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I'm thinking the best application would be maritime surveillance. It takes a long time to get to the loiter zone, but once it's there it can circle indefinitely
by hugh3 16y ago
I'm thinking the best application would be maritime surveillance. It takes a long time to get to the loiter zone, but once it's there it can circle indefinitely (I'm assuming it can be made unmanned). If you're ~1000 miles from the nearest airbase that's probably a lot cheaper than swapping planes out every N hours, and the $0.5 million cost is virtually nothing on a military budget.
I can't think of any good civilian uses, though.
- borism 16y agonot only navies use oceans - there are magnitude more commercial vessels that are currently forced to either use very unreliable low bandwidth or very expensive satellite communications.
- hugh3 16y agoI was suggesting it for surveillance, like the detection of smugglers, illegal fishing, et cetera. I can't imagine that it would be in any way cheaper than satellite communications if all you need is a communications relay.