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Can someone explain the use case? Is it just to help soldiers board an aircraft quickly? With innovations in drone technology, I'd imagine it'd be more ideal
by darod 5y ago
Can someone explain the use case? Is it just to help soldiers board an aircraft quickly? With innovations in drone technology, I'd imagine it'd be more ideal to engage with the enemy with an autonomous or remote controlled drone. This would avoid putting a soldier flying's life in danger but maybe I'm missing something.
- andrewstuart 5y agoWalls are often a key defence against attack. These make wall defences irrelevant.
- raisedbyninjas 5y agoThis sure puts egg on the Trump administration's face.
- Gabriel_Martin 5y agoI mean ladders already existed
- veddox 5y agoWe have had helicopters for a while...
- chrisseaton 5y ago> With innovations in drone technology, I'd imagine it'd be more ideal to engage with the enemy with an autonomous or remote controlled drone. The enemy are likely inside the ship. So you would need to board and then go into the ship and fight. I can't imagine a drone being able to do that soon.
- dnautics 5y agoCould also be a hostage situation... You don't want to be willy nilly blowing shit up on an innocent third party ship, though a few bullet holes can be patched up.
- T-A 5y agoYou want to board a ship at sea for inspection. Currently, you either abseil from a hovering helicopter or drive up to the ship's side with a patrol boat and scale a rope ladder courteously provided by the ship's crew. Both approaches put your vehicle and everybody on it at risk: one RPG hit and you're out of business. Having smaller, faster targets approach independently, optionally from multiple directions at once, is obviously better.
- vkou 5y agoUnless you are making a habit of inspecting ships that like to surprise you with RPGs fire (And what exactly is their plan after firing that RPG at an inspection crew sent by an incredibly heavily armed warship?), this thing will need an incredibly low accident/crash/technical defect/user error rate in order to be a net positive for adoption. Also, if you are boarding the kind of vessel that makes a habit of surprising naval inspectors with incredibly lethal application of medium-arms fire, what stops them from shooting you while you float in... Or are screwing around with getting your gear off after you land. This seems like a fun toy which is only useful in situations when nobody's looking to pick a fight with you.
- cm2187 5y agoAlso in this heavy fire environment, my first choice wouldn’t be to send a slow moving guy covered with fuel tanks.
- adolph 5y agoCertainly the technology needs maturing but one might imagine that other elements could provide overwatch/supporting fire while the boarding party maneuvers. Additionally, while the video shows relatively long flights actual use might only replace the ladder or fastrope portion of boarding.
- vkou 5y agoDoes this sort of thing happen frequently enough in peacetime to even warrant a contract to build this? Again, see my question about "Who in their right mind opens fire on an inspection crew sent by a warship?" And during wartime, I don't see this being at all useful. This isn't the eighteenth century, warships no longer perform boarding actions against opponents that are going to shoot back.
- dharmab 5y agoHonestly? This is mostly PR for Gravity and the Royal Navy. Gravity gets to look cool to investors and the Navy looks cool to recruits.
- megablast 5y agoAnd what dies the drone do then?? Threaten to explode unless they stop the ship?? Take over the controls??
- mattr47 5y agoMedical personnel, coast guard inspections. As the tech gets better there could absolutely be a case for tactical assaults using this kind of tech.