alt Hacker NewsThis is the part I don't understand about chip export restrictions; the argument used is that high-end chips would be used for high-tech weaponry, but most weapons don't need high-end chips, 2-5 generations old chips are good enough for most smart weapons. I mean the Tomahawk is from '83, the HIMARS from the late 90's, etc. I don't believe that high end, small process chips are used in any weapons right now.
The only use case is modern day AI workloads, but that's used more in planning than in the field. I can imagine a use case for e.g. image recognition, but again, that tech or the level required is not new at all and doesn't need state of the art chip tech.
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Weapons systems like the Tomahawk and HIMARS are continually evolved, especially the electronic systems like navigation and command+control. The iteration isn't nearly as fast as in other industries, but the modern incarnations are not 30+ years old, AFAIU, old stockpile notwithstanding.
That's also why they're so damned expensive, and why it's difficult for upstarts to break into the market with cheaper alternatives. Like any tech company, once they get the customer locked into a platform they're constantly pushing upgrades to both stay technologically competitive and, more importantly, keep their margins high.
They do spying to understand the capabilities of allies and adversary weapons. The goal is to maintain supremacy and slow down development. The US had a spy in the Soviet era that provided the entire Soviet radar roadmap into the 1990s, and technology was deployed (or not) based on that.
That’s one of the reasons drones are so disruptive. The development cycle is tuned by state of the art missile and stuff, and isn’t tooled for some dude strapping a mortar round to a little drone.
There are uses for AI running on the platform, you can see this in Ukraine right now where many kamikaze drones use AI for terminal guidance if the connection to the operator breaks after a target has been selected. How intensive that workload is and how it needs to be however I can't say.