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Wait a minute, how in the world do you outfit ordinary shipping containers to "launch and retrieve a swarm of drones with a combat radius of a few hundred miles

Wait a minute, how in the world do you outfit ordinary shipping containers to "launch and retrieve a swarm of drones with a combat radius of a few hundred miles"? I mean, yeah, that sounds like it would be pretty effective. Assuming that you could actually do it. But I'm not aware of any drone that might conceivably have an operational radius of a few hundred miles that could launch, land, and be serviced in an area of 8ft x 20ft or 8ft x 40ft. Much less a "swarm" of them in the same area.

nostrademons 10y ago
A Cessna Skyhawk has range of 640nm, height of 8ft, length of 27ft, wingspan of 36ft, and payload of about 900lbs. Take the pilot out, streamline & shorten the fuselage, and give it folding wings, and you're basically there for size, range, and payload. For landing: well, SpaceX can land a rocket vertically on a drone ship after taking it to orbital velocity. You could do similar maneuvers with a drone. Flip the plane so that its wings act like a parachute to slow its descent, and then turn it around all the way to use the propeller to lower it onto the deck, then fold the wings. Without a pilot, the only limits on G-forces is the structural integrity of the airframe, and such planes are likely to land very lightly after completing their mission. Computer control lets you do things that would be totally impractical with a pilot, like maintain stability in a stall. Takeoff seems the biggest challenge. Ground roll on the Cessna is 960 ft, and the drone will be at its heaviest on take-off. Maybe do an assisted take-off, launching from a gun barrel or compressed air cylinder? Again, without a pilot, you can be much more liberal with G-forces, and with computer control you can do things like unfold the wings in the air. It wouldn't fit in a single container then, but you could have a system of containerized components all working together. Also, the Russians reportedly have containerized cruise missiles, which meet the requirements for range, payload, and take-off. They don't really have multi-mission capability, but it may not be all that far from there to drones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632543/A-cruise-missile-in-a-shipping-box-on-sale-to-rogue-bidders.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632...
- aetherson 10y ago
  I think you meant "km," not "nm." Cessna Skyhawks also do not, you know, carry munitions, and have a top speed of about 180mph. I'm by no means an aerospace engineer, but I think a blithe assumption that you can take a slow, light, un-durable civilian aircraft, turn it VTOL, arm it, and launch it from a box essentially no larger than it is, and have an even remotely effective combat aircraft, is unfounded. And in any case, that's still not a "swarm."
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    It's 640 nautical miles according to Cessna's website. And a lot of the assumptions about what makes an effective combat aircraft go out the window when you take humans out of the loop. The #1 cost in a manned airplane is the pilot - we do everything we can to bring them home, first of all because human life is sacred and second of all because there's a massive investment in training them which can't be replaced. Why do you need durability when the drone is expendable? Why do you need performance? All you need is to deliver a critical mass of ordinance accurately onto a target. If your drones cost less than the missiles used to shoot them down, just have more drones than missiles and you win. A typical container ship has between 10,000-20,000 TEUs. Many of those are stacked below decks and wouldn't be available for flight operations, but even if you assume 500 containers on the top deck and pack 2 drones/container, you could have an air wing of 1000 drones. Or put 50 containers each on 10 ships in a convoy. I'd consider that a swarm.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Oh, sorry, "nm" means "nanometer" to me, but of course nautical miles.
acveilleux 10y ago
The drone swarm folks are persistent and resist the facts that as drone lethality approaches fighter jet, so does the size, complexity, cost and operational requirement of the drone. It's one thing for a drone to carry a few hellfires and be remotely controlled over air space where completely supremacy as been achieved or access granted versus actually having autonomous drones do strikes in hostile air space. I mean, the later kind of drone exists of course, they're called cruise missiles and they cost 1.6m$ each (Tomahawk Block IV, 2014 price).
maxerickson 10y ago
The traditional approach has been to put missiles on a destroyer. The US Arleigh Burke-class can carry missiles to shoot at land, sea and air targets.

nostrademons 10y ago

A Cessna Skyhawk has range of 640nm, height of 8ft, length of 27ft, wingspan of 36ft, and payload of about 900lbs. Take the pilot out, streamline & shorten the fuselage, and give it folding wings, and you're basically there for size, range, and payload. For landing: well, SpaceX can land a rocket vertically on a drone ship after taking it to orbital velocity. You could do similar maneuvers with a drone. Flip the plane so that its wings act like a parachute to slow its descent, and then turn it around all the way to use the propeller to lower it onto the deck, then fold the wings. Without a pilot, the only limits on G-forces is the structural integrity of the airframe, and such planes are likely to land very lightly after completing their mission. Computer control lets you do things that would be totally impractical with a pilot, like maintain stability in a stall. Takeoff seems the biggest challenge. Ground roll on the Cessna is 960 ft, and the drone will be at its heaviest on take-off. Maybe do an assisted take-off, launching from a gun barrel or compressed air cylinder? Again, without a pilot, you can be much more liberal with G-forces, and with computer control you can do things like unfold the wings in the air. It wouldn't fit in a single container then, but you could have a system of containerized components all working together. Also, the Russians reportedly have containerized cruise missiles, which meet the requirements for range, payload, and take-off. They don't really have multi-mission capability, but it may not be all that far from there to drones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2Rqte6XOs http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632543/A-cruise-missile-in-a-shipping-box-on-sale-to-rogue-bidders.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7632...

aetherson 10y ago
I think you meant "km," not "nm." Cessna Skyhawks also do not, you know, carry munitions, and have a top speed of about 180mph. I'm by no means an aerospace engineer, but I think a blithe assumption that you can take a slow, light, un-durable civilian aircraft, turn it VTOL, arm it, and launch it from a box essentially no larger than it is, and have an even remotely effective combat aircraft, is unfounded. And in any case, that's still not a "swarm."
- nostrademons 10y ago
  It's 640 nautical miles according to Cessna's website. And a lot of the assumptions about what makes an effective combat aircraft go out the window when you take humans out of the loop. The #1 cost in a manned airplane is the pilot - we do everything we can to bring them home, first of all because human life is sacred and second of all because there's a massive investment in training them which can't be replaced. Why do you need durability when the drone is expendable? Why do you need performance? All you need is to deliver a critical mass of ordinance accurately onto a target. If your drones cost less than the missiles used to shoot them down, just have more drones than missiles and you win. A typical container ship has between 10,000-20,000 TEUs. Many of those are stacked below decks and wouldn't be available for flight operations, but even if you assume 500 containers on the top deck and pack 2 drones/container, you could have an air wing of 1000 drones. Or put 50 containers each on 10 ships in a convoy. I'd consider that a swarm.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    Oh, sorry, "nm" means "nanometer" to me, but of course nautical miles.

acveilleux 10y ago

The drone swarm folks are persistent and resist the facts that as drone lethality approaches fighter jet, so does the size, complexity, cost and operational requirement of the drone. It's one thing for a drone to carry a few hellfires and be remotely controlled over air space where completely supremacy as been achieved or access granted versus actually having autonomous drones do strikes in hostile air space. I mean, the later kind of drone exists of course, they're called cruise missiles and they cost 1.6m$ each (Tomahawk Block IV, 2014 price).

maxerickson 10y ago

The traditional approach has been to put missiles on a destroyer. The US Arleigh Burke-class can carry missiles to shoot at land, sea and air targets.