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All three of those goals are served by removing the cockpit and everything that goes along with it.
by nrclark 4y ago
All 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.