make as much use of commercially available products as possible to get the job done within strategic limits (i.e., not becoming dependent upon goods produced in a potentially hostile country). Eric
