3 ms·
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 e
by 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 agoIt'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 agoOh, sorry, "nm" means "nanometer" to me, but of course nautical miles.