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Posted by newer_vienna 4 hours ago

DARPA's new X-76(www.darpa.mil)
73 points | 62 commentspage 2
bilsbie 3 hours ago|
I’d go for simplicity and do a tail lander.
usrusr 12 minutes ago|
These days my vote would go to a quad. Impeller fore, impeller aft and one in each wing. Behind doors, obviously, like the bays for retractable landing gear - this is a solved problem.

They don't have to be efficient, because how much hovering time would you really need? Battery could even exist only in mission specific pods (internal perhaps, when it's a cargo carrier), trade-off as needed.

trelliumD 3 hours ago||
that already exists in the form of Saab Gripen :)
FrankBooth 2 hours ago|
Where do the 14 soldiers sit in the Gripen?
rkomorn 2 hours ago||
On the wings, obviously, for quick deployment. Maybe I mean early deployment.
adolph 1 hour ago||
Shades of: Being strapped to the sponsons of an AH-64 is one wild, but potentially life-saving ride.

https://www.twz.com/38435/this-is-all-the-survival-gear-that...

rkomorn 1 hour ago||
The straps just need to be a little stronger!
sandworm101 2 hours ago||
Different engines for different phases of flight? It has been tried many times and never really works. Such craft can be made to fly, but never well. The answer has to come from using one set to power all phases.

Id be interested in seeing a turboprop that can transition to a turbofan/jet once the prop is folded away. The f-35 was a step in this direction.

dash2 4 hours ago||
“ With SPRINT, we're not just building an X-plane; we're building options”. Found the guy who couldn’t be bothered to write his own press release…
newer_vienna 3 hours ago||
I'm quite fond of the caption, which describes a "a proof-of-concept technology demonstrator that aims to demonstrate technologies and concepts"
NitpickLawyer 2 hours ago||
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
irl_zebra 3 hours ago|||
I think I'd rather have them working on airplane tech rather than writing airplane tech press releases. With this approach, it's not just a tactical thing; it's relieving the burden of wordsmithing from technical people.
bigfishrunning 3 hours ago|||
The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a new job. I hope they get it.
palmotea 1 hour ago|||
> The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a new job. I hope they get it.

Do technical writers work on press releases? This sounds more like a job for the public relations/corporate communications department.

binkHN 2 hours ago|||
It was a GPT.
irl_zebra 1 hour ago||
Or, at least, my take on GPT. :) I promise I am a human.
jdiez17 3 hours ago|||
You're absolutely right.
notahacker 4 hours ago|||
Good to hear that the DoD's new contract with OpenAI is solving all the most important problems...
O5vYtytb 4 hours ago|||
It's a quote from someone...?
jdiez17 4 hours ago||
... who probably wrote their prepared PR statement with an LLM.
esseph 3 hours ago||
I have always talked/written like this. now that LLMs do it in a similar enough way, my own writing gets called AI slop. I just wish my rotator cuffs knew I was a robot.
irl_zebra 2 hours ago|||
It's probably good signal at least, if not a bit of a harsh thing to say that I don't mean in a bad way, that your writing was bland or mediocre since LLMs are basically regression to the mean.
jacquesm 3 hours ago|||
Skimping on the service again, are we?
bigyabai 3 hours ago||
It feels like DARPA has fallen so far. In a post-Salt Typhoon era it's really hard to imagine them as dynamic, best-in-class innovators anymore.
ambicapter 3 hours ago||
This administration doesn't really prioritize anything that has to do with intelligence, so advanced research was obviously going to fall by the wayside.
browsingonly 20 minutes ago||
https://www.iarpa.gov/research-programs
ambicapter 9 minutes ago|||
What are you saying? Do you think my claim was that all US research programs have closed up shop?
bigyabai 16 minutes ago|||
No search results for "Salt Typhoon" as the query. This nation really is fucked.
idontwantthis 3 hours ago||
Isn't this need already met by the Bell V280 that the army already selected for it's Blackhawk replacement? What is the big innovation they are going for here?
Tuna-Fish 3 hours ago|
+50% top speed over the V280. Bell offered it as an alternative to the V280 in the early stage of the contract, but it was judged too experimental (and probably too expensive). Apparently DARPA is funding further development of the concept.
crimsoneer 3 hours ago||
Someone has played the new Deus Ex games
phplovesong 3 hours ago||
The swedish gripen can do mach2 (2300km/h) and does not need a traditional runway (500 meters of something "flat enough" will do). I assume its way cheaper than something like this.
Zigurd 3 hours ago||
I suppose the argument is that X-76 could work in environments without roads. But that also implies without fuel or any other support on the ground.
RandallBrown 3 hours ago||
Can it hover?
greatgib 3 hours ago||
I can't access darpa.mil. Was it slashdotted because of the article being posted here, or now it is unavailable outside of US?
dang 2 hours ago||
https://web.archive.org/web/20260309171633/https://www.darpa... might work
rcMgD2BwE72F 1 hour ago|||
Inaccessible from France. With family.dns.mullvad.net private DNS.
logotype 3 hours ago|||
I can access it from the UK
newer_vienna 3 hours ago||
Still up here in the US
HumblyTossed 3 hours ago||
Hmmm... that just looks like problems. It's a lot of mechanical parts that always have to work correctly.
dang 2 hours ago||
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

01100011 3 hours ago||
The Osprey killed a lot of Marines over the past decades. It took a while to work out the issues. Hopefully we will remember what the Osprey taught us.
thatmf 3 hours ago|
[flagged]
bak3y 3 hours ago|
hopefully we never will - the last thing I want the government MORE involved in is healthcare
vicnov 2 hours ago||
It is a fascinating take. I am curious to understand what model you think would work.

The U.S. effectively has a dysfunctional system with wild mix of "no regulation" and heavy state participation. I am not sure there is any country with a deregulated system where people can enjoy good healthcare. You could theoretically say that Switzerland does this, but the government there requires everyone to have insurance, even though hospitals are 100% private.

bak3y 2 hours ago||
There's no magic wand fix to healthcare, it and the related insurance industry are incredibly busted.

What I am dead certain of though is that involving the government in it will be worse, not better.