Reverse-Engineering American Tech

There's been a lot of talk about glowies in Ukraine wanting to get a look at newer Russian tech to better gauge its capabilities and potentially develop countermeasures.
Flipping it the other direction, to all non-Americans on /k/, if there was a piece of non-export US military hardware you'd want your country's military to get an unauthorized peek at, whether that's gauging capabilities or even reverse-engineering, what would it be?
Hard mode (though not required to play): No stealth aircraft.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    SM-3 IIA or LRHW

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >LRHW
      Actually, I changed my mind, I'd rather look at HACM, since LRHW is just a normal rocket with a hypersonic glide warhead.
      HACM is an airbreathing hypersonic cruise missile, much more challenging engineering-wise and likely more valuable for another country to take a look at.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >HACM is an airbreathing hypersonic cruise missile
        now that's hawt

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >SM-3 IIA
      I feel like the only way to really make that worth it is if you managed to get a really in-depth look at Aegis as well.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah a look at Aegis hardware and software would be valuable, but that encompasses a ton of different systems and platforms.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    GPS technology, I guess.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Kind of a waste, the difficulty in GPS isn't how it's done, it's the cost and complexity of launching the satellites to their proper orbits and maintaining the constellation of satellites over long periods of time.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >GPS
        Glasnost is at least an order of magnitude less accurate than GPS, possibly two.
        That might be about having enough satellites in orbit to refine the estimates down to a smaller number but I feel like they're probably also just giving more precise readings too.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Well GPS uses 6 orbital planes vs GLONASS which only uses 3 orbital planes.

          And actually in certain parts of the world GLONASS is slightly more accurate than civilian GPS, but is still beat to shit by Military GPS accuracy.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Why?

      Galileo's restricted access mode is over an order of magnitude more precise than any GPS mode. Shit's amazing if you've ever worked with euro govt land survey equipment supporting it.

      And either way as a civvie you will be using a "GPS" chip that supports all satellite positioning constellations.

      >GPS
      Glasnost is at least an order of magnitude less accurate than GPS, possibly two.
      That might be about having enough satellites in orbit to refine the estimates down to a smaller number but I feel like they're probably also just giving more precise readings too.

      >Glasnost
      lol

      But yeah, it's much worse than GPS. Satellite positioning systems require just the kind of delicate precision engineering that you can't expect from an orc country.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        To be fair, is there any real practical difference between 30cm accuracy and 1cm accuracy?

        Even a quarter or half a meter would be good enough for most use-cases.

        The only reason you'd want 1cm or sub cm accuracy is for like engineering and surveying purposes.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          sub-meter accuracy is important for farmers.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Well none of the sub-meter accuracy GNSSs have that level of accuracy for civilian use, GPS military is down to 30cm and Galileo encrypted is down to 1cm. But their civilian versions are ~1-5 meters.

            So sure, farmers might want it, but none of them have it.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Your knowledge is out of date anon, artificial accuracy restrictions for civilian GPS went away in 2000, one of the final laws Clinton signed. The remaining restrictions are related to height and speed, though I don't remember exactly. I think operating above 50k feet and 1000mph, though don't quote me, something in that ball park. The military ones allow faster lock, will allow more accuracy FASTER with more data, are more jam proof, etc. But you can absolutely do sub-meter accuracy with civilian units now, at least if the units themselves are good enough. The limitations most people experience is because stuff like smartphones aren't actually that good, positioning is just one minor function amongst many not something to devote lots of processing and antenna space and so on too. Though they can use cellular info to boost (AGPS). A high end vehicle mounted unit can do a lot better, aggregate more data and so on.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Also straight from the horse's mouth if you care:
                >https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/#difference
                >The user range error (URE) of the GPS signals in space is actually the same for the civilian and military GPS services. However, most of today's civilian devices use only one GPS frequency, while military receivers use two.
                >Using two GPS frequencies improves accuracy by correcting signal distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere. Dual-frequency GPS equipment is commercially available for civilian use, but its cost and size has limited it to professional applications.
                >With augmentation systems, civilian users can actually receive better GPS accuracy than the military.
                I guess in theory too the US government could shut down unencrypted GPS in a given area killing the signal entirely for non-military units. Doubtful that'd happen outside a peer-level war though, maybe not even then depending on if it even mattered and considerations around ASAT etc.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Your knowledge is out of date anon, artificial accuracy restrictions for civilian GPS went away in 2000, one of the final laws Clinton signed. The remaining restrictions are related to height and speed, though I don't remember exactly. I think operating above 50k feet and 1000mph, though don't quote me, something in that ball park. The military ones allow faster lock, will allow more accuracy FASTER with more data, are more jam proof, etc. But you can absolutely do sub-meter accuracy with civilian units now, at least if the units themselves are good enough. The limitations most people experience is because stuff like smartphones aren't actually that good, positioning is just one minor function amongst many not something to devote lots of processing and antenna space and so on too. Though they can use cellular info to boost (AGPS). A high end vehicle mounted unit can do a lot better, aggregate more data and so on.

                You're still not getting reliable sub meter accuracy with standard regular old GPS receivers.

                You might SOMETIMES get sub-meter accuracy, but you're certainly not assured of it 24/7/365 across the entire planet, depending where the satellites are, and exactly where you are at the time you're trying to determine your location will effect the final positional accuracy, and even with dual signal GPS systems you're still not gonna be 100% assured to get sub-meter accuracy.

                That being said, under ideal conditions with the right equipment to provide a correction source, you CAN get sub-meter accuracy.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You're still not getting reliable sub meter accuracy with standard regular old GPS receivers.
                But that's not due to any artificial restriction on GPS signal is my point. The unencrypted one isn't degraded, civilian units can flat out beat typical military ones if they're up to it. Getting super accurate is expensive and requires more size and power, and most just don't have any application, but for those that actually need it (and farmers already make use of it, the modern automated planting machine technology is just fricking mind blowing, almost nobody appreciates how godly high tech American mass agriculture is now) the government isn't getting in your way (unless you want your tractor to go Mach 2 in the stratosphere for some reason).

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >smartphones aren't actually that good
                Yeah no shit

                Most smartphones use GPS chips designed for car nav, which makes them absolute garbage for high precision tasks. Those chips need a restart to update your position if you haven't moved a certain distance, it's generally impossible to tell the chip via software to try and get a high precision fix while your receiver is stationary. Any old bluetooth GPS dongle worth a couple of bucks is probably far better than those in cheap smartphones manufactured today.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >like engineering and surveying purposes.
          Yeah. You certainly don't need 0.01 meter precision for car nav, 10 meters is enough for that.

          But the precision of Galileo's govt-restricted mode offer opens up whole new possibilities. If it was available to everyone it would have huge commercial potential.
          It's so precise that it pinpoints an area that's way smaller than your device. Smaller than many global positioning antennae, even.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >GPS
      russa
      china
      EU
      all already have GPS equivalents

      Who exactly still needs to take a look at GPS?

      Hell even India has a local GNSS (works in India and about 1000 miles around India) so even street shitters have domestic GPS capability.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >to all non-Americans on /k/
    there shouldn't even be any. the absolute fricking state of this board.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Now, now, the Swiss are welcome here

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      lots of other weapons in the world moron

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This. It's covered by ballistic missile export controls, so it counts.
    Reusable spacecraft and ballistic missile tech wrapped up into one package. I can't think of a country that wouldn't kill for one of these.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    One of those Growler jamming pods would probably give a lot of insight into not just American systems, but what Americans know about Russian/Chinese systems as well.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Frankly OP most of the impressiveness about American tech isn't that it's some magical alien stuff, it's actually MAKING it, in bulk, and then supporting that. Sure there is tons of R&D involved too and a few bits of real secret sauce no doubt, but we're getting to the point where having blue prints even doesn't necessarily help much because a lot of the real sauce is in the institutions. Like for a stealth jet, tiny imperfections in the skin or differences in mass manufacture are a big deal. The exact specifics of producing single crystal super alloy turbine blades are insanely challenging. America could just public full 100% specs and plans of those new Ford class super carriers, and only China maybe could eventually manufacturer one, let alone a bunch. Russia on paper has good stealth jets, advanced new tanks, and PGMs. But having, like, 4 advanced jets is pointless. And getting a "PGM" from 200m CEP to 10m CEP is a huge deal but it doesn't require special tech, it requires extreme attention to detail in manufacturing and ironing out all the kinks. And then producing those in tens of thousands is its own separate big deal.

    So I honestly, unironically can't think of a single thing America makes that really would matter. The problem most countries have is institutional rot or corruption, lack of budget, culture issues or a tons of other soft factors that'd need to be solved first. Almost no one makes the most of just existing COTS easily available stuff. Adding more to that is just a waste.

    This is true even of countries that have major access to American tech. Like Taiwan should be adopting a decentralized distributed hedge hog doctrine. But they have military fudd leadership that wants big shiny toys that are basically fricking useless vs their major threat scenario. That's not a tech problem.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Lasers, naval reactors, and maybe some of the hypersonic weapons we're working on are really the only ones anyone would REALLY care to take a look at, and that's just because they're the most cutting-edge shit that still requires a ton of R&D before it's viable for actual service.

      But yeah, as you mentioned, the real difficulty comes from actually being able to mass-produce the damn thing.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Samegay here, case in point:

      https://i.imgur.com/ps8c2fb.jpg

      This. It's covered by ballistic missile export controls, so it counts.
      Reusable spacecraft and ballistic missile tech wrapped up into one package. I can't think of a country that wouldn't kill for one of these.

      . Most of the sauce of SpaceX is in their built up institution, process and structure not their tech. Having a Merlin engine isn't having all the engineers and material leads and skilled labor experienced in making them. It isn't even having Starlink and all the stuff needed to bootstrap mass production, because if you aren't mass producing and have regular experience with mass cadence you're not going to be able to develop their level of refinement or mass production. Lack of SpaceX tech isn't why Russian reliability went down the toilet, they didn't need that to, like, not install a fricking guidance component UPSIDE DOWN in a proton rocket. What they're doing to develop Starship is all right out in the open, they're using cheap stuff like stainless steel everyone knows how to work with, one of the most flexible and best understood materials in human history. They've done it on like 10% of the budget Congress has pissed away on the SLS. It's the culture. If anyone else had the same culture, they could recreate SpaceX easier and faster themselves.

      There are a few startups who are actually angling at their own promising and interesting competition with Falcon 9, Rocket Lab and Relativity come to mind. RL is at least actually getting stuff to orbit and developing experience.

      Meanwhile Blue Origin is known in the industry derisively as "Below Orbit" because despite being OLDER than SpaceX and backed by Bezos infini-money it's literally never gotten a single thing to orbit. Not once, in decades. It acts like an Old Space lazy cost plus organization.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Isn’t a good example of this their process for welding, grinding, and polishing of the spaceX rocket’s outer body?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >not install a fricking guidance component UPSIDE DOWN
        just for any /k/ommandos who havent seen it since its still really funny:

        this was russia in 2013, people should have been getting suspicious about their army state even then in retrospect lol

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Should have posted raw footage instead of edited crap.

          Either way, Proton-M is seriously overbuilt. It almost survived that 180 maneuver until impact. While this is impressive in a "russian rugged tech stronk" way, nowadays space launch startups chase after efficiency gains by designing their rockets' structures to withstand *only* the max Q of a nominal launch and nothing more.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Either way, Proton-M is seriously overbuilt. It almost survived that 180 maneuver until impact. While this is impressive in a "russian rugged tech stronk" way,
            It's because Proton series started live as an ultra heavy ICBM design anon, back in the very earliest beginnings when ICBMs were still liquid fueled and we had no MIRVs or the slightest precision yet so strategy still pushed towards big ass bombs that could frick up a city even if they hit miles away. The fricking thing was designed to actually launch a Tsar Bomba level design, a hundred fricking megatons. By the time it was even getting to launch that entire concept was already strategically obsolete but they'd done all the work so got shifted to space launch instead. So yeah it's really wasteful in terms of mass ratio, and that's Max-Q with engine throttle down too, but it didn't come from a civilian launch plan in the first place.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >So I honestly, unironically can't think of a single thing America makes that really would matter. The problem most countries have is institutional rot or corruption, lack of budget, culture issues or a tons of other soft factors that'd need to be solved first. Almost no one makes the most of just existing COTS easily available stuff. Adding more to that is just a waste.
      right. reason eu say does not have ameriburger level army is pure culture not tech. lots of countries just did not want to pay for it. still dont in parts tho this war has been a wakeup

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The big problem with the reverse engineering meme is the ability to copy AND produce something, either something similar to it or a counter to it.
    Lets say Russia captures an Abrams tank. Russia has not built a new production tank in 30 years. They cannot build their Armata, they can't build the 2A82 gun that accepts Svinets-1 or 2. They can't make those penetrators anyway. Procurement and production problems mean they're mostly handing out BM-42 to tank units in Ukraine. So what advantage would giving them a brand new SEPv4 tank right off the production line bring? None, really.
    Now, what about China? They're still a ways behind in tank technology - armor composition and ammo technical specifications leaks have proven this. It would no doubt be quite useful to them to capture american gear, but they've gotta get one intact - and considering how much firepower the US has thrown at disabled M1s in the past I'm not sure they'll get one.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The other issue with production is that even if you theoretically have the exact same manufacturing capability and tech level, the specifics of your domestic supply chains will be different. Hell, that can be the case in the exact same country. A classic non-/k/ example of this now is something like the Apollo F-1 engine, a question that has come up frequently online over the decades has been "geez shouldn't we just restart production of those, they worked well right?" But... we can't. Even though it's America that made it before, even though we are in fact more advanced now. But those engines were built around specific skills and institutional knowledge that is now all lost, and may not exist anymore (that level of skilled welder may now be done with machines, but those do things different and need to be used different ways). Doing the F1 again would basically require a brand new program effectively designing it again from scratch, but of course with modern materials you wouldn't do it the same way again. So you might as well design a new engine.

      China vs America is same thing, both are capable of manufacturing advanced stuff, but tons of details are different, what is cheap for one could be more expensive for the other and vice versa, each leans on its own strengths so the details of tech end up different in many aspects. Or America vs USSR back in the day (I mean, in like the 50s/60s or maybe barely early 70s back when USSR still had serious tech/science and hadn't completely fallen behind in all respects). USSR had much more powerful rockets, America had less, so USSR brute forced more stuff whereas America leaned on better computers and advanced materials to do more with less and the space programs ended up with significantly divergent designs. There was seriously incredible engineering on both sides for a while, but each on its own path.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Institutional knowledge plays a big role. Especially if the manufacturer doesn’t officially record all the production steps to autistic levels.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        https://i.imgur.com/U07vjyG.jpg

        The big problem with the reverse engineering meme is the ability to copy AND produce something, either something similar to it or a counter to it.
        Lets say Russia captures an Abrams tank. Russia has not built a new production tank in 30 years. They cannot build their Armata, they can't build the 2A82 gun that accepts Svinets-1 or 2. They can't make those penetrators anyway. Procurement and production problems mean they're mostly handing out BM-42 to tank units in Ukraine. So what advantage would giving them a brand new SEPv4 tank right off the production line bring? None, really.
        Now, what about China? They're still a ways behind in tank technology - armor composition and ammo technical specifications leaks have proven this. It would no doubt be quite useful to them to capture american gear, but they've gotta get one intact - and considering how much firepower the US has thrown at disabled M1s in the past I'm not sure they'll get one.

        Samegay here, case in point: [...]. Most of the sauce of SpaceX is in their built up institution, process and structure not their tech. Having a Merlin engine isn't having all the engineers and material leads and skilled labor experienced in making them. It isn't even having Starlink and all the stuff needed to bootstrap mass production, because if you aren't mass producing and have regular experience with mass cadence you're not going to be able to develop their level of refinement or mass production. Lack of SpaceX tech isn't why Russian reliability went down the toilet, they didn't need that to, like, not install a fricking guidance component UPSIDE DOWN in a proton rocket. What they're doing to develop Starship is all right out in the open, they're using cheap stuff like stainless steel everyone knows how to work with, one of the most flexible and best understood materials in human history. They've done it on like 10% of the budget Congress has pissed away on the SLS. It's the culture. If anyone else had the same culture, they could recreate SpaceX easier and faster themselves.

        There are a few startups who are actually angling at their own promising and interesting competition with Falcon 9, Rocket Lab and Relativity come to mind. RL is at least actually getting stuff to orbit and developing experience.

        Meanwhile Blue Origin is known in the industry derisively as "Below Orbit" because despite being OLDER than SpaceX and backed by Bezos infini-money it's literally never gotten a single thing to orbit. Not once, in decades. It acts like an Old Space lazy cost plus organization.

        Frankly OP most of the impressiveness about American tech isn't that it's some magical alien stuff, it's actually MAKING it, in bulk, and then supporting that. Sure there is tons of R&D involved too and a few bits of real secret sauce no doubt, but we're getting to the point where having blue prints even doesn't necessarily help much because a lot of the real sauce is in the institutions. Like for a stealth jet, tiny imperfections in the skin or differences in mass manufacture are a big deal. The exact specifics of producing single crystal super alloy turbine blades are insanely challenging. America could just public full 100% specs and plans of those new Ford class super carriers, and only China maybe could eventually manufacturer one, let alone a bunch. Russia on paper has good stealth jets, advanced new tanks, and PGMs. But having, like, 4 advanced jets is pointless. And getting a "PGM" from 200m CEP to 10m CEP is a huge deal but it doesn't require special tech, it requires extreme attention to detail in manufacturing and ironing out all the kinks. And then producing those in tens of thousands is its own separate big deal.

        So I honestly, unironically can't think of a single thing America makes that really would matter. The problem most countries have is institutional rot or corruption, lack of budget, culture issues or a tons of other soft factors that'd need to be solved first. Almost no one makes the most of just existing COTS easily available stuff. Adding more to that is just a waste.

        This is true even of countries that have major access to American tech. Like Taiwan should be adopting a decentralized distributed hedge hog doctrine. But they have military fudd leadership that wants big shiny toys that are basically fricking useless vs their major threat scenario. That's not a tech problem.

        Good shit

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >glowies in Ukraine wanting to get a look at newer Russian tech
    They must have such blue balls to be waiting this whole war and see a T90 and that's it.

    They're sitting in some bunker listening to radio chatter and reading reports and hoping to hear that some wunderwaffe is fielded but it's all refurbished T62s.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They can try to reverse it but they will never be able to produce it. The electronocs alone are faaaar beyond russian ability to replicate.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    fun thread to talk with anons on thanks for the sort of change of pace

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      yeah these threads keep me coming back despite the stupidity, the meta humor and bait threads

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They don't need to since we contract them already to build the parts for our equipment; wanna know why China caught up to the US in stealth aircraft technology? Here is a good video on the subject.

    .

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >wanna know why China caught up to the US in stealth aircraft technology?
      Not in the mood for fantastic fairytales right now, but thanks.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You can appeal to your personal incredulity all you want, but if you don't learn you will remain blinded to the truth and remain ignorant as to why China will rule the 21st century.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          homie please, the century is 1/5 done and chinks ain't ruling shit.

          Are we speaking chinese right now? Is it the lingua franca of science and commerce globally? Are we on a chinese website? Is Hollywood maybe in China, are we consuming chinese pop culture? No and we never will, because their culture is what it is. It will never become world culture because china is a repressive shithole. Nothing will threaten anglo global cultural hegemony in your lifetime.
          This might be really hard for a burger to grasp since you don't have outside perspective and can't distinguish the difference between world culture and your own, as they are one and the same.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You should stop using the word culture.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Jesus THATS your come back?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >build parts
      >a magnet ordered through a subcontractor
      aren't you the same guy who totally thinks Russia bought an Abrams in the 1990s?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        All our rare earths come through China because we are scared of thorium or some shit.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          No it's that the mines are dirty and refining the stuff also dirty if you do it cheaply. Doing it to standards costs a lot more. China has been happy to poison large parts of its population and until recently lots of the West was still onboard the "they'll inevitably get better if we trade with them" train. "Rare" earths aren't but it is more expensive to so it if you have to care about your population's cancer rates so made sense to outsource it.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            No they treat the thorium like it is nuclear waste when we could just add it to roads as roads are naturally radioactive.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The marketing department of McDs. I want to know how you can make a multi billion dollar enterprise making shit food that people are happy to eat. I then make a competitor and open a chain of stores worldwide, at once infiltrating, siphoning funds from and making the average Joe culturally and epicurially dependant on me and mine.

    Good luck fighting me when your stealth bomber pilots and your geopolitical neighbours are all addicted to my food. Hell I could put mics in the seating to listen in on these convos that break OPSEC.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Advanced Precision Kinetic Weapon System II

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The correct answer here is a Seawolf
    You get access to some of the best sensors, sonars, and most importantly the US's godly nuclear reactor tech.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I just want a J-20 pilot to defect so we can see how embellished China's tech claims are.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Viktor Belenko 2: Electric Boogaloo

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Maybe the B2 I guess?
    Though honestly I suspect if we asked nicely they'd probably give us a squizz at that too since they are willing to hand over nuke subs

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >showing bare weapon bays
    L-lewd!

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