Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

Why? Why is this a thing?

..."and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats"...

Okay, but what/who is the root problem that created this company to solve this issue? The either real or perceived threats that the United States and its media affiliations have concocted has really put a tamper on its own ability to make policy decisions that benefit its own peoples. We are spending BILLIONS of dollars on wars in other countries WHILE neglecting our own. Why do we need another private company help with this?

Another question for a separate answer: why can't we spend that money on domestic issues?

We are already spending money on this type of problem. Realistically, this looks like a more cost-effective solution. So you have it completely backwards – this being a thing might actually unlock more funds for domestic issues.

Of course it probably won't work out this way because the DoD doesn't just say "We bought a bunch of Anduril Roadrunner's instead of $4m Patriot missiles [or whatever] this year, so we don't need as much budget, take some back".

But a company trying to come up with new solutions to existing problems (you might disagree they are real problems, but we are already spending the money regardless), is actually a good thing.

Just look at SpaceX – before SpaceX, NASA had the ability to send stuff to space. But post-SpaceX, they can send more payloads at a cheaper cost. Isn't that better?

Seemed pretty clear to me. Drones are a dime a dozen. Drone defense is disproportionately costly. This product's goal is to protect from drone attacks without wasting a bunch of million-dollar missiles.

Regardless of one's feelings on the military-industrial complex, the use case seems relatively straightforward.

A reasonable guess is that this is in response to the proliferation of group 3 UAS in the Ukraine conflict [0]. Personally, I am all for the US producing robotic systems designed to kill robotic systems that are designed to kill humans.

[0]https://www.eurasiantimes.com/deliveries-of-russias-deadly-o...

> Just look at SpaceX – before SpaceX, NASA had the ability to send stuff to space. But post-SpaceX, they can send more payloads at a cheaper cost. Isn't that better?

They're now at the whim of an exceedingly eccentric billionaire for their space flight stuff. If Musk one day says he doesn't want to put up satellites that can be used to threaten Russia, NASA can't do anything about it, at least immediately (as they can't just rebuild their payload to fit into ULA rockets). We've already seen that play out with Starlink.

The world pre-SpaceX wasn't good either as NASA was mostly (ab)used by Congress to distribute pork, but now I think the pendulum has swung to the other side way too far - now Congress has zero control short of emergency nationalization over SpaceX.

Before NASA started using SpaceX they basically didn't have launch capacity. They were sending astronauts to the ISS on Soyuz rockets. A private US company being the best available launch provider is an improvement on the previous status quo.

Beyond that, there are now many, many other private endeavors working to add launch capacity, many of which exist thanks to SpaceX.

Before this literally congress had to beg the Russians for space engines. And we were at the whim of a nation state that we are enemies with. I’ll take free market capitalism any day.

Whoever pays the piper calls the tune. When you refuse to pay you end up getting what you paid for.