>What's unethical is to have your countrymen in a fight with substandard equipment that you could have helped them improve.

if the fight's imminent or already on, sure. but most of the time weapons are made long before there is the anticipation of a fight.

if nation A has a weapon that lets them fight without risking their soldiers as much as nation B, nation A will always be more willing to enter armed conflict, especially against the less-endowed nation B. so the act of making a better weapon lowers the threshold for using force.

that's one big reason why drones are exceptionally effective weapon systems. surveillance and airstrikes in enemy territory are prone to being shot down and the pilots killed or taken prisoner to be used as a bargaining chip for peace, but drones aren't. the political toll of a drone being shot down is practically zero in comparison, so drone wars can continue indefinitely without domestic outcry.

It takes 10-20 years to field a capable modern weapons platform. It would be ridiculous to wait for the fight to be joined before developing your platforms.

The air Force joke is "it isn't your Dad's air Force, but it might be his plane." Service lifetimes of some craft are past 50 years.

I don't mind a done war that field tests all of our systems, kills a slew of bad people, and costs us no blood. That's a good deal to me.

“think the limp-wristed 'ethical' stance on defense is really just virtue-signalling for other limp-wristed selfish people.”

You are making some good points and you are damaging them with your last paragraph.

Removed last paragraph, thanks for the feedback.

Regardless of how this country uses or misuses their weapons, I have to say this is really impressive: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/dod-cia-develope...

I used to think like this. But these days I believe we've lost our moral high ground, beginning with OIF and continuing with countless unethical, shady things people in power are doing in the name of the red herring that is "national security." I've lost faith in this country's ability to wisely wield the technology it has.

Maybe it was always this way and I just had a rosy outlook early in life, but it seems at some recent point we became the bad guys. I don't want to make weapons, or anything really, for the bad guys.

I suspect that if people could rely on that the weapons they make are used defensively, many more would be willing to make weapons. In many countries, you can't rely on that, and making tools that reduce risk increase the leaderships willingness to use force more offensively.

And of course there's a large unclear area where one persons long-term defensive measure is another persons justified intervention, and another persons war of aggression.

Agreed about risk reduction leading to increased use of force, that's totally the case - look at drones.

However while the frequency might increase, the scale and impact is at an all-time low.

WW1: 40 million dead. Drones: "According to the Long War Journal, which follows US anti-terror developments, as of mid-2011, drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2,018 militants and 138 civilian". Hard to argue with those numbers for a 5 year period. Roughly 20 people a year die by being crushed by their TV's and furniture in the US a year - we don't stop selling furniture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_U.S._...

I mean how can you NOT support several thousand dead militants, with that minor a civilian cost? I'd happily accept a far higher civilian cost for the decimation of militants, but our guys are exceedingly professional and their precision is legendary.

Mistakes happen, sure, but in comparison to the 20th century, we're doing great!

We're doing so good, maybe we should argue that we need MORE precision weapons, given how much they've reduced overall conflict and the fact that large governments are no longer as willing to go toe-to-toe because of them.

This isn't total war. Technically it's not even a war, but a "Military Operation Other Than War" (MOOTW). We're not fighting against a coalition of countries; we're fighting a few thousand dudes in caves with AK-47s and rusty Russian ordnance. Of course there will be fewer casualties. Yet still we've managed to kill upwards of 100,000 people, mostly innocents, across 18 years of occupation, in retaliation for a lucky strike that killed 3,000 Americans. You're right--that's actually a lower number for direct casualties than I expected. But I seethe knowing this is what my "defense" tax dollars fund.

Those drones just make it easier to continue killing people tagged as "militants" (a very flexible word in the hands of our government, I'm sure) while removing deterrents, like the idea that our children could be sent off to die in such a campaign. So now we have robots killing people the government doesn't care about, simply because they have been identified as the "enemy." I think I've seen this movie before.

Mostly innocents? That's not supported by the numbers I was looking at.

Could you point me to these numbers? It looked to me like killing a whole slew of extremists for extremely minimal collateral damage.

I wasn't referring to drone strikes in particular. I pulled the numbers from from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war... and might have misread the 30k wounded as additional deaths. So "most" could be wrong, but the numbers have a way of reflecting the best possible outcome for us.

I'll try to be more precise in future rants.

As for drone strikes: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/11/14/...

Personal I think a country needs to produce defense weapons but I would draw a line at selling to unstable countries for profit. Defense should not be a profit center

Whole hearted agreement about selling to unstable countries for profit.

But selling to our friends/allies? I like the French, I'd be overjoyed if they thought my weapons were so chic/dangerous that they'd protect their countrymen in their most perilous times. Same thing if the Germans, Canadians, Japanese, etc bought my wares. Why not?

Saudi Arabia... not a fan, I don't think that's wise at all, I think that's going to come back to bite us in the ass and that it's a mistake in progress.

The system isn't perfect, I admit.