[ExI] robo-rescue

[Keith Henson]

Spike, I don't know if any gold was shipped to Los Alamos, but a vast
amount of silver went to Oak Ridge to make the magnets for the isotope
sorting caldrons. I can't think of any use for gold going to Los Alamos,
but if you can find any reference, please post it.

The point of thick armor is that you can just ignore drones; they just will
not cause any damage if they hit thick armor.

Keith


On Sat, Jun 13, 2026 at 5:16 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Saturday, 13 June, 2026 1:13 PM
> *To:* ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> *Cc:* John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>; spike at rainier66.com
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] robo-rescue
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> John, thinking about it, I am not entirely sure that something like a
> battleship might make sense in the drone era. Battleships were resistant to
> ton-class shells hitting them. A ship with foot-thick armor would not be
> damaged by a light-weight drone if it hit the armor. You would still need
> something like a double hull with the space filled with styrofoam to resist
> torpedoes. Such a ship could maybe get away without point defense, such as
> is used on modern ships, because it would just ignore drone hits. Not
> certain how useful such a ship would be, but there is no way a small drone
> is going to do serious damage by hitting a foot of armor.
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> Keith
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> Best wishes,
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> Keith
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> Sure Keith, but there would be no need for all that mass and size, when
> the idea is to launch drones at enemy surface ships.  I have noticed that
> in the video released of the recent naval battles, the intercepting item is
> not moving all that fast.  Clearly it isn’t a projectile or even a rocket.
> It is likely a propeller-driven drone.  Those don’t cost much, but they are
> raising hell.
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> Apparently the Iranians don’t have an effective anti-drone system
> analogous to our Phalanx radar-guided gatling gun:
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> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5DU-uoLwj4
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> spike
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