Ironic that everyone talking shit about "building killing machines" probably also has Ukraine flags next to their PFPs. How you think Ukraine fighting their war right now fam - with sticks and bottle rockets?
replies(8):
One can also believe multiple things at the same time, like:
* Waging war is immoral
* If someone wages war on you, it's acceptable to defend yourself instead of allow them to kill you
* Enabling war for personal profit (by selling weapons) is immoral
* Making weapons for self-defense is acceptable
i.e. during WW2, many countries repurposed existing industry in order to build all the weapons that were needed to win the war. That's a very different thing from spinning up a new startup with the stated goal of making weapons to sell for money. You can personally think it's okay but it seems totally reasonable to me that someone would believe "weapons should not be manufactured for personal profit the way we manufacture toys or food".
America has, for decades, has been trying to bilk Ukraine into forgoing free Soviet surplus to buy NATO-standardized equipment, only to remotely disable their material while they're using it. Because America was so fickle in providing defense, we've guaranteed that all future peace treaties (eg. one in Ukraine) necessitates direct American intervention, and not vague "security" agreements. That's probably why Trump is brooding over his options right now instead of arranging a ceasefire - he can't get peace without trading away something absurd like US naval assets or direct satellite intel.
1991-1994: They nuke Moscow.
1994-present day: American strategic deterrence takes over.
If any part of that is unclear to you then I urge that you reread the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and return to the discussion with the rest of the context.
Anduril does not manufacture strategic deterrents. If you think they're the solution to the Budapest Memorandum then you're the sort of armchair YouTube General that the Army filters out in officer school. It's not hard to understand, anyone can Google the difference between strategy and tactics.
Edit: oh I see, you only support strategic deterrence which equates to “standby until we have to nuke them.”
Ukraine had physical possession of the nukes, but their ability to actually use them was highly suspect. They might have been able to circumvent the security measures given enough time, but if anything such an attempt would have sparked an international "peacekeeping operation" to make sure the nukes didn't fall into the wrong hands.
https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/budapest-memorandum-myth...
WW2 was probably the last time you could fight a war, and do things like convert your local industry to produce weapons and tanks that were relevant. And even then, it only really happened because the US mainland was not contested territory during the conflict - it had the luxury of choosing when to enter the war.
Ukraine is simply not a "normal" looking modern conventional war. Both sides have receiving significant external imports which are various reasons are mostly untouchable by kinetic strikes till they cross the relevant borders (in this way it is much more like Vietnam in logistical respects). So you see assumptions like "mass production of drones will be key to the future!" in a context where the bulk of the critical components - microprocessors, cameras etc. - are not produced in the countries in conflict, and are imported from factories which are in no danger of ever being directly targeted.
So cheap mass producable systems have held the line in areas, but they're obviously drop ins for something you'd prefer to use instead - i.e. artillery - but there's a shortage of that. But conversely they haven't moved the line in a lot of areas - some of the biggest strikes of the war have been from conventional exploitation of defensive failures - i.e. the Kharkiv breakthrough, or from espionage operations which might be notable for using a lot of drones but the real accomplishment was getting them in position and the real success was still very typical: Operation Spidersweb taking out a large number of Russian long range strategic bombers.
Now people will point to the latter and say "see! strategic bombers are useless!" ... and yet that can hardly be true if a substantial operation to destroy strategic bombers was worth doing. A system being vulnerable in a way it previously wasn't does not make it ineffective (i.e. if strategic bombers at airfields intact would endanger the Ukranian position, then they're still an obviously necessary system, but they now need better protection then they had - or Russian counter-espionage just sucks).
Using what, Field Marshal?
If Ukraine had the physics package, why couldn't they deploy it? Barring launch codes from the Kremlin, there's still enriched uranium in the warhead that you can turn into a simpler one-stage bomb. I doubt they could have gone thermonuclear, but simply leveraging the ICBMs and fissile material seems well within Ukraine's wheelhouse.