5 ms·
Drones can be very, very fast. it just depends on the design. A drone is just an unmanned aircraft at its core. A drone could do maneuvers that would kill a pi
by nrclark 4y ago
Drones can be very, very fast. it just depends on the design.
A drone is just an unmanned aircraft at its core. A drone could do maneuvers that would kill a pilot, kamikaze itself, or fly with only enough fuel for a one-way trip. It could have a jet engine, a rocket, or maybe both.
Designing for human pilots is really a huge limitation. Drones can be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and can have any engine the designer decides to put on them.
They’re the future of aerial combat for sure.
- elorant 4y agoFast, cheap, heavy ordnance. Pick two.
- slim 4y agoYou can pick all three in three different drones
- nrclark 4y agoAll three of those goals are served by removing the cockpit and everything that goes along with it.
- elorant 4y agoEven if you remove the pilot you’d still need a big drone to load air to surface missiles capable of destroying an airfield. In which case, you’d also have to add a jet engine to make the thing capable of lifting the weight and be fast enough. And now you have a fuel issue, so you add even more size to be able to carry a few tones of jet fuel. Eventually you’ll end up with something as big as a fighter jet, in which case you can’t just develop thousands of them because the cost will already be too high.
- dirtyid 4y agoHigh is relative. Remove multiple pilots that cost 10M+ over course of life of air frame. Adopt hi-lo mix of master UAVs with full sensor suits mesh with simplified bomb truck units. Cutting out manned training will also dramatically reduce operation/maintenance costs, you don't need to waste 1000s of hours per air frame on training, just store the drones in a warehouse and "spin their tires" every once in a while. Hardware costs also goes down when most of fleet aren't optimized for service life. It's not 100:1 ratio, something like 3:1 can dramatically enhance capabilities.
- imtringued 4y agoOkay but now they can't do anything nrclark said.
- dirtyid 4y agoLoyal Wingman specifically intends to do all that, remove pilot and associated operation overheads with lower cost MQ28s as force multiplier to support/augment expensive manned overseer. Next potential step is to make overseer unmanned as well.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoWeight of human and controls is way overstated.