I agree. If grandma grows her own tomatoes she can only try four tomato-related recipes. If she goes to the grocery store she can try thirty.
The AI is enabling a lot more experimentation with software. The AI supplies the tomatoes (infrastructure / grunt work), grandma tries her recipes (the software / business idea).
The choir director at my church, Michael Dodds (UNCSA), covers the early development of musical notation, "From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory" [0]. Currently on sabbatical at Cambridge. Once in a while during rehearsal he will give an impromptu lecture on music history, always interesting.
In Brazil in the 1980s the VASP (Viação Aérea São Paulo) airline put their smoking section on the right side of the single aisle, and the non-smoking on the left side of the single-aisle. The smoke stayed on the right side just fine. (jk)
São Paulo is in the "green" but they were supposedly around two weeks from running out of water for municipal distribution in 2014/2015. A city of that size without water would not do well.
Aircraft carriers are not particularly well suited to be supplied by cargo aircraft.
The largest cargo aircraft with the strengthened landing gear, arresting hook, and catapult attachment used to be the C-2 Greyhound. It had a range of approximately 1,500 miles with a 10,000 pound cargo. It was retired on July 28th, 2026. The C-2 has been replaced by the CMV-22B Osprey. It has a range of only 1,150 miles and a more limited cargo capacity of only 6,000 pounds. 6,000 pounds isn't nothing, but it's not a lot either.
There's not a lot of stuff within 1,150mi of the Arabian Sea. Your two options are one of the US bases in the southern Persian Gulf (Kuwait is too far) and Diego Garcia. Neither are ideal. In both cases you're doing a transfer out in the field.
On the other hand, the C-5 Galaxy can carry 120,000 pounds to a range of 4,800 miles. You can fill it with food in the continental US, fly to Hickam AFB in Hawaii, refuel, and fly the rest of the way to Guam. On the return leg, an unladen C-5 can fly directly to the 22nd Airlift Squadron's home base California without a layover.
The C-17B Globemaster is smaller than the C-5, although it's nearly as capable. With a 160,000 pound cargo, it has a range of 3,200 miles, (the C-17A has a shorter range) which is just short of the 3,800 miles to get from Hawaii to Guam. I don't know how much cargo it's capable of carrying 3,800 miles, but on the order of 100,000 pounds is a reasonable guess. It is also capable of an empty flight back to the US without a layover.
Mostly tensioned cables carrying hoses (liquids especially fuel being the highest volume / limiting factor), some palletized transfer over cables, and some helicopter lift (because the flight pads/decks are already sitting next to each other while everyone is waiting for fuel to finish).
I've watched some videos showing UNREP and they're fascinating. It takes a lot of skill to keep the ships parallel. There was a collision earlier this year between the resupply ship and the recipient.
> Also, the Navy is using Ospreys to resupply submarines at sea because they have the range and helicopters don't.
Afaik, modern submarines handle terribly on the surface, so I imagine direct ship-to-ship UNREP is rare. Also, too much cost risk from a collision.
Per YouTube, it's mostly vertical replenishment. Helicopter for short range. Osprey for longer. Floating pallets pushed out of the back of a C-17 at max range.
I'm sure the packing is intricate for something that's going to be air dropped, then floating, then has to be broken down on an unstable floating platform and conveyed inside through small ports!
Spot-on and thanks for sharing that video too. Aircraft carriers aren't really designed to be replenished by large aircraft which would instead be used to replenish sites like Guam with large enough runways and, frankly, the need if something went wrong due to the population size, remoteness, and inability of everyday residents to do anything about the situation.
Another pending example is the 2035 retirement of the E-3 AWACS and its replacement by the much less capable E-2D. There are/were other more capable options on the table, including the E-7 and the E-10, both of which have been canceled.
The Osprey is air refuelable though, isn't it? Each flight is roughly one pound per person on board.
It's also roughly 2800 nautical miles from Kuwait to Diego Garcia, so regardless of where the carrier group is, it should be at most a ~6 day round trip at 20 knots for a supply ship from the closest of the two.
That assumes there is no way to airdrop watertight pallets of food (e.g. steel drums loaded with cans and MREs) into the water, then retrieve it with RHIBs or helicopters.
I can't speak to how much cargo was on board, but I did a Hawai'i to Guam leg on a C-17B that was carrying palletized cargo.
One of my better Space-A experiences. Crew was great, flight was smooth. I preferred it over the KC-135 leg, despite the more spartan conditions. The aircrew let us toss out sleeping bags and packs in the aisles between cargo and get some sleep.
I thought it was well-known that unmodified C-130s (Look ma, no hook!) can land and take off from US-sized carriers successfully. Ergo, in a pinch, everyone will be getting their chicken nuggets and canned corn.
No, in a pinch, you're just beclowning yourself with your utter ignorance of carrier air operations.
They're not striking the entire air wing below just so one C-130 can land and take off, and that's assuming a stunt pulled by one elite test pilot was replicable by a bog-standard junior C-130 pilot.
Giving how static bases (including airstrips) have become vulnerable, i think we may yet to see those flying boats coming back as a way to support Navy fleets which historically were relying on the static bases.
That could be a different navy concept if surface carriers go extinct. You could have submarines and (possibly submersible) seaplanes, and submarine-launched UAVs.
That explains why resupply doesn't work as well as in peace time
But at the same time, it's not like that came out of nowhere. If you attack a country, that country shooting back at any military installations in missile range has to be one of the expected outcomes. Given the US had all the initiative in starting the conflict I would have hoped there was a logistics plan that involved not relying on those bases to continue to exist
> Given the US had all the initiative in starting the conflict I would have hoped there was a logistics plan that involved not relying on those bases to continue to exist
Have you seen the people responsible for planning right now? They're more concerned with posting AI generated memes on twitter and scoring bigotry points than managing a foreign conflict.
> Given the US had all the initiative in starting the conflict I would have hoped there was a logistics plan that involved not relying on those bases to continue to exist.
Anyone with the capability to plan for the Iran war never would have started it because the costs would have been obvious. In other words the only way to start a war with Iran is to have no plan for it.
> Anyone with the capability to plan for the Iran war never would have started it
Not only that, but it was already that way for ~40 years, where past presidencies all knew and documented why it was a stupid idea, didn't press the stupidity-button, and mostly worked towards better options.
Idk, current president and general staff seemed to be very against it as well. Foreign influence and realized threats of assasination seem to be a factor.
All Trump needs is a little dangling of glory and publicity and he'd oink like a pig if he thought it'd earn it. Pathetic creature.
Netanyahu tried the same schtick he's done for 30 years of POTUS's, just now we have someone retarded enough to fall for it and a party that allowed him to be surrounded by sycophants.
You should just admit you voted for a retard and pay your penance to your countrymen and species.
> If you attack a country, that country shooting back at any military installations in missile range has to be one of the expected outcomes.
Americans make war on other people, other people don't make war on Americans. It's one of the reasons why they are so eager to do so. 'The other guys might hit back' doesn't even register in the cultural psyche.
You'll notice that the aircraft carrier continues sortie generation. What's causing us to lose is failure to achieve victory due to the means employed not the enemy constraining our freedom of action through force. Not to say it's great: it sucks to be on the ship for this, but if Hezbollah murdered 3,000 Americans the shortage wouldn't make the news amid our invading Iran.
In the Vietnam war the US didn't win because it couldn't, no matter how much force was employed. Here same thing: we can't depose the Iranian government without a land invasion (which is too costly) and nothing else keeps them from having control of the strait.
Exactly, which makes this a stupid war to start in the first place.
Also, to be clear, a land invasion isn't "too costly". It's suicidal because we're talking about a massive country that has been preparing for decades, has a terrain advantage and literally more than a million fanatics ready to die for the regime. You'd need millions of soldiers deployed, and are looking at some Operation Downfall level expected losses.
I'm not suggesting we should even consider invading Iran - mostly because we don't need to, but these numbers you are throwing around seem a bit off the mark without either a time horizon or some other qualifier.
Also... a million fanatics ready to die for the regime? Maybe. Maybe some of them value their lives.
We've dealt with fanatics multiple times whether that's Japanese willing to die for the emperor or Muslim extremists throughout the Middle East trying to get their 72 virgins. Nobody in the US is scared of dealing with fanatics. Been there, done that. Iran is more mountainous and the terrain is a challenge but the major population centers aren't hidden in bunkers in the hills. Iran is also not landlocked, and unlike, for example, Afghanistan, we would be dealing with a population that has familiarity with the modern world and has at times even protested en masse against the current government of Iran.
Again, none of that is to suggest we should or politically could "invade Iran", and of course I don't think it's necessary to achieve any of our goals, but let's not put Iran on a pedestal either.
> Also... a million fanatics ready to die for the regime? Maybe. Maybe some of them value their lives
The Basij militia has more than a million men in it alone (officially it has 20+ million but more neutral sources pin the number around a million), and this is the organisation that was doing unarmed human wave attacks against Iraq to defend the Iranian revolution. It's also a theocracy with a religion that has martyrdom as a thing.
If anything, a million fanatics ready to die for the regime is probably an understatement.
> We've dealt with fanatics multiple times whether that's Japanese willing to die for the emperor or Muslim extremists throughout the Middle East trying to get their 72 virgins. Nobody in the US is scared of dealing with fanatics
And Japan surrendered because the Emperor said so. If Operation Downfall had to be done instead, you'd have millions of American and Allied casualties.
If you're not scared of this, you aren't paying attention.
> Iran is more mountainous and the terrain is a challenge but the major population centers aren't hidden in bunkers in the hills
Bombing population centres has never resulted in military victory. It has occasionally, alongside military reversals, contributed to political leaders deciding they can't continue (Hirohito, Milosevic), but it would be delusional to hope that Iran's Supreme Leader, sone of the previous one who got bombed out of existence, and again, is a religious leader part of a religion with martyrdom, would be impressed by the US bombing "his" people.
The US was fighting the wrong war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese wanted independence since the 1920s. The US didn't. The French didn't (the second time). The Japanese didn't. The French didn't (the first time).
It's not really the same thing. I really do not at all understand why folks see any sort of military intervention that isn't over in 5 minutes as "the next Vietnam". Venezuela was going to be the next Vietnam too. It's like "the next 2008" all over again espoused as a traumatic, quasi-religious point of view. Rather interesting from a cultural evolution standpoint - seems to be that some folks can't shake a trauma so they just keep going back to it even when it's no longer important or relevant for current decision making or situations.
The public being against the war is just about where the comparison between the war in Iran and Vietnam loses meaning.
The United States doesn't need to depose the current Iranian government on its own. An economic blockade could do that, or at worst simply deprive the Iranian government of the means to financially carry out war. As Iran is now finding out, the Strait wasn't quite the leverage that they, and pundits and internet commentators thought it was, and now the US isn't even interested in negotiating which is causing Iran to lash out. It'll be a slow, but certain death to the economy and such an event and blame rests squarely on the shoulders of those in charge of Iran and their idiotic and undemocratic beliefs. The world can't be held hostage and won't be. Though of course the fact that the United States yet again has to go police the world is a bit like a reservoir that slowly refills. There's only so much we're going to be able to do and we're seeing ongoing populist MAGA and DSA backlash against the war. The next crises the US may not be able to respond to politically and then we're in relationship trouble.
We haven't ever tried this level of economic isolation with Iran. The closest would be North Korea. If you wanted to attempt to make it sound as though I was parroting a quasi-religious point of view, you would want to argue (which I haven't because it's incorrect) that I'm looking at what happened with North Korea (a regime that exists to terrorize the world thanks to communist regimes in China and the Soviet Union) and that I'm saying all blockades or economic sanctions will work just like that, which is, of course, nonsense, just as comparing Iran to Vietnam today is.
No that's incorrect - what would be quasi religious and similar to this obsession with Vietnam would be for me or someone else to use North Korea's economic isolation as an example in the same strong fashion.
I'd encourage you to re-read my comment to see how I drew that distinction.
Pretty well I think? Are you up to date with the Russian economic situation? Or are you suggesting the EU and US stop sanctions since they aren't effective?
You're just revealing your ignorance of Navy supply chains with this comment, and I say that as a veteran who has no support for the ongoing shitshow, only sympathy for my former colleagues trapped underway.
Carrier resupply while underway is primarily by a sort of temporary cable tramway erected between the carrier and the resupply ship.
Supercarriers came into existence at ~70,000t and transitioned to ~100,000t. You'd need to scale another step up or three, to 140,000t, 200,000t, or 280,000t, in order to see something capable of landing and taking off a cargo-laden C-130 in regular operations.
One of my jobs at work is to translate data-science-provided AI models, convert them to optimal GPU forms, and send them downstream to DevOps for deployment in a variety of contexts, all contexts adaptable from basic Docker instructions.
I had a couple of very specialized adapters for the first couple of environments that were very aware of the whole GPU conversion and deployment stack (ONNX, TensorRT, Triton, etc.), but even these were very fragile to version upgrades, etc., and required a lot of adaptation from one "stack" to the other. As soon as the frontier models got to be real good I took a more "agnostic" approach. My new framework's goal was to be "mealleable" and very hands-off w.r.t. the details of the conversion / deployment ... after all, these models are very well trained on the whole AI pipeline, including deployment. So now the basis is more or less (a) where are the model files, which Docker image do we want to use, which "conversion / deployment" method(s) do we want to try, what are the inference use cases addressed; (b) what is the conversion / deployment method used? (c) how do we assemble the smoke-test and basic performance test cases for multi-client, single- and batch-processing modes for all use cases? (d) how do we package the end results so that the DevOps person has all they need to make sure they have the proper files and that they can run Docker and check that the inference works? These questions and answers are all wrapped in some very flexible base classes. Every conversion is somewhat different, so each one involves extensive discussions with Claude Code (e.g., "hey, look at this other prior conversion, its raw files, compare with these raw files, develop a conversion / use-case-smoke-and-performance-test, and packaging). Rather than trying to be very hands-on at these lower level, Claude has almost free reign at the "low level" to suggest the best approach, and I so I "talk to an engineer with vast knowledge but (for now) a bit less judgment". With this method though I probably cut the total time to conversion-for-deployment by 80% to 90% now ... the choices and options are vast, and Claude knows a lot more than I do.
At times there is not a ready-made solution for the particular problem at hand, and so then it gets more interesting with how to shoehorn a solution into one of the available technologies. We prefer one of the various builds of the Triton Inference Server (or one of its hardened versions maintained by others).
As incomplete as the sentences from one of these may be, their "weave" style tickles the attention mechanisms for their most ardent supporters, and comes across as heartfelt, relatable, and ultimately a coherent stream of consciousness dump.
In the meantime Mozilla was mocked on slashdot.org and elsewhere relentlessly after the first two years of the project when nobody believed there would be any value in the effort. Hats off to the team that took around five years to get to Firefox 1.0 (and released Mozilla browser in the interim). It took a lot of conviction to see it through.
I'm hopeful that software will be applied in new areas where it was too costly before, with AI help it will be possible. Software will be cheaper, even more prevalent, lower quality in since respects, but SW engineering will still be a viable career.
There are really a ton of fields where people have done an absolutely terrible job of properly using the advantages of software, even pre AI. Like, even today there are people manually drawing footprints in PCB design software, manually determining what pins carry differential signals, manually forgetting to swap RX and TX lines..
except for the functions they absolutely had to have a computer do, they forgot to move out all the drudgery and footguns and continue operating in "PDF space". It's embarrassing for a profession that is supposedly made of engineers.
PDF space is still more advanced than the people typing into "word processors" however. Making software to emulate letters was such a massive mistake for the trajectory of computing, it let people effortlessly "adopt computers" by making a digital facsimile of their terrible analog processes. Only with AI we now have the ability to digest all this unstructured mess.
The AI is enabling a lot more experimentation with software. The AI supplies the tomatoes (infrastructure / grunt work), grandma tries her recipes (the software / business idea).
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